About Matt Moore

Matt Moore is a 25 year old writer who has spent the last few years engaging the culture in discussions about sexuality and faith. In 2010, Matt converted to Christianity from a lifestyle of homosexuality. He greatly desires, through his writing, to help the gay community see the world and themselves from a biblical perspective and to know the hope that is available to them in Christ. Matt lives in Shreveport, Louisiana and is currently an intern at a local Southern Baptist church.

How Matt Moore Tells His Story

“I’ve been living in New Orleans, Louisiana up until three days ago. I’m back home in Shreveport, La. I became a believer in 2010 when I was twenty one years old. I was in the middle of not merely a homosexual lifestyle, whatever that really means, a drunken lifestyle, promiscuous lifestyle, a really hopeless way of life. A couple of my friends had become believers over a period of that year in 2010 continued to share the gospel with me and to love me and towards the end of the year I really came to the end of myself and realized that my life and my way of living my life were broken.

I needed redemption. I needed to be made whole and so I began pursuing this God that my friends had turned to and then within a couple of months I really understood the Gospel of Christ and I became a believer. From that point forward I just started to write some and started elaborating on my experiences because I feel like it’s a need in our culture and even in the church. That’s a long story very very short.”

Why Matt Moore Loves Jesus Too Much to Call Himself a Gay Christian

“I was gearing that experience that thought in my mind, the image of the gay Christian in my mind, where different people that I know of like Wesley Hill, or Julie Rodgers, who are repentant and celibate Christians who struggle with same sex attraction. They’re orthodox in their beliefs but in their terminology they choose to call themselves gay still and are pretty adamant about that, and about how it’s ok, and about how the church should embrace this worldly terminology, and how people who struggle with homosexual temptations should embrace this gay identity.

Which I just feel just flies in the face of Scriptural teaching; It flies in the face of believers identity in Christ, and no longer in the world, and no longer in sin, but in Christ alone. I feel although they would find that using that word to describe themselves would put them level with the world in order that they would engage them better.

I felt actually the opposite of that because you’re communicating to the gay community and to the unbelieving world that you still find so much of who you are in your flesh and in your fallen sinful inclinations rather than in Christ. That’s why I said, “I hate sin” because really that’s what it is. These people who call themselves “gay Christian” although they’re orthodox supposedly in their beliefs, they’re really dumbing down the evil of sin and the heinousness of sin and making it feel and sound better than what it actually is.”

The Desire to Place Identity Outside of Christ

“Honestly, and they would take offense to this, but I believe it’s pride. I believe they find some satisfaction in comfort, and pride in identifying as gay. I don’t know if that is an overreaction to having to suppress and hide that part of themselves for so much of their lives that now they have come out, they’re unwilling to relinquish that terminology to describe themselves, because it’s who they are, it’s who they’ve always been.

They’re going to be honest with that no matter what. I think some anger may fuel that, anger of being misunderstood by the world and by the church. In Christian communities, people who choose to use the term gay to describe themselves, I feel like the motives are pretty similar to why the world would use those terminologies to describe themselves and pride.”

Where Does Matt Moore Find His Identity?

“Where does my identity come from and what part of who I am do I find valuable? Do I find my born again, grace fraught nature in Christ, as the part of me that now I find my identity in this? Or do I still find my identity and view myself according to my fallen and natural nature? I feel like when you say gay Christian, well you’re communicating to the world, Yes, you love who God has made you to be in Christ and that’s how you identify yourself and you’re thankful for it.

But at the same time you’re still holding on to the fallen natural inclinations that God hates and that Christ died for.  Still, it’s just very contradictory and confusing to the world for somebody to communicate themselves that way.”

Can Someone Really Escape Their Homosexual Desires?

“I believe all that we are as human beings can change the more that we behold the glory of Christ and are transformed more and more into His image. I’m not pro Reparative Therapy specifically, because I don’t know that change and sexuality and any part of our being comes through specific therapeutic exercises. I think it comes through having an increased revelation of the gospel and who we are in Christ and being closer to Him.

I know that the shift in my sexuality, I know there’s not been a radical shift but there has been some shift. It hasn’t been a result of seeking out counsel. I know that’s not a bad thing, but it hasn’t been as a result of seeking out counseling, or therapeutic exercises, or trying to figure out what happened in my childhood to make me this way. It wasn’t bad. It was daily reading of Scripture and daily prayer and daily seeking to see the face of Christ that changed me. It’s kind of mysterious and I can’t really explain the mechanics of it.”

What Does Tolerance Mean to Matt Moore?

“I believe that true tolerance would be, to be able to respectfully disagree with people who have totally different worldviews and perspectives, including sexuality. And by respectfully disagree, I mean to be able to disagree without saying that the opposing party hates you. I would say the new definition of tolerance, which is not true tolerance would be in order for you to be a tolerant person you need to not only agree with a certain world view or perspective, but you need to support an advocate for that world view and that perspective.”

Matt Moore’s Response to Our Fallen World

“I would say our fallen context would be the world and us as human beings are not what we were created to be. We were created to be good. We were very good before the fall and now since the fall, we have a fallen nature that we have inherited from Adam and Eve and because of that our desires, and our feelings, and our inclinations are all messed up and are directed more toward evil than they are toward good. Now that doesn’t mean we are as bad as what we could be. There are still remnants of God’s character and image reflected in us. But in totality we are stained by sin, and because of that every part of who we are is inclined towards brokenness and towards sinful self destruction.”

How Matt Moore Has Changed His Perspective on Identity

“I think that prior to knowing Christ, I viewed myself and my identity as being good. I viewed myself as not being sinful really. Then when I came to Christ, He humbled me and showed me that I’m not good apart from Him and His grace, I’m evil. Seeing what my identity was apart from Christ really changed my perspective on things like my same sex attractions.

Before Christ, I couldn’t understand how am I a good person? How can these feelings that I just naturally have for love, I mean that’s how I viewed it, be wrong, and be evil and be vile and be an abomination? It makes no sense to me but when I understood who I really was in my natural state as a broken fallen, sinful sinner, it clicked. It made sense to me, “Oh well, if I’m really as bad off in my natural state as the Bible says that I am, it makes sense that I would naturally have these feelings that they’re wrong.”

How to Communicate With Self Identified Homosexuals

“I would start honestly, I think when you’re talking to somebody that is gay and identifies as gay; and holds tight to that and they’re unrepentant; they’re not a believer, I think the worst thing you can do is try to convince them that their sexuality is bad or harmful to themselves or anything like that. The worst thing you can do is even focus on sexuality because they have totally convinced themselves that their sexuality is good and the whole world tells them that.

I think you need to go a step further and try to help them see that their heart apart from sexuality in ways of hatred or greed or selfishness. Try to help them to see that we are all messed up.” I feel like that’s the first thing they need to believe before they’re going to believe anything that we believe or the Bible says about homosexual behavior. They need to first believe at the very core that they are broken people.”

How Matt Moore Responds to “Being Gay is a Choice”

“Well, we were discussing other family members in my family who really embraced me before I was a believer and I had come out as gay and really affirmed that behavior and that lifestyle choice. My grandfather was telling me, “Even back then before you knew Jesus, I would tell them, “God did not make Matt gay. It is his choice.” I immediately began to respond. Not harshly or in anger but as I began to speak my grandmother could tell that I was disagreeing with what he was saying. My grandmother said, “Well Matt, what are you saying? It’s a choice. It is a choice. Didn’t you choose to be gay before you knew Jesus? Now you choose not to be.”

So I began to explain to them when they say, “Being gay” regardless of what they mean in their minds, what that communicates to every single gay person or unbeliever is that you’re saying that their experience of us feeling these desires. That’s what they think of when they hear, “Being gay” is the experience of feeling desires for the same sex. You’re saying that “That’s a choice.” They were like, “Oh no. We all have different weaknesses. We’re all fallen people and we have sinful desires that we don’t choose. They’re choosing to act out those desires.”

The Reality That Homosexuality is Embracing Sinful Desires

“When I came out as gay, I chose to embrace these sinful desires but I did not choose to feel, but I chose to embrace them and act out on them. It’s really important that if that’s what you mean when you’re saying, somebody ‘made a choice to be gay,’ you need to say it like that. You need to say they’re choosing to embrace their sinful inclinations, rather than turning away from them and trusting the gospel. So it was a really good and fruitful conversation. I knew before I even got into the conversation with them, that I knew they believed what I believed. I knew we were on the same page theologically and Biblically, but just the way that I would articulate that vs the way they would articulate that is completely different.”

How to be Loving and Truthful

“I would say to be truthful is to be loving, it’s not to be hateful. If what we believe as Orthodox Christians regarding sexuality is actually true, regardless of how we feel about it or anybody else feels about it, the most loving thing to do would be to reveal that truth and communicate that truth to everyone who it applies to, which is everyone.

So I mean to comfort somebody in their sin and to call that not judging them and to reassure somebody that they know the Lord while they’re embracing a lifestyle of sin, it’s really the most hateful thing that you could do. I know that the world will not say that, that the world will continually call speaking the truth hateful, no matter how gently you do it. But at the end of the day, the most hateful thing you could do is to comfort somebody in sin and reassure them of their place in Christ while they’re in sin.

It’s a massive need in the church for people to… I’m not saying that they do not understand homosexuality, because I feel like there’s not a whole lot to understand. It is sinful, sexual immorality and it needs to be turned away from just like everything else needs to be turned away from that is sinful.”

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