Navigating Faith and Identity

Can Christians Embrace LGBTQ+ Love and Authenticity?

We Have Much in Common:

It’s hard sometimes to be gay and Christian. That’s not to say that it’s hard to honor God and my relationship at the same time. It’s not. It’s hard to live in a world alongside an abundance of people who think that my faith and sexuality are mutually exclusive. Although I expected when I came out that I would have some trouble from religious institutions, I kind of expected that the gay community would be okay with me being both gay and Christian. Instead, I found at the time that it was just as hard to be openly-Christian in the gay community as it was to be openly-gay in the Christian community. Both communities were groups who professed to love everyone the way they were, no matter what, and both communities felt like they failed to do that.

To be fair, maybe I wasn’t in the right communities. I was in church communities which have never been affirming, but I didn’t know that there were progressive churches that I had not given a shot. I had gone to gay events and clubs, but I didn’t know about support groups, affirming churches, book clubs, and I hadn’t found gay mentors. I felt very alone.

I bet a lot of people have had similar experiences. If the only place you know you can be yourself is a gay bar/club, then you might be under the impression that the way that people act in the club is how all gay people are. You don’t feel like there are good role models and mentors, because the only place you’ve ever felt free to express that part of yourself is in a place filled with drugs, aggressive sexual behavior, and rejection of the other part of you as a spiritual being.

Apparently, all the right people and organizations existed at the time, and I had never been told about them. In fact, I had been purposely exposed to bigotry in order to keep me in line, and I had been purposely given one side of my faith in order to keep me from thinking that “those people” are okay, that they were God’s children who also have God’s love.

I had been exposed to several scriptures that people use to excuse their bigotry, and I feared so much about a faith that is supposed to give me peace. I didn’t know that there were so many translations, versions, and interpretations of the same scriptures, so when I realized that I could look to more literalist, more contextual, more plain-worded, or more ecumenical translations, I started to realize that not every Bible and not every Christian was trying to hurt me.

Personal Spiritual Development:

When I started to realize that I thought about the guys in my school the same way that they thought about the girls in my school, I was sure that I had to change it. I still didn’t think I was gay, because all I knew about gay people was that they were wrong, unholy, and generally depraved. So, when I had all the hints that I was gay, I wasn’t about to admit to myself that I was wrong, unholy, and depraved. I worked so hard to be a good boy. I tried to push it down, to forget it, even to nurture heterosexuality in myself.

After a couple years of praying to become straight, I told God, “Okay, I understand now that you’re not going to make me like girls, so just make me asexual. I don’t need to experience sex if the only way I can is to make you unhappy, so just take all these feelings away from me.” Nothing happened. After a while, I had read translations of scriptures which condemned things about myself that I couldn’t turn off, so I told God, “If you aren’t going to make me straight, if

you aren’t going to make me asexual, take my life. I would rather be dead than be something detestable to you.” Again, nothing happened. I was unwilling to do it myself, because the same dogma which told me that being gay would send me to Hell also told me the same thing about suicide. I was stuck with feelings I didn’t want, trying to change them for a God who, it felt like, either didn’t want to answer my prayers, or wasn’t listening to me in particular. It’s interesting that in this one case, the bigotry instilled in me was what kept me alive. I can’t say that for many others. For anyone who says things like, “You just weren’t praying hard enough,” or, “You didn’t really have faith or it would have worked,” I want you to understand that I was willing to die in order to be right with God. I prayed for it, even. Don’t tell me that I don’t have faith or didn’t pray enough. I’m done hearing that.

I read scriptures that said things like, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go to Hell.” I was in an extremely literalist private school at the time, so I looked at my body and asked God what on me I was supposed to cut off/out. Maybe my whole self was the body part.

I want parents, teachers, coaches, and ministers to understand that this is what goes through a child’s mind when they are constantly told that a group of people are bad, and then they find out that they are one of those people. I read online recently a post that said something to the effect of, “Pride is not about making your straight children into gay children; it’s about preventing your gay children from being dead children.” Bigotry kills people. There’s also another saying I hear in the community: “Be careful who you hate—it could be someone you love.” I had so many things said about me to my face when no one knew they were talking about me. So, for anyone who uses the f-slur or who makes homophobic remarks, please understand that someone around you hears that, and you have no idea you’re talking to them about them. The believe they don’t have support in you.

When I was twelve, I went on a church retreat where I felt called into ministry. I knew I wanted to do this from that point on. There was no better place for what I wanted to do with my life. I started reading about sexuality and Christian scriptures way too young to understand what I was reading. I had no concept of different translations having different messages, translator bias, socio-historical context, oral traditions being transcribed, or allegory within history. Every commandment in all Christian Bibles, regardless of translation or translator, had to be literally true for all people in all circumstances. So, when I got older, I read various translations, finding that different readings of the same ancient texts yielded different enough messages that it must be a lot more work to read the Bible than just reading one.

I read several translations and versions of the scriptures that had made me hate myself for so long. I wish my older self had been able to ask me at the time, “If you are so terrible of a being for something you can’t control, why would Jesus have enough love for someone like you to suffer and die for you? Because He definitely did!” You can’t hold the doctrine of an all-loving, all-benevolent, all-powerful God who hates you and won’t or can’t change the things that make you bad. You can’t hold the doctrine that God loves all humans as God’s children alongside the idea that you were just born unable to stop being disgusting, even through Christ’s forgiveness and the power of the Holy Spirit. Unless you just think that they are not that powerful. Do you think that your sin is more powerful than God? Jesus forgave a murderer on the cross next to Him. Is involuntary physiological attraction that God created within us biologically so much worse than murder that my natural body will send me to Hell, but destroying another one will not?

Education Brings Freedom:

In graduate school, I wanted to look at the passages which people used against me and figure out why they said what they said—or if they were inaccurate translations, why someone took what had been written in scripture in Greek, Hebrew, or Aramaic, and thought that translating it in a way that could harm people like me would be accurate to the spirit of what the words said—why it would be productive for the Church.

While reading scholarly sources, more literal translations, and commentaries on what have become known as the “clobber passages,” I found that there were some parts of scripture which, translated more precisely, are actually ethical guidelines, not prohibitions on loving naturally. Other passages, which had always been told to me as literal histories, were understood within scholarly circles—as well as their original audiences—to be allegories similar to Jesus’ parables, meant to share a lesson, not to be taken as a historical event.

There are two points in this story at which many people lose their faith. One is when people find out that the gay and religious communities around them do not accept each other. It is hard for many of us to hold onto faith when you can’t find a support system within it. Since being a Christian is a choice you make, and being gay is not, many of us give up on faith when we are told that we can’t be both. For that reason, I want no one to tell anyone that they can’t be [blank] and be a Christian. The other time was this point in reading scripture. Those of us who were raised in strictly literalist churches, schools, or households are often told that the entire Bible has to be literally true or nothing in it is sacred. I had to believe in the whole thing as literal, or I had to throw the whole thing out.

Reason for Learning:

I believe that God’s irresistible grace for me as well as the faith instilled in me kept me searching at these points. I refused to believe that the love I felt from Christ, the power of God in my life, nor the work of the Holy Spirit in me could be fake. I had experienced profound spiritual experiences. They weren’t fake! They weren’t group psychosis, confirmation bias, placebo effect—they were times when God interacted with my life! No one could take that knowledge away from me!

But that left me with a need to look into Biblical allegories, histories, commandments, traditions, and realistic, faithful applications of the scriptures. I had experienced God’s love too strongly in my life to accept that God wasn’t active, God wasn’t good, or that Jesus didn’t really want to die for me in particular.

As I write about the clobber passages in the next few blogs, I want people to understand that I continue to learn. If you have corrections for me, I invite them. If you have similar experiences, I want you to be free to express them without fear of judgment. I can never judge you as harshly as I’ve already judged myself. I needed people to know my story before I shared my findings, because you need to know that this is the anguish that gay Christians deal with as a result not of our God or our (original) scriptures, but of the bigotry carried out in the name of One who forgives—the defeatism in the name of a Spirit who gives hope—the hate professed in the name of One who is love.

Even if you disagree with the way I present scripture in order to affirm people in their faith and sexuality, I need you to remember that God is love. I have plenty of friends who disagree with me on the points about sexuality and scripture, or who think that my marriage “doesn’t count,” or who think that, “homosexuals are called to spiritual celibacy in order to be holy,” and we are able to handle respectful disagreement. The reason we can do this is that I believe that they believe that they are doing the right thing with their lives, and they believe that I believe that I am doing the right thing with my life. People who disagree with you don’t necessarily hate you. My Side-B, Ex-gay, and SSA friends want to do what is right in God’s eyes. So do I. We disagree on how to do that. We all need love. We all need God. We should all support each other’s walks of faith and right to exist and be happy. This is a no hate zone. Because God is love.