The Day I Truly Understood the GLBT Community

As a Christian, there are moral issues I have a hard time wrapping my head around. How exactly I felt about the GLBT community is one of those. I admit, issues like morality are important to me, and I truly believe that if you have a close friend who is headed in a wrong moral direction, it's not wrong or unloving to speak out to them on that issue. But there are Biblical standards, and that issue, at least, is tangential to this post.

However, there was a day not long ago that I had what I would call an epiphany. When I didn't just empathize with GLBT friends, but UNDERSTOOD their position in a dramatic and lifechanging way.

A friend who I know genuinely has my best interests at heart sent me a message about my bull in a china shop approach to things. The not so subtle suggestion was that if I toned things down, I might achieve greater traction (I've heard other people advance that belief since, but this was lovingly and carefully presented, and I have no doubts as to the sincerity of the sender).

But there's a side of that that he didn't know: I had spent years of my life trying to change who I was. I've long recognized that I am a horribly misunderstood individual, and desired to change that, to make that happen. But the change never came, and so after years of prayer and contemplation, I surmised that, much like Paul's thorn in the flesh, it was there for a reason.

It was a part of who I am; a part of the big picture, a part of what makes me who I am. And something that God, in His wisdom, has decided to leave me with. And so it is in my best interest, I realized, to learn in what ways this trait could work to make me a better, a stronger person.

And that's when the light came on. I know people who have told stories of how they have prayed not to be homosexual, how their parents have prayed for them, how they worked diligently to change who they were. And I know too many stories that ended with a crudely tied noose, a bottle of pills, or a gun. Stories that ended with the final and complete despair of these people who simply wanted to be understood.

That is never right, and that is not an end that anyone deserves. As Christians, we're called to love, not to judge, and to be light in the world. And when someone is in a dark place and we drive them to an even darker place, we cannot call that love in any language.

There's already enough pain in the world without adding to it. And if we're going to mince words about the finer points of Levitical law, we have a lot of areas to cover before we even BEGIN to address homosexuality. And I decided long ago that I had no call to stand in the place of the Holy Spirit and convict someone, because there's a lot of dirty laundry I need to sort out first.

But it was then, at that moment, that I could say that I truly UNDERSTOOD. And hopefully, maybe, in sharing this, someone else out there can understand.