Recently received this message on the Facebook page of the Not All Like That (NALT) Christians Project:
I’m a 16-year-old who grew up in a Christian household. I am a homosexual; I like other males.
My mother used to read me the stories of Jesus Christ. When I was young, if I heard the word “Jesus,” what always came to my mind was compassion, love, egalitarian, and harmony. So when I began to see the hatred, inequality and anger shown by Christians to LGBT people, it really discombobulated me. Jesus was nothing like these “Christians” were. These “Christians” confused me, frightened me, and made me mad.
Once my parents knew I was gay they began to treat me differently. There was a brief time when my mother tried to bring me to a gay conversion therapist. Another time I was grounded until I “stopped being a homosexual.” My friends stopped talking to me because being a homosexual is negatively stigmatized where I live, due to the predominance of Christianity here. I quickly lost my parents, friends and family. I was a 13-year-old boy being dehumanized and treated like I’m not a person.
I began to see Christianity as being “the enemy” of equality, because in my mind Christians forget the Christ in “Christian.” This was about four years ago, when I began to have a growing distaste for religion, in particularly Christianity.
Last year I was walking home from school when a bunch of kids beat me up. My neighbor, whom I have known for years, is a Christian. She came outside and helped me up after calling the police to make them leave. She asked me why they were doing that, and I told her I was gay.
She didn’t look at me with disgust or hatred; she sighed and helped me up as she told me that there is nothing wrong with being gay. She told me that I’m not a crime against humanity, and that I won’t go to hell for being gay. Then she hugged me.
For the first time I was shown the other side of Christianity. Slowly, recently within the last year, I saw a growing number of Christians being accepting, and I thought “Wow, this is great!” I began to question my distaste for Christianity. I started to ask myself if I’m being the bigger person, or if I am wrongly demonizing an entire population.
NALT Christians, you give Christians a good name, in a time where Christians are viewed as “All like that.” You not only accept me and people of the LGBT community, but you also saved me from my own ignorant hatred against Christianity.
Thank you a million times for showing the world the beautiful and loving side of Christianity.
Sincerely,
A friend
If you’re a Christian who understands that it’s no sin to be gay (and if you’re at all unsure about that, see my Taking God at His Word: The Bible and Homosexuality), I hope you’ll step forward and make a simple NALT video. It’s very easy to do. You don’t know who out there your video might help save.
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