I Love Jesus and I Affirm LGBTQI

This post has been a long time coming. My social media interactions this week finally put the nail in the coffin of me being demure about my beliefs about homosexuality. Ever since I left the church of Christ (and conservative Christianity), I've come to place an incredibly high value on conversation. The more I've learned to listen, the better I've become at speaking. I've always loved talking, but in my need to be right, it was more of a talking at versus a listening to. And when I listened, I heard bullet points that I needed to negate in my response. I had conversations to teach rather than to learn. Many of us frame this as "outreach." Rather than seeking to validate the feelings and viewpoint of my "opponent", I tried to dismantle their beliefs in order to further validate myself. While that mentality is not exclusive to conservative faith, that is the environment in which I learned it. Because if someone can prove you wrong, then you are, plain and simple. And being wrong might mean you're bad. And if you're bad, God doesn't love you. That's why we constantly have to fight to be good. (I know, crazy).
As we all know, this debate style can get destructive very quickly, especially on social media. Many of my dear friends have encouraged me to stop hosting and moderating cultural conversations on Facebook, knowing that I get attacked, have false motives placed upon me, while trying desperately to avoid taking the bait. And let's face it: I've got health issues and small children to raise and when you can't sleep because you've got tears rolling down your face and thoughts racing through your wired mind, one wonders if conversation is indeed worth the trouble. 
I continue on because I've become who I am (of which I'm very proud) partly through such experiences. I've honed my values through hearing many perspectives on issues of importance to me. I've always loved diversity and I want it to remain. I believe in God as Creator. I see his artistry most clearly in the diversity of mankind. But we can't live alongside people who are different from us and get along and grow as a collective society if we can't see things from another perspective. Just for a moment, we must learn to suspend our background, biases, assumptions, yes - even our faith, to try to understand what the "other" might be thinking and feeling. What would it be like to occupy their headspace, all while assigning them the same level of dignity and humanity we give to ourselves?
What does this have to do with homosexuality? If I am going to form a theology based on what I believe about homosexuals and God, I must begin by listening to homosexuals. I want to know their stories, to have them teach me about what it means to be them. This is how we are shaped, by story. And I want to be shaped. I want to be open, to hear, to change, to learn. How can I develop a theology about someone I don't know, don't love, don't value personally in my life?
This, of course, is my adulthood speaking. I grew up being told what God said about homosexuality (that it was wrong, unnatural, and its offenders were going to hell). I was raised to listen to God first and only. That everything must be seen through the lens we assign him (you better believe we assign it through our biblical interpretation) and let the chips fall where they may, regardless of how we or anyone else feels about it. This worked for me. Until I got into relationships with people outside of conservative Christianity. Once I got to know some gay people, I went back to the drawing board. It's okay to start with scripture. But if that is all that informs our beliefs, humans all around us be damned (pun sadly intended) then we might be missing something really important. Something game-changing. Something people all around us are getting beaten for, losing their lives for, walking away from God for. 
If we believe that God is alive and working today, then we must admit that he is working in this generation, in this time, in our culture. Not that we assume all beliefs are therefore valid because of the time we're in, but is it possible that certain truths were veiled from humanity in a time where their implementation was not possible? What I mean is, if slavery was always wrong, but the Bible was written in a time where it was not socially possible (we had not evolved to the point to consider it) to abolish it, could it be that it addressed slavery to the level we could handle in the time the Bible was written? Meaning, rather than saying slavery was wrong (though we all agree upon that now and with solid Biblical support to that end), the Bible challenged slave owners to be kind and for slaves to serve with love. Many people used scripture to advocate that slavery was okay with God because he did not say to abolish it. And yet we look back now and call bullshit, right? I hope so. 
Is it possible that homosexuality was only seen within the context of child slavery and idol worship at the time the Bible was written? Can we all agree that men should not rape little boys? I believe we can. Can we say that unprotected orgies in the name of some false god and the taking advantage of little children is probably not good for society? Yup, I can see that being constituted as "homosexual offenders" type of behavior. Perhaps that means we, as Christians should stop supporting industries that enslave and sexually traffic children? That we should worship the one true God we believe in and not have orgies with children as part of our praise time? We must learn to make distinctions between sodomizing young children in idol worship and adults who are in a committed, loving relationship who want to make a family and live in peace. The fact that this even needs to be said is appalling to me. 
Is it possible that there was no concept of sexual orientation at the time the Bible was written? That we weren't ready (nor was science) to understand the nuances of gender, sex and orientation that we're aware of now? Does that mean that we've outgrown the Bible, that it's irrelevant, that we're "past" God? Or does it mean that we have permission to continue to read the Bible through a new lens, through this time, incorporating our experiences and relationships and the word of the people we're condemning before writing off an entire victimized people in the name of the God who made them exactly as they are? 
My relationships with gay people up til now are all with people raised in conservative Christian circles. How do you think they felt during puberty or later when they realized they were gay? Seriously. You, heterosexual, married, Christian, think about it. HOW DID THEY FEEL? Do you think they were scared? Do you think they wished they could un-gay themselves? Do you think they tried? Do you think they felt lonely? Do you think they felt like they had a huge secret, that if they could just hide this terrible abomination, they might get to keep their faith, their family, their future and their community? If they had a choice, what do you think they would have chosen? 
I don't believe being gay is a burden. I think we as a church made it a burden. Our society has made it a burden as well, though it's way ahead of the church on trying to make amends. Jesus saw people, not sins. He saw hearts. Where are our hearts? If you believe gay people are going to hell, are you upset about it? I really, really hope you are. I hope you're begging God every night to change his mind. God knows I used to.
Outside of how we interpret scripture, what do we know of the character of God? I think this is very important. If we know of God to be loving and patient, giving humanity every opportunity to turn to him and embrace the shocking love and communion he offers, why would he make people gay and then condemn them for it, with no hope of redemption? I think this is why we want so desperately for orientation to be a choice. Otherwise, God looks pretty bad, right? But if every time we ask a homosexual when they chose to be gay and they turn around and ask us when we chose to be heterosexual, we are in a bit of a conundrum.
Well, they can be celibate. Huh, okay. Let's all stand in solidarity then and say to God, while you made us beautiful, sexual and full of impulse to engage in the emotional and physical intimacy of sex (some might even say designed for it), we're all gonna boycott it. If one of us has to be celibate to please God, then I guess we all gotta be. How many of us would honestly sign up for that? Now, I know some gay Christians (no, that's not an oxymoron) feel convicted to be celibate. Go for it, peeps. Line up with the priests and nuns and be amazing individuals. Seriously. That actually IS a choice. But it's a choice made personally, not for you by people who never have to consider that as a valid option. 
Well then, let them have sex but don't let them have the dignity of calling it love, marriage or family. They will always be less than God's perfect design. You know what this reminds me of, the prodigal son's older brother. Man, I used to really identify with him (before I realized I was just a regular human, rather than someone very holy, deserving and self-sacrificing). Are we stingy with the love of God? When we've worked a whole day, do we begrudge the person worked 2 hours and receives the same pay? Do we withhold the dignity of marriage and rights because we want to keep some of it for ourselves? If you want things to be fair, time to turn to a different religion, folks. God will always be more merciful than we are. And this is the crux of it for me. If I can imagine that gay people are worthy, beautiful, human and deserving, I'm pretty sure God knew it all along and was just kindly waiting for me to catch up.
* For some suggested reading (this is by no means exhaustive. In fact, I read all these articles just in the last few days), please see the following:
- For insight into what it means to be a devout gay Christian, read this or you can borrow my copy if you're local.
- For thoughts on business, Christianity and politics, see this. 
- For thoughts on serving others while still maintaining a conservative faith, see this.
- For thoughts on the risk of not affirming gays as Christians, see this. 
- For an incredible documentary on how Christians reconcile the Bible with how to treat homosexuals and the damage poorly handling that has caused, see For the Bible Tells Me So on Netflix.
I can't tell you HOW MUCH INFORMATION is available on this subject that might be counter to a literal reading of these Scriptures but if your heart has ever felt uneasy in this theology, I encourage you to listen to that and read more and talk more and listen more. This is a worthy pursuit.