Comments on: What do Gays and Lesbians Hear? (repost)

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 02:53:03 +0000

I checked out this blog upon recommendation from another site…

MS’s original post I found to be refreshing, though I read some of his comments with great trepidation…

For me, the tone of the subsequent comments can only be described as incredibly depressing… truly depressing…

I am a 52 year old gay man. I came to Christian faith when I was 17 years old after being raised in a non-religious home. I have built a life with the man I love for the 19 years we have been together. I came to Christian faith among Evangelical Protestants; my journey has since taken me elsewhere. I am a member of a large Christian communion not generally perceived as welcoming to gay and lesbian Christians, though my own parish home is a blessed exception.

I really shouldn’t read such things… they only serve to remind me what an incredible gulf still persists between the experience of gay and lesbian people and the understanding of such large numbers of professing Christians…

By: For any who have ever said “I hate Christians”… « Thoughts right now…

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:32:42 +0000

[...] you’re so inclined, here’s a long blog post and internet discussion among mainstrem Christians, gay people, gay Christians, [...]

By: Evan Hurst

Evan Hurst — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 22:17:44 +0000

@Nikki:

well, i had to say, in another Christian forum, something about how a lot of Christians don’t understand the utter banality, from a gay person’s perspective, of having the same four verses from the same HUGE book regurgitated at them over and over again.

it’s like “say something different!”

and yeah, you hit on a lot of the reasons i reject a literal reading of the Bible. add to it the fact that many of the Old Testament myths are found in other forms in lots of other ancient belief systems.

they had to come up with some way to understand/rationalize big scaries they couldn’t interpret. so stories develop, myths arise, legends grow. it doesn’t mean the texts are irrelevant, but a literal interpretation just…you miss the poetry. you miss what’s going on between the lines.

By: Nikki Hatch

Nikki Hatch — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:57:22 +0000

Personally, I think a literal interpretation of the Scriptures makes absolutely no sense. In the end, I think that a reliance upon a fundamentalist/ literal interpretation would be the ultimate destruction of the Church. The Scriptures become nothing more than a fairy tale if you expect people to view them in literal terms.
There are at least two different creation stories, there are differences in the Gospels about the same events such as the Sermon on the Mount. The story about Joshua ordering the sun to stand still is another example. We now know the sun doesn’t move, the earth rotates and if it was to stop the gravitational effects would destroy the planet.
I could go on and on but you get my point.
As Fr. John McNeil writes in “ Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism”, “Unless theological truth can be separated from pre-scientific understandings of reality, the Christian faith will be reduced to one or more ancient mythology that will take place along side the religions of Mount Olympus.”
“The Bible relates to us the way our ancient forebearers understood and interpreted their world, made sense out of life, and thought about God. Our task is the same as theirs. We must interpret our world in light of our knowledge and suppositions”.
The point that I’m trying to make is that for many people; and especially GLBT persons, the Church has simply become irrelevant to their life and experience. Too many Christians have a theology that would fit a third grader but not an educated adult. There are many issues such as sexuality, birth control, euthanasia, stem cell research etc. that require complex answers and not simplistic platitudes with a Bible verse hurled at them.

By: Nikki Hatch

Nikki Hatch — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 19:50:40 +0000

boo

By: Evan Hurst

Evan Hurst — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 00:22:18 +0000

Oh…my…

Okay! I participated in a long discussion of this posting at christianresearchnetwork.info (as opposed to the other scary dark .com place) and it didn’t cross my mind that a much larger discussion was going on here.

one: I, too, appreciate the original post and those commenters who are willing to discuss, with a sense of nuance, this extremely divisive issue. People are trying, it seems. Okay, so…

dos: I’m a young(ish) gay guy who has been on a LONG spiritual journey, starting with (and I’m using really general terms here) mainstream Christianity, fundamentalism, Calvinism, etc. Then I came out (kind of like an appendix rupturing, honestly), left the church, and honestly hated the church for a really long time. It’s only been recently that I’ve started to even consider the church again, and mostly because a formerly non-Christian friend became involved in Christianity of her own volition. In the meantime, though, I’ve done a lot of searching, a lot of research, a lot of praying, a lot of yelling at God. (Yes, to the one taking issue with the “agree to disagree” thing, I’m not shy about saying that He and I have gotten into kerfuffles before. I mean, He’s gonna win, ’cause, like, He’s GOD, but if the Old Testament teaches us anything, He likes to fight.) What’s funny is that my most intimate contact with God has come AFTER accepting myself, imperfections and talents, wisdom and foolishness, and yes, my sexuality, which I do believe is God-given. I ask God to point me in the right direction, and He does. I ask God to speak to me, and He finds a way.

trois: Add me to the group of “Every gay person raised in the American Church unless they were very, very lucky,” in that I have been severely abused by Christianity. I still hold out a complete disdain for certain members of the faith, activists and civilians, who either knowingly or unknowingly spread disinformation and bigotry to the general populace, all under the guise of a “yoo can chaaaaange!” version of love. Well, guess what? The head of Love In Action just resigned under suspicious circumstances, and if it’s shown that he was caught “acting out,” the gay community will just shrug and say “there goes another one.” This is why groups like Exodus, Love in Action, et al., aren’t very forthcoming with their statistics. That being said, though…

Fore!: God has been calling me back into dialogue with Christians lately, both in real life and on these here interwebs, and He’s been showing me where I need to have more grace, and learn to forgive; also, in weird, kinda specific ways, He seems to be introducing me pastors of churches who welcome gay people without reservation as equal members of the flock, without judgment, etc. Which is weird, since I’m in sales, but they’re coming up as my customers…

So, hm.

I’m just glad the discussion is taking place.

My beliefs are ever evolving, and I would add that I’m decidedly not a Biblical literalist, and I think the jury is still out on the canonization of the Bible.

Yet I follow Christ, where He leads me.

Anyway.

Carry on, interwebs people, carry on…

By: Intelligence and Ignorance

Intelligence and Ignorance — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:30:36 +0000

Negotiating Minefields…

Michael Spencer (the Internet Monk) has recently been tackling, with great sensitivity, the biggest minefield in contemporary, western Christianity: the issue of homosexuality.
There are three essays: the first is a commentary on the need for sensitive…

By: 2United

2United — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:17:49 +0000

I’m sorry to see Rod go.
It took my wife one time reading Brian’s response for her to say that she was dismayed in the presumption, the divisiveness and the hurtfulness. It took me three times reading it.
Proof perhaps that it is the author’s responsibility to ’see’ what the reader will see?
We are youth pastors in South Florida. We have youngsters who claim to be gay and we both have siblings who are gay. I say the youngsters ‘claim’ to be as I don’t think at 15 or so, even I knew which end was up in the world.
Brian, I’d encourage you to re-read your post.
What we got from it and from what I see that Rod saw first was an attack on his relationship with God. None of us are called to that. Question perhaps, but not attack. And even then, such exchanges must be made with a Christ-like mind. We, none of us, have any idea the true nature of one another’s relationship with God and he specifically admonishes us not to consider things that are beyond our knowledge and judgment, wherein only He can render decisions. Even when the disciples pointed out others working ‘in His name’, He directed them to let them be. We are called to judge the spirits for ourselves….FOR OURSELVES.
But to be frank, it was the presumptuousness that hurt my soul to read. Again and again, you presumed to attack his relationship that you ‘did not undertand’, then you presumed to attack him because he can not know what you do or do not understand.
I’ve re-read Rod’s original post at least 10 times, but in your response you talk about ‘rationalizing as good, wholesome or acceptable’. I see none of that in his post. Once again you presume and put words into it that simply aren’t there.
Also, you presume that he’s angry! Angry? does it make you feel better to think that he’s angry and not hurt? Neither of us heard anger in the response, but a tersely worded, controlled response without judgment or name-calling…he never once questioned your relationship with God. But, yet you continued and even admit to ‘attacking’…Christians don’t “attack” reasoning.? where did that come from.?
And I suppose last and most importantly, in your response you quickly cite how Rod could not possibly know your relationship, what you’ve been through, etc., and you are essentially asking him to consider those things, but you gave him no such courtesy.
Last, and I realize we’ve rambled, but i’d suggest that perhaps the ‘agree to disagree’ is something I’ve experienced in my life as God allowing me some time and space to come to sincere knowledge of His opinion/Word on a particular subject. I mean, in my past, God has given me a short leash with very direct consequences and very quickly, and other times He has not pressured me, but allowed me to wander His pasture and find the boundaries of His love and concern on my own.

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 23:41:23 +0000

Brian,

At the risk of stirring things up, my relationship with God is one of friendship, too.

At times.

At times, I experience God as an implacable, imponderable force of nature. At times as a parent, at times as a shepherd. God is certainly not limited by my experience, and it has never occurred to me to try to define Him or limit the ways that He is allowed to interact with me.

And, while I agree with you in principle that when I disagree with God, it is me that is wrong. But there have been more than a few times when what I was wrong about wasn’t my opinion, but God’s. There have certainly been times (lots!) when I had to change my behaviors. But there have been many others when God’s call to me was to look deeper into my understanding of His will. Sometimes my stubbornness was something to overcome, but other times, it has been a signal to better understand something more true than I understood.

I would not phrase those times as “agreeing to disagree” with God, but I would say that there are times, and issues where I am content not to be clear on everything yet and the the Spirit continue to teach me.

It seems to me that refusing to ever change my view of God’s will has as little to do with genuine submission as refusing to ever change my behavior would.

By: Rod (the second one)

Rod (the second one) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:45:46 +0000

Gosh, Rod, it is nice to meet myself. You’re quite good-looking, if I say so myself. : )

I too am gay and am active in my church and in a committed relationship. And while I am in a Baptist church, no one blinks an eye. Of course, we don’t keep slaves either or make women cover their hair and I am told many people love to eat shellfish, so we are raving heretics. Oh, and the women deacons. There’s no question where this handbasket is going.

And that’s the answer to what it is GLBT people hear.

I’m still waiting on that explanation that strange idea about sexuality and the Trinity.