Thirty seconds away from a gay-Christian healin'
A new myspace friend emailed me this week, and really seemed to be at her wits' end with trying to be both gay and Christian.
She's having many of the same thoughts that I've had in the past, like: "What if God really is disgusted with me?" "If I deny the truth about myself I may be miserable, but at least I won't step on anyone else's toes." And the one that hits closest to home, "If I'm going to be more Christian, I'd better be less gay."
It comes down to a matter of faith, really. The Left and the Right can toss Bible verses back and forth until they're completely blue in the face and winded, but it will always boil down to an individual's faith in God, and that intimate relationship. For example, no blanket statement from Pat Robertson is going to deny the truth that God is abundant in my life and in my lesbian relationship, and that God fully accepts me "as is." I've been over the Bible verses a million times and each time I get the same answer--I am on the path that God intended for me. It's not wrong to be gay. This is my experience and my faith, and while others may agree or disagree with it, nothing changes the fact that mine is a true experience. Sometimes it helps just to know that other gay Christians do exist. I empathize with where this emailer is coming from.
Sometimes it feels like "gay" and "Christian" are two identities that just don't fit together. But as I shared with her, the turning point in my journey of faith came when I finally realized that the two identities weren't two separate things battling for control of me--one being evil and one being good. Rather, each one was truth. One day several years ago when I lived in Austin I dialed the number of a counseling hotline that was part of a benefit package at the place where I worked, and the representative on the other end of the line summed up in thirty seconds what I had been trying to put my finger on for years. When I told her I needed a referral to a therapist because I was gay and Christian, she said, "So you just need to reconcile two different parts of yourself." Two different parts of myself...that was it! Hello! Prior to that moment I had become convinced that homosexuality was an evil that had been battling with the good part of me, and that it was trying to take over and make me one big evil. But as I heard this woman speak, something clicked inside me, and I finally realized that each of these identities existed in me intrinsically, and that they could live in harmony. They were each seeds that contained the ability to love (to love God and to love another person), and they wouldn't grow unless I stopped trying to kill them.
Since then, my life has become a process of weeding out the things that interefere with my gay Christian growth. It gets to be kinda fun when I can picture some of the well-known fundamentalists as dandelions. Or better yet, crab grass. I'll just keep on soakin' up the sun.
She's having many of the same thoughts that I've had in the past, like: "What if God really is disgusted with me?" "If I deny the truth about myself I may be miserable, but at least I won't step on anyone else's toes." And the one that hits closest to home, "If I'm going to be more Christian, I'd better be less gay."
It comes down to a matter of faith, really. The Left and the Right can toss Bible verses back and forth until they're completely blue in the face and winded, but it will always boil down to an individual's faith in God, and that intimate relationship. For example, no blanket statement from Pat Robertson is going to deny the truth that God is abundant in my life and in my lesbian relationship, and that God fully accepts me "as is." I've been over the Bible verses a million times and each time I get the same answer--I am on the path that God intended for me. It's not wrong to be gay. This is my experience and my faith, and while others may agree or disagree with it, nothing changes the fact that mine is a true experience. Sometimes it helps just to know that other gay Christians do exist. I empathize with where this emailer is coming from.
Sometimes it feels like "gay" and "Christian" are two identities that just don't fit together. But as I shared with her, the turning point in my journey of faith came when I finally realized that the two identities weren't two separate things battling for control of me--one being evil and one being good. Rather, each one was truth. One day several years ago when I lived in Austin I dialed the number of a counseling hotline that was part of a benefit package at the place where I worked, and the representative on the other end of the line summed up in thirty seconds what I had been trying to put my finger on for years. When I told her I needed a referral to a therapist because I was gay and Christian, she said, "So you just need to reconcile two different parts of yourself." Two different parts of myself...that was it! Hello! Prior to that moment I had become convinced that homosexuality was an evil that had been battling with the good part of me, and that it was trying to take over and make me one big evil. But as I heard this woman speak, something clicked inside me, and I finally realized that each of these identities existed in me intrinsically, and that they could live in harmony. They were each seeds that contained the ability to love (to love God and to love another person), and they wouldn't grow unless I stopped trying to kill them.
Since then, my life has become a process of weeding out the things that interefere with my gay Christian growth. It gets to be kinda fun when I can picture some of the well-known fundamentalists as dandelions. Or better yet, crab grass. I'll just keep on soakin' up the sun.
posted by Jen Austin at 7:53 PM
3 Comments:
Extremely interesting post. I am glad I happened upon your site. I have struggled with the same thing myself. Keep up the good work.
-Conor
www.conorjmurphy.blogspot.com
I've been struggling with reconciling myself to being both gay and christian, and it seems impossible! I want to experience what its like to be in a relationship but i can't get past the bible verses that say its sinful to practise homosexuality. What did you do with these passages? (Rom 1: 26-27, 1Cor 6: 9)
Thank you so much for this post. I have been feeling that my homosexuality was killing off my faith and I think that now I will be able to put those two together finally without denying one of them.
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