The Christian / Gay Dilemma

This past week my mother was in from Michigan, visiting me here in the beautiful town of Orange. My bedroom is sort of bland – beige walls, black furniture – so we went to Ikea to spruce it up. Waiting for a piece of glass to be delivered to us post-checkout, I asked my mom what she thought about homosexuality. Random, right? Nah, I have these types of conversations with my mom all the time. I rarely get the chance to speak with her as intimately anymore, so I asked her.

“Well honey,” she says, “the Bible says it's an abomination.”

Classic Lydia – quoting straight from the Bible.

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination” (Lev 18:22).

In Leviticus, God burnt down the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah in a storm of fire. Massive wickedness and sin had been going down, and one especially important aspect of this sin is mentioned: two men attempted to homosexually rape two of God's messengers. God condemns a lot of things in Leviticus, including shaving. So I feel like a lot of the content in this book and the books of the Old Testament could be culturally-based, which is why I tend to favor the New Testament. We'll get into that in a few seconds.

I contested, “But there are so many people who love the Lord and are gay.”

I asked my mom to think of this hypothetical situation, a situation that I often pose to myself. There's a gay guy, but he loves the Lord and leads a great life, giving glory to the Father along the way. Yet, just because he's gay, he won't be able to enter Heaven? I know some homosexual people who are great people, and the sins that I've committed would blow theirs out of the water. But just because I'm straight, I get to go to Heaven, and they don't?

Man, this confused me. I've asked myself this question many times as I'm at that age where questioning my beliefs is something I find myself doing everyday. I even question the two testaments of the Bible. The Old Testament tends to favor lashings and whippings to those who indulge in homosexual acts; the New Testament favors repentance and forgiveness through Jesus Christ.

Since I'm not a huge fan of belts being whipped over my back, I prefer the latter. To me, the Old Testament is more of a teaching and the New Testament is more of the actual way we should live our lives. But, that's just the way I interpret it, and the written word is the written word, or so I'm told.

“The Bible says,” is what I always hear when I ask these types of deep/controversial/cultural/moral questions. Yeah, “the Bible says,” but shit man, we need to approach this stuff contextually. Look at the world here. There are so many homosexual families and couples who love Jesus, and even the ones who don't, they're more loving and caring than some of the most Christian people in my life. The world has changed, so why shouldn't we?

It's no doubt that Christians have a bad rep amongst the homosexual community. People think it's their divine right to judge others and the way they live their lives. So we see marches on Washington and picketers with their posters, upon their high horses, getting all up in the faces of our homosexual comrades. Hey dawg, guess what? If a gay person wants to get married, does that affect you? I'm not talking emotionally, I'm talking if that has a literal impact on the way you live your life – the way you raise your children, or the way you party on weekends, or the way you get to work? Nope. Who are you to deny them the right to be happy, or to judge who they love?

No doubt, I love my gay friends and the gay community. I accept them the way Jesus would accept them – as equals, feel me? Regardless of what the Bible says will happen or the way God will condemn, I just keep on keepin' on. Keep loving, keep praying for mercy. Neither am I in the position of enforcing my beliefs upon anyone, nor am I in a position of judging others under any circumstance. I know that I'm f**ked up in my own way, and I've got enough on my plate. You like men? Or you like women? Cool with me, brah. That makes little to no difference in the way I treat you. Unfortunately, it does to others who also bear the name of Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and for that I am sorry.

I hate reading quotes, but this one is important.

“Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).

This was written by Paul, an apostle of Jesus, in 1 Corinthians. See, he says that these are things that we were, but by Jesus's saving grace, we're washed of our sins, washed of our errors. And boom, we're saved. Now, I know I'm still a sinner, regardless. I'll keep sinning in my own ways just like everyone else, as much as I try not to, and gay people will keep being gay. I don't think that means we can't both be equally as washed of our sins and saved as the other. 

“The times may change,” my mom concluded as the Ikea attendant wheeled over the bulky cardboard box filled with the blue tabletop for my new desk, “but God doesn't.”

God is still the same. His word is still the same. This world may pass us up and make us question our faith, and we might look like old timers with our Bibles in our hands and our traditional ways. But I like to think that my God is merciful and faithful. He deserves more credit than being a gay-hating deity. He asks us to be like Jesus – the man who surrounded himself with sinners and even ditched his followers to go hang out with blind people and prostitutes. Damn, what an O.G.

TL;DR: I don't know who goes to Heaven, that's not really the question here. And forgive me, I know my argument has a lot of flaws, but I'm trying to make sense of this stuff, too. That's why I'm writing it. It's more of an exercise for me than it is a teaching for you. I'm just saying that we owe it to each other to be genuine and loving. Let God deal with who He wants the way He wants. With that, we cannot concern ourselves. The only thing we should be concerned about is living this life faithfully and lovingly as the saved sinners that we are.