The Future of this Bridge Building Work

There was one quick sentence that the reporter Heather Sells said in the segment that was quite profound:

“It may take years to understand Marin’s impact on the Church and the LGBT community”

How true that statement actually is. In today’s on-demand culture there is an expectation of the immediate. People can immediately get news in real time on Twitter before it actually airs on TV. People can immediately voice their opinions on blogs in the exact moment of reading something. We can call, email, etc from anywhere at anytime. Hyper-connected, I think, is the official geeky term for our lives today.

The operation of the Church has fallen into these exact same negative cultural patterns. These days churches are working off of a success or failure model. But what is success? How do you define it? Numbers? Programs? People ‘saved’ by praying a prayer? No matter what someone believes is the correct definition, it’s all relative.

And none of it carries any weight in my book anyway.

Here are some thoughts on Success and Failure when it comes to Christianity and building bridges between the Church and the LGBT community:

Faithful commitment is Success

What if a LGBT person never agrees with a conservative interpretation of Scripture? What if they accept Jesus Christ and then pronounce they are a gay Christian? What if they say they hear God clearly tell them that living in a same-sex, committed and monogamous relationship is a blessed, God-ordained way of life? From a conservative perspective,

Have you not done your job?

Did you fail?

Are you not fulfilling even the most baseline of Christian standards?

The answer is that a faithful commitment to God is a success no matter what the outcome. Proverbs 16:3 says: “Commit tot he Lord whatever you do and your plans will succeed.” The more accurate translation of Proverbs 16:3 is, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do and your plans will be established“.

Success in God’s eyes is completely different from our modern understanding of the term.

The fallout from this incorrect alignment leads to a creation of false expectations for ourselves in comparison to God’s biblical promises. There are two main Kingdom differences between establishing and succeeding:

Establishing is rooting your motives and actions in God’s unknown process.

Succeeding is beating the competition with perceived outcomes that the mainstream (whether secular or religious) deems worthy.

Establishing is the spiritual understanding that there is personal contentment in faithful commitment. This is not an excuse to be lazy but it is the Kingdom parallel to the flesh’s second version of succeeding -

Succeeding is having contentment in knowing the outcome.

Both the Church and the LGBT community set themselves up for this disconnect because we use a model of Success vs. Failure – a model created with the rise of an ‘advanced’ Western mindset of philosophy, evolution and business. Each of those cultural metrics have since led us further from Christ’s metric of success. Hence the reason LGBT activist groups and religous right activist groups won’t be caught dead longing to establish anything with the other – because they both are trying too hard to ’win’ the battle to see anything else.

The point of faith is not to beat up and conquer every other people group/belief system so we come out the ultimate winners. The point of faith is to establish Kingdom, here on earth as it is in Heaven, no matter what the outcome.

So do I know the outcome of what this bridge building work will look like in 40 years? Not that I know of. But 40 years down the road isn’t the point, and it’s not even in my remote focus. The point is to faithfully live out each day in relation to and relationship with those in my life, no matter what the outcome turns out to be four decades from now.

Faithful commitment is success. We will stop failing when we stop trying to succeed and start establishing Kingdom.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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Validation vs. Affirmation:

There are some who are very upset about my understanding of validation and affirmation. Here is a more in-depth explanation. I find these critiques strange because many people in both communities love, and I mean love to talk about being ‘inclusive’ or ‘focused on outreach’. What that actually means these days is that inclusive people or those focused on outreach get to choose who to be inclusive to or who to reach out to while keeping everyone not in their ’target audience’ ostracized from the ‘in’ pack.

With The Marin Foundation, inclusion and outreach actually equals non-Christian LGBT, LGBT Christians, celibate, ex-gay, liberal and conservative straight Christians and non-Christian straight people, together and active in our stuff. And I can say that because each one of those categories is deeply involved in the everyday work, classes, gatherings and events of The Marin Foundation.

Since that is truth, how can I best describe the overwhelmingly peaceful and productive relationships we see on a daily basis with so many different theological, political, social and scientific ideologies combined in one group – where in the rest of culture those combinations of people just end up fighting? The only way I can think is by validating everyone’s journey/story/experience as legitimate to them—regardless of where they are on the spectrum, while everyone else still is able to hold on to their theological belief system—whichever liberal or conservative one that is. (For more info on my thoughts on the label Affirming, please read this).

If you don’t like my understanding of how I explain how the folks within The Marin Foundation get along so well, then give me a better description and I’ll use that. But here’s the problem, the majority of the people out there just want to critique and talk while The Marin Foundation is actually doing the ‘doing.’ That realization has become a safe-haven for my own soul recently. People love the labels of ‘inclusion’ and ‘outreach’ until the label has to become a reality.

Well, it’s our reality—validation and affirmation fit what we see happening everyday.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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What many people don’t realize is that the Salvation Army is way, way more than just people who at Christmas stand outside with a bucket and ring a bell asking for change. All around the world the Salvation Army has formed very intentional, and deeply incarnational groups of people planted in areas literally all over the globe that need to see what Jesus looks like in a hands and feet type of way.

No frills. No fluff. Just everyday faithfully living a life of service to a local community of people.

That is the number one reason I love the Salvation Army, and the work that they do, so very much. It’s also the reason why I’m so humbled by them continuing to ask me to teach at their training institutes all over the place. If there is a legacy I would like to leave, a big part of it is one of spurring on others to really understand the need to incarnationally do life in the places the Lord has led you to. Life is about faithfulness, and showing that faithfulness starts and ends with living in the place you yearn to be faithful to.

From today until August 9th I will be teaching three times a day to a national gathering of Salvos (at a dude ranch/camp in Midlothian, TX where it is currently 105 degrees as I write this) from all over the country. My everyday schedule is as follows:

10:45-12:15pm Sitting on a Panel trying to answer questions that come our way about the Bible in general, and its implications to our lives today

1:30-2:30pm A week long core class on Building Bridges within the LGBT Community

7-8pm A week long elective on Studying the Bible and Integrating Study into Our Everyday Spiritual Lives

It’s going to be a great week.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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Public Statement:

The work of The Marin Foundation is to build bridges between the LGBT community and a variety of faith communities through education, scientific research and diverse community gatherings. We are a movement shaped by bold individuals of reconciliation; whose orientation is one of love, who live in the tension of different social, theological and political ideologies, and refuse to allow hate, disagreements or past experiences cause division in any community.

Over the last ten years I have seen a growing difference between cultural reconciliation and actual reconciliation. Cultural reconciliation is when the conservative world or the LGBT community only sees reconciliation as ‘the other’ dropping their personal worldview and picking up a full set of ‘correct beliefs’ that brings everyone to only one side. To me that resembles more of a mob mentality than actual reconciliation—which seeks to connect and dignify two different groups of people on a human to human level whether in agreement or not. That is The Marin Foundation’s ultimate goal. We model this type of reconciliation everyday within our own organization on staff and in volunteers, which consist of straight and LGBT people, single and partnered, liberal and conservative.

Such an effort is a countercultural place to be, especially in light of the divisive culture war that continues to surround faith, politics and sexuality today. The Marin Foundation and I are making even more of an intentional effort to spend our energy, time and resources working with others from both the LGBT and conservative communities who yearn to see a true reconciliation happen on earth, as it already is in Heaven.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

In light of all the attention surrounding the talk I gave to a group of conservative youth pastors in the Fall of 2008, I want to answer some of the accusations. Despite my critics, from both the LGBT and conservative communities, accusations that I have things to hide (e.g. depending on what extreme you talk to I am either a person ‘pretending to be nice to LGBT people in order to make them straight’ or ‘I am a heretical emergent pastor who loves LGBT people’), I don’t have anything to hide. So I figured for the sake of those who do love our work and the sake of those who don’t, I will post my responses to the public accusations floating around:

To start off, I want to say that at that point in my ‘speaking life’ I was not anywhere close to being confident in the delivery of the bridge building message. Mostly, I was just scared out of my mind trying to figure out how to publicly speak to huge groups of people about such a divisive topic. I never had any intent to be the ‘evangelical’ go-to guy on this topic, I only cared about wanting to show love in a tangible way in my one neighborhood. When I listened to the recording from two years ago, I thought some of the same things as many of the critics out there; even cringing at times because I know what I was trying to communicate, but the delivery of it was anything but how I say it all today. Thanks to those who took the time to ask these questions:

Q1. You use the phrase ‘same-sex attraction’ and that is not liked within the LGBT community because it sounds like you don’t want to accept the word gay.

R1: I have never had any LGBT person say to me that they hate the term ‘same-sex attraction’. But now that I am hearing such a response I don’t want to offend anyone with that term (e.g. the same reason why I never use the word ‘homosexual’; instead using gay, gay and lesbian, or LGBT—as you can hear on the recording).

Q2. It sounds like you always make a distinction between being Christian and being LGBT as two separate entities of each other. There is such a group of people as gay Christians!

R2. To that particular audience of Southern, very evangelical youth pastors there is really no such thing in many of their minds as a gay Christian. For most of them to even hear those words put together is, as I’ve heard hundreds of times, “an oxymoron”. In general though, when I talk about Christians and the LGBT community (as I did in parts of my book as well - which is written for straight conservative evangelicals) I am referring to broader community generalizations within the culture war—not attempting to suggest that either of those groups are mutually exclusive (which many took it as…which if I could redo the talk and parts of my book, I would make much more clear today).

If conservative folks can’t get past the political culture war, how is culture going to change from its current divided and bitter state? I believe that it is on the conservative world to make that first step towards reconciliation instead of doing what they have traditionally done—wait for LGBT people to apologize first. LGBTs shouldn’t apologize first, they were not the ones to do the kicking out and disenfranchising. So I wanted to focus on that culture war aspect first. The ‘problem’ with such a focus on my part is that it does sometimes decentralize a focus on gay Christians, which is a legitimate group of people. Although there is a hugely growing gay Christian movement, from my experiences gay Christians still do not compromise a majority (51%) of the LGBT community as a whole. I have no proof of that statement, either…it’s just a perception of mine from being around the country so much. I could be wrong. Though I do believe that one day it will be the majority of the LGBT community, right now I don’t see that. Hence the reason why I usually separate the two when I speak about the divide, the culture war or traditionally held conservative or liberal paradigms. One other thing, when I say ‘whole of the LGBT community’ I am referring to the dominant entity under the umbrella. This doesn’t mean that I believe the opposite of gay Christian is drinking, partying, sleeping around, etc; because I don’t believe that. This just means the majority, in my opinion right now, would not identify themselves as gay Christians.

One other note, I do not believe that for every LGBT person, their identity equals sexual behavior (I could have made that distinction much more clear while talking; as well as made that much more clear in my book!). There is so much that makes up a complex human life. My ultimate goal, agenda if you so wish to label it, is to provide space for everyone to live the life they so desire to seek—with God, without God. Unashamedly, I do believe life with a belief in God is more complete, but that is what living in the tension is all about – what does it mean to have differences in ideologies and still be peaceful and productive in today’s culture… 

Q3. In the suicide note you read, it mentioned the options of celibacy or straight marriage with kids. Why isn’t the other choice (gay marriage) considered?

I think what everyone is forgetting is that I did not write that suicide note. That note was written by an out gay man who I had never met, didn’t know and who had just heard me on the radio with no where else to turn with his thoughts. So he sent his suicide note to me. I don’t know his life or his context other than what he wrote in that suicide note. Although he didn’t include all “options” of faith and sexuality in his letter, it is a powerful reminder to the conservative world that this is a life/death type of thing. To many in the conservative world, homosexuality needs to be humanized first before any bridge building can occur; because right now it’s a political battle. That is why I read that suicide note.

Funny to me, is that prominent LGBT activists read notes like that all of the time to get the same point across about the severity of this issue. But because it’s an LGBT person reading it people focus on the intent of the suicide rather than the minutia of how big of a field of faith and sexuality is included in such a note. I’m not upset about this…it’s just a fact. Also, I haven’t received too many suicide notes. In fact, when I spoke on the recording in question, as well as wrote my book later, that was the first and only one I had ever received to those points. So it’s not like I had a lot of suicide notes to choose from.

Q4. There is value in promoting celibacy until marriage (whether gay or straight), but it sounds like you were trying to keep LGBT youth in the closet because if they come out they will then have a ‘gay identity’ and you’re saying that is a bad thing.

R4. As for the chastity for LGBT teens until marriage/civil union/etc depending on the State if that is what they want to do—like straight teens—that is what I think is the prefered course from my Christian worldview. When I was describing the 13-15 year old window (bad, bad language on my part by the way—I have since stopped saying that as of last year), I was not telling those youth pastors to keep LGBT kids in the closet. As I said in the recording, it’s important for youth pastors to have such important discussions about faith and sexuality with their youth.

What I was trying to say was that when a 13-15 year old kid comes out, as research shows, (R.C. Savin-Williams & K.M. Cohen, “Homoerotic development during childhood and adolescence,” in M. Diamond & A. Yates (Eds.), Sex and Gender: Child and adolescent psychiatric clinics of North America (Philadelphia: Saunders, 2004), 529-550), they are then the singled out ‘gay kid’ for all time; even at the high school reunions 10+ years later. I don’t know many out gay kids that are treated really well in the rural South. It’s a big decision to come out. It’s more than just a huge step. It’s obviously life changing. My main point was to encourage those youth pastors to understand the harsh reality of what could potentially happen to these kids in their everyday/and church life (if there is a ‘church life’ after?) while going through this realization and coming out process. My statement to delay the coming out is to provide the needed space to realistically gauge the situation around them with as level of a head as possible. I have had many of my LGBT friends tell me they wish they would have waited to come out instead of just blurting it out and then being left alone on an island with no idea what to do from there.

When I said “it’s harder for kids to ‘come back’ after they are already out than it is to keep them in the fold”…I was referring to having a faith and living with a belief in God! I was not talking about behavior modification as many who have listened to it since assumed. Once again though, I could have definitely made that distinction more clear, especially in light of how it sounded when I listened to it for the first time two years later.

Q5. There doesn’t seem to be much intent from you for helping LGBT teens to be celibate to marriage, or even marry, as you sound like you’re encouraging those pastors to help the LGBT teens live in life long celibacy or becoming straight.

First, I will make this very clear: The Marin Foundation, its staff members and myself personally—our goal is not to have anyone who is LGBT become ‘straight.’ Never has been. Never will be. That is not our goal/agenda/secret agenda/whatever you want to call it. Everyone who knows us personally or has ever come to anything we have ever done backs that statement up. When speaking to a particular audience I, like any communicator, has to gauge where the audience is at and what they can handle in terms of the more liberal or conservative theologies that push against what that particular audience believes—otherwise you’ll just be quickly written off and the message won’t land – which is counterproductive to anyone trying to communicate a broader message, let alone one of a different medium of engagement.

I have been accused of ‘telling LGBT people what they want to hear and conservative people what they want to hear’. The answer to that is partially correct. I use the exact same Principles (e.g. Won’t answer yes/no, Principles of Bridge Building, etc) that communicates the exact same message no matter who the audience (and that includes the numerous non-Christian universities I have spoken at, which the audience consisted of liberal LGBT people and straight conservatives!), but the particulars of how/what I can push that audience on looks different.

But the main accusation coming from the recording is the ‘behavior modification’ – In light of the understanding (at least in my own head) that I was not talking about behavior modification (point 4 above), but rather about faith, that all made sense to me as I said it at the time.

Q6. It sounds like you might have some clandestine desire to see married LGBT couples with kids break up and eventually settle down with straight opposite sex people.

R6. I recently wrote the following to a gay person I know who emailed me with questions about some of the accusations:

I want to make this as clear as I possibly can: I have no intent, ever, public or private, to ever see you and your partner divorce/separate/break-up/not live a happy life. You are great parents to the great kids you have adopted, who without you, would not have the ability to live the life they are living. I couldn’t be more humbled to know you, your husband and your kids as the family that you are.

Q7. You describe, when one of your best friends came out, that he became freakish: “lost a bunch of weight…got the little ‘fauxhawk’…started acting effeminate, talking effeminate…the stereotypical flaming gay guy.”

R7. First, I never used the word freakish, or any other insulting adjective. Second, there was absolutely no judgment in what I said. I was describing the change in physical appearance. That was not a judgment statement, it was a fact of very noticeable features changing before coming out and after coming out. Another fact I should point out is that there is such a thing as a stereotypical flaming gay guy—of which, right or wrong, is well recognized by LGBT people, the mainstream world and the religious world. I also have a fauxhawk

I talk extensively in my book, Love is an Orientation, about the need to deconstruct those negatively imputed cultural stereotypes—about LGBT people and about conservatives. At that point in my life in the year 2000, as a bible-banging homophobe when he came out to me, what I communicated to that audience was the dead honest truth about what was running through my head when I saw him for the very first time after he got back from college after he came out. 

Q8. You said: “What if you’re asked if people can change their sexual orientation?” Your answer: Be evasive.

R8. That wasn’t my only answer. Here is what I meant by ‘evasive’: First, I used really, really bad language when I said the word evasive. As I said in my opening statement, I was not accustomed to speaking and had not found a comfortable way to communicate the following:

“Don’t answer yes/no questions because the people asking them (“whether friends or enemies” were the exact words I used) are just trying to pin you down into a ‘my team’ ‘their team’ scenario.” Bridges can’t be built from only one side! The problem with close-ended questions is that in a one word response three things happen: I know who you are, I know what you believe, and (this is the big one) I know how I should treat you based on that one word. None of that seems peaceful and productive to me surrounding the most divisive topic in our culture today. That is why I don’t answer yes/no questions, whether to friends I love and trust or to those who don’t like me so much. You can see more about what I believe it means to live in the tension of the cultural, political and theological polarization in my book.

Another thought: When I listed the groupings of people that consist of faith and sexuality in our culture today answering the question about “change”, they were exactly that—groupings. I said it then, I made it very clear in my book, and I’ll say it again here: Those groupings are not a ‘change or step program to go from gay to straight’! They are rather a categorical list of all the different shades of faith and sexuality in today’s culture. A categorical grouping is not a moral or social judgment statement; it’s just an informational list of how different people in our culture today self-identify regarding faith and sexuality.

Q9. You were asked a question from the audience: What do you do when you encounter a gay youth who thinks he or she could be Christian and also openly gay or lesbian? Answer: There’s “hope” for someone like that because it’s hard for youths to realize at 15 what life might be like at 35, when they can’t get married or have kids — implying gays shouldn’t/can’t get married or have children as adults — so give them the “big picture,” of what it might be like at 35, but whatever you do, DON’T mention sexuality!

First, in 2008 there was only 1 (one) State that gay marriage was legalized, Massachusetts. So unless every single LGBT person moved to Massachusetts, at that time the talk was recorded in the South, no, there would be no gay marriage with kids. I was again stating a fact. Today, that response is different. I honestly believe gay marriage will be nationally legalized sooner than later. Within that thought process, my message to the conservative world is: When it is legalized across the country, are you just going to continue to fight or are you going to learn what it means to live peacefully and productively within a society that has legalized gay marriage?

Also, when I said ‘don’t mention sexuality’, I was once again referring to the main issue of focusing on having an identity in Christ (I remind you that I was talking to a group of conservative pastors). Sexuality is such a huge topic with teenagers, whether straight or gay, that it is easy to get caught up in mainstream’s ideal (by mainstream I mean both secular and religious mainstreams) of what is sexually acceptable, in either direction, that youth can quickly fall into the extreme right or left categories. The extremes are what I feel are not productive and further perpetuate this culture war. Instead, living a spiritually fulfilled life (whether gay or straight), from my perspective, should be the goal of where to land on the cultural spectrum of faith and sexuality.

Q10: It is really narcissistic to name an organization after yourself!

If you know me, you know that I am a few things that don’t compute with others my age: 1) I am not technologically advanced – I know nothing of computers, design, Macs and the rest of it; and 2) I am not clever with slogans, marketing, etc. The reason I ended up naming my organization The Marin Foundation is because when I was trying to think of a cool, clever name, every name I thought of would I ask my LGBT and conservative straight friends what they thought of it, and every time they could think of a reason why LGBT or conservative people wouldn’t want to have anything to do with us just based on the name being either too Christianeze or too gay. The last thing I wanted was for someone to write us off just based on a name. So the most bland name I could think of that no one would have a clue what we did unless they actually knew what we did, was to call it The Marin Foundation. We are a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit. We are not a family foundation that was birthed out of a trust fund. Far from it (please see the link below about our financial records). Interestingly enough, it was a gay man in his 50′s that thought it would be a good idea to call my organization The Marin Foundation. Who knew that name would cause so many problems?

Q11. You lied when you said The Advocate article about you was retracted. What else are you lying about?

I was under the impression that The Advocate article was retracted. Please take my sincerest apology for publicly saying that it was retracted when it wasn’t. I want to thank The Advocate for going on the record and clearing that up. In regards to the article in question, I received two phone calls, one email and one letter from four different people quoted in that article who all stated they did not say any of what was quoted in the article by the author. To me, even today, that is enough to be satisfied whether the article was retracted or not.

I have never sought out one speaking engagement. I have never written one book proposal. I have never contacted any media outlet to cover us. All of these things have been brought to me. If I never get one more speaking engagement, write one more book or have one more media outlet cover us (whether positive or negative), I would still be content. I’m not here, and it was never my goal, to be a national leader or talking head. It is what it has become today. I’m just trying to continually learn how to live and love in real time; just now it’s in the public eye. It’s not easy. It doesn’t always work out how everyone would like it to. It’s quite uncomfortable. But it is what I’m committed to; in the public eye or not. I will never be above saying I’m sorry or admitting mistakes, as I have done numerous times on my blog and while teaching.

As I have always stated, I have nothing to hide about anything. That transparency also includes all of The Marin Foundation’s finances; of which are all public record through the IRS (as that seems to now be a hot topic that my organization is a cover to make me rich). If you don’t feel like chasing down the IRS, just let me know and I’ll post them all for everyone to see. If there is anything else, please let me know and I will freely communicate about it all. (Note to recently frequent commenter Eugene, I have not forgotten your questions, I will be getting to them, along with every single other question, as soon as I can).

Much love.

Andrew

PS – I have turned the comments off because this is a public statement in response to those accusing me of things. Thank you for understanding and letting my words stand by themselves.

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I don’t want to clog any of what will be said with my words.

PLEASE READ THIS. (and the comment on the link by Jesse, who was also there)

If you have ever wondered about the work of The Marin Foundation, our Living in the Tension gatherings or what we’re all about – the above link will answer them all (maybe not to your satisfaction, but surely to mine).

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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*Sorry for the spacing issues. I copied these from my inbox and for whatever reason, no matter what I try, the spacing is off.

Well, this ’I'm Sorry’ Campaign has officially hit craziness. 100% of yesterday was spent fielding media requests, doing interviews and writing transparently to skeptics about The Marin Foundation. In the coming days/weeks, I will be posting all of my email exchanges to the skeptics out there for you to read as well.

Yesterday I posted that three super duper popular bloggers strongly critiqued The Marin Foundation and our work. I emailed all of them directly, and two of them repsonded to me via personal email, Hemant Mehta from Friendly Atheist and Dan Savage from the Slog. Andy Towle from Towleroad has not responded at all. Two quick notes though: First, I want to be very clear that the positive emails/notes/Facebooks/etc we have gotten from this Campaign far, far, far outweigh the negative. Second, I was so humbled that there were so many people who came to our defense on each of the negative blog posts. We at the Foundation were floored!

I will start by posting the questions and responses I had with Dan (and the reason I am posting these emails is because they are written as public statements that Dan has permission to post as well):

I reached out to Dan by saying:

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Who knew this whole ‘I’m Sorry from the Church Campaign 2010′ would go viral? Not us, I’ll tell you that much. Anyway, there have been a couple really well known sites that have publicly stated their distaste and skepticism for me, for The Marin Foundation and for our Campaign.

And why should they believe us at our word?

They shouldn’t.

And I don’t expect them to.

We all know the scars the Church has left – the same Church we are a part of.

And I’m perfectly content that these culture makers can’t stand me because how else am I to show them otherwise over the long haul unless we know each other?

Maybe one day we’ll all sit down face to face and I’ll let them fire away at me and I’ll answer everything as open and honest as I always do. That day hasn’t come yet. Until then, I’ll keep apologizing and I’ll keep loving unconditionally.

Yes. Unconditionally…which means whether gay, in a relationship or not, Christian or not, whether people “change” or not. And I’ll still keep pressing the church to do the same thing.

Here are the links:

Friendly Atheist

Towleroad

Slog – They first posted this awesome article, then they posted this not so flattering one.

I have already privately emailed both of them. We’ll see what happens…

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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This is literally what Christian Outreach to the LGBT Community looks like:

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org  (Picture Credit goes to Michelle from Maladjusted Media)

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Here’s Part 1

We then started to talk about sexual consumerism—no, not human trafficking, but rather sexuality being consumed to fuel one’s self worth and give them validity as ‘fully human’. So often people feel that they cannot be ‘fully human’ living in the way God created us as sexual beings without the ‘sexual’ part. But what so many miss is that God didn’t create us to idolatrize sexuality, but to be conformed to His image. And if His image was made manifest in Jesus, and Jesus was single (and peep this from the Book of Isaiah), what’s the deal with the world today?

Culture (Mainstream: Christian and secular) look to marriage as the end-all-be-all of ideal human sexuality (gay and straight). In his book, The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries, sociologist Rodney Stark notes that in 59 BC Julius Caesar secured legislation that awarded land to fathers of multiple children, and Cicero fought to outlaw celibacy. Then in the year 9 AD emperor Augustus passed laws that:

*Gave political preference to men who fathered three or more children

*Imposed political and financial sanctions upon childless couples, unmarried woman over the age of twenty, and upon unmarried men over the age of twenty-five

Stark goes on to document how each successive emperor after Augustus added additional perks for married couple with children and additional penalties for unmarried people and married couples without kids.

Here’s my problem—during Jesus’ time and the disciples time after that, marriage, in their culture, was being stripped from a God-honoring covenant to a legally sanctioned relationship with political and financial gains associated with said relationship.

At that moment, sexuality and marriage, became a product to consume to give worth. It’s a shame that mindset has lasted so long.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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I don’t know Matthew Paul Turner. I’ve never talked to him nor have I ever met him—but I now feel like he’s my BFF! Reading Hear No Evil is literally like having a conversation with your best friend. It’s full of comfort, humor and extreme awkwardness, and that’s only the first couple of pages.

Why I love this book so much is because I found myself squirming around, at times getting upset at what Turner was saying and then at the same time realizing that he’s telling my Christian story. I was so uncomfortable because it’s hard to read your own life mirrored in a book by a guy you don’t know. And yet, there it is, in ink right in front of my own eyes.

Turner is known on his widely read blog, Jesus Needs New PR, as offering satirical commentary on faith and culture, and that doesn’t stop in Hear No Evil. Using his life and experiences growing up in an extreme fundamental Baptist church all the way to getting plugged in with a tongue-speaking rock star type charismatic movement (p.164-167 about a ‘prophetess praying for Turner’s indigestion in a TGI Friday restaurant’ was the funniest stuff I’ve ever read in any book in my life. Ever! Guess it’s that life of an insider charismatic that really get me, because it is me!).

So for an extremely fun, extremely uncomfortable book that you will enjoy from start to finish, Hear No Evil: My Story of Innocence, Music and the Holy Ghost is the one to read!

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. I often hear straight Christians talk about the GLBT community as ‘living in sin’. What does that mean? I’m being serious.

My default is: Are we not all literally living in sin, no matter who we are or what we’re doing (Romans 3:23)? James 2:10 (my translation) says:

“If you’ve committed one sin, it’s like you’ve committed them all.”

There is no hierarchy in that statement. So what separates GLBT sin from the next? Here are a few answers I’ve heard, and a few honest questions I have to those answers, that I am looking for answers myself:

1. But partnered gay couples are perpetuating their sin… (Don’t you and I perpetuate in our sin everyday as well?)

2. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:18 that sexual sin is committed against one’s own body, and all others are committed outside of the body… (But Jesus said that if you even lust after someone you’ve comitted adultery – so what’s the difference then?)

I’m not here to argue if same-sex sexual behavior is sin or not, I’m just curious about the general statement ‘living in sin’. I’d love to hear your thoughts about what is ‘living in sin’ to help me think through this. Thanks.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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When people ask me about other books out there that focus on bridge building that I would endorse, I have responded with the same answer every time:

“Unfortunately, and quite sadly, I haven’t found another book that I could get behind that I believe is a true bridge building book.”

That was my answer until now. Friendship at the Margins: Discovering Mutuality in Service and Mission by Christopher Heuertz and Christine Pohl is as real and honest of a confession of bridge building as Love is an Orientation. While I was reading it I kept thinking: It’s as if I wrote this book. They just put into words many of the exact things I have been thinking in my own head.

Heuertz and Pohl speak clearly and poignantly about true reconciliation; diving deeply into living in tension, personal sacrifice, human dignity and what it means to befriend someone not as an evangelism opportunity but as an opportunity to know freedom in being authentic where authenticity is the last thing expected.

This short book (142 pages) is packed with so much brilliant deep reflection and revelation, that every person needs to not only read it, but soak it in and implement its words. If this is done, I promise our culture will look totally different!

In my opinion, this book is required reading for anyone who is serious about building a bridge.

This is not a shameless plug for a friend, it is a serious petition because I know this book will make a significant impact for the Kingdom and advance this bridge building work. And the unique part to Friendship at the Margins is that “margins” can be whatever group is opposite to yourself, no matter where you’re coming from!

I will be starting a devotional series on this book shortly, diving deeper into some of the points that I feel are indispensable. You can purchase Friendship at the Margins here.

Much love.

www.themarinfoundation.org

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