Welcome Message

This blog is part of my own journey of reconciliation. There is only one agenda here; that is, to seek God's truth concerning homosexuality. If you are visiting for the first time, welcome! A great place to start is the introductory posts that explain this blog's purpose, my perspective and presuppositions, and a plan of attack for the shape the blog will take.

Monday, March 19, 2007

Introductory Post #1: This Blog's Purpose



When I first considered creating a blog as a place to catalogue my ongoing study of the Bible and homosexuality, I naively thought that there were few, if any, internet sites that approached this issue from the perspective of someone who desires to be a God-pleasing person but has not figured out everything of his responsibility in the sexual realm. As I have been working on the framework of the blog these recent weeks, though, I have discovered that there are many others on a similar journey, and I have been blessed and encouraged by reading the words of fellow believers who, as one blogger put it, daily face the collision of these two worlds of faith and sexuality.

I find myself feeling like the rope in some great tug-of-war match, with each set of companions trying to convince me to join them and leave the other.As any person who has homosexual attractions will concur, a great chasm exists between the "gay community" and the "religious community" (terms I use for convenience here more so than for absolute precision). I personally live in the "gay" neighborhood of a large U.S. city, and many of my friends are non-believing gay men. However, I also attend a solid, conservative evangelical church which, although its leaders are far kinder than those in many churches, holds to the belief that homosexual relationships are sinful. All of my previous church experiences have been outright antagonistic towards the gay community.

So, I have experienced the frustration of seeing kind, decent gay friends speak of religion in angry, caustic terms, truly believing that there is no place for a gay man in a circle of faith. And, to some extent, after seeing the hurtful and hateful actions of many Christians toward homosexuals (both personally and toward friends of mine), I can't entirely fault my gay friends for such a perspective.

But then, on the other hand, I have been frustrated by comments I hear from fellow believers--God-loving, sincere people--who paint all homosexuals with the brush of the most extreme elements of gay society. But then again, after seeing the extreme rhetoric of some of the most vocal elements of gay activism and the vile actions of some homosexuals toward Christians, I can't entirely fault my Christian friends for a warped perspective, either.

Thus I find myself feeling like the rope in some great tug-of-war match, with each set of companions trying to convince me to join them and leave the other. And, having the blessing of friendship from people on both sides of the struggle, I am not simply standing there passively, allowing myself to be pulled to and fro. Instead, I try to find opportunities to bring these groups together, to show them that their mental images of each other are caricatures rather than photographs, like those cartoon artists at Six Flags who will purposely exaggerate some physical feature of a person for comedic effect. I want to get rid of the cartoons and show my loved ones the photographs and say, "See here? These are real people, sincerely kind, with real hopes and struggles, just like you!"

But it was a reading of one of my favorite passages of Scripture, the fifth chapter of 2 Corinthians, that helped me to understand how my thinking was slightly off-kilter. For a long time, I have been trying to reconcile "gay reality" with "faith reality", or to reconcile gay friends to faith friends. But 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 says that the very-legitimate ministry of reconciliation that we are given is the ministry of reconciling people to God. Only when that happens--when I am aligned with God's truth, when my gay friends are aligned with God's truth, and when my faith friends are aligned with God's truth--can we truly be reconciled to each other.

So that is the purpose of this blog:

First, it is a record of my own journey as I follow this path of reconciliation with my Savior.

But I hope it will also be a help to gay friends who sincerely seek truth, to see that God's truth does not turn away anyone who comes with an open heart--and that any Christian who acts in unkindness or judgmentalism toward a gay person is acting contrary to, not as an example of, the truth they claim to hold.

And I hope the blog will be a help to my faith friends, to consider that there are people you know and love and respect, who yet are honestly working through these issues, and that perhaps not every gay person is a God-rejecting reprobate.

As we each work to understand God's truth and align ourselves with that truth, we will inevitably find that the chasm between us begins to shrink, and that those differences dividing us are not so far away as we initially thought.

I have purposely kept this initial post, as much as possible, in the realm of the theoretical. The next two posts will address more practical matters of my perspective and presuppositions. But, to use a frequently-heard term, this blog has only one "agenda" - to seek God's truth and to be reconciled to His truth even in this challenging and emotional topic of homosexuality and faith.

Click here to continue to the second introductory post.

2 comments:

Eric said...

thanks for the reference to TWC. welcome to the blogosphere! i look forward to reading more about your story. =)

i'll put a link to here from my blog. feel free to contact me anytime!

blessings!

Reconciled said...

Thanks, Eric! Your blog has been a great help and blessing to me in recent weeks as well!