How I Came to be Gay Affirming

This post is not one I would have written so early in the process, but it is Pride Month, so maybe this is a good time to talk about this. I have learned many things on my journey of discovery in recent years. Becoming gay affirming was one of those things that I learned. And it sort of happened by accident.

I mentioned in my previous post that as The Explorer, I replaced my beliefs brick-by-brick over time. As I learned, I would slide out the old belief and replace it with a new belief that explained the world better. This was one of those bricks. And it fell into place without my giving it much specific thought.

On several occasions when I presented the Communion Meditation in my church, I referenced Jesus’ prayer in the garden, the night before He went to be crucified. “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20-21 NIV)

I would always mention that if the Father was going to answer anyone’s prayer, He would answer Jesus’ prayer. So, we can assume that the Father granted Jesus’ request. We are one. One with God and one with each other. That we do not see or believe this is a lack of faith on our part, not because the Father did not deliver on Jesus’ request.

This was a transformative lesson for me and propelled me on to a greater and deeper understanding of God. Continuing with the idea that the Father would always say ‘Yes’, to His Son, I considered the next request that Jesus made to the Father. This request came the following day; “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”

I assume that the Father granted that request. He forgave us. All of us. Jesus didn’t qualify this request. The prayer wasn’t “Father forgive them if they repent of their sins and say the sinner’s prayer and get baptized and go to church every Sunday and read their Bibles every day, and go to Church Camp, and gather at the flag pole, and listen only to contemporary Christian music, go to Bible study, and….” The Father forgave us. Full stop. No conditions. No exceptions. Everyone is forgiven. Faith enters the picture in that we need faith to see (and accept) this forgiveness and live into it.

So, debates about whether homosexual acts are sins or not, or whether someone must give up their (God given/created) sexual identity to be saved is completely pointless. It does not matter. It isn’t about sin anymore. It’s about Grace. Confused about that? Go read some of Paul’s writings. He had a lot to say about this.

And speaking of Paul, after I came to this further conclusion; I returned to the Book of Romans and re-read what Paul had to say about circumcision. For anyone else investigating this question, I post this challenge. Re-read the first eight chapters of the Book of Romans and substitute “give up being gay” for every use of the word “circumcision”. That will cast a new light for you. It seems that renouncing any non-heterosexual identity is the New Circumcision.

Do you think that homosexuality is sinful? Then you should not engage in homosexual acts. Are you lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, queer, intersexual, or asexual? That’s good. God made you that way and loves you.