Token

Sorry I haven't written in a while...I'm so sleepy all the time! It's a stress thing.

So this guy in my ethics class asked if he could interview me about my stance on homosexuality for his final paper. This guy, clearly, wants to shred my viewpoint to pieces. But as usual, I was like, Bring it on. So I said sure, I'd help. Now I think I want to back out.

Ugh. I'm the token liberal. I mean, I've asked for it. This is so nerve-wracking. I have to be so careful about how I approach this. I feel like I'm representing the entire pro-gay Christian universe! So much pressure! Help?!

The main reason I'm nervous is because my reasoning started (but didn't end) because I saw and experienced gay Christianity with my own eyes. I witnessed the work of God's spirit in people who she had no business working with. And I talked to people who prayed for release for years, who tried to live celibate, who denied themselves any joy, who hated themselves, yes, who even submitted to voluntary pain: electroshock therapy. And then one day, for the lucky ones, they clearly heard the voice of God telling them: "You're okay. You are the way I made you and I did not make you wrong. Go in peace." And sin no more...no more self-loathing of a beautiful creation of God's. No more following a call to celibacy that's not your cross to bear. No more obssessing about what you shouldn't be. It's time to become who God made you to be. And that will necessarily include your orientation, and if you find someone, a loving, monogamous covenant relationship.

It's like when women starting obviously getting called as pastors. The church finally realized they couldn't deny the work of the Holy Spirit. It's like when Peter went to the Gentiles in Acts and was amazed because they already had the Spirit. He said wait! They shouldn't have the spirit! And yet he could not deny that they did, and the church changed forever. Most denominations recognized the same working of the Spirit in the lives of many women, in concert with social changes going on last century. And as Stassen tells us, God is always ahead of culture.

But all of this is reasoning based on experience, not the right order (which is supposed to be basic convictions lead to principles lead to rules lead to situations). But then again, our ethics paradigm calls for constant repentance and constant checking back fromwhat we've learned. That, I guess, is where I'm starting. I went in believing one way and the Spirit of God and the Christians I met changed the way I saw the issue, from the rules down through the principles until my basic convictions were shaken (which was NOT pleasant or easy!). In the end, I could not deny what was obvious before my face - God was alive and well in our church's gay group, and that meant everything else needed a second look. Upon second look, we find Scripture isn't quite so clear. And we find Jesus definitely on the side of compassion. Like with the woman issue, it requires reading the narrative and the context of Scripture over proof-texting.

My position is Orthodox Inclusive. I refuse to throw out the Bible passages. I refuse to deny the holiness of Scripture and what we can learn from Tradition. But I also believe God does new things with the Church through the Spirit. (I mean geez, if she didn't, we'd never have had the Reformation!) This may be a new thing. And if we can wrestle with the Bible in a scholarly and responsible way and can see contextually that the issue of orientation is not addressed, and same-gender covenental relationship is not addressed, if we can see that Leviticus laws may have had more to do with reproduction and Romans also (after all, it is more "natural" for women and men to lie together b/c that makes babies). Even Genesis deals with this, and with human being's need for community. It couldn't be Adam and Steve because this wouldn't have allowed the human race to come into existence! I agree that we're not to ignore the biblical wisdom nor put our own desires onto the text. But I have been convinced by responsible biblical scholarship that honestly deals with these texts, both what's difficult and what's been misunderstood about them.

The basic conviction is that God is love so hatred of gays is wrong. God made us in God's image so people with homosexual orientation are made in God's image. God desires community for us, both with one another and with God. This means helping people get away from self-loathing, from the lie that God can't love them, from the difficulties presented by asking them to change something they can't. There are people all over the spectrum - some CAN change, some DID choose, some WERE abused. But, can we possibly, possibly imagine, that some cannot, did not, were not. Just simply are. If God calls that person to a loving relationship, to teaching Sunday School, to the ministry...and the person is absolutely tracking with God and knows this call and their life produces fruit of the Spirit and their ministry makes progress...could this be an exception to the rule that all gays who act on their desires are sinning?

This was the exception I found. And I had to then reevaluate my principles. And actually I found that my basic convictions remained intact. Things I thought were basic weren't actually - they were based on something other than God (church teaching, family attitude, societal pressure). Always, always, it's about going to the core and looking at where is God? And God is with the gays. Period.

"When you feel God has called you to something, and people are questioning it, that's hurtful." (my TA re: her call to ministry as a woman)

Same story, next verse. Imagine being told not only are you not suitable for ministry leadership, you're not even suitable to be a Christian, in fact, you're not created the way people are supposed to be. Imagine if you knew deep in your soul that God loves you, but you are told your whole life God cannot love you the way you are. Who do you listen to?

But it's so easy to look at this and say I'm basing it on my experience or emotions or just what I want instead of the Bible. Dammit!

I'm going to back out. I don't want to be this guy's sacrificial lamb. Or would I do more good than harm? Would I maybe help him see there's someone out there who believes in Scripture and in gay rights, and maybe that would plant a seed for further thinking, maybe crack open his mind a tiny little bit?

I don't know what to do. Honestly I don't really even know if I have time to deal with it. I have my own group to interview and be interviewed with. Do I really want to add the extra work of another? Am I copping out?

Well here is a beautiful passage written by the mother of a gay teenager who committed suicide. He did it largely because of his ultra-conservative family's religiously-motivated pestering. His mother experienced a crisis of faith when, instead of healing him, God let him kill himself. Here is what she later wrote:

“When God views a loving and caring heart he is pleased and all is well with him. He is not concerned with our sexuality, but with the vast numbers of humanity who are not being loved and cared for…I would rather be branded a heretic while helping a child of God out of the gutters of this world, where the church and I have thrown them, than to pass by on the other side muttering under our breath, ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Rather this than to look away from the pain and humiliation of a child lying helpless.

“The heart that hungers and thirsts for God’s love will find it in the Bible. It has been said the eyes are the mirror of one’s soul. When we look into God’s mirror [the Bible] will we see God’s reflection of love gazing back? Or will we see an evil reflection of man’s inhumanity?”

That is the question.

Leroy Aarons, Prayers for Bobby: A Mother's Coming to Terms with the Suicide of her Gay Son (HarperSanFrancisco, 1995), 147-148.