Cokey, your comments did not offend me. I feel confident about my relationship with the Lord. But, many other homosexuals do not and are offended. Is it offensive to God when the people he has created are told by his followers that they will go to hell? And, what is the greater purpose to be served – for a homosexual Christians or non-Christians to hear that God wants a relationship with them and loves, or that they are condemned no matter what because they continue to engage in their gay lifestyle? Gays have heard the churches’ message loud and clear. As a result, we are not winning these people for Christ.

I do not live in a homosexual relationship (whereby I am intentionally unrepentant) without regard to man or God. I mentioned above my years of prayers and conversations with God. God is my first consideration. Also, by engaging in conversation here and otherwise with my Christian family and friends, I continue to take into account man’s consideration. And let me say that I completely listened to Adam’s comments discussing the conservative point of view about homosexuality. I have read 4-5 books on how to revert to heterosexuality (written by Christian authors), but they fail to realize that I can’t revert because I was never straight in the first place.

Cokey, you point to the pain that I wrote about above. The churches’ unrelenting message of damnation caused much pain (and politicians don’t help either). My life has been painful, but I haven’t thought of suicide since years ago when I felt I was destined for hell. Keep in mind I was also closer to my teenage years then – a time I imagine that suicide is more common. But, God’s grace has eradicated so much pain through prayer, through my family’s unconditional love, through Adam’s comments (like his desire to be my pastor), through meeting Christians at COR who are more concerned with AIDS or poverty than with my sexuality. My healing continues, and I am and continue to be a new creation in Christ. I no longer characterize my life by pain. And I do not take God’s forgiveness for granted (or cheapen justice) because I know of the huge amount of grace God has provided for me. This makes me more graceful to others, too.

Emphasizing grace does not shortchange justice. Justice was carried out 2,000 years ago. I believe God wants the emphasis to be on grace because we otherwise live life full of guilt, which destroys us (hence, my former life of pain). That’s why grace is so amazing. Justice is the logical response to our sin. God has willfully withheld justice and granted us grace, something that defies logic, considering we are God’s creation and therefore completely subject to God’s dominion. But God’s response, and my only choice, is His grace.

One idea keeps coming up in recent posts, that of grace triumphing over justice. In one sense, of course, Christ did just that. But I would be careful not to shortchange justice because that will shortchange Christs’ atonment. Only an accurate view of human sinfulness will reveal an accurate understanding of Gods’ grace. If we ever knew the full measure of what justice cost God, we would be devastated beyond anything we could endure.

Northstar raises a good point; how and what are we to think if scripture is null and void? I think this is key. How would Satan succeed in corrupting mankind? He attacks our thinking first and then our families, the core of our existence. It mostly happens slowly over centuries and almost goes unnoticed, until man is the focus of man. In the name of love are we compromising our God-given conscience? In the name of love are we letting truth die? Trying to tell the truth takes love and compassion regardless of the implications. I would hope anything I say would glorify God and help to illuminate the path to Him. I pray God would relieve me of vindicating myself.

God loves each person even through God’s immense hurt and disappointment. God expresses His hurt and disappointment in deep ways through the heart, conscience, and mind. God is a good parent, even though He continues to love us through the worst of our depravity. If God can so love his children, then it seems okay to me for parents to always love their children, no matter what. In fact it seems okay to love people no matter what others do.

How do you deal with sins? This varies depending on whether you are deal with the sins of your children, the sins of other children, the sins of adult Christians, or with the sins of adults outside the Church.

Adults who are not in the Church do not sign up for Christian scrutiny. So, if their sins do not victimize others directly, and if you are definitely not invited into the discussion, then basically it’s none of your business in a free society. Please notice, for example, in the sins of adultery, theft, etc., that there are innocent victims, making it everyone’s business. Who are the innocent victims in homosexuality? Pushing your attitudes onto non-Christians who don’t want you in their lives and who are not victimizing others is not called helping. It’s called meddling, and it comes off as self-righteous intrusiveness. It doesn’t much resemble love, but more resembles sounding brass … like a big obnoxious gong sounded by someone who likes bullying others into doing what they want.

Paul distinguishes between those inside the Church and those outside: “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” Those inside the Church do sign up for Christian scrutiny, like it or not.

God expects the same grace to be extended toward others that He has extended to us. “While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” The purpose of God’s kindness is to reveal His love and lead people to repentance. Those who are caught up in justice and insist on judging others through the law ONLY are in danger of being judged by the law ONLY, a judgment that they cannot survive. “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

For example, someone who believes that an unrepented sin will result in hell is in a hell of their own making. Perhaps they forgot to repent just one sin in their life. Perhaps they don’t even realize that something is a sin. Perhaps they don’t believe something is a sin, but that it is. Nobody can stand up to this test. I know I’ve not repented every sin because time is simply too short, my memory is simply too short, and my conscience falls short.

I have never responded to these blogs because I haven’t wanted to stir up more debate, but I think it is time for a response on this topic from someone who is gay. I also want to say up front that I speak in generalizations quite a bit, and of course I don’t mean that my language is all-inclusive. And, I apologize for the long response.

I came to Christ when I was a child, but I rebelled when I was a teenager and realized I was gay. Over the last 12 years, I have gone from completely abandoning God out of anger to embracing everything that I could to change the way I was. I attended Focus On the Family’s Love Won Out conference even though various Love Won Out leaders have been fired by Focus On the Family for being seen in gay bars or reverting to a homosexual lifestyle. I have been to Christian counseling, which failed to cure me. Nothing ever permanently worked, and I would again abandon God. Later I would pray and beg for God to change me, asking Him to end my life so that I would not have to endure this anymore. I usually ended up sobbing on the floor and hating myself.

In 2001, my cousin died tragically in an accident. My thought of God and death intensified and out of my fear of hell, I attempted to be straight and even asked out women. I looked for a church and visited many Methodist churches because I grew up Methodist. I attended a service at a Methodist church in Lee’s Summit, Missouri, after which I asked the pastor about this particular churches’ views of the divinity of Christ (only because so many churches deny who Christ is), but instead of answering my question, he stated that I “would never see any funny business occurring in this church – like marrying gays or something.” His point was that his church was conservative, but I ask you who are critical of homosexuals to imagine how I felt. I was trying to find a church where I could be loved, and I could serve the Lord, and the only thing the pastor said to me, a complete stranger, concerned negativity toward homosexuals. I never went back.

I attended COR for the first time in 2002. While preaching that Jesus is the son of God and proclaiming the essentials of Christianity, COR also taught that one of its main goals was to reach out to and serve the lost. I didn’t hear the fire and damnation sermons and finger pointing about the effect that abortion and homosexuality has had on our society, and for the first time in my life, I felt that I could call a church “home.”

I began dating (men) again, and I felt guilty. Adam preached a sermon on homosexuality, and I did not attend the service because I was afraid. I didn’t fear that Adam would say that homosexuality was sinful, but I feared that I would hear Adam say that homosexuals were not welcome and that they were condemned. I finally listened to a recording of the sermon, and Adam’s approach to this subject was the most thoughtful approach I have heard. I then read Adam’s chapter on homosexuality in Confronting the Controversies. Still feeling angst over my “sinfulness,” I spent one night on the floor in my home praying for hours, asking God what I could do to change the way I was. And in a rare moment, I heard God’s response. First, God reminded me that all of my sin (both known and unknown) has been atoned for. Thus, regardless of whether homosexuality is a sin, I had already been bought. I realized that God is so much bigger than my own sinfulness, and He is big enough and capable of handling my sin (if it is sin). I also realized that we have a God who is inclusive in that He went to such incredible lengths to save us that I cannot imagine that He is standing at the gate trying to nitpick our sins to keep us out. We know that’s not the standard because our justification comes from Him. Our God loves us, and I believe that God desires our love and adoration in return, and this is not contingent upon our being blameless.

God also let me know that he knew my heart. My desire was to serve God because I loved God. I think this mattered more to Him than my being gay. God also helped me realize that for years I had been so preoccupied with my homosexuality that I had failed to tell others about Jesus, and I had been failing to help others because of my own shame and grief. In this rare moment, I felt such relief because I felt such conviction that God did not want me worrying about this because it was keeping Him from being able to otherwise work in my life. What mattered was that I loved Him and that I was loving others. It was one of the first times in my life that I felt absolute assurance that I was not going to hell because of my homosexuality. And, I’m not.

In Adam’s sermon on homosexuality, Adam compared the role of God as “Father” to that of a human father, and ultimately, himself. Adam said that if his own daughter told him she were gay, he would love her still. Those are some of the most important words I’ve ever heard because they have helped to heal so much hurt. And, if Adam is capable of loving his daughter, then God is capable of loving me in spite of myself. I believe Billy Graham’s response when asked how he would respond upon learning that one of his children was gay was that he would love them all the more because they would need it all the more. Gays need to be loved by the church, not because society is harmful, but because the church and its response has been so hurtful. Adam concluded his sermon by saying that he wanted gays to know that they are welcome at COR and that he would love to be their pastor. Few know what this meant to me.

As for the biblical passages concerning homosexuality, there are no easy answers. In thinking about the bible’s prohibitions, I have come to appreciate certain arguments. First, the bible’s prohibitions must be taken in the context of all of scripture. Jesus summed up scripture when He said that the greatest commandments are to love your God and second to love your neighbor as yourself. Loving your neighbor as yourself means that we should try to understand what life is like in other people’s shoes. How can you love your neighbor as yourself if you cannot even put yourself in their shoes? Try and put yourself in a homosexual’s shoes – imagine growing up and hearing that gays will be cast into hell; imagine later discovering you have homosexual feelings; imagine trying to hide it from the people you love most; imagine having your friends hate you, your family leave you, your church deny you; imagine feeling guilty, condemned, and ashamed all of the time; imagine hearing the (compassionate) insulting phrase that “I don’t hate you, I hate the sin. But, I love the sinner;” imagine being told that homosexuality is not sinful, it’s the practice that is sinful and that you will be fine as long as you abstain; imagine being told to never be in a relationship, to never be sexual, to never get married, to never have kids, to never adopt, to never fall in love; imagine being told that only by doing these things will God love you and will we love you; imagine being told that if you fail then you are condemned to hell. I ask you to understand how utterly hopeless this makes us feel. And if you act like it’s not a big deal, think about how devastating it is for women if they find they are cannot have children, even though they can still marry, adopt, and live life. And yet, when gay people want families, which the church so often points out is fundamental, it denies that gays should be entitled to a family and labels its request as a “gay agenda.” It should not come as a surprise that the gay community is very estranged from the Christian community.

Although there are a handful of verses in the bible concerning homosexuality, most of the bible does not discuss it. If the bible does not focus on it, why is the church focusing on it? Further, Jesus never addressed it, or at least the gospel writers did not discuss it if He did. If all scripture is God-breathed, then God decided what to include as words of Jesus, and again, Jesus did not discuss homosexuality. Some may claim that this was not as big of an issue in Jesus’ day as it is today, but God was fully aware that the church would be debating this issue today.

Moreover, the Ten Commandments do not refer to homosexuality. In fact, there are 6 commandments before adultery, the first sexual sin mentioned, is even mentioned – honor your mother and father, do not murder, do not take the Lord’s name in vain, remember the Sabbath, and others are listed first. I also find it telling that the commandment to remember the Sabbath was the 4th commandment, and when questioned about His failure to observe it, Jesus responded that man was not made to serve the law. There are two important notes to take from this: first, Jesus said that there are times the law is not to be observed because there is some superior purpose; and second, a religious leader who was sure that failure to observe the Sabbath was sinful accused Jesus of sinning, but was wrong. This makes me believe that people in our churches who are so sure about church law and doctrine should remember that they are not always right. And I would strongly caution anyone against religious arrogance if they believe they are 100% correct in their interpretation of the scriptures.

I also tend to believe that if something is deemed sinful, there is a reason it is so. For example, drug abuse is sinful because it is emotionally and physically destructive, it leads to other sins (theft, deceit, etc.), and because it becomes a god to many. I have a harder time seeing any such arguments for homosexuality. Perhaps homosexual sexual activity could be physically harmful, but so can heterosexual sexual activity. Or maybe homosexuals should abstain because God has a higher calling on their lives – but, I don’t believe there would be a disproportionate number of gays with higher callings than there are straight people, and for most people who God has called, it seems that God does not require abstention from marriage.

Some have claimed that only unrepentant homosexuality is sinful and those who do not repent are damned. I believe this distorts scripture, which is very simple. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Rom 10:13 (NIV). Or, “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Rom 10:9-10 (NIV). It is our heart that justifies us, not our acts. The heart of the Gospel is faith. Further, I believe that most people, including Christians, will die with unrepentant sin. For example, what about Christian smokers? What about resentment or lack of forgiveness? If the answer is whether a homosexual has repented, I believe we are in dangerous territory. What about a sin that a Christian commits for the first time right before death that the Christian would have committed again if he or she had lived? God knows our hearts, and I think we are defined by our hearts, not our acts. If Christians are totally honest, most have unrepentant sin. Ultimately, Christians can do as I’ve done here and throw verse after verse at each other to make a point, which is why you have to look at the totality of scripture, which is summarized by God’s redeeming work and love for us.

I appreciate COR and Adam Hamilton because I have learned that COR is not driven by abortion or homosexuality, but by loving God and the unchurched. I fail to understand why the church is so upset about homosexuality and fails to address so many other sins like child abuse (Jesus clearly stated severe penalties for this, and the church rarely addresses it even though it’s rampant), alcoholism, greed, pride, stealing (even stuff like pencils, pens, paperclips from work), cussing, taking God’s name in vain, poor parenting, lack of respect for each other, failing to love each other, failing to forgive, lusting in your heart, being drunk, etc. I believe that God cares more that I am rude to another person or when I cut someone off in traffic than when I have sex with my partner. In the former situations I hurt someone else and put myself first, but in the latter I’m engaging in a consensual physical act that is not hurting anyone. No matter which service I attend, I always see people race out of church, cut others off, and act disgracefully coming into or leaving church. And yet these are the same people sitting next to me in church and pointing their fingers at the sinfulness around them. We have so many other problems that fail to be addressed.

I believe that COR focuses on love and not sin (and addresses sin as appropriate). I believe there is something backwards about churches that focus on sin first – God overcame death, tragedy, and sin, and yet many churches allow sin to define them instead of Christ. This is tragic to me, and this is one of the reasons the church is declining. The church is not declining because there are so many gays. The reason that so many gays don’t attend Christian churches is because the churches have already kicked them out. This is completely the opposite of what God has asked you (and me) to do. And though many Christians claim that gays are hateful to them, Christians put them down first. And, regardless the church should be praying for its enemies. I don’t think that gays are really putting down Christ most of the time anyway – they are reacting to the hurt and pain that has been inflicted in the name of Christ for so long. Christians are called to love and serve others, including gays.

I also must point out the churches’ hypocrisy here. Many Christians claim they reject homosexuals because they are living sinful lifestyles. But, so are Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Mormons, and any other religion that fails to recognize Jesus as Savior and God. Yet, these other people aren’t treated with the contempt and hatred that gays are, and under Christian doctrine, where these other people end up is at best questionable (and denial of Christ is certainly sinful). So, why is the church so hateful to gays? I simply do not understand.

In the end, I had to come to terms with my Christianity and homosexuality. I had a choice – to one day be with Jesus because I feared hell or to one day be with Jesus because I know who He is and I love Him, and in spite of all of my problems, He has already justified me. At the end of the day, if homosexuality is a sin, I don’t think it deserves the priority status it has had for so long. The sins that Christ became angry over were sins committed in His name (like the money changing in the temple) or over hypocrisy in the church. He was angry at religious leaders. And while he pointed out the sins of others, He did so out of compassion and love, and he didn’t condemn them based only on sin, but on rejection of Him.

One of the most often quoted scriptures regarding homosexuality is Corinthians 6:9-10: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” But, why do Christians citing this verse so often fail to mention the other sins listed here? Sexual immorality applies to the thoughts in our minds, idolators worship something other than God, we live in a greedy society (this is true within the church, too), and I have seen Christians drink too much. I don’t believe these sins will necessarily keep a person out of heaven because when taken in the context of scripture, it is clear that we have a God who wants to save us from these sins, and this is the theme of the bible. I imagine most Christians tell lies frequently – think of the white lies you have told in the past week, and yet this passage makes no distinction. I am certain theologians could debate whether this passage includes white lies. And, finally, the end to this passage continues by saying, “But you were justified…” Thus, this passage refers to the way something was – but that something was changed not because the act stopped occurring (a material thing), but because the person was justified (a supernatural thing). Even this passage leads back to the conclusion that it is our faith, not acts, that justify us.

Although it’s becoming cliché, the bible warns strongly against judging others. In fact, some believe that we will be judged in the same way that we judge others. I would rather be on the side that is forgiving than the one that is condemning because I believe that when we condemn, we take on ourselves the role of God and thereby take His name in vain.

Adam Hamilton finished his sermon on homosexuality by imagining for a moment that God has a primary will and some sort of secondary will. Adam’s ponders that maybe homosexuality is not what God would choose for our lives. But, if a person finds that he or she is homosexual, God’s response to that person may change in the way that a parent’s love for a homosexual child can change. I, too, can imagine such a scenario. For example, if I had a child born with downs syndrome, I would be disappointed because my child’s life would be more difficult. But, I would love the child even more and I believe many parents end up having similar responses to their gay children. And that is what the gay community wants from Christians – love. If the Christian church could start being known for the positive way it treats people, miracles would happen, and the church in this nation could start healing. One pastor did that for me, and it has changed my life. I am so grateful for Adam, his insight, and his love, which is a mere reflection of my Father’s love for me.

I doubt I will persuade anyone here, but I think it’s important that you know that your comments are being read by others (gays included), and I think a gay person’s point of view is important anytime homosexuality is discussed.