Jackie Hill Perry, author of the book Gay Girl, Good God and a former lesbian, insists that sexual orientation does not factor into the Christian concept of salvation because God does not call people to be straight.
“If there’s any hill I’ll die on, it’s the fact that the gospel is not a call to ‘change your orientation’ but rather, to submit to Christ as Lord,” Hill Perry says in the caption of her viral video clip. “By doing so, through the power of the Spirit, you are indeed changed (converted) but this change doesn’t make temptations go away, if anything, true conversion empowers you to flee them.”
Hill Perry shared the video excerpt of her discussion with Matt and Laurie Crouch, hosts of TBN’s popular “Praise the Lord” program on social media on October 6. Hill Perry, a married mother known for renouncing her former homosexual lifestyle, explained her perspective on “change” as it pertains to the Christian idea of sanctification to the hosts.
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“We are by nature, children of wrath. We are born in sin and shaped in iniquity,” Hill Perry said, quoting Bible passages from Ephesians 2 and Psalm 51. “And God has every intention to create us again, to make us new creatures, to give us the right to become children of God. And so the Bible is all about change, all about conversion. It’s just the way we’ve communicated as Christians has been unbiblical.”
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The Gay Girl, Good God author then referenced New Testament writings by Paul on the idea of “conversion,” saying that the apostle presents “true change” as being “that God has saved me and set me apart for Himself.”
“He has made me right, justified me with God,” she added.
But believing that God “makes us new people” doesn’t mean Christians are then exempt from struggles and temptations. “[B]ut now we have a Spirit that fills us with power that is able to help us to defeat and fight those things that we are tempted to leave God for,” Hill Perry said.
Related: Jackie Hill Perry Warns Women About Tempting Her Husband
“I imagine that if that is the way that we communicated change, we would actually have more conversions,” she added. “Because now we’ve preached a real gospel and not a prosperity gospel, because it is a kind of prosperity gospel to say, ‘Hey, come to Jesus and he’ll make you straight,’ implying you come to Jesus and be temptation-less. Even Jesus didn’t have that kind of life. So we want to tell people what it really means to be a Christian, which is you [sic] gonna struggle, but you’re not gonna struggle forever.”
Hill Perry, who recently released Holier Than Thou, is known for speaking openly about her struggles with same-sex attraction. She has previously explained that while she loves and enjoys her husband and considers herself “functionally heterosexual,” she remains “very much attracted to women.”
“Yet, I love God more than what I am tempted by,” she has said.
Hill Perry talked several years ago with Faithfully Magazine about her conversion experience, which occurred while she was in a relationship with another woman. In that discussion, centered around her popular Gay Girl, Good God book, she also commented on being a wife and mother, conversion therapy, and how she nurtures her relationship with God.
Hill Perry, also a spoken word artist, shares three children with apologist and fellow poet Preston Perry.
TBN published the full interview with Hill Perry on YouTube on September 28.
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