Love is an Orientation
Coming up is the National Day of Silence, where GLBT youth and their allies vow to not talk today at school to bring awareness to the name-calling, bullying and harassment of them in schools. In response to this day there are many Christians out there who decide to pull their kids out of school in protest.
I think that is the biggest mistake a Christian parent could possibly make.
Why?
1. It breeds in our Christian youth the idea that if we don’t agree with something we protest and walk in the other direction. And in my opinion, there is no worse way to represent our Christian faith on such a day.
2. From my perspective, what a better way to bring the GLBT topic to the forefront in our Christian homes then to use this day as a springboard in how to peacefully and productively engage what has always been nothing more than a very divisive topic. And in doing such a thing with middle and high schoolers, it gives us a wonderful opportunity to start our youth down the right path in how to bridge within the GLBT community. It’s our chance to do something different in showing our faith rather than just talking about it in regards to homosexuality, which is what most of us tend to do.
I was on a Christian radio program recently and off the air the host told me about how his daughter wanted to go to school that day because she knew all of her other Christian friends were going to protest and not be in school. The host went on to tell me that she was the only Christian kid left in many of her classes, and at the end of the day everyone in one of her classes was being silent. Since she was the only one not being silent, and since she was the only Christian, for 20 minutes the teacher allowed her to talk about her faith and her love, and all of the reasons why she decided to come to school that day in opposition to all of the other Christian who didn’t!
Just think what would happen around the country if our Christian kids did as she did…
I could only imagine.
A colleague of mine, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, has started what he calls the Golden Rule Pledge to be done on the Day of Silence. Take a look, and please join in, especially if you have influence in a middle school, high school or college campus—keeping our kids in school and using this day as the Kingdom opportunity it should be.
This is too important to keep running away from.
Much love.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In