Open Letter to Fundamentalists
I stumbled across your website recently and was amazed at how thoroughly and “scientifically” your words and Robert Bowman’s invalidated me as a Christian, dismissed my faith and belittled God’s work in my life. I trust that your motives are to assist in my salvation, yet I fear that your technique drives away far more than it attracts.
I am constantly amused at how many heterosexuals have homosexuality all figured out. You dismiss the involuntary physiological changes that I have on seeing a good-looking man. You paint with a broad brush as you presume to know my lifestyle while all the homosexuals I know life lives nearly identical to heterosexual counterparts. Promiscuity and the abuse of drugs and alcohol are hardly the sole property of gays and have more to do with self-esteem than sexual orientation.
You simplify homosexuality down to a mere act without trying to understand the founding psychology that drives us all. I surely hope your marriages are deeper than simply a vehicle for sexual gratification. Most of all, you know nothing about what my soul is like and show no interest in finding out. You analyze and critique, but it is all meaningless drivel. No doubt you have had to defend your faith to someone who says God does not exist. Yet you use the same methods to persecute me, my family, my friends and my relationship with God.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that Christianity is about love, not logic; it’s about faith in things unseen and acts that cannot be understood, not words written in virtual stone; it’s about openness to new revelations not closed mindedness; and it’s about compassion and caring for the Samaritan not crossing to the other side of the road. And it is thanks to your work and those of you ilk that I am derided by my fellow gays as I am by many Christians.
But I fear that your focus on me has made you myopic towards your own sins of false pride, intolerance, fomenting hatred, slander, abuse of trust, driving away God’s children and even idolatry of the perfection of the Bible. Recall that Christ told us he would send a comforter in the form of the Holy Spirit. He said nothing about sending the Bible.
Yet I cry at the thousands of homosexuals that people like yourselves are driving out of the church and alienating from God. I deal with it every day as I try to repair the damage and bring these souls back to a loving God. I show there is hope where others offer only condemnation. I myself suffered a major crisis of faith that only my strong intimate relationship with God was able to salvage. I could not deny his work in my life from sheltering me from my own self-destruction to sending me a wife and son who truly understand and have enabled me to blossom in God’s light.
I have been a Christian all my life, born to a minister, my faith has been a strong foundation in my life. I have also been gay all my life and knew at the age of six that I was different. By ten I had been taught those differences were fatal flaws that I must conceal at all costs. I grew up under the influence of your interpretation of scriptures and believed that being gay and being a Christian were mutually exclusive. I was married for 20 years and have a wonderful son from that marriage.
But when my denial of myself grew to the point of destroying both myself and my beloved wife, God spoke to me. He asked me a very simple question – why am I ashamed of the wonderful man he has created in me?
God taught me how to love myself and more importantly how to get past the unproductive slavery of shame and get to work for him. And while God led me and my wife to divorce, he ensured that the foundation of our covenant remained intact.
Now while I am quite accustomed to being abused for being gay, I take offense when you attack God’s role in my life. You claim inerrancy of the scriptures which troubles me for it ascribes God-like perfection to the writers and translators. It also implies that God no longer needs to speak to us. This seems too close to heresy for my taste. I prefer to believe the Bible is a book of truth, truth being the inherent word of God. Yet our human minds are often clouded to the truth or incapable of understanding God’s higher purpose.
I now thank God with jubilation that he has blessed me with the gift of being gay and the tremendous capacity of love I have for that special man. I thank God for the opportunity to do his will and spread his message. I am proud in having God as my father and feel blessed by his walk with me. And I thank him for removing the black abyss of shame that separated us.
I ask you now, what difference would it make in your thinking if God personally told you that he creates homosexuals, loves them as his children and desires their full and happy lives. What if he told you to quit persecuting your brothers and sisters in his name? Would that make a difference? Would you even listen?
Well, consider yourselves told.
May the light of God be upon you and peace be in your soul.
I am constantly amused at how many heterosexuals have homosexuality all figured out. You dismiss the involuntary physiological changes that I have on seeing a good-looking man. You paint with a broad brush as you presume to know my lifestyle while all the homosexuals I know life lives nearly identical to heterosexual counterparts. Promiscuity and the abuse of drugs and alcohol are hardly the sole property of gays and have more to do with self-esteem than sexual orientation.
You simplify homosexuality down to a mere act without trying to understand the founding psychology that drives us all. I surely hope your marriages are deeper than simply a vehicle for sexual gratification. Most of all, you know nothing about what my soul is like and show no interest in finding out. You analyze and critique, but it is all meaningless drivel. No doubt you have had to defend your faith to someone who says God does not exist. Yet you use the same methods to persecute me, my family, my friends and my relationship with God.
I shouldn’t have to tell you that Christianity is about love, not logic; it’s about faith in things unseen and acts that cannot be understood, not words written in virtual stone; it’s about openness to new revelations not closed mindedness; and it’s about compassion and caring for the Samaritan not crossing to the other side of the road. And it is thanks to your work and those of you ilk that I am derided by my fellow gays as I am by many Christians.
But I fear that your focus on me has made you myopic towards your own sins of false pride, intolerance, fomenting hatred, slander, abuse of trust, driving away God’s children and even idolatry of the perfection of the Bible. Recall that Christ told us he would send a comforter in the form of the Holy Spirit. He said nothing about sending the Bible.
Yet I cry at the thousands of homosexuals that people like yourselves are driving out of the church and alienating from God. I deal with it every day as I try to repair the damage and bring these souls back to a loving God. I show there is hope where others offer only condemnation. I myself suffered a major crisis of faith that only my strong intimate relationship with God was able to salvage. I could not deny his work in my life from sheltering me from my own self-destruction to sending me a wife and son who truly understand and have enabled me to blossom in God’s light.
I have been a Christian all my life, born to a minister, my faith has been a strong foundation in my life. I have also been gay all my life and knew at the age of six that I was different. By ten I had been taught those differences were fatal flaws that I must conceal at all costs. I grew up under the influence of your interpretation of scriptures and believed that being gay and being a Christian were mutually exclusive. I was married for 20 years and have a wonderful son from that marriage.
But when my denial of myself grew to the point of destroying both myself and my beloved wife, God spoke to me. He asked me a very simple question – why am I ashamed of the wonderful man he has created in me?
God taught me how to love myself and more importantly how to get past the unproductive slavery of shame and get to work for him. And while God led me and my wife to divorce, he ensured that the foundation of our covenant remained intact.
Now while I am quite accustomed to being abused for being gay, I take offense when you attack God’s role in my life. You claim inerrancy of the scriptures which troubles me for it ascribes God-like perfection to the writers and translators. It also implies that God no longer needs to speak to us. This seems too close to heresy for my taste. I prefer to believe the Bible is a book of truth, truth being the inherent word of God. Yet our human minds are often clouded to the truth or incapable of understanding God’s higher purpose.
I now thank God with jubilation that he has blessed me with the gift of being gay and the tremendous capacity of love I have for that special man. I thank God for the opportunity to do his will and spread his message. I am proud in having God as my father and feel blessed by his walk with me. And I thank him for removing the black abyss of shame that separated us.
I ask you now, what difference would it make in your thinking if God personally told you that he creates homosexuals, loves them as his children and desires their full and happy lives. What if he told you to quit persecuting your brothers and sisters in his name? Would that make a difference? Would you even listen?
Well, consider yourselves told.
May the light of God be upon you and peace be in your soul.
posted by Scott | 2:11 PM
4 Comments:
Thank you for your thoughtful letter. I was married for 20 years to a man I met a a Christian retreat. His story has some parallels with your own. Although we have been divorced for 20 years and I am married to someone else, our friendship has remained. We have three grown children, and when our youngest son's twins are born in June, we will have seven grandchildren. It is not always possible, and it is never easy, to understand fully God's purposes in the things He allows us to go through. Thank you for sharing your struggles and your insights so beautifully.
I am a Christian man who has struggled somewhat with my perception/assessment of homosexuality, brought to light in particular by the revelation that my fiancée's brother is gay (ie it was no longer an issue I could just float through life ignoring, not knowing any other homosexuals personally). My fiancée was immediately supportive of him and supports gay marriage out of love for her brother. I take the word of God seriously, and have been much more contemplative on what it says about homosexuality. While I am still on the fence, I listen wholeheartedly to the personal testimonies of gay Christians such as yourself, and very much admire and appreciate what you have written and expressed.
I am realizing that I become much more accepting/positive towards homosexuals when I discover they are Christians, which I find interesting about myself. It tells me that what I am really concerned about is not so much their sexual orientation/practises, but that they conduct their lives with conscious meditation on God's word and desires for us. And you are obviously doing just that. God bless you for it.
I am curious about your definition of being a Christian. Christianity is the belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of God who died and rose again to save us from our sins. Belief in Jesus as your Savior makes one a Christian. Part of being a Christian is having a relationship with God by knowing him as he reveals himself in the Bible. The Bible is how God revealed himself to man - as 2 Peter 1:21 says - "For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." Christians take the Bible - cover to cover - as God's Word. We can't pick and choose what we want to believe from it. So when the Bible states that marriage is not to be ended by divorce (Matthew 19:3-9), and that God does not approve of homosexuality (Leviticus 18.22; 20:13;. Romans 1.24ff; 1
Corinthians 6.9; 1 Timothy 1.8-11), a Christian will accept these things. To somehow imply that God led you to divorce your wife is saying that God caused that, which goes against what Scripture clearly says about God's intentions for marriage. And to say that God blessed you with being a homosexual refutes his clear statements that homosexuality is detestable to Him. The Bible states that God is the source of good things (James 1:17); evil is a result of sin, which came from man's fall. James also states that God doesn't change, so even though the world around us is becoming more accepting of homosexuality, a Christian won't just ignore what God says about it in the Bible. Acts 5:29 puts God's word and will above man's reason and desires. God does not make people with sin; sin is passed on to us from our parents. God does not make people homosexual (which would make God the cause of sin), rather, if homosexuality is now woven into the genetic fiber of human beings, that is also a result of sin. As such, it is a sinful desire that needs to be fought against, just the same as the sinful desire to steal, lie, murder, etc. Homosexuals can most certainly be saved, because Jesus Christ died for the sin of homosexuality as well as all the rest. Christians (gay or straight) cannot act as thought homosexuality is acceptable in God's sight without changing what the Bible says. And changing the Bible is also addressed in Scripture (Rev 22:18-19) - we can't pick and choose what we want to believe.
I pray for you that God leads you to have a better understanding of who He is, what He's done for you, and what He wants for your life - now and in heaven!
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