A couple months ago, I had a very interesting conversation with a group of Christians. There were about eight or nine people – seated in a circle – speaking in an ill-manner about homosexuality. Being someone who has always supported the LGBT+ community, this was very tough for me to sit through. However, I kept my mouth shut because I wanted to show respect for their different views. And being a very new Christian, I felt I had no place to make the calls. But I think back to this conversation many times, and I quite often picture what would’ve happened if I did speak up. Yes, I recently gave my life to Christ, but I will not stop supporting the LGBT+ community. Here’s why:
I am NOT familiar with much of the bible, and I am very new to the faith. But from what little I do know, I know that Jesus talks a lot about love and at it’s core, Christ is love. And although it’s hard to argue that it is written in the bible that homosexuality is sinful, nowhere does it say that we must be judgmental, condemning, bashful, hateful, or not supportive of those who identify as a part of the LGBT+ community. Whether or not I ever decide to believe the common interpretation of the bible’s words about homosexuality, I will not have any right to condemn the community. And neither do you.
John 12:34-35 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
When the group of eight or nine Christians were talking about homosexuality, it started off simply as a conversation about marriage. Somehow it spiraled into a half an hour long session of degrading the LGBT+ community. Some of the things that were said include: “those people are going to argue us no matter what we say. They always have something to say to defend themselves”, or my personal favorite was “they claim to be born that way.. well, what if I claim to be born a pedophile? Or what if I claim to be born a murderer? Do I have the go-ahead to commit these crimes?” This bashing went on for quite some time, and I’m still very disappointed in myself that I didn’t say a word. What if someone who identified as LGBT+ was sitting right there, or what if someone in one of the surrounding tables was? And more importantly, what if that person was on the fence about Christianity, but this completely pushed them away? When I was at this table, I was still on the fence — and sometimes I feel like I still might be — and this honestly made me more hateful toward the faith. Now, I realize that not all Christians are like this but not everyone realizes it. Sometimes all it takes is one conversation like this to push someone over the edge. When we, as Christians, are having conversations about controversial things like this, we should be careful of not turning it into a hate session. Why can’t these things be discussed with love?
If homosexuality is wrong, and Christians want to go around saving homosexuals outside the faith, let me remind you of something: you can’t do the saving. Only Jesus can. And if someone is not a part of the faith and identifies as part of the LGBT+ community, you talking to them about homosexuality in the bible is only going to push them further away from Christ. If our goal is to get more people in the faith, why do we do things that we know will push people away? Why do we do things that we know will make people hate Christ? Why are we going around saying these things in Jesus’s name when Jesus never said such hateful things? Christians make Him out to be the bad guy, and that’s why you see so much hate for Christ outside of the Christian community. And then churches wonder why. Pastors wonder why. People with such strong faith wonder why. Why do non-Christians hate us? It’s because many Christians take it upon themselves to condemn a behavior they don’t agree with. But is this not a matter between the individual and Christ? Personally? I don’t believe that our God — creator of the universe — would strike His children down due to sexual orientation.
Regardless of whether you believe homosexuality to be a sin, I don’t believe that our job as Christians is to go around doing the saving. I believe our job is to bring people to Christ. But if Christ Himself will never push His love on anyone, why would we as Christians force the faith on anyone? What gives us the right if Jesus Himself won’t do it? Why don’t we just go around sharing His love and see where that takes us? And if someone is a part of the LGBT+ community and hears about Christ’s love for them, who knows, they may end up giving their life to Him. And then Jesus can take care of the rest.
But let’s take this a step back. So many Christians are trying to bring new people in the faith when they don’t even realize that there is so much brokenness among the faith itself already. There are so many Christians that identify as part of the LGBT that don’t want to. They see it as sinful for themselves and so they want to change their ways. I believe Christians need to focus more on helping those people who want the help, before worrying about those who don’t. There’s a bible verse that sums this up perfectly.
“You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Matthew 7:5 (NIV)
While this isn’t directly talking about this situation, I do believe it’s valid. It’s getting at the idea that we should not judge another community’s brokenness, when our community has so much of it already. Until we can perfect our community, we should not try to perfect someone else’s. Why don’t we focus on being supportive of each other? Why don’t we focus on helping each other?
So many Christians secretly condemn a certain behavior on the inside, while outwardly expressing their love toward that group, just so that they may remain good with God. This is not the point of my post. What I’m trying to say is that we should have this love both inwardly and outwardly, and we should stop secretly condemning people. We are not God. If we want to express our opinion on a matter, it should be done so with love. But at the end of the day, God created us all – with our flaws, with our imperfections – YOU were made with so much love. God never makes any mistakes, and YOU were made the way you are for a reason.
enterious 