Illuminating the Gospel: An Anonymous Conversation with a Gay Christian (Chapter Three)

“My testimony is not a homosexual testimony, it is a sin and redemption testimony. I want my understanding of sin and redemption in my life to speak to other people’s understanding of sin and redemption and their life, whether or not it’s the same sin. That’s what we’re missing in America. That’s freaking what we’re missing in America. I mean, like, suburbs and fences and locked doors and social media, all the things that that enhance manipulation and deception and allow people to live in secrecy. Our churches are the same way.”

The following is the final chapter in a three part conversation I had with a friend of mine concerning his sexuality and his faith in Christ and the intersection of the two. If you have not yet read the first chapter please do so here.

My words are in bold while his are not.

What are some things that you wish people understood about your experience?

A lot, you know, but one this is… in adolescence, everyone around you has started talking about their sexual attractions to people, using their mouth to describe what they like on a daily basis, almost on a daily basis, and multiple times a day for most people. Even things like men, she’s hot. Or like, well, yeah, she’s cute, or I really like her or, or even more than that.

I have never – never in my life once – not used my mouth to describe what I’m feeling sexually. And I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know if it’ll ever be something that I just feel like I would like to say, or to describe, you know?

Why you think you haven’t done that?

Well, totally fear of being of it being disgusting to the person that’s listening, or being really uncomfortable.

Not even to people who share your experience or people who would be pretty affirming of your sexuality?

Honestly, that’s never really cross my mind. It’s mainly been the opposite. I’ve never talked about my sexuality with someone who would want… actually there’s two people that love the Lord a lot that I shared with that really wanted me to experience it, to live out homosexuality. And like, 30 minutes into the conversation their hearts kind of changed, because they do love the Lord but are very liberal and lived in L.A. and were friends with a lot of people and had kind of just submitted to saying, “I care about loving them more than I care about whether or not it’s right or wrong.” And they didn’t even think when I confessed it to them or talked about it with them to encourage me toward holiness. The first thought was like, “You’re, you’re fine, you’re loved. Like, I want you to be happy.” And I was like, but I want you to hear me say that it won’t make me happy. They’re like, “why?” And, you know, having a theological conversation with them was kind of weird.

So, it’s mostly because I want to be normal. I don’t want people to be grossed out. One time, a friend and I were talking about sexuality and he was talking about wanting to care for me and love me and be accountable with me just to like his straight friends. He was being kind and saying it’s no different. But he’s like, “we’ll be at a restaurant and there’s a really good looking waitress and like, you know, we say that it’s really hard not to look at her butt while she’s walking away,” you know? But if I were at a restaurant with him and we had a waiter and he started walking by and I was like, “man, his biceps are nice,” even if he weren’t offended or weirded out, he’d probably be like, “oh, thanks for telling me and trusting me,” or like, “I hear you.” And like, even if you’re loving about it, like no one… no one wants their normality to be deep every time they bring it up. It’s always either weird or deep. You know, it’s either like “ew, gross,” or it’s like, “thanks for being vulnerable.”

It’s a thing every time.

It’s a thing every time! And if you didn’t make it a thing, that would feel like a thing, too. If he were like, “yeah, man, he’s freaking buff,” I’d be like, it’s kind of weird that he’s trying to kind of encourage my attractions and my sexual desires right now. And I know he’s doing it to make me feel normal or typical or seen or loved or whatever for who I am, but he can’t win. There’s nothing he can do to win in that situation. I just have to accept that.

Do you have more encouraging or open conversations like that with people who share your experience?

Not at all. Not at all. And I think we’ve kind of talked about that before. Like, why do I never open up like that with people who struggle like me? I do want my sin to be a normal sin and talk about it with people, but maybe not. But maybe I’m just judging straight as easier than it is. I perceive heterosexuality as something where you can discuss your sexuality frequently, even in ways that don’t feel like you’re discussing your sexuality, like whenever I told a friend that the fact that his wife is in his phone as “Sexy Wife,” that is him expressing his sexuality, even though he doesn’t realize it.

It seems like heterosexual people get to regard their sexuality all the time in healthy ways or in ways that don’t immediately trigger them to dabble in an addiction or to commit adultery or to lust like crazy or whatever. Even if there’s always temptation and lust there, it seems as though our culture or society allows heterosexuality to be discussed frequently. If I saw a movie where two men were making out, I would probably be like, this isn’t good for me to watch. But we see straight people making out all the time and it’s normal. And maybe straight people just are always lusting – and I am too – but I mean, maybe it’s just like, they don’t realize how sinful they are, how deep we are in lust we are as straight people in our culture, but it’s like, I can’t. I mean, none of my sexuality can be normalized, because it just feels wrong and it feels like I’m always fighting it. So even to be with a safe person where I could be like, “that guy’s really attractive,” and he would be like, “yeah, of course he is,” after that comment it’s kind of like, why did we even say that? Why did we even go there? We didn’t need to go there.

But it seems like straight guys can be like, “that girl’s really attractive” and be like, “yeah, of course she is,” and there’s this normality to it. As long as we don’t really say anything bad or keep talking about it, it’s totally fine to regard her as really attractive, you know? Yeah… and I don’t know what’s true or not true. Is it okay for me to regard my attractions a little bit more normally? Or has it just revealed to me how lustful our whole world is always? Not to condemn people who talk about attractive people; I just mean, wow, we really are so lustful all the time. Maybe I just have a greater awareness of that, you know?

There are going to be people who read this interview and this doesn’t answer hardly any questions. This is more just your experience an what it has looked like for you. People will have questions. People will be angry – on both sides – about the way that you’re interpreting your experience or the way that you’re handling your ministry. But for the people who have questions and want to do this right, how should they go about it? How should they be better brothers and sisters to people in your situation?

I think relationship – community – I think it changes everything, and if people could hear my experience and just be encouraged by the fact that when I, for the first time in my life, started to actually let people see me in my worst, that was the first time in my life that I felt people love me, actually. People’s love and attention toward me was a healthy thing that mended me, rather than just a comfy thing.

The people who I’ve talked to who are gay, who do not agree with me theologically, every single time, they don’t have community. That’s become, to those people, my encouragement. Before you decide for yourself what you will do the rest of your life, allow yourself to actually be held by people who love Jesus. Give the darkest places of yourself over to people who profess to love the Lord and believe in grace, and watch how the gospel of grace – whenever your darkness is held by people around you – watch how that starts to change, hopefully, the way you decide is true and untrue.

I am someone who has allowed his feelings and experiences to be interpreted through truth and tradition, and when people have allowed their experiences and feelings to be interpreted by their experiences and feelings, it goes nowhere. And that bridge from experiences and feelings to also reconcile that with truth and tradition, that bridge has been relationship, actual relationship, every time. It’s been someone crying with me or me crying with them about actual pain, and actual confusion. And it’s never not illuminated the gospel—with family, with friends with mentors, with people by whom I’ve been taught, with strangers even. It’s never not illuminated the gospel whenever actual confession and brokenness has existed. Like, Satan doesn’t have a place. So, I hope that people could, like, read this and… and be encouraged to not just want to know more of the people around them, but to let them know more of them.

Because this isn’t really a conversation about struggling with homosexuality. Yeah. It’s about struggling with sin.

Yes! Yes, that’s good. Yes, this is… and that is the reason why I haven’t yelled from the pulpit my sin struggle, even though I want to, and I think there’s good in that. There’s good in that. Because I’ve become more whole as I’ve realized that my testimony is not a homosexual testimony, it is a sin and redemption testimony. I want my understanding of sin and redemption in my life to speak to other people’s understanding of sin and redemption and their life, whether or not it’s the same sin. That’s what we’re missing in America. That’s freaking what we’re missing in America. I mean, like, suburbs and fences and locked doors and social media, all the things that that enhance manipulation and deception and allow people to live in secrecy. Our churches are the same way. I don’t want my whole church to know that I’m gay. I want my whole church to know everyone’s sin in our whole church, and that includes my whole church knowing I’m gay. And I know I actually don’t want everyone to know everyone’s sin. I just want everyone in our church to be known by people in our church, fully. So, part of that narrative is my church knowing I’m gay, but it’s not because I told my church I’m gay, you know?

 It’s because they know about your sin, holistically.

Yes, yeah.

So really, what the most helpful way to go about this is not to find a gay Christian in their community and fix them or try to convince them that they trust them or anything like that. It’s just to start building communities where we’re more open and we’re more honest about our own brokenness, and we see our own brokenness for what it is. So often we seem to think it’s about the straight church helping the gay church, or whatever. And instead of it being like that, it’s about all of us being broken and humble, just sinners and saints who love each other and mutually need Jesus. This isn’t really about how we bear the burdens of our gay brothers and sisters. It’s about how we bear each other’s burdens and let our gay brothers and sisters bear our burdens as well?

 Yes. Like, can we repent? Can we freaking repent, but then be instruments of real unity? No matter your upbringing, no matter your pain, you know? Real pain and real error, real things that need repenting of, and I think the same thing about my homosexuality. I think it’s a huge gateway to our church actually repenting of some big sh-t and starting to walk in real oneness with everyone’s pain and everyone’s confession.

Right? Because, yeah, one type of Christian is not the savior of another.

Yeah. That’s right.

We are all mutual sinners in need of a mutual Savior.

Yeah, so, the straight Christian is not the savior of the gay Christian and even the opposite. I find myself sometimes thinking that I, as the gay Christian, can be the savior of the straight Christian, even.

Sure, but I mean one side needs to learn a lot from the other. One side does need to learn a lot and other Christians who struggle with heteronormativity – the idea that theirs is the normal temptation – need to learn from people who share your experience. No sin is normal. Yeah, that’s probably the most frustrating thing to me about this these conversations is that no sin is normal to being human, including, you know, the ones I struggle with from my side of the sexuality spectrum. So, we can start we can learn a lot, I think, from gay Christians and the ways that people with your experience are loving Christ and loving other people, and the things that it’s teaching you about community. Even heterosexuals shut people out of our own struggle and we like to pretend that maybe we need Jesus a little bit less.

Right, that’s good. (chuckling) Yeah, you could do this whole thing without me; you don’t need me.

(chuckling) Well, I learned it all from you, so, no, I couldn’t. But, we are out of time. Before you go, are there any resources you would suggest for people who are interested?

Two books: Gay Girl Good God by Jackie Hill Perry an Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill.

Jackie talks a lot about false gospels – whether you’re straight, gay, or anything in between – and the importance of recognizing that Satan is always trying to tell us that something will save us when it won’t; only Jesus will save us. And she talks a lot about the Marriage Gospel and the Hetero Gospel, but other things, too, depending on your story. And I love the false gospel conversation regarding heterosexuality and homosexuality.

Wesley talks a lot about the family of God and how – whether your sin is gay, or straight, or temptation, or lust, or addition, or anything – the church being a family would really heal a lot of our illnesses, if we started to walk in familiness. And he thinks that, in his experience, homosexuality has been a glaring invitation to actually find family in believers. I don’t feel called to celibacy, but he felt called to it and so had to say, “well, where’s my family?” and then realize, “well, duh, the church is my family,” and then realize all the ways the church was not acting as family at all.

I think those two things are really important, because this is a sin conversation not a gay conversation. I want the church as a whole to start rejecting false gospels that we believe are true. And I want the church as a whole to start regarding themselves as a family unit and to hold each other in really deep, painful places where we don’t do that.

This was one of the most edifying and wonderful conversations I’ve had in a long time. Anytime I speak with this friend of mine, I always walk away feeling like I learned more about myself than I learned about him; I always feel that I have learned more about what it means to cherish and adore Christ in my own brokenness. Of the two books that he suggests, I have read Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill, and it is more a book about brokenness in community than it is about homosexuality. It has been several years, but it remains the best book on sin and our need for Christ that I have read to date.

I hope that you have learned from this conversation, as well, and I pray that we can become the kind of community that he dreams of, one in which we are all open and vulnerable enough to admit that we all are in need of a Savior, we all are in need of a healer, and the ground is level at the foot of the cross.