Here's a letter I got in last week:
Hi John! I stumbled across your site about two weeks ago, and have just been absolutely floored as I've gone back and read post after post. I've been so blessed through your writings and the comments that people have left. As a mid-twenties gay Christian in a small-town, conservative evangelical community, just knowing that you exist has brought me to tears a few times. Thank you.I just re-read your post entitled "Should I leave my anti-gay church, or try to change it from within?", and I was very moved and encouraged by your response, as it's a situation I currently am finding myself in right now. I'm from a very large family, and I currently work on our family farm, proud member of the sixth generation. We're a pretty tight bunch, and I value that. There was a long season in which I tried to distance myself, both in physical miles and relational ones, from them. The past year or so has seen a great work of restoration on both sides, and I'm now very grateful for my close proximity to them, and especially in the restorative work that the Spirit has done in us all.
The big elephant in the room, however, is that I remain, still, a gay Christian. To my family's belief structure, this just isn't possible. My parents and I have danced and boxed around this issue, and we've been stuck for quite some time at an impasse: they believe a valid and true faith in Jesus will bring about an eventual healing and change of sexuality for me, and that, in the meantime, I need to practice self-control to live as a good Christian ought to. I see my sexuality as an innate and valued part of my authenticity with my Creator. I don't have a boyfriend, and I'm not currently looking for one. But I eagerly look forward to a day when I find a wonderful man to share my vision with, and partner in his. Someone with whom I can make a covenant of marriage before our Creator.
My family and I are finding it impossible to move past this. My parents and siblings see it as a refusal to submit to Christ, as outright rebellion against God---even going so far as to say that I am sowing rebellion and destruction in our community by attempting to open a dialogue on the issue. I am feeling patronized and often sidelined, as if I were a person crippled and incapacitated by sin, and not able to be treated as a full and functioning member of the family. I kept thinking that this would change in time, but my parents have known for ten years now that I'm gay, and while we've come a long way, it just doesn't seem as if we're making any progress here.
So, I'm stuck. I very much desire a deeper relationship with my family, one in which the Spirit flows, and respect, love, and joy flourish. I believe that God is capable of bringing that about, and I pray earnestly and often that he gives me his eyes and heart to view my family members as he sees them, so that I can extend to them grace and forgiveness. I also pray that he shows me where I'm not living and loving well with them, so that I can better serve as an example of a man both gay and Christian. But I also find myself pondering the instances where scripture tells us to, for instance, shake the dust off my feet. I desire for God's name to be glorified through his work in my life (because God knows it sure isn't my name that deserves to be glorified), but I'm having trouble discerning whether my family is part of that, or whether they're hindering it.
Help?
Thanks for your time, and thank you so much for all you do. I really don't have the ability to articulate all that your work has done for me. May the grace and peace of Jesus Christ be with you, my brother.
Dear guy who wrote me this:
As I responded to you the moment I read this, what a great, great heart you have. This is beautiful. (And thanks, very much, btw, for your kind words about my work. I really appreciate that.)
You're, like, the ideal brother and son. You're ... a gay, tractor-driving Wally Cleaver. To say that your family is lucky to have you is like saying Paris is a pretty good town. If I were you, and I lived in your family, I'd have long ago turned the whole sorry lot of them into the greatest fertilizer ever.
I'd be at the county fair, going, "People have asked me how I managed to grow this record-breaking, fifteen hundred pound pumpkin. If you believe anything in this world, believe that I will never, ever tell you."
But that's just me. You, on the other hand, have chosen to instead act so Christ-like toward your family that Jesus himself must look down upon you and take notes.
One strategy I might suggest for moving forward in your relationship with your family is to, in fact, do as Christ did, and pointedly, purposefully and lovingly teach them.
Here's what you do (I mean, if you want, obviously): Write down everything you wish your family knew about you being gay: what it has and does mean to you personally; how it's impacted your relationship with others, with God, with Christianity and with them. All of it: go deep; go honest; go clear. Imagine that your family is a jury to whom you are pleading the totality of your case. You have one chance to convey to them your knowledge, understanding and experience of being gay.
So you get all that material together, right? Say, in an outline form. (Take special care, obviously, in preparing your explication of the Bible's clobber passages.)
Once you have all that stuff down, figure out how many half-hours it would take you to carefully and thoughtfully say it all. Let's suppose that your time estimate for giving that uninterrupted talk is three hours.
Go to your family, and express to them that you want to schedule with them six one-hour long family meetings: after dinner for six nights in a row, or on successive Saturday afternoons, or whatever. Don't tell them what the meetings are for, beyond that it's deeply important to you that they occur.
Open the first such meeting by telling your family why you wanted these meetings to take place. Tell them that you know that your sexual orientation has created deep and real fissures in the family unit that means so much to you, and that it's terribly important to you that your whole family, together, talks about it.
Tell them that at each of the meetings you want to talk, absolutely uninterrupted, for one half-hour, and that after that, you and they can all talk together about the things you've just said to them.
If you do this, then at the conclusion of the meeting series you will have a lot more information about your relationship with your family than you do right now.
Did they all show up to the meetings? Did some of them show up, but not others? Did they listen to you? Did they hear you?
What happened during those meetings? What, if anything, did they result in? The answers to that realm of questions will likely reveal to you the path you'll next take in relation to your family.
No matter what happens during those meetings, or what they result in, they will, in the end, provide you with the one thing you most need: certain knowledge that you tried everything you could to reconcile yourself to your family. The value of that knowledge cannot be overestimated. If you break with your family, the fact that you put forth the effort it took to plan for and hold those meetings will be a source of comfort to you for the rest of your life.
You tried. You were there. You prepared. You showed up, willing to share with the most important people in your life your heart, and all that you are.
You asked them to love you. Moreover, you showed them how little it would take for them to stop seeing you as a inveterate sinner, so that they are free to love you as they should. All it takes is them being open to perfectly valid reinterpretations of a few lines from Paul, and you go from being the problem they think you are to the blessing you've always been.
Here's to family togetherness! Or award-winning produce!
Wrongest joke ever. Sorry.
Good luck, brother. Here's hoping your family opens their mind toward you half as wide as you've opened your heart toward them.
Follow John Shore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johnshore
What the Bible Says - And Doesn't Say - About Homosexuality
Loving (‘neighbor as myself’) and simultaneously trying to embrace Christianity is evidently seen by your loving family quite clearly, but within the erroneous framework of belief that morality comes from outside humanity (ie belief in God). Loving ourselves includes all of our many faults and sins, and if we see homosexuality as just one more on that huge list it can be claimed that we show no more hate due to its inclusion than we do in repenting for all our other sins – pride, greed, overindulgence, etc. The only honest way to bypass this is to admit that the list needs to come from ourselves, not from a so called external morality given by a God. (If it truly IS external/given by a God, then it should be no surprise if some of it – ie banning homosexuality – seems wrong to our human idea of morality.)
Is it the fear of loss of some sort of afterlife that keeps people hanging on to dogmas that make so little sense they require huge acrobatics to even maintain in some mangled format? What is it?
... unless you're into that kind of thing.
As such, I am bound to love all, sinners and non sinners alike, so there is no option for me to "hate" homosexuals. That settles THAT.
As to whether or not homosexuality is a sin, it seems clear to me that being gay is not, as some say, a "choice." I cannot think of anything more fundamental than a person's sexuality. I could no more "choose" to be gay than I could "choose" to change my eye color. People who endure persecution do not do so over something trivial.
If it is not a choice, then I do not see how God would condemn someone for something that one cannot change. My God is not like that.
Thus, I do not think the issue is homosexuality, per se. Heterosexuals are not praised by God for being heterosexual, they are praised for good deeds, and criticized for sin, and a sin, after all, is simply an act that harm's oneself or someone else.
I know one gay man who is one of the most kind and decent men I have ever known. That is enough for me to question the idea that being gay destroys all else about him that is good.
I think it is clear that there is more to this than the simple condition of being gay, and it is time for all Christians to stop slinging scripture at each other and start THINKING about it.
Just would like to observe that you are overlooking something here. We are all born sinners...."it is not a choice". None of us are "good". God does condemn us for our sins because He is holy and just....but He has given us grace! We are ONLY justified through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ alone.
I only disagree with Mr. Shore's advice on one point. I don't think there is much to gain by talking to a group of people about this. This young man would be better off talking to each of his relatives one-on-one. If he does, he will probably find many of them who would support him.
But put them in a room together and the potential allies will hesitate to speak -- but the bigots won't. The bigots will quickly and loudly point out that the status quo is "gays are sinners", and the potential allies A) won't have a response, and B) don't have much reason to stick their necks out. They will probably avoid conflict by remaining silent and letting the bigots prevail.
Talk to individuals. Find the ones who can support you and strengthen that support. Your allies will start working on the less supportive relatives on your behalf. If you do decide to hold a family meeting, these allies will feel compelled to stand with you, because they've already told you they support you and it would be hypocrisy to betray you now.
Wrongest joke ever. Sorry."
Maybe not. How about this one: Questioner, you seem like a great person. Completely agree with JS's take on that part. But wouldn't it be great if you could reconcile your family religion problem to observable reality, and then somehow, lovingly, "pray away the Jesus," sotospeak. But then you'd be praying to cross-purposes, again sotospeak.
How can one not oppose a religion that opposes you (it is written) ?
There are other solutions, such as creating your own belief system, but Jesus, Yahwah, Jehovah and more, will have to be eliminated from it.
How can a god 'of love' not love his children equally, as any father should do, without condition?
I wish you well my friend.
Most importantly, Christianity is unique in that it is a PERSONAL relationship between you and God, it is not a relationship between you and, as Thomas Jefferson said, your post office. The Church, while important, does not have the right nor the ability to teach you to hate. If it does, it is not a Christian church.
You don't blame the manufacturer when a maniac drives a car into a crowd, you blame the man. Please don't make the same error here.
If the manufacturer KNEW for certain before it made the car that it was going to be sold to a maniac who would drive it into a crowd, you can be damn sure the manufacturer would be held liable ( along with the dealer who sold the car ). God supposedly knows all - ahead of time: supposedly even from before time began.
The only teaching I ever got from my dad on the subject was, "Well, you know, there are homosexuals in the world. Ho hum. Next subject."
I am starting to think that this hysteria over homosexuality is a relatively new thing. If it didn't bother the hard-bitten, pre World War II Old Army, then that says something significant.
If I encounter a gay person who argues America is a Christian nation and we should outlaw atheism, I would probably be angrier with him than with a straight person who said the same. I would feel a sense of betrayal. We both suffered under Christianity's influence, so how can he act the same way as them?
But I might not attack that person in public. There are enough theocrats to fight that I can choose an opponent who *isn't* my ally on gay rights.
As a straight older guy with a straight wife and son, I probably add little knowledge to this topic. I do, however, care a lot about it because it presents the perfect example of what absurd religious beliefs can do and the perfect example of the harm that biased religious people can cause. Gay people and straight people are born, it seems to me, with an attraction to different genders of people. That appears to be the salient point. There are good and bad straight people and good and bad gay people. Sexual orientation is almost - or should be - a mere footnote to one's life.
The idea that someone would consciously decide to make his or her life more difficult by "choosing" to be gay is beyond foolish. I suppose Christians and those in some other religions have to think that way in order to justify their bigotry. Condemning someone for being born with a certain orientation is much harder than arguing that this person chose a particular gender focus.
Atwill (not sure if this is your last name or not), please accept my best for you and your son.
They think it's more fun and we can't have that.