One80: Testimonies of Transformation

113: The Gay Identity Lie, Matthew Karchner (homosexuality)

• OneWay Ministries • Season 4 • Episode 113

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A single question on a crowded lunch line can change a life. 

Matthew Karchner grew up steeped in church and Scripture, yet carried a secret that shaped his choices, hardened his heart, and led him into a “counterfeit freedom” that never delivered the peace it promised. From hidden shame to late‑night calls and alcohol‑fueled bravado, his world looked bold on the outside and empty on the inside—until an evangelist at a McDonald’s asked, “If you died today, where would you go?” 

Hear how that encounter changed the trajectory of Matthew's faith, purpose and life, where he is the one proclaiming, "I've decided to follow Jesus; no turning back." And how a bold stand for faith changed even his profession to missionary pastor in Cambodia.

While Matthew found a new identity in Christ, he sheds light on the false identity lie often found with homosexuality.

You'll never see strangers the same way again, and you might be convicted to share the love of Jesus with them after listening to today's One80. 

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OneWay Ministries

Announcer:

Welcome to One80, transforming testimonies from next door to across the globe. Be amazed at how God works to bring people to himself. Share today's One80 with a friend. It might be the best news they hear today.

Matthew Karchner:

I was so deep into it and so into the false identity of I'm attracted to men, therefore I am gay. That was what I was walking in at the time, that lie.

Margaret Ereneta:

We sat down with Matthew Kirchner. He is a pastor in Cambodia who grew up trapped inside an identity lie. And it's a lie so many of us buy into. Learn how God set him free. This is Margaret Ereneta Welcome to Matthew's One80.

Matthew Karchner:

My name is Matthew Karchner, and uh we say "Car-ick-ner" in my hometown. I'm from a small town in Pennsylvania, an old coal mining town. Uh these days it's a Walmart town. It was very conservative growing up. I came from a Christian family. My parents were very active in the church. Parents were leaders of the youth group. My dad was an elder and then later a deacon in another church in recent years. He was a treasurer, and they put me in the Christian school next to the church. And I was in the youth group.

Matthew Karchner:

So then uh Wednesday night typically I was in church, typically Friday or Saturday, and Sunday morning, Sunday evening. So we were I was very well churched and learning scripture, memorizing scripture, and um going for youth events and all kinds of stuff. And and so uh there wasn't a lack of biblical teaching, and there wasn't a lack of Christian community. But about 12 years old, when the boys started to like the girls in school, I felt attracted to the boys, and so that became my deep dark secret, something that I kind of went through uh coping with in stages. Eventually I started crying myself to sleep many nights, praying that the Lord would take that temptation away.

Matthew Karchner:

I didn't like it, I wanted to be like everybody else. Um, the temptation didn't go away, and through those hormones raging in the teen years, I took steps toward that that I shouldn't have taken and looked at pictures I shouldn't have looked at and got into videos, and sin is never satisfied. So the more I fed that fire, the more the fire grew.

Margaret Ereneta:

It's so moving to hear Matthew share his story and say that sin is never satisfied. I just have so much compassion when he shares his story and what follows and just the progression of his sin and how God brings him out of it.

Matthew Karchner:

Went to the nearest city when I was 19 to attend the University of Pittsburgh, got down there and was relatively uh anonymous. People didn't know me. I had one friend, I think, in the town at first, and and so uh started to eventually get out drinking, which I hadn't done in high school. I had really avoided that. It runs runs into family alcoholism, and so avoided it like the plague as a younger guy. And then when I got into my early 20s, took the plunge, and it was kind of that door that I opened and I couldn't close.

Matthew Karchner:

It was a door that I opened that gave me what I feel today is a sense of counterfeit freedom. Like finally, I can do the things, I can act on this the fantasies that I've had and the things that I never had the guts to do. So I felt that kind of bravery that felt good initially. So I came out into the gay life slowly, kind of remained a secret in the early early time, and then over time became more emboldened in it, and eventually came out to my family and said, you know, accept me or else, and F you and that sort of thing.

Matthew Karchner:

And so I was calling them late at night and drunk and shouting on the phone and carrying on, and it really seemed to them like all hope was lost. The enemy, Satan, through me, I didn't realize that at the time, but trying to force them to turn their backs on God and his inspired word who they had given their lives to, and and I didn't see it that way. I saw it as a political thing and acceptance, and you don't love me, and all that sort of thing. So several years into the gay life, it wasn't nearly as as exciting and and joyful as it was day one, day two, day three. Uh 9-11 happened.

Matthew Karchner:

I woke up out of a drunken stupor, turned on the TV, the the twin towers are coming down. I knew the word, I knew that the Lord's coming back in judgment, that he allows judgment on the disobedient. I knew that he was allowing judgment on my nation, who had turned our backs on the Lord, who we were founded as a Christian nation originally, and then forgot who the blesser was and and started to be proud and and boastful and and turned away from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew Karchner:

And so 9-11 was judgment on my country. And I thought, wow, what about me? What if I'm next? I'm I'm kind of at an individual level, the same as the US, the same as my country, turned my back on the Lord and walked away. And uh so I cried that day, and you would think, well, that's when you got on your knees and repented, right? And it wasn't. I was so deep into it and so into that the false identity of I'm attracted to men, therefore I am gay. That was what I was walking in at the time, that lie. And so it was a while after that. I don't know if it was maybe six months or so after that. I was downtown in Pittsburgh on my lunch break bank. I worked at PC Bank at the time.

Matthew Karchner:

An evangelist, a street evangelist, followed me into McDonald's, tapped me on the shoulder, waiting in line uh with me and said, if you died today, where would you go? And he didn't know me from anyone. I was three hours away from my hometown. And so then it started to occur to me, wow, the Lord's reaching down to me. It has to be, because this guy doesn't know my family. So it it became something of a miracle, right? That I was trying to piece together. How could this be? It has to be the Lord, but I don't want to believe that because I don't want to turn away from this life that I've embraced with all that I have.

Margaret Ereneta:

So these tugs from the Lord keep happening and they're getting stronger and stronger.

Matthew Karchner:

Long story short, the Lord allowed me to go through some tough stuff and really hit rock bottom through alcoholism and friends committing suicide, overdosing, and that sort of thing. HIV cases among among my friends, not in my case, praise the Lord, but among people that I knew, and just a lot of scares.

Matthew Karchner:

And so, long story short, I was in my apartment, filthy, disgusting apartment, living a horrible life. The fun was over. May 28, 2010. I got on my knees and prayed the sinner's prayer to the best of my recollection. Praise the Lord, to truly surrender my life to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so um, that was 15 years ago. And uh praise the Lord for new life. He really washed me clean in his blood, gave me peace and new life.

Matthew Karchner:

I really, I stood up from kneeling at the bed and surrendering my life to Christ and looked at myself in the mirror. There was like a mirror there over the dresser, and it was like, Who are you? What happened? It was like I like Encino Man or something like that. I like to think uh, like I didn't know what my life was gonna be like. What am I supposed to do? I had been so many years in that life, and I knew now that I belonged to the Lord, and so in short, I plugged into the local church. I was about two blocks away from the same denomination I had grown up in. That was a natural fit at the time.

Matthew Karchner:

Got into service there and witnessing to youth and helping out with different kinds of ministries and sharing the gospel when I walked the dog in the dog park near the church, kind of a rough, crime-ridden area with prostitutes and that sort of thing. I would be sharing the gospel with prostitutes, sharing my story with drug dealers and everything else. And praise the Lord, he really manned me up through that. You know, you think of coming from a homosexual life and then into being a man of God, and that's not only in the spiritual, that's also fleshly. Like the Lord does a lot in the spiritual to change you to a different person in the flesh. And so there were things that I had the boldness to do and the bravery to do that I would have been hiding under something in my past life.

Matthew Karchner:

So praise the Lord for that. A lot of it came through evangelism. Eventually, he led me to uh go skydiving and scuba diving in the deep ocean and break a lot of fears, got me into Toastmasters to break the fear of public speaking, so I could stand in front of churches all over the place and share my testimony and share the gospel, his gospel, call people to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Matthew Karchner:

Pretty immediately I got plugged into missions at the local church, and eventually the Lord led me to be a pastor in Cambodia to open a church over here. So that was through partnership in the local church. The church had a partnership with the church in Cambodia. We came here on three short-term missions. I knew immediately, like day one, that I was called to be a missionary. I didn't know what that would look like. The Lord kept me there at the bank working at PC for a number of years, training me through Toastmasters, breaking fears of public speaking, and all that kind of stuff so that I could be effective in ministry. And so a number of years after the Lord brought me to repentance and it was time to walk away from the bank, that's a whole other story. I'll try to summarize quickly. PC had gone headlong into the diversity and inclusion, the trend. At the time, it was relatively new. So this is 2014-15. They had started to champion the cause.

Matthew Karchner:

We had a new leader in a legal department at PNC who really, really championed what they call now DEI initiatives. And so a lot of my responsibilities in my role as a middle-level manager in the legal department had to do with celebrating or promoting the LGBT agenda or sharing what happened this week as we were supporting the LGBT agenda. And I couldn't do that with a clear conscience. So I went into my boss's office and told him that I couldn't, with a clear conscience, lead people down the path that I almost had followed to my desk. And so on that note, the Lord led out of the bank. Basically, it came down to him trying his best to make arrangements for me to, you know, switch responsibilities and that sort of thing. And then eventually saying, you know what, if you can't fall in line with one of our core values as a company, diversity, maybe this isn't the company for you.

Matthew Karchner:

And I said, Praise the Lord. So I left out of there, and my resignation letter read, I've decided to follow Jesus, no turning back. So I left that high-rise building, that skyscraper in downtown Pittsburgh with like a banker's box in my hand, and I'll never forget looking up at the building and thinking, Okay, Lord, what's next? I hope it's Cambodia. I was dying to come to the mission field. My entire heart was in reaching the lost for Christ, and I'd been even doing that in the workplace to their chagrin.

Matthew Karchner:

So um the Lord brought me over here, and interestingly, in Cambodia, there is LGBT evangelism here for me to do. There's a there's an LGBT community here, and so I share the gospel with those folks. But even in the mainstream community of Cambodia, the national identity is very, very closely tied to Buddhism. So the nation is statistically, they say 96% of people identify as Buddhists. So extremely overwhelmingly Buddhist to a point where it's like, I am Cambodian, therefore I am Buddhist. Like the vast, vast majority of people that you meet will say that literally or in some way, shape, or form, indicate that. Like it's not Christianity, it is not an option for me. I'm Cambodian.

Matthew Karchner:

Don't you understand that? Like, I'm in an exception category. It's like, no, the Lord Jesus Christ is the one true God, the creator of the heavens and the earth, every country, and he loves you and died for you. In an unusual way, the Lord has has brought a parallel there to what I learned from my background coming from homosexuality. The lie that I feel attracted to men, or I felt attracted to men, and therefore I am gay, that lie that I believed for years, a variant of that same lie is now over here. I am Cambodian, therefore I can never follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm bound and gagged to go to hell for eternity.

Matthew Karchner:

That's a lie from the pit of hell. It's an unusual little parallel there, but it's a way that the Lord gives you a heart for the people where you feel like this is like talking to a brick wall, but I get it because I remember having that mindset where it's like, that's not an option for me. The gospel doesn't apply to me. It's only for you guys, it's for you church people. And so it gives some passion for evangelism over here to continue to preach against idolatry, worshiping of Satan. People over here are very conscious that they are worshiping Satan.

Matthew Karchner:

Why? Because they're aware of the demonic of evil spirits, and they're aware that there's, like the Bible says, the God of this world, right? Second Corinthians 4 4. The God of this world is Satan. Ever since the fall, when we handed over dominion to Satan, of course, the Lord has dominion over all things. The earth is the Lord's in the fullness thereof, but Satan's the God of this world, the small g. And so Satan has power here. And this is the nation who was not founded on Christian principles. And so the people here are living in fear of Satan, and Satan rules and reigns through fear.

Matthew Karchner:

They know that if they give worship to Satan in form of lighting the incense and giving food offerings and that sort of thing to the demonic, to evil spirits, they feel that that will help them to avoid curses from the demonic. So they're living in fear and literally giving worship to Satan knowingly. You don't have to go and try to convince someone that they did or didn't. They know that they are. And so they're very actively worshiping Satan, and Satan is ruling over them here.

Margaret Ereneta:

Since Matthew is an evangelist, he does go through evangelism for us, which is really cool.

Matthew Karchner:

So there's a lot that goes into evangelism beyond the simple gospel message. God created the heavens and the earth, the first man, the first woman sinned against him. The Lord Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again. We must repent, put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. He's coming back in judgment. We must be ready. That's the simple gospel message. And then for Cambodia, it's required, it's incumbent on the witness, right?

Matthew Karchner:

To say idolatry, bowing down to idols, worshiping evil spirits, worshiping spirits of the dead is sin against the one true God. And they have no power to help you, right? And Satan certainly doesn't want to help you. He wants to steal glory and steal worship from the one true God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who loves you and died for you. It's a lot. It's not easy. It's not expressly a dictatorship, but uh people go missing.

Matthew Karchner:

Let's just put it that way. People go missing when they really come against the cultural norms and what the leadership feels holds the country together as a people. So if I'm there preaching on a on a speaker in a church every Sunday against Buddhism directly, it's a major risk. And so it requires full dependence on the Lord Jesus Christ. And he has power to protect. And if it's his will that then I'm taken away and arrested or something like that, then let the will of the Lord be done.

Margaret Ereneta:

I love this story. It but I asked Matthew to elaborate on the stranger at McDonald's and to take us through what happened there. So listen in.

Matthew Karchner:

Talk about miraculous because there were hundreds of people on the street. It was lunch, lunch hour in a major city, right? So big street corner and big McDonald's kind of in the center of town. And of all people, he follows me in. And I really do not think that he ate lunch there that day. I don't I don't think he stood in line for any other purpose other than to follow me in there. So I feel that the Lord had a bullseye on my back and he knew it, you know, because I've I'm in evangelism now. I'm that guy.

Matthew Karchner:

So I know how it works, you know. But um, he went in and and just stood behind me, kind of like, I don't know if I noticed him before. I think I might have before he actually touched me on the shoulder. But when he did, I don't remember what else he said, but I remember there was he put the heat on me for sure, you know. He kind of like put me in the corner with his words. So the big impact though for me was he's being used as a vessel. Like I couldn't deny it after that. I mean, maybe it didn't sink in in that moment, you know, completely, but it's like as much as I want to deny this and run away from it, this is the Lord. And to me, the second highest impact part of that experience was I truly thought that I had gone too far. You know what I mean?

Matthew Karchner:

I I've I felt that I mean, biblically, I I know now homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin, but there are many believers who don't really get into the word that would like to think it is because it's less socially acceptable than so many other sins, like premarital sex is relatively acceptable in the church nowadays, right? But homosexuality is a big, big deal. And so um 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11 specifies that these people who do these things, many, many, many, many sins, and homosexuality being one of them, they will not enter the kingdom. But then verse 11 says, and such were some of you.

Matthew Karchner:

So the Bible very expressly clears. So Paul's writing to the Corinthian church, a church in Corinth in the first century, and even at that time, there were people that the Lord had forgiven and washed clean in the blood out of a homosexual lifestyle. Praise the Lord. And so the Bible's very clear that homosexuality is not the unpardonable sin. But at the time I felt such like such a bizarre outcast through high school and the bullying and all that sort of thing. And I had walked so far and so deep into that lie, that false identity, that I just felt like the gospel's for you guys. I don't worry about me.

Matthew Karchner:

I you know what I mean. That that's how sad I get goosebumps now when I think about that, because I really felt like I was beyond the Lord's love, beyond the Lord's grace. Like I can't, I can't fix this about me. I've tried before, I've tried before it didn't go away. I was a little boy that cried myself to sleep when I was 12 and 13. And if the Lord Jesus Christ didn't take it away from me, that that temptation, then he's not gonna take it, you know.

Matthew Karchner:

And so I felt like like the Cambodians here, I feel attracted to the same sex, therefore I am gay, you know. And that's not at all the reality. The reality is we could we could have any number of attractions or feelings, don't follow your feelings. The heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked, who can know it? Jeremiah 17:9. So follow the Lord Jesus Christ according to his inspired word. You are not condemned and doomed by some feeling or bizarre attraction that you have. The Lord Jesus Christ is greater than all that. And so um praise the Lord.

Margaret Ereneta:

So for our last question, we asked Matthew to elaborate. He said that so often we think I'm a man attracted to men, therefore I am gay. He said that's a lie. So we asked him to elaborate on that.

Matthew Karchner:

I feel that the major thing that's missing from most pulpits nowadays from preaching is we don't talk about the fall anymore and the impact that it has on all of us right now to this day. God created first man and first woman, Adam and Eve sinned against him, and we followed them. Everyone has a sinful, corrupted nature. We're corrupt to the core and morally bankrupt and cannot get to heaven by trying to be a good person. There's no way. Only the Lord Jesus Christ has the power to wash away our sins and give us entrance to heaven by grace alone, through faith alone, and the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

Matthew Karchner:

And so nobody's a good person. And I think that is not really preached anymore. I think we're thinking, well, he's a relatively good person and he's more morally pure than most people, and she's a pretty good person and has a good heart or whatever. That's What the Bible says, the Bible's teaching is that we're all morally bankrupt and we all have feelings that we want to do things that aren't right, that are sinful according to the Lord Jesus Christ, whether it's gossip or envy or jealousy, or uh we want to steal something, we want to lie, we want to cheat to get ahead on in business or whatever. And we're all called to turn away from following our deceitful hearts to follow the Lord Jesus Christ according to his word. So everyone is in the exact same boat, and everyone on planet earth has temptation.

Matthew Karchner:

Like the Bible says, no temptation is overtaking you that's not common to man. So we feel sometimes isolated, like my temptation makes me weird. Nobody else struggles with this kind of temptation. The Bible says that's a lie from the pit of hell that people don't want to talk about it because they have pride and ego and that kind of stuff, and it hurts their reputation if they share in public. But everyone has something they don't want you to know, right? So that's the encouragement that we have. Like, like the Lord made clear to me, you are no less of a man. This is day one, 15 years ago.

Matthew Karchner:

Uh, when I go to the place to run outside or exercise or something, I see other men, you are no less of a man than he is. In other words, like the Lord dictates who's a man and who's a woman. He created you to be a man. Doesn't matter if you feel a little bit more effeminent than him or whatever, it doesn't matter. You are a man that the Lord created to be a man, and you're not to be feminine, you're to act like a man and to be a man according to God's word. And so um, I don't identify as gay in any way, shape, or form. I identify as a man of God, and that's it. I don't believe that the Bible allows for any kind of identity that's gay or certainly no identity that's gender, you know, non-binary or anything else. God created the male and female in his image, and there's no other uh there's no other, there's no homosexual, gay, or whatever.

Matthew Karchner:

To say that someone is gay because they feel attracted to the same sex would be the same as saying that somebody feels tempted to steal, so therefore they're a thief, or tempted to drink, so therefore they're drunk. We're called to repent and reject those feelings and follow the Lord Jesus Christ according to his word. That's the point. So there's no such thing as gay. I do not identify as gay, I reject that false identity in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise the Lord. I'm a man of God, and that's it.

Matthew Karchner:

My thing as a younger guy, what like high school era and everything was I can't play sports as strong as the other guys. When I if I try to play basketball, I throw like a girl or something like that. There were all kinds of things. It was constantly comparing myself to the guy next door. And then the Lord came in at the end of all that, and I was so broken, and I was so at the end of everything. I was really at the end of myself. Like I've tried everything in in that life and it didn't work, and I'm just dead, you know. Then the Lord comes in and it's like he just rebuilds from nothing. Like you're a man just as much as he is.

Matthew Karchner:

I don't care what the guy next door is, like, we're far from high school now, forget about that. You know what I mean? It just uh rebuild and reconstructed and got me up sharing in front of the church and breaking the fear of public speaking, which also had to do with those feelings of inadequacy. Like if I speak publicly, they're gonna say that I talk like a girl. If I do this, they're gonna see my gestures that I'm feminine or something. I mean, everything. It was just like stop comparing yourself to everybody else. Find your confidence in Christ, you know, your identity in Christ. And that was so important. Praise the Lord for that.

Margaret Ereneta:

Hey friends, we so appreciate how much you're sharing One80 with your people. If this is the first time you've heard a One80 podcast, make sure to download the show on your favorite pod player and listen to all the episodes. We have a trove of awesome stories of God. Thank you so much.

Announcer:

One80 is brought to you by One Way Ministries. Exalt Christ, advance his gospel.

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