doing what God calls us to do and sticking to it regardless the outcome really does take real faith. in my youth group as leaders we have goals set for next year to grow, and God has given our youth pastor specific ways to do so. i would be interested to see if we barely grew at all while doing everything we were told to do, whether or not we could stand strong and know God’s will had been done.

thankyou for sharing this, i have been trying to look at your website and facebook regularly since i heard your podcasts from cornerstone festival this year. God bless

I know some people who have experienced abuse at the hands of their fathers and other men in their life, and saying God is a “He” is hard to accept. We use “He” because our language is so limited to describe something so much greater.

I apologize for any confusion.

I definitely would not begin to argue from the stand-point of having the answers. The only thing I know, in part, is my struggle. A struggle that I have kept silent about for too long because of the fear of being an outcast. A struggle that I – willingly, I must emphasize – went through reparative therapy to fix. A fight that kept me at odds with everything else I believed. I won’t pretend to understand God’s design in it all. What I do know is that I have come to the point that I cannot believe in a God who would reject me on the basis of what makes me, well, me.

That is the “warm, fuzzy love” I guess you were talking about. I know it does not fit into nice little square theological boxes. I remember when Rob Bell was talking about something similar to this – not homosexuality specifically, but theological arguments – in his talk “Everything is Spiritual.” He basically talks about how our perspective is so very limited that we cannot comprehend exactly how the theology fits together. It as if it is a three dimensional object (imagine a cylinder) when we can only see two dimensionally. So one side is of the argument is saying that “the object is a rectangle” while the other side is saying “it is a circle”, and what if God is beyond it all and saying “it is both?” He said it much better, but perhaps you get my point. What if for all this divisiveness within the church, the answer all along was “yes”? Not “you are wrong and you are right,” but “you both missed the bigger picture.”

I would never argue for relativism, but perhaps the answer is beyond us. Does that mean we do nothing? Far from it. But does it not mean that our focus should be on building our personal relationship with God? Is the Bible meant to be set of rules? In a certain sense, perhaps, but legalism becomes a huge issue. I believe in a God who personally convicts. We are not here to be Christ’s personal ambassadors to convict all the others around us. We are all supposed to be pursuing God. And the Church is supposed to be a community of imperfect people who are not focused on each other and the possible or perceived faults we see in others, but on a God above us all. A God who seems, as best as I can tell in my limited understanding, to be saying “it’s okay.” And that may sound heretical to you, holzer29, but here is the point. That point of freedom has allowed me to pursue God with all my heart and not have this overwhelming guilt that I have put on myself. Not conviction from the Holy Spirit, but guilt created by myself and the church culture I have lived within.

I would never argue that the sex, drug, porn, alcohol-addict is completely free to do whatever he wishes. I believe those things are sin because they hinder our relationship with God and reverse our focus to satisfying ourselves. We would never tell the straight man that he is sinning because he is attracted to women and thus is not putting his focus on God. So how can we say that the gay man is sinning because he is attracted to men? Because we don’t think it is natural? Is the Bible meant to be a science book? Galileo was jailed because he was a heretic according to the Church’s interpretation of Scripture at the time. Does that mean Scripture is wrong or that we mistranslated and missed the point? What if a gay man is in a committed relationship with another man and they are both pursuing God? Are they sinning, or are they just sinners just like the committed heterosexual couple (i.e. we are all sinners)?

I do not want to dismiss entire passages of Scripture for my own benefit. That is wrong. I do not want to misinterpret entire passages of Scripture just to fit into my current understanding of the world and pop culture. But when we dogmatically fight for our interpretation of Scripture we get into trouble. As I recall, the Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, the Southern plantation owners all used Scripture to justify their positions. I don’t want to get divisive here, but I will point out that misinterpretation goes both ways. The problem is that we miss the bigger picture, the greater point, the overall message.

“For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.” Hebrews 4:12 (New Living Translation)

What is our innermost thoughts and desires? If one desires another to get personal pleasure, does it matter whether it is straight or gay? If a straight man cannot stay committed to a woman, is that not wrong? In other words, is the issue sexuality or what we are seeking after?

Do I have the answers? No. These are not answers, per se, but my commentary on my journey towards God. May I look back on what I have said here ten years and see things from a completely different perspective? Assuredly.

Can I judge your heart or you mine? No. But we can encourage one another to seek after God with all our heart, soul, and mind. To dwell on his Word as often as possible. To pray without ceasing.

And if we stop putting labels on people; if we truly allowed the poor, smelly homeless person the same rights in the church as the generously-tithing, rich person; if we allowed the gay couple the same rights as the heterosexual couple; if we stopped putting up dogmatic barriers between the “straight and righteous” group and the gay community and instead opened our doors, realizing that we are not the moral police but the examples of Christ to hurting, lost people, then we will finally have gotten the bigger picture. If we realize that our job – and our ONLY job – is to point them in the direction of God, a personal God who changes, convicts, and guides us *all* as we develop our *own relationship* to our Creator, then we will stop focusing on getting outward results. We are all imperfect beings, living in an imperfect world, reaching for a perfect Creator.

The only theological truth that I will fight to the death for is a God who loved us enough that somehow, in some way I do not understand, made himself the ultimate sacrifice and the link between us and our Creator, and that the way to God is to believe that Jesus, somehow, some way, is God and the link to our forgiveness and our ultimate reconnection to an amazingly personal relationship with a Creator beyond our understanding or comprehension.

Now if we could all just start fresh from there.

Holzer29: I seem to remember that you have a gay sister or something similar. I must imagine that family gatherings are a hoot.

Gotta run, pick up the kids, and see the hubby! -Jon

Love you bro!
–Darren

I’m not completely sure on the bible being outdated so to speak, not having a modern understanding of homosexuality..but i do it’s odd to assume a behavior is legitimate just because a person is naturally inlcined to it.
It does seem ludicous to believe that the creator of the universe in guiding the biblical authors was ignorant concerning the things we now know about homosexuality through modern biology, physicology, socialgy and so forth. To deny scriptural statements about homsexuality on these grounds is to completely deny God’s superintendence in the authorship of scripture.
Anyways, those are thoughts, some mine, some the author of the book ” A strong Delusion” by Joe Dallas.
He covers alot of the issues you just spoke of Dan, you might want to pick up a copy and read it for youself…i found in full of information.
Either way Sir, We are all faced with so many desires of the flesh, to try and avoid them all on our own is impossible. I found this out myself.
But don’t close the door the possiblity that the beliefs that you were brought up on are now wrong. God can speak to your heart. Ask HIm. Seek Him with a will heart friend and He will, answer.

Holzer29: I understand your point and where you are coming from. I was raised in a conservative family, in a conservative Lutheran church, and I believed the literal reading of our *modern English translations* of *ancient Greek texts.*

Oh, and I am gay.

I have fought it since I was 13. I’m in my 20’s now. And I am done fighting. That decision is between God and me. And I now, having read more into the issues of translation – and I am not saying I am anywhere near a scholar, have the right answer, or can even read Greek, for that matter – believe that we have mistranslated those Scriptures.

1)You can’t use the Old Testament as proof against homosexuality, unless you are also going to believe that all brides who are not virgins should be stoned (Deuteronomy 22:13-21).

2) Paul and the writers of the New Testament did not have a modern understanding of the notion of homosexuality. The word homosexuality did not appear in a Bible translation until the 1900’s (I do not have an official or academic reference on that point, if anyone does, please post, I am looking for it). The Greek words that Paul uses are not entirely clear and some scholars believe that they better translate into essentially male prostitution and pederasty – again, not modern understandings of homosexuality.

I do have problems with the gay community. The level of substance abuse and promiscuity is staggering, but is that because we are all ungodly heathens who have turned from God? That leaves me out. I would argue instead that it is the Church community who has through misinterpretation and dangerous dogmatism left an entire group of God’s children out in the cold. And if the Church won’t be their for people, we will turn to other places.

As for “laying down” – you can’t cause them to lay down anything. That’s not your job – it’s not of your ability or choice. It’s theirs. So now you have 2 opions: 1) Accept that and continue to live in relation to and relationship with, or 2) Continue to reiturate your point because you think that if you say it enough they will one day wake up and believe you.

In regards to questioning my belief in Christ as real and what I really believe, I made it abundently clear in my second response. Oh, and InterVarsity Press published my book, and I went to seminary at Moody. Doesn’t get much more tradtional evangelical than that. I guess I get tired of people continuing to question what I believe just because I don’t say what people want me to say, how they want me to say it.

As for Jess – that video is a very important part to what it means to live out your belief in God in a 21st Century context. I did not put that up on this blog to use it as a theological statement, but rather as an example that most of the over 12,000 readers of this blog will never have a personal experience to personally experience involving themselves in a life like Jess’ life.

HERE IS A LETTER I WROTE TO A FEW FOLKS AT MOODY after they were up in arms about Jess and a few other gays and lesbians who spoke that night:

First off, I want to thank all of you for attending class last night. As I was reflecting from what happened in light of some of the emails I got, I would like to make a few points more clear:

1. Moody Theological Seminary, The Marin Foundation and myself all believe the Bible is fully inspired (2 Tim 3:16), and is also the unchanging inerrant Word of God. Let there be no mistaking our theological belief system as we all wholeheartedly believe in a traditional interpretation of Scripture.

2. The theme of last night, started off by the talk I gave, was about what it means to understand the GLBT community through their perspective and filtration system. My experience over the last decade immersed in the community is that the mindset of ‘right from the gate you can’t relate’ is the only place to start for peaceful and productive bridge building. With that in mind, the four people to speak after myself were a cross-section of real life GLBT people with religious backgrounds who are struggling to figure out, and desperately wrestling with, what faith and sexuality mean in light of their same-sex attractions. These are some of the types of people that you will [more importantly] be encountering in your everyday ministries after you leave Moody. Two of the GLBT speakers last night go to very large, well known conservative evangelical churches, so this is not an issue only for the liberal factions of our faith. As Dr. Fuder always communicates, “Chicago is our lab! Let’s explore it.” Last night was a small piece of that lab as we had the privilege of hearing people first hand who are coming from completely different places, worldviews, theological beliefs and experiences than our own. You are getting an education at Moody that is truly preparing you for real ministry, and that includes not just taking the World Religions course, but experiencing it as well.

3. To me, one of the most important parts of our Christian walk is to not just ‘preach to the converted’ but to get outside our comfort zones to show our Christ in the midst of the places that by no other means would hear our Truth. Life, and tangibly walking out our faith is not easy, nor is it pretty, nor does it always align or fit our preexisting paradigms of engagement. Rather walking out our faith is about a true conviction of what we believe theologically, and yet living it out differently (1 Cor 9:19-23). I am so convinced that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God that hearing what I did last night doesn’t scare me or make me question what I believe, it excites me as a blessed opportunity to continue moving in the challenge that God has set forth before all of us in today’s socially driven, secular (and even liberal religious) culture.

4. Some of what happened last night might have been a shock – maybe a little too much. Dr. Fuder and I always, always, want to respect each of you, respect Moody, respect ourselves, and most importantly, respect God. If in any way what happened last night did not accomplish any of those goals in light of last night’s theme, then I [Andy] am the one to be held accountable for that. My intent was to never offend anyone, it was to present (in a safe environment for all of us) a group of people willing to put themselves out there in the face of fear, to share their lives with you. Agree or disagree with what they said, the main point is to know what it means to humbly listen and learn. Our conviction of Scripture is clear, and that provides power and strength, even when there are others around us who don’t feel the same.