If I've lured you here because of my poster for a gay Christian group, you were probably thinking my "How I Got from There to Here" title was about how I came to accept homosexuality as not being sinful. I'm getting there. In continuing my story, I've been deciding how much I should talk about when my daughter "came out", and I've decided very little.
Let me just say, for kids who have grown up in church, this is an extremely painful process. (Not to imply it's not for other kids...but every story I've heard that is exceptionally awful has been because of religious issues.) During the most precarious time of their life (adolescence) they start having 'feelings' that they are told are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. It doesn't matter if they act on them or not, the fact that they have them at all is enough to make them believe they are disgusting to God. And if they start looking online to see if they can still belong to the Christian faith, they will see hate. Go ahead and try. Pretend you are gay and go online to see what Christians think of you. (I hope this is changing. But when my daughter did it several years ago, she realized there are actually people out there who wished she were dead.) And if you don't go online, just start listening to the way Christians talk. See how often you will hear them talk offhandedly about how homosexuals are the enemy. (God's enemy...and therefore Christian's too.)
And so I thought it important to start with my belief that God is in the process of reconciling all things to Himself. (When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all... I Corn.15:28) If you can believe this, then you know we are trying to help reconcile people back to God, not the other way round. We are not trying to get people to 'accept' Jesus so that God can 'accept' them. (And who doesn't think being accepted and being loved go together?) We are trying to get people to believe that God ALREADY loves them, before they do anything. (We love him, because He first loved us...1 John 4:19) This gets rid of the 'us' (children of God) and 'them' (children of Satan) mentality that is so prevalent in Christianity. And where did we get the idea that some humans are not children of God? I'll jump into that next time, and ironically it will start from the same book of the Bible I just quoted from.
Let me just say, for kids who have grown up in church, this is an extremely painful process. (Not to imply it's not for other kids...but every story I've heard that is exceptionally awful has been because of religious issues.) During the most precarious time of their life (adolescence) they start having 'feelings' that they are told are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. It doesn't matter if they act on them or not, the fact that they have them at all is enough to make them believe they are disgusting to God. And if they start looking online to see if they can still belong to the Christian faith, they will see hate. Go ahead and try. Pretend you are gay and go online to see what Christians think of you. (I hope this is changing. But when my daughter did it several years ago, she realized there are actually people out there who wished she were dead.) And if you don't go online, just start listening to the way Christians talk. See how often you will hear them talk offhandedly about how homosexuals are the enemy. (God's enemy...and therefore Christian's too.)
And so I thought it important to start with my belief that God is in the process of reconciling all things to Himself. (When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all... I Corn.15:28) If you can believe this, then you know we are trying to help reconcile people back to God, not the other way round. We are not trying to get people to 'accept' Jesus so that God can 'accept' them. (And who doesn't think being accepted and being loved go together?) We are trying to get people to believe that God ALREADY loves them, before they do anything. (We love him, because He first loved us...1 John 4:19) This gets rid of the 'us' (children of God) and 'them' (children of Satan) mentality that is so prevalent in Christianity. And where did we get the idea that some humans are not children of God? I'll jump into that next time, and ironically it will start from the same book of the Bible I just quoted from.