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

“I have this innate recognition that without suffering we don’t know Christ. Without suffering in this life, there is no chance for me to understand the gospel it its fullness… What an incredible, tangible, in my face, loud opportunity I have on a daily basis to see myself as in need of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ and the wholeness that he gives me, even when my flesh screams for wholeness somewhere else.“

The following is a conversation I had with a friend of mine. He is involved in ministry at a neighboring church and from a very young age has recognized in himself an attraction to men. It is only recently that he has started to be more open about his experience and he has yet to make it a part of his public ministry (so he has asked to remain anonymous). The conversation is separated into three chapters for easier reading (in case you need to stop and pick up where you let off later), but it is meant to be considered as a whole. Some of the ways that he interprets his experience may be upsetting to some – in fact, I am certain of it – but the point is neither to comfort nor to convince, but to promote and encourage understanding. If the conversation angers you or raises questions for you, I hope that you will read to the end and embrace the tension. Being human is neither simple nor easy and faith in Christ is often complicated. Still, I hope that you learn from my friend – as I often have – how suffering illuminates the gospel and the privilege of knowing intimately our dependence on Christ.

My words are in bold while his words are not.

Chapter One: Communities

Did you grow up in church? What was your family like and what kind of community that you live in?

Yeah, I grew up in a Methodist church. My family was very discipleship oriented – very righteousness oriented – and I think looking back at my childhood, even though things weren’t perfect, I had an incredibly healthy example in my home life and in my upbringing of grace and righteousness coming hand in hand, being called to live uprightly and regard your sin all the time. I had parents who were always asking you to ask for forgiveness from your siblings and explaining why things were wrong and bringing everything back to the Lord. Like, vacuuming the den on a Saturday morning was a spiritual task that my mom would talk about, like, how can you do that to honor the Lord? Annoyingly upright and like righteousness-driven, but not legalistic. There wasn’t really this attitude of needing to be perfect and needing to be better. There was a lot of grace in my house and there were a lot of tears. There were a lot of conversations around hurt and pain.

I really think that’s a lot of what saved me regarding my own sexuality: my parents intentionality toward my own pain and holding me with grace and teaching me righteousness. But I think what would have made the world of a difference in ways that I can’t even imagine is if they would have let me see it in them. They never let us see it in them, how they were messing up, or how they were in need of grace, or they were in pain. Never, like, at all.

So did your parents know about your own temptation or struggle?

No, not till I was in ninth grade, and they knew because my dad saw the internet history that I was searching for hot or attractive or whatever pictures of guys and knew it wasn’t my little sister because she was 10 at the time. Back then 10 year-olds definitely did not know about pornography. Nowadays, that’s different.

How did he approach that?

They were really… they both called me into the room where the computer was and I knew. I knew why they were calling me up there because they had been up there for about an hour and everything was really quiet. So, they had been talking about something. And I walked in, and they were both red-eyed and weeping – like, quiet weeping not loud weeping – but they’re just red-eyed. And they had clearly been crying for a long time. And… and you know, it was the whole like, “son, we need to talk” and “what is this? Is this you?” And “do you struggle with these things?”

Their conversation with me was incredibly loving and incredibly calm and also very healing-driven. Like, “we want to see you healed and we want to believe in your healing and we want to do everything we can as your parents to love you and encourage you toward healing.” I don’t think they believed that that something was going to heal me. I think they just believed that God has a heart to heal me. And so, why not care about that above all else? It felt really loving to me at the time and kind of exciting as a young ninth grader who knew his whole life that he’s gross, or outcast, or wrong, or messed up, you know? For all of a sudden, in one day, for that to just be switched and my parents know me and see me and love me and say, “you’re gonna be healed; we’re gonna be praying continually and we believe God’s heart is to heal you.”

I was all for it. I was all for it. And I still kind of am to an extent, but there’s been a lot of change even in that realm of things. Even whenever it first happened, my parents saw Satan at work in their son and that God desires to heal their son. And it’s… it’s become over time much more of a story—they’ve had a change of heart. It’s become much more of a story of Satan has attempted our son’s whole life, to ruin him, but in the middle of the pain, confusion, fear, and anxiety, we see time and time again how God has been faithful and God has been good. How God has been loving. How God’s grace, God’s mercy, God’s attention toward us has continually called our son home… without fixing him. It’s been much more of a thing that’s illuminated the gospel rather than a thing that’s hindered the gospel. Whenever they first found out about it, “oh, we need to see the gospel alive in our son, so, we need to get rid of this thing,” you know? And that’s changed over time.

But right now you’re not “out” yet. I mean, you’re telling certain people, but it’s not a part of your public ministry.

Right.

So, how would you identify, I guess, privately? You know, there are these conversations about whether Christians can call themselves same sex attracted or a gay Christian or a Christian who struggles with such-and-such. How would you identify and what was the process like coming to that realization?

I think most people that I agree with theologically would expect me to identify Same Sex Attracted, or Struggles with Same Sex Attraction, which I’m fine with. I’m fine with that. I also know there’s a spectrum of sexuality and it’s really helpful for people who… who are atypically on the spectrum to recognize that there’s a spectrum and to recognize that everyone struggles with temptation uniquely. There’s not just a pool of straight people and a pool of gay people and a pool of bi people, you know? The spectrum has helped me a lot to recognize that sin is sin and temptation is temptation and lust is lust. But on that spectrum, I would identify same-sex-attracted and even gay. I’m fine with gay and I’m fine with homosexual. I like homosexual a lot, because I think that’s really clear. I think same sex attracted a lot of times sounds like I’m trying to sugarcoat something.

I believe sexuality is a huge part of our identity. I know that my identity is rooted in Christ, but I don’t buy all the talk of like, well, that’s not your identity and don’t make it your identity. I just feel like we can’t help but wrap ourselves up in things that are that are huge, whether family, or passions, or jobs, or giftings. And sexuality is a huge part of who we are. And I think sometimes it takes being an atypical sexuality – or what would be deemed an abnormal sexuality – to recognize how big of a role it plays in who we are. I think maybe straight people might see sexuality is something that, of course, is a part of life, but isn’t part of identity. And as a gay man, I’m like, yeah, it is. You don’t realize how much of your life, your conversations, your friendships, your interactions, the things you’ve been involved in, the things you haven’t been involved in, the people you’ve flocked to, the people you haven’t flocked to… like, you don’t realize how much of your life has been formed by your sexual desires.

It’s like, being outside of what’s considered normal, you’ve been rubbing up against that.

I’ve been rubbing up against it. Because so much of my life has been formed by my sexual desires. It’s just in my face. I recognize the friends that I’m attracted to, the friends I’m not attracted to, the situations that I’m afraid of, the situations that I feel like I can have power over. It’s always on my mind. So, I have a hard time believing it’s not always on straight people’s minds. It’s just in different ways. More incognito, maybe.

But I went to I went to a college where there’s a lot of gay people or LGBTQ people and so I’m very comfortable with those people as being people. There’s a lot of people who struggle with homosexuality who are still homophobic, just being raised in this culture. I know many of those and I would not say I’m one of those, because for many years, while I still was ashamed of myself, or kept my sexuality silent, I was friends with a lot of LGBTQ people.

So, to identify as gay is not offensive to me in any way, because I have many gay friends who I love dearly and regard as normal people. And so I even kind of like identifying as a gay Christian, or a gay man, or whatever, because I just think it’s clear. I think it just tells someone what they almost expect to hear and it’s not wrong, you know? I almost kind of love someone hearing that I’m gay and then assuming whatever they want to assume and then me helping clear it up. Well, just because I’m gay doesn’t mean that I’m having sex with men or that I’m practicing, you know, relationships of homosexuality. I kind of like that rather than saying I’m same sex attracted and people wondering, “what do you mean by that?” or “how much?” or “so, just like a little bit? So, you just kind of like guys a little bit? or, you know.

(sarcastically) But you’ll be married to a woman one day?

(chuckling) Yeah, yeah, exactly. “But you can be straight even though you’re same sex attracted, right?” or things like that. But if I just say I’m gay, then I kind of like run and jump off the cliff without letting them assume things and then I get to kind of reel it back in, you know?

So, growing up in these communities, did you ever think that you would just embrace that and walk away from the church and Christ and just leave that all behind?

I never did never once.

What do you think kept you from doing that?

Shame. I think I would want to say fear of God kept me from giving in because I believe God is who he says he is and he knows what’s best and he speaks truth and he calls me higher. There was some of that, of course. That’s intertwined in all that, because I do love the Lord and have always loved the Lord. But fear of man has been the thing that’s kept me from giving in. I am so addicted to being accepted by people, not only because of what I struggle with, but also just because of my personality. I happened to be a very people-oriented, relationship-oriented person who is a people pleaser, even absent of my sexuality. The thought of being – even if people don’t reject me – the thought of being dismissed, or seen as weak, or seen as not loving the Lord enough, of being dismissed from a platform of leadership in the church, or the community of Christians being kind of taken away because of what I’ve chosen, the thought of any of that is way worse than the thought of not having sex with a man my entire life.

Of course, I have dealt with pornography – secret sin – and would and could very much so see myself having some time in my life dabbling in homosexual relationships, but only secretly in shamefully. I really think, knowing myself, the only way I will ever dabble in that physically is if I give in to a secret temptation and it somehow probably ruining me and it probably coming back to bite me in the butt. I don’t think I would ever give in as a lifestyle or embracing this as my earthly identity – embracing this as me – because it just has never felt like me. It’s always felt like something that’s not me. And it’s probably because I’ve hated it for so long.

So, I do need to do some healing there because there is an extent to which I need to kind of welcome it back in and not hate that side of me. And there is a fear that as I fully, or hopefully fully, welcome in the things that I’m shameful of in order for people and God to love me in that place and even see me healed in that place, that I would start being more okay with it. Like, maybe it’s fine? But even as I have started that process, I don’t feel theologically or personally any difference in my conviction at all. Not at all. I really don’t.

And you could, right? I mean, there’s plenty of people do. There are major movements in mainline denominations that would completely welcome and celebrate that. So, what keeps you from kind of that articulation of the church? What keeps you in more conservative theological communities?

I have talked with many people who are in my place sexually, regarding their sexuality, who have started to become a part of those communities you describe. At the risk of sounding prideful, I think I see myself as a little bit of a remnant or a set apart type of person—a child of God. I’ve always regarded those people in those conversations feeling like what I discern in them is ultimately a need to please themselves over the Lord. Ultimately, it’s a need to feel comfort over a willingness to feel suffering. I have this innate – I didn’t do anything to create it in me – this innate recognition that without suffering we don’t know Christ. Without suffering in this life, there is no chance for me to understand the gospel in its fullness, and when I see people do everything they can to even disregard some Scripture that we do have for the sake of comforting themselves, it just seems backwards to me. We use the truth of Scripture to comfort us in our earthly realities. We don’t change the truth of Scripture to make our earthly realities more comfortable. And that’s just always been clear to me. And I don’t think I did anything to create that. I really think it’s the Lord’s grace in my life and I think it’s true. I really think it’s true that as a gay man. What an incredible, tangible, in my face, loud opportunity I have on a daily basis to see myself as in need of the grace and the love of Jesus Christ and the wholeness that he gives me, even when my flesh screams for wholeness somewhere else.

So have you expressed that kind of faith and that kind of conviction to people who are affirming?

Maybe three or four or five times?

How is that usually received?

Not well, not well. Yeah, it’s not usually received well and I… it has been hard for me to feel like not only do I believe truth, but I know it to be true from my experiences of how God has been even more near to me whenever I even more forcefully reject sin or am broken in it. I feel like I’m interpreting the Bible in the right way and I also feel like that correct interpretation has found itself to be true in my experience of God. So it’s frustrating when those two things just fall on deaf ears. It’s so frustrating. And it’s been hard whenever it feels like, if there’s ever a time where my leadership is going to mean something, it’s right now, and even in that moment to recognize, oh my gosh, the Holy Spirit really does all the work. It’s not me. And love really is the most important thing, not my correction or my rebuke. It is the continuing to love that person, no matter what, that might ultimately work toward their redemption. For me to be to them what God has always been to me, no matter what I choose, no matter how much I hoard my sin, no matter how much I don’t confess, no matter how much I look at porn, or whatever. God’s always been like, “I’m still here and I still love you so much and I want what’s best for you.” The realization that I have to be that to the people that won’t receive the truth for me, you know? Well, man, I have not received it from God many times. So like, why would expect that? If God is humble enough to say, “I know that these humans I have created in my image will often reject me,” then why would I be prideful enough to think that I shouldn’t be rejected by one of those humans?

Right? Because you’ve explained it so well.

(chuckling) I’ve explained it so well, yeah.

They’re just not ready. They’re not ready. And that’s been hard. I thought my whole life I’m meant to change the homosexual community, and I think I can in a lot of ways, but it’s all God.

Click here to read the second chapter, in which we talk about some helpful – and unhelpful – ways people have responded to his experience, as well as how it has affected his relationship with Christ and his public ministry.