An article caught my eye from one of my friends that I go to church with and I thought I would share it with you...Thank you John for opening my eyes to this!!!
It is entitled, "What's it like being a Gay Christian?" and it is written by Matthew David Morris. I like what it says very much and provides such sweet food for thought...
He writes:
“So what’s it like?” he asked as he cut into his spinach and goat cheese omelette.
“What’s what like?” I responded.
“What’s it like to be a gay Christian.”
I nearly dropped my fork.
“I don’t think I’ve ever known any gay Christians before you,” my acquaintance, a long-time professional in the Christian Music Industry, told me with a straight face.
(No pun intended.)
Of course you’ve known gay Christians, I thought. Are you kidding me? Have you ever really paid attention to the music directors at some of your churches?
Gay. Most of them gay.
(I know this first hand. Don’t ask how.)
I was so caught off guard. I didn’t realize we were going to be having this talk. I thought we were talking about faith. About my faith. Not my “gay” faith, mind you. My faith-faith. The faith that was re-shaping the landscape of my life.
I’d been telling him about how jarring it was to discover myself feeling called back to the Church. I was praying regularly, and making sincere attempts to read Scripture each morning. I was wrestling with what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a capitalist country obsessed with progress, whose citizens are often bored by conversations about justice and are mostly uninterested in the plight of the poor. I was trying to discern where I fit into the greater Christian landscape, one dominated by a religious culture that treats Christianity as though it’s some kind of “lifestyle brand” with Jesus as its celebrity spokesperson.
This is all messy, complicated stuff, and worthy of unpacking in fellowship with other Christians.
But it was my gayness that interested him; my gayness as it related to my Christianity.
Homosexuality — a word preferred over “gay” by most conservative Christians, a word that makes everything about the softest, most sensual, gentle, and vulnerable parts of my life sound clinical and cold — was, in his mind, the thing which must be coloring my conversion experience.
In rainbows, perhaps.
“I don’t know. What’s it like being a straight Christian?” I asked him. “I mean, how is your relationship to God or Jesus informed by your straightness?”
He didn’t know how to answer that question.
Few straight people do, I’m finding.
But that doesn’t stop them from asking about my gay-Christian experience. It’s a point of fascination for most of them. I am a paradox, it seems. I am the contradiction of an untold number of sermons and messages preached from pulpits all across the land. I am not supposed to exist, the gay Christian.
I’m also not actively processing my Christian faith through a gay lens. That is, not until a straight person reminds me that I’m a gay Christian.
My faith does inspire me to ask a number of questions, most of them having little or nothing to do with my sexuality. For example:
How am I supposed to serve God in the world? What am I called to do, exactly?
How can I learn to love more honestly and deeply?
How can I resist the temptation to judge others, to hate those who hurt me, to covet the products which are marketed to me ad nauseam, to exploit the people and resources of this world in order to secure a safe, protected, privileged, middle class lifestyle?
How do I pray when I feel hopeless?
How do I praise when I really feel like lamenting?
How do I steer clear of easy interpretations of the Bible? How can I resists self-serving ways of reading the text?
More importantly, how can I learn to read the Word as it manifests in the world around me?
These are the questions that inform my Christian faith. These are the things I think about when I’m laying next to my husband each night before we fall asleep, him reading a fantasy novel and me skimming something theological. These are the ideas that I’m interested in writing about, and which have inspired me to begin pursuing a degree in Religious Studies. These are the questions which remind me that there is mystery in all of this.
So what’s it like to be a gay Christian, my acquaintance wanted to know?
It’s awkward sometimes. And probably not for the reason you’d think.
Profound eh?? The website has many other wonderful articles to stretch your cranium as well...why not go there and check it out? It is www.deeperstory.com
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