It is one thing to say, “I was a terrible sinner before I knew the Lord, but God still loved me even in my sin and had His hand on my life.” It is another thing entirely to say, “All the years that I was living in blatant, open sin, I was actually a born-again Christian.” Really?
In a poorly reasoned article about same-sex “marriage” in the ultra-liberal Huffington Post, Daphne Daly shares with real candor the horrible lifestyle she lived before she got right with the Lord. It included prostitution, adult entertainment, a lesbian relationship and even advocating for legalized brothels.
She explains, “Jesus still loved me throughout my entire life of sin. He held my hand the entire time, guiding me through until I found my place in His kingdom, not in this world.”
Yes, God’s mercy is amazing, and many of us can relate to how incredibly patient He was with us before we were saved, intervening in our lives even when we were rejecting Him.
But that’s not all Daphne has to say. She writes, “It may surprise many Christians to hear me say that I was a born-again Christian the entirety of my 20 year career as a prostitute and adult entertainer. I was a born-again Christian the entire time I was advocating for legalized brothels.”
What? A born-again Christian prostitute? A born-again stripper? A born-again advocate for legalized brothels?
We’re not talking about a momentary slip-up or even a series of falls. And we’re not talking about someone being sold into sex slavery. We’re talking about a chosen lifestyle over a period of more than two decades after professing faith in Jesus as a child. Yet she claims she was born-again the whole time?
I am really glad to hear that Daphne has found her way back to the Lord and that she’s even in ministry school (even if it’s premature). And I hope that her bad theology is the result of her being young in the Lord. After all, she doesn’t exactly claim to be the holiest person on earth, writing, “I curse like a sailor. I can admit it. That is something I am working on.”
The problem is that she is functioning as a public spokesperson for the gospel, wanting to correct the church for standing against same-sex “marriage” (although she recognizes that homosexual relationships are sinful) and wanting to tell us what God does and doesn’t require.
Daphne explains, “My potty mouth”—cursing like a sailor, as she put it—“doesn’t make me any less of a Christian.” But doesn’t it make her less Christlike? And isn’t Christlikeness part of the very essence of being a Christian?
Yet profanity is hardly the major issue here. Paul warns repeatedly against the very deception Daphne espouses, namely that you can be born again while living in blatant, ongoing, unrepentant, habitual sin.
“For you may be sure of this,” Paul writes, “that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 5:5-6, ESV; see also 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Gal. 5:19-21; Col. 3:5-6). Paul could not have made himself any more clear.
Daphne writes, “The Bible clearly states that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead for our sin. He asks for very little in return. He has asked us to be born again. Once we have become born again, we are ‘covered by the blood,’ as it states. We are washed clean in His eyes. It is pretty cut and dry without religion to jumble it up.”
What is cut and dry is that being born again means living a brand-new life (2 Cor. 5:17), and Paul taught plainly that Jesus “died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again” (2 Cor. 5:15, NIV).
We are saved to serve the Lord, and while Daphne claims that Jesus “asks for very little in return,” He actually asks for everything in return, telling us that we have to renounce everything we have to be His disciples (Luke 14:33).
But this is not a legalistic requirement. It is the Bridegroom calling His bride to be His, to love Him with an undivided heart, and He empowers us by His grace to live out His radical call.
When it comes to homosexuality, it is no surprise that Daphne makes some very weak points about same-sex “marriage,” but rather than condemn her, let’s take this as an opportunity to pray for her to come to a place in the Lord that she has never known before, examining our own lives as we do.
And let’s remember the wise words of Charles Spurgeon, who said, “I cannot conceive it possible for anyone truly to receive Christ as Savior and yet not to receive Him as Lord. A man who is really saved by grace does not need to be told that he is under solemn obligations to serve Christ. The new life within him tells him that. Instead of regarding it as a burden, he gladly surrenders himself—body, soul, and spirit—to the Lord who has redeemed him, reckoning this to be his reasonable service.”
Put another way, there is no such thing as an unrepentant, born-again Christian prostitute.
