Here’s a letter I got in this weekend:
Good day John. I’d like to say I’m really ecstatic that I came across your blog.
I’m a lesbian (a dyke, butch, a girl who looks like a man) and I’m a born-again Christian. I was an active worker of the church back home in my country (Philippines), where my dad was a pastor. I was in a worship team. And I really find joy in serving our Lord Jesus Christ—singing praises to Him, feeling His presence and being filled with the Holy Spirit. I see people being blessed by what I do for God’s glory.
But I sometimes wonder what they would think if they knew that I am a homosexual—which I think is pretty obvious, because you would never see me being girly, wearing a dress, putting on make-up, and doing all those “how-a-Christian-girl-should act” things. I was always true to myself, but not so truthful that I’d stand up in front of the congregation and confess “Hey! brothers and sisters, I am gay and love Jesus!” I dream of doing that though, of letting the people know, or the church know, who and what I really am. To somehow let them know that as a Christian homosexual God can still fill me with His spirit.
But you think I should really do that, come out that way? I’m just curious.
It was not long ago when I started asking myself if being gay or lesbian is not okay? Is it a sin? An abomination? That it is a given, once you’re gay, that you just go straight to hell? Doesn’t matter if you love Jesus, doesn’t matter if you serve Him: you are a homo and that’s a sin, so it’s either you repent and be straight, or continue your homosexual acts and burn in hell!
It scares me, John. The idea of changing myself because it is the right thing to do—it is what they say what God wants me to do—is scary. It’s like giving up my life. My whole life. And I’ve been like this since grade school. Though I know that’s what serving God is all about. Right? About surrendering your all to Him.
Every year we have our youth camp, and last 2006, during our Holy Spirit Baptism, I had this incredible experience with the Holy Spirit that I thought I would never feel because of the fact that I’m gay. After that night I felt so blessed that I felt something had changed in me. That I was lesbian no more! But I still did not wear a dress though. A month after that encounter, though, I got involved with a girl. We go to the same church, and were both active in our ministry, so we kept this of course from everyone. My relationship with her lasted about three years. She broke up with me because, you know, our love was wrong. So I was devastated and depressed.
And that’s when my journey began of seeking the truth about homosexuals. Do you think I am seeking for more knowledge about God and homosexuals just because I just want to justify my sin?! Or am I doing this because there is really is something about homosexuals that the world should know about?—that the Christian world should know about? Was it God who lead me to your blog??? Because I never actually thought that there would be a fellow straight Christian who is not against homosexuality. And as I scan through your Facebook page I found more Christians who are not against homosexuality. And that gave me hope. Hope that I can be myself.
I honestly don’t wanna think anymore about whether or not being gay is a sin. I just wanna live and be myself and serve God. But there are circumstances that requires me to find out more about the whole thing. My mom has these books about homosexuality: how to come out of it, how to pray for your homosexual daughter/son. And there’s this website she always visits, I can’t remember the site or the speaker’s name. But it teaches that there is hope for gays and lesbians to be straight. And it hurts me. And confuses me at some point. If God did not want me to be this way, I should have just been straight in the first place. Why would God create gays and lesbians? Or did He really create us to be this way? And If He did made us this way, is it just to prove that there is hope for change for people like us??
I don’t get it. It does not make sense. It’s a torture, for me, as a Christian gay, to feel this way. Because I really don’t think that it was my choice to like girls. What can I do? I never dream of having a man by my side. Just like a straight guy who would never dream of having a guy as his partner for life. I think it’s the same thing. You are straight: Do you ever dream of having a man by your side? Am I even making sense here? Forgive me. My heart is bursting in tears. I am actually heart broken again right now. So I asked God, am I really not allowed, am I really forbidden, to love someone??
God said whatever our heart desires, ask and He will give it. And my one true desire is to love and be loved. And that who I am and love would be okay for my family and the family of the person I love. My desire is to be free and have no one judge me.
Thank you for taking time to read this John. I have so many questions and running across your blog made me think, maybe this is God’s answer.
Oh, Lord. When is this caustic, toxic, hateful, homophobic bullshit Christians do going to stop already?
Look at this girl. Look at her love. Look at her desperate yearning to do nothing more than love and be loved.
She wants to love, be loved, and know that God doesn’t hate her. That’s it. That’s her heart’s desire. That’s what she needs. Same as any other person (of faith) in the world.
And there’s Christianity — which is supposed to be founded on the unconditional love of God — breaking and tearing apart her heart. Shredding her sense of worth. Devastating her confidence. Ruining her relationships.
Destroying her life.
And still she loves Christ. This girl is so deeply wedded to the very heart and soul of Jesus that despite two thousand years worth of ignorant and poisonous institutionalized Christianity being leveled against her and everything she knows about herself, still she clings to God, still she loves Jesus, still she seeks reconciliation between herself and the God who calls all to his side.
Phenomenal.
And there’s her poor mother reading books on how to “heal” her, and praying that God will fix her.
And her crime? The thing that makes her anathema to the faith that she champions, that she continues to love despite its condemnation of her?
She dreams of having a woman by her side instead of a man.
And so Christians, hating the way she loves, do everything they can to make her hate herself.
And see its effect! Look where she’s at now. Looks what’s happened to her. Her letter drips grief and confusion.
The moment I read her letter I answered her back this:
It’s okay that you’re gay. God loves you no less for that. Some PEOPLE decided to translate their fear of gays into Biblical texts, but those are translation errors, not reality. And then SOME Christians decided to believe in that translation, not because they were listening to God (who invites EVERYONE to come to him/her), but because they were listening to their own craziness.
I pray she hears that.
Are you out there, girl? Hear that! God doesn’t care if you’re gay. God made you gay. God likes you being gay. God likes girls; you like girls; I like girls; everyone likes girls. It’s perfectly okay for you to be perfectly lesbian.
The only people who don’t like homosexuals just because they’re homosexuals are dented in the heart. Something awful happened to them. They (very often) were inculcated with a version of Christianity that sickens God. Someone gave them the awful anti-gay virus, and they sneeze and spit that nastiness onto others, because they just don’t know any better.
But you do. You know better. You hear God telling you that he loves you as he created you. You know your church is wrong. You know your mother (God bless her loving heart) is wrong. You know the love you can feel for a woman is every bit as strong and pure and right as the love any person ever feels for another.
All you have to do is accept with your mind what your heart already knows. That’s it. Just accept it.
As to a few of your specific questions:
No, I don’t think you’re under any moral obligation to come out to your church, or to anyone else you don’t want to. Who you are and how you love is nobody’s business but yours.
No, I don’t think you are seeking for more knowledge about God and homosexuals because you want to justify your sin. I think you’re doing it because deep inside you know that being homosexual isn’t a sin, and you’re seeking (and deserve) confirmation of that.
No, I don’t ever dream of being with a man in the way I am my wife.
And finally — and again and again and again and again: No, you don’t go straight to hell for being a lesbian. That anyone is automatically condemned to hell just for being gay or lesbian is absolute, one hundred percent medieval bullshit that you can with great relief and joy toss out like the fetid old garbage that it is.
You love. What could be less of a sin than loving? Loving is what humans are supposed to do. When you love, as God made you to love, God wins. You win. I win. Even your church (though they may not yet realize it) wins.
God is love — period, end of story, forever and ever.
So love! And love, even, those who would condemn you for that love. For (as someone once said) such people know not what they do.
(This post was originally published in June of 2011.)
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
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What I do know for a fact is God loves this woman exactly as she is and that Jesus was sent to us to teach us what unconditional love is all about. I our own judgements and fears that get in the way this simple and beautiful truth.
It’s wonderful that there are truly compassionate, loving christians who have rejected the awful hate and bigotry that has contributed to the wounding (and killing) of LGBT people. For me though, it is way too little, way too late.
I am 55 years old. Gay, male, married (legally now) to the love of my life. We have been together for 17 years. We have raised three daughters together (from previous marriages to women). Our daughters are wonderful women. Educated, strong, loving, compassionate women. None of us are aligned with any faith.
I was raised an evangelical christian. With experiences much like the woman who began this thread, I barely made it out alive. Example of where I come from: My mother (lovely christian woman) not only did not attend my wedding three years ago (after my partner and I had been together for 14 years), but tried to ruin it from afar. My question/statement to the faith community is this: Why would I want to come within miles of a christian church ever again? I will always have post-traumatic stress from what the church did and tried (and is still trying) to do to me. I have a brother-in-law who preaches anti-gay sermons regularly. I can only imagine the damage he has done to the gay kids sitting in his congregation. For me, returning to any kind of christian church would be returning to an abusive relationship. I simply don’t understand why any LGBT person would continue to embrace christianity. It seems sick to me.
If your christ is god, why does he let this continue? If he is all powerful, and compassionate, why do gay people kill themselves everyday because of christianity and christians? From my perspective, if there was a god, a christ, who is loving and compassionate and powerful!?, the torture of LGBT people by his followers would not be happening. I am alive because I rejected everything I was raised to believe. The moment I rejected those beliefs, I began to live. Live honestly, genuinely, hopefully, and happily! I didn’t realize I had the ability to be happy until I threw off the yoke of christianity.
I know, there are those christians who are not bigots, are not judgemental. Please though, understand that some of us can’t embrace the religion that did us so much harm. Let us go on our way. We are healthier and happier away from christianity and we don’t want to be associated with it.
I am a closeted transgender man, living in a (legally) lesbian relationship with a transgender woman. My partner and I pretty much statisfy every letter of LGBT. And I still believe in God. I still attend church.
Am I angry at God sometimes? Yes, unspeakably so. As I try to go back to the church that raised me, it’s a difficult road. That church doesn’t even speak of LGBT issues. There is utter silence, as if the struggle doesn’t even happen. I can never decide if that’s better or worse than shouting from the pulpit. As far as I know, I am the only LGBT person in the congregation on Sundays.
But all throughout my journey, I have never not felt God’s presence. Where I have gained peace is in realizing that it is God that I follow, not my church. People can say what they say, but at the end of the day I have only to answer to God. And I believe They are pleased with me and love me. God knows every tear I have shed, knows the searing anger in my heart, but They can’t take away others’ free will. That would not be loving. People do those hurtful things, not God. I don’t know why God made me transgender, but I think They wanted to teach me something, and I trust They have a plan for my life. That’s why I haven’t turned away.
If you are healthier and happier away, that’s so wonderful. Go in peace, and be happy. I am so glad you have found a life you love.
Terry, your theological and philosophical question about why God allows humans to be cruel to each other has been answered by many writers far more wise and eloquent than myself, from Aquinas to Augustine to Merton. But it all comes down to this: God created us with free will. We are free to do what we want. We can follow his advice and love and nurture each other, or we can blow each other to bits, emotionally or physically. He won’t force us to do anything one way or the other, because that is not the nature of his creation. Could he have created us all as automatons who do nothing but good all day long? Yes, he could have. But he did not. Why? God only knows. So everything that we do is by our own choice. We truly are created in God’s image, because we ourselves are creators. We create our own reality every day.
God did give us the potential to be good all of the time; we are able to choose to do this. Our experience with our fellow humans, though, teaches that vast numbers of us utterly squander this potential to varying degrees, from those who are merely careless with the gift of God’s grace to those who are aggressively violent toward his creation.
And yes, a lot of that violence is carried out in God’s church and in his name. That’s a tragic reality that clearly informs your experience of Christianity.
But there are Christian communities, like my little Episcopal parish here in Rhode Island, where all are accepted and loved and supported equally. We fly a rainbow flag, we participate in Pride Day every year in Providence, and our new bishop is working vigorously to solemnify the blessing of same-sex unions in the church, even if the RI legislature still can’t seem to get its act together to pass a marriage equality law (RI is kind of the caboose of New England). We even do an annual drag show as a fund raiser for the parish.
I’m not suggesting that you should run out and try to find a parish like mine. If the pain you associate with Christianity is too great to overcome, then it would be futile for you to try to build a healthy relationship with a faith community. God will love you the same whatever you decide to do, so long as you yourself are living in love. God dispenses abundant grace to all, regardless of church attendance.
But do know that such communities exist. The LGBT members of our community come because they receive love and support and acceptance from all parishioners, and they find joy in a community of worhip, praising God, breaking bread in the eucharist, and striving to live the love taught to us by Jesus Christ.
I thank this letter writer for her honesty and courage. Reading her quandry, I realized how lucky I am. When confronted with the choice to either believe in the crap I was reading about gay immorality, or believe in the goodness of my love and my being, I never for a monemt believied in the bullshit superstitions of sheep herders dead for 2000 years.
Spirituality is not what you believe, it’s the quality of your consciusness. If you can’t be who you are where you are, find another path.
To the letter writer:
God made us this way because he loves us and sees us as his eternal creations, his beloved children, and wants us to participate in the wonder of his Creation. You’re beautiful just the way you are, and through the working of the Holy Spirit – which is very clear in everything you write – called to an ever deeper experience of God’s love, which you can then share with those around you.
That’s your relationship to God. God most certainly does not hate you for being most fully who he created you to be, and the single most powerful guide to what that is in your life is where and how you experience love. God is love, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. If your love includes romantic love for other women, then that is one of the ways God speaks in your heart.
The rest of it isn’t about your relationship with God, but your relationship with your neighbor. And yes, a lot of people, and sadly, most of them religious people, feel that they have a right to tell you what your relationship with God is supposed to be.
A lot of things changed for me when I allowed myself to be in the place of turning the question around. Instead of listening to the voices of people telling me how flawed my relationship to God was, I came to realize how powerfully I could be a force for God’s presence in the world simply by being most genuinely myself without shame. I found that when I let go of my shame and judgment, other people found me a place where they could be free of judgment, too. So much of the hate directed at you is people projecting their own fear that if they are who they are, with all their flaws, they will be shameful and unlovable. You can prove to them you don’t become lovable by “doing it right,” you become lovable by loving.
God made you to be who you are, and to be in relationship to him. At the same time, God can use you to do God’s work in the world. God didn’t make you “to be” a force for love and diversity, but you can choose to act as one in God’s name.
And yes, it sucks, but it’s possible that by being most genuinely yourself and following Jesus where the Holy Spirit leads you, you may find yourself unwelcome in the community you want to have as your home. Some of us have found that God has plans for us in other communities where our voices were more desperately needed, and we had to leave communities where our voices were being silenced in order to serve.
Some of the people who most deeply need to hear the voice of God in their lives are the least able to hear it when it is spoken in the language of “Church” – and that means some of us have to be able to speak for God using other languages. Sometimes your light is best displayed as one of many candles in a grand candelabra. But sometimes your light is most needed as one of the few candles in the darkness.
This hostility, confusion, judgement, and, yes, pushing away of you may not be God working to force you to change. It may be God working to strengthen you for what comes ahead.
I’m assuming from the tone of your letter to John that at some point (likely LOTS of points) in your life, you said to God to use you as God needed to use you to serve his people in the world. This may be God’s answer to that prayer. I know it was in my life.
God is Love, and you are God’s Child. Hold onto that, and the rest will follow.
i read a buddhist idea once (i can’t remember which author) that the reason there are all different people is that the Universe experiences through us and so without our little drop in the bucket, something would be missing. so maybe everybody represents a facet of God’s experience of the Universe… or vice versa? it’s all a bit too infinite for me to process, but i thought it was interesting.
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