I do not believe absolute truth about God can be known conclusively. While such truths likely exist, I do not believe we can know them for certain, at least not in this life.
My whole life, the religious authorities told me homosexual lifestyles are sinful, and for awhile I had little reason to believe otherwise. The Christian Bible contains scriptures which seemed to condemn this way of life as sinful, so that was that.
Even while I believed homosexuality was a sin, I was unsettled by the way Christian people talked about both homosexuality and the Christians who support the homosexual lifestyle. I was appalled by the way Christians seemed to blame so much of the world’s evil on people with this sexual orientation. I was unnerved by the way people in authority spoke with such distain for a culture advocating for homosexual people to be accepted into all aspects of society. Why had the Christian Right decided to act as if homosexuality was the second most heinous sin (second only to abortion)?
We are in a dangerous place when we blame the relationships of two consenting adult men or women for the suffering of our country (such as was seen after 9/11 and can still be heard expressed today from pulpits all around our nation). This while greed, manipulation, shaming, and all manners of non-consensual oppression are widely practiced by even our most respected leaders and businesses, and either are applauded or go unnoticed.
I did not understand it then, and I do not understand it now.
While on journey toward being fully supportive of those in a LGBTQ+ lifestyle, I often posed a scenario to myself and others:
What would those in Christian leadership do with two married men (or women), newly converted to Christianity, who came to them with a well-established family wanting to know how to proceed as upstanding members of the Christian community?
The consensus I gathered was that the couple should either split and share custody of children or remain in the same household and commit to celibacy.
In the first scenario, a family is torn apart by the Church.
In the second, an unending and destructive cycle of failure and subsequent shame occurs as celibacy is unlikely to be obtained. Neither scenario settled well with me, and I was left with the uncomfortable realization that I would not know how to advise such a family.
Christians are taught to accept the Bible even when they adamantly disagree with the interpretations of its teachings, and most of my life I have tried to be a good Christian.
When a widely accepted interpretation of the Bible goes against my experience of God and life, I have tried to nevertheless accept the interpretation as valid. We are taught that anything within us which pushes against widely accepted biblical interpretation comes from the sinful nature and must be resisted.
I have been left to wonder, if it is truly my sinful nature which desires to support the LGBTQ+ community and whether my deepening compassion over the years is the work of the Spirit or the work of the sinful flesh.
It has recently come to my attention that my position on marriage equality was based solely on what others have told me is true.
No belief occurs in a vacuum, without influence of personal experience. We receive information from a variety of sources throughout our lives, and it is up to us to determine what is most likely to be reliable. What seems to be true, what works its way into our worldview, appears to be that with which makes the most sense to us. We may think we believe something based on facts or information alone, but I venture to say our beliefs are a combination of evidence/information and personal resonance.
As our experiences in this world change and as we receive new information, we assimilate these into our belief system and begin to see the world differently. This process often occurs over time through small adjustments from consideration of our current worldview alongside new information and experiences. Sometimes small adjustments appear to be big changes, but often these changes occur in slight fluctuations over a long period of time.
The progression moves something like this: reception of information, healthy skepticism/consideration, personal resonance, and worldview assimilation.
It is crucial we go about developing our belief system in this way. If we wholeheartedly believed everything we are told without personal examination, we would not be able to make sense of our world. We would be frantic, chaotic, irrational, and unsettled.
Let’s say, for example, we have a Jewish authority figure who tell us Jesus is not the Messiah and we also have a Christian authority figure who tell us Jesus is the Messiah. We cannot wholeheartedly believe both of these simultaneously even if both authority figures present compelling and rational evidences. We may remain uncertain, but we cannot wholeheartedly agree with both. We can either remain uncertain while believing one to be more likely, choose to believe one and not the other, or remain entirely undecided.
I have found unity between the meta-narrative of scripture, my experience of the Divine Presence, and my own life experiences. I therefore accept the authority of the scriptures as essential stories for our faith which have been used to make meaning for the people of God through the ages, but in doing so I do not hold them to be incapable of flaw or error. (I see the meta-narrative of scripture as the rescue, freedom, unification, and redemption of people separated from God and brought back to God.)
When we consider that the scriptures are writings of imperfect men, allowing their writings to shape our faith community is not the same as believing their every word to be absolute truth.
I hold the scriptures as dear and crucial to my personal faith, but do not find them to be perfect or without flaw. This is a belief nearly 37 years in the making, full of nuance and considerable thought/study, and it is not one I hold lightly.
There is such a strong prevalence of sexual shame in Christian culture. If people uncomfortable with their own sexuality are even more uncomfortable with a sexuality which is different from their own, could this be why conservative Christians often treat homosexuality as one of the worst conceivable sins?
When we consider the contempt and revulsion which is often only thinly veiled in the presentation of a person speaking against homosexuality, is it so inconceivable this same disdain could have been present in the writers scriptures, who were themselves imperfect? Is it inconceivable that this flawed discomfort might not disqualify their writings from being entered into the sacred cannon of scripture? That their writings could still be central to the faith community even if they are not without flaw?
That, the people of the time (like many in our time) may have been all too quick to accept writings which condemn homosexuality because they resonate with the discomfort experienced at the idea of homosexual relationships? Or, that authors of scripture (their writings not even yet scripture at the time of their writing) may have lumped together all homosexual practices out of that same discomfort when the practices they are truly condemning are instances of men raping boys or of those in power using their might against another in an act of sex?
On the contrary, I find this all quite conceivable.
For too long I allowed others to tell me all homosexuality is sinful, and it is only as I have allowed myself to become reconciled to myself that I have come to reject these teachings.
I can no longer accept that two men or two women should not be given the same rights, marital or otherwise, as heterosexual individuals, especially not on the sole basis of a handful of scriptures. My understanding of the meta-narrative of scripture, my own awareness of the Divine Presence, and my life experiences leads me to the conclusion that members of the LGBTQ+ community should be welcomed and accepted as full members of both church and nation with the same rights as their heterosexual brothers and sisters.
My husband long ago reconciled his faith with his support of the LGBTQ+ community, and I am grateful for the ways his willingness to engage in mutual discourse has influenced my worldview these past 19 years.
I am not claiming to know with absolute certainty that this is the correct belief, but it is the one which makes the most sense to me. I may be accused of allowing feelings to dictate my beliefs on this issue, and certainly those who belief this are entitles to their perspectives. However, I would ask such people to examine precisely why they believe what they believe and find the places where their own life experiences intersect what they have been told, because it is highly unlikely what any of us have been told exists in a vacuum.
It is my belief that there is simply no such thing as an unbiased belief.
If in the end my deepened compassion and support for the LGBTQ+ community ultimately disqualifies me from Christian community, then I guess, so be it. I believe my deepening compassion and acceptance for members of the LGBTQ+ community are the work of the Spirit rather than the work of sinful flesh, but I know not all will agree.
My understanding of scripture, my experience of the loving Divine Presence, and my own experiences in this world have brought me to where I stand today. I do not believe it serves me or others well to continue to war against my developing worldview for the sake of appeasing the authority figures in the Christian Right.
I stand with the LGBTQ+ community and on the Democratic Party’s stance on this issue.
You can find my most recent post about the Democratic Party and Social Services HERE.
You can find details about taking Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Classes with me HERE.
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