I recognize that these are big issues, they are not new, and we are not going to solve them here bantering on social media.
I didn't come here to pick a fight or start an argument. I came to share my story. To vent. To heal. To bring awareness. To do something that I believe is positive with my voice. You may disagree. You may think that what I have done is divisive. That's okay, I can handle that. Doing what you believe is right is often unpopular.
But I follow up with this. And I will be brief, this is an expansive topic too large to unpack here, but it does plays directly into why many of us feel that getting to a place of affirmation is so important.
The place where so many people have a hard time even considering being accepting and affirming of LGBTQ people in the church is because of what scripture has to say. People like myself are accused of limiting, discounting, cherry picking and questioning the validity of scripture. To that I would say it's just not true. That is not what we are doing. We are trying to unlock scripture and mine the best out of it and leave behind the parts that are flawed by the humans that wrote it, because divinely inspired and hand penned by God are very different things.
And the truth is we all do it.
Scripture has been used to commit incredible atrocities throughout history. It has been used to justify enslavement, the marginalization of women, genocide and more. Because when you hold the bible in a literal spoken word of God context, evil things can happen. It makes sense. This is the book that claims God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, and that God told the Israelites to slaughter the Canaanites to name a few.
If we followed scripture to a T, Young LIfe would not let women lead in the way that they do now and would not consider women to be equal to their male counterparts in the ministry. However, Young Life has a stance on “Women in Ministry” that doesn't exactly line up with scripture, and even that is hard for many male staff people to get on board with. They all say they are for an egalitarian ministry but some of their actions say otherwise, I have witnessed it, and have probably even been part of the problem at some point in time because of the world I have been raised in.
It is the same with LGBTQ people. Some of you point towards other social and moral issues like premarital sex and abortion and things of this nature. These are also very important topics to discuss, but there is an important differentiating factor between moral/social topics like these and the LGBTQ conversation.
LGBTQ should not be a moral issue. The people who make up the LGBTQ population are a people group. This is who they are. That's what being affirming means, to look at a gay individual and affirm who they ARE and not try and change them, because you can't. And as a straight people we need to come to terms with the reality that we will never know what it feels like to walk in their shoes.
LGBTQ folks were created different. It is completely unfair and harmful to classify someone's biological composition as a sin because it doesn’t match up with your definition of “normal”. Or to place an expectation upon them to change in this area. Peoples sexual orientation and gender identity are out of their control. This is scientific fact. Today, in many ways we are a much more enlightened people than we were several thousand years ago, and we have to find new ways to hold both the spiritual truth and wisdom found in our faith traditions and scriptures as well as our scientific discoveries. We know that the earth is millions of years old and not thousands, we know that we evolved as a species and didn’t start off as two people in a garden.
Is it too much to ask of people to consider that there is a better, different and healthier way to approach the LGBTQ issue? One that is inclusive instead of exclusive? One that celebrates our differences instead of demonizing them? I don’t think it's too much to ask.
Put your bible down, develop a friendship with someone who identifies as Gay or Trans, do some research. I implore you.
That's all I have to say at this point in time. If you need me, you know how to find me.