To be young, gay, Christian, and afraid

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Dear John,

I am 21 years old. I am also a Christian very involved in my campus ministry.

I revealed to people about a month and half ago that I am gay.

I hid it for a long time due to growing up hearing Christians say that homosexuality is an abomination before God. I felt that no one would accept me due to my sexuality. I hid it and tried very hard to be straight and have relationships with Christian girls, because I felt that was the “Godly” thing to do.

I tried so hard to be like everyone else. I tried and tried. This fell me into a deep depression because I believed that God hated me because I was gay. I felt that God would send me to hell because of this. I decided to tell one of my close Christian friends about my homosexuality. I did and now I am out to my church.

There are many gay Christians like myself in my ministry. However, they all believe that acting on it is a sin that would deny us the entrance of the kingdom of God. Every time I tried talking to them about it, they always brought up 1 Corinthians 6:9. Confused, I searched the web looking for answers. I came across the NALT project. [Here.] The explanation you have provided [here] makes sense. However, I have my doubts, because all other Christians I know would disagree with this point of view. And if I ever entered a same sex relationship I know I would be kicked out of my ministry.

I am super confused but I still love God and want to serve him. I feel like it would be beneficial for me to speak to a gay affirming Christian. I however do not know of any. I was hoping you could put me in the right direction.

Dear friend,

Well, now you do know a gay-affirming Christian: me. And all my friends here on this blog. And all the Christians who made NALT videos. And the 33,739 people who’ve liked the Unfundamentalist Christians Facebook page.

And you can find one of the over 5,000 churches in this country that fully affirm LGBT people at GayChurch.org.

It’s so easy for any of us to feel that ours is the only situation that exists. But it rarely is. And in your case it most certainly is not. There are tons of LGBT-affirming Christians and churches out here. Unfortunately, the church you’re in is one that time is increasingly leaving behind, praise be to God.

The only advice I can give you is to, at whatever pace is comfortable and/or workable for you, transition away from where you are now into a life populated with people who understand that God would no sooner condemn a person for being gay than God would condemn a person for being blue-eyed or red-headed. I’m just now visiting the city of Palm Springs, CA, which is very gay-affirming place. In a place like this—or in any of the vast gay communities that exist in so many large American cities—Christians who think being gay is a sin are widely considered sad, backward, ignorant bigots who need to join the 21st century and stop mistaking their prejudice for God’s will.

In such places the overwhelming majority know the truth, which is that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. There’s nothing unnatural about being gay. There’s nothing in the Bible that says jack-squat about the morality of being gay. There’s absolutely nothing offensive to God about being gay.

That people want the Bible to say that being gay is a sin—that they so fervently desire it they’ve actually perverted the Bible in an effort to have it reflect the fear and hostility that’s in their own heart—tells you more than anyone should have to know about people, and nothing whatsoever about God.

People fashion the God they want. And your friends, and your pastor, and your parents, and your teachers, and a million other people can tell you that God condemns gay people, and that won’t make it any more true than if the same number of people told you that the world is flat or that birds live under water. The truth isn’t subject to the stresses of majority rule or peer pressure; the truth stubbornly remains the truth, no matter what. And the truth is that anyone who looks into the issue with any care at all readily understands that deciding the Bible condemns gay people to hell is like deciding the phone book is a hymnal.

So believe what your heart (and the Bible) is telling you; trust in the inviolate integrity of God’s love; teach your friends when you can and forgive them when you can’t; and look forward to the life you’ll soon enough be leading, where, I guarantee you, you’ll daily be grateful to be living a truth that is so much greater than the lie you were raised to believe.