Tag: grace (Page 5 of 11)

If You Were Truly Conservative, You Wouldn’t Be Anti-Gay

February 14, 2016 / / 4 Comments

You’ve stared down the aisle of homosexuality, perhaps taken a few steps of examination. It didn’t take long for the reality to overwhelm. The issues are complicated with lots of moving parts. From terms like LGBTQ to issues of biology, from political creeds to long held theology. You’re trying, you really are.

With an inner heartbeat pulsing toward love, if only to be free, yet chained to prescribed understandings of an ancient text, lines drawn by the God of your faith upbringing. At best, you’re now straddling a fence. Who’s right, who’s wrong? Bending and twisting, juxtaposing Grace and truth— two chopsticks in hand, insisting that one must be the fork and the other the spoon. Perhaps, the tension is too much, you’ve insisted on landing—the road most traveled, the familiar path. Determined, that as far as God is loving, He is also condemning of all things LGBTQ. One big mess of sin, a grotesque abomination, some foreign reality to God’s rendering that requires transformation. Not just a fork, not just spoon, but a knife, declaring gay doom.

Where you are is where you are, not going to debate that.

But on top of it all, the icing on the cake, you’ve boxed up all your concrete conclusions, wrapped them in black and white paper, and packaged it all as being “conservative.” The genetic codes of your believism, your safe and sure home base. Declaring the inside scoop to a sacred text, years of ecclesial tradition. Self-proclaimed protectors of Christian values, the clear and plain teachings, not to mention… God-inspiration. This is America, the Jesus-sanctioned nation. “Oh-o-say can you see…”

Keep on singing, why stop there. Not just defining what’s in some “conservative” box, claiming it as your own. But labeling all those outside it, throwing shade from your man-made throne.

The hymns of your condemnation. You’ve made it all so loud and clear. To you, I’m a slippery slope pastor. The rest of us, lost and wayward Christians. Heretical to the nines. We’re all just one of them, those liberals, bending to the sway of culture, watering down, sponging in a bath of perversion. Gently tickling, feathering the ears of all that would listen. To make it feel so good, to feel so easy. Living in the grey, postmodern relativism, all with the agenda, to do Satan’s bidding. Looking down your nose, patting me on the back, hoping one day I’ll graduate from this gay-affirmation. Sometimes with words, other times with silence, you say I’ve sold out a sovereign God, joined a long list of false prophets, blinded by culture’s coercion. I’m just another one of those misguided progressives, who simply can’t handle truth.

Well I don’t know who you think you are, but in my humble opinion, you’re way off base. Quite frankly, not even on the planet. You have no idea, not a clue, the journey I have taken, and that of many others.

So, I sure hope you have your adult diapers on, because here comes the truth. My gay-affirmation didn’t come from smoking some kind of progressive liberality, it actually came from the incense of my deep seeded conservatism.

I love Jesus, the Bible, and truth just as much as any other. It’s out of an ardent, soul stirring quest to get this right, that I have come to this LBGTQ-affirming conclusion.

I’m determined, to conserve the singular essence of God who is love, nothing more, nothing less. While you take your liberalities, dancing far outside the box, making Him into a schizophrenic, condemning monster of multiple personalties. I’m holding fast, staying close and true to His clear delight and hand in all creation. While you take your liberalities, twisting, bending, fabricating God into a human-hating, sin-focused old man, sitting at the edge of heaven’s seat, licking his chops for the moment to show the unrepentant the back of His eternal hand.

I’m determined, to conserve the seriousness of the Bible, its sacredness and divinity. While you take your liberalities, raping it, reducing it into a text that should be understood, in all things, only literally. As if God gave you the Bible as a whore of words with which you can simply have your way. Making it all seem so black and white, so you can control, manipulate, label and sway. Adding words, translations, and meanings, stripping them from their context. Treating the Bible like a three-ring circus, parts that seem to light your enemies on fire, gaining the height of your attention, even the rise of your entertainment.

I refuse to play these religious games, to have my faith spoon fed, joining in lines of religious herds, feeding from the trough of self-righteousness.

I’m determined, to conserve the person of Jesus, the only Word of God, who for the joy set before Him, the entirety of humanity, endured it all. His Gospel of Grace, His message of peace. The goodness, value, acceptance and pleasure He takes in all that He has created. The very One who declared our leather-bound Bibles aren’t our salvation, often reinterpreting long held beliefs, always to the displeasure of the religious.

I’m not going to stand aside while you play eternity games with people’s lives. While you hijack the Gospel with your no-gospel Gospel, and pimp it as life. Making “church” into a club of like-minded people whose greatest spiritual gift is to talk amongst themselves and judge the world. Turning Christianity into a moral play, and you, the holders of the script. Scaling the heights of true liberality, truth twisting, backsliding, all while you’re pointing fingers. Puffed up with arrogance, you call it “conservative,” lifting yourselves as the keepers of all that is God’s intention and will.

Well, I’m not buying it, and countless others are beginning to see behind the curtain. You aren’t a conservative Christian, you are a convenient Christian. Anything to keep power, privilege, and authority— the trinity of your ambition.

Creationism, racism, nationalism, fundamentalism. Homophobia, xenophobia, misogyny, all bare the stench of your true liberality, moving so far away from the heart of God, Jesus, and the faith diary of His people. It’s all so convenient.

You are about as truly conservative as crayons taste like their colors. Spiritual shape-shifters, blending into, and making fit, anything that furthers your agenda— the one thing your brand of “conservatism” is good at accomplishing, the conserving of your own religious, self-righteous bigotry. A condemnation in your heart, seated deeper than any scripture.

For if you were truly conservative, you wouldn’t be anti-gay.

You’d stay so close to His nature, His heart, the person of His son Jesus. The thought of moving even just one step from His expanse, the incomprehensible essence of His ways. Seeing His image, his hand in all creation. The science, the biology, the complexity of it all. It would all be enough to give you pause. To stand in one place, on one thing alone… love.

From there, you could not be budged, you could not be moved.

Convinced that God is in all, and that God is good.

He is greater, His love higher, and his affirmation, universe reaching.

Everything His hands have made.

For if you were truly conservative, you wouldn’t be anti-gay.

You’d be like Jesus, and Jesus alone.

Believing in love… all the way.

What Has Your Christianity Done To You?

January 31, 2016 / / 1 Comment

There’s a diabolical way Eskimos kill wolves. Taking a long knife, they coat the blade with frozen blood, placing it upwards in the snow. The wolf smells the blood, feverishly starts licking. As the blood-sickle numbs the wolf’s tongue, their clueless to the moment the razor-thin edge slits it wide open, shifting the animal to consuming its own blood unaware. Doing so, in a frenzy of oblivious delusion, the wolf literally drinks itself to death. What tastes like it’s yielding life, is actually ending it.

Look in the mirror. There’s blood all over our mouths. Dripping down.

Not just your mouth, but your hands, your feet, you heart, your soul. The outside sees it, smells it. Don’t you? Like rag-shirted zombies that think they are alive, believe they’ve been resurrected. Groaning, moaning, needing someone to devour. The walking dead.

What’s happen to you? What’s happen to us? The people we’ve become.

These words, not trying to be destructive, just trying try be descriptive. This is life and death.

Most Christians don’t even realize what their Christianity has done to them.

Hard to see it, even harder to say it. But, you’ve become a monster.

Not just you, all of us.

Look at ourselves. The heights from which we have fallen.

In the Garden of Eden, it was enough that God is love, you were fully human, created in His image to fully love. It was as simple, complete, and beautiful as that. Nothing to add. The Gospel of the Garden. Life as it’s intended. Everything to enjoy. Freely loved, freely loving. Bliss upon bliss, heaven forever. The ultimate life. An eternal flow of endless loving and being loved, all without limits, without restriction. Seated high, only shadowed by the angels. Imagine the freedom, the release to love expansively. The forever smile that reality painted on our souls.

But then, numb to the scheme, we fell for the Law. We bit the lie that there are conditions. Conditions, limitations, expirations to being loved and to loving. It’s not free, to give or receive, nor is it to be freely given or received. Lies upon lies, licks upon licks, swallowing the evil whole. In so doing, in our condition-believing, we didn’t become more human, we actually became less. Our souls slit wide open. Our hearts bleeding. Our fall from Grace, by falling for the Law. Confusion set in. What felt like distance from the Divine, was all in our minds, not God’s heart. That’s what conditions do, they taste like life, but are sure death. Projecting onto God a reality that is not His, not ours, not anyone. God didn’t go there, we did.

Jesus came to reveal, to lift the veil, to change the mind, to sober the trance. To awaken us to what has always been, that God loves humanity as if the Law never existed. In His heart, the timelessness of eternity, conditions never have. No fine-print, demands, or a distance. From Moses to Jesus, God’s ardent revelation to humanity of the dance-of-death created by the futile pursuits of human performance and God appeasement. It doesn’t work. The diabolical drama of the Law, with all its systems and calculations, is not just undoable, it’s errant. A wrecking ball, a blade in the snow to all that is truly God and life giving. Jesus, revealing God as Law-fulfilled, condition-less. For if the Law, in writing or Spirit, were inerrant there would be no Jesus, the Word, the Way, the Life.

In fact, the only two people in Scripture that Jesus proclaims are people of “great faith,” were both Gentiles, not Law-conscious, condition-believing Jews. One was a Roman and the other a Canaanite. What they had in common wasn’t an off-the-chart spiritual record, it wasn’t some laser-like capacity to point out sin. It wasn’t even church-attendance or ardent-worship awards. Rather, what was intrinsic at their core was that both of them had no awareness of the Law, no sense of a God of conditions, none at all. They shared the untainted, un-seduced clarity of mind and heart to see and believe in God as He truly is. Their “greatness” of faith was in direct correlation to their awareness of the “greatness” of God’s unconditional love. These weren’t conditions to God-relationship that were being pushed aside, overlooked, or covered over. In the framework of their God perspective, there weren’t conditions at all. Jesus sees this, their eyes-wide-open awareness of the true nature and heart of God, and declares, “Now these guys, they get it.”

Later, when Jesus points us to the spearpoint of God’s Old Testament intention, the summation of all that can be summed up, He pleads for one thing, genuine God-love and the loving of our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Don’t be duped by your Christianity. In these words, Jesus isn’t pushing for us to press into the Law, meeting more conditions and expectations, getting more religious and ambitious. Actually, He’s begging you to see the imprisonment that comes with it, and our forever release from it. As if it never existed. That Good is good, and His love endures forever.

For how can you truly love without reservation, believe without inhibition, with complete mind, heart, and soul, in a God of conditions? How can you truly love anyone, in any way, with love-limitations? You can’t. If it’s not unconditional love, it’s not love at all. If it’s not an unconditional God, it’s not God at all. It’s Satan’s slick substitution… religion. That’s what you’re feverishly licking. Drinking death, believing it’s life. You’re not loving God and people, you’re religion-ing God and people, and calling it life in Christ.

Jesus is yearning from the depths of His being for our return to being fully human…

Fully human… awakening to the awareness that you are unconditionally loved by God who is nothing but love.

Fully human… loving humanity without condition, without restraint nor reservation.

Fully human… seeing the goodness, the divine hand in all God has created.

Fully human… embracing our release from the Law is if it never existed.

Why? Because Jesus knows, only then do we have the capacity, the freedom, the genuine desire, the rest within our mind and heart from which to truly see Him and therefore to truly love Him, manifesting that love to ourselves and to others. A rebirth, a new creation, a new species, a return to being fully human.

Free to be loved fully, free to love fully. No brake pumping, no leash pulling, guilt tripping, fear mongering, no if, ands, or buts.

This is heaven come down, to love lavishly as you are lavishly loved. To see no conditions, to give no conditions. No governor on the love accelerator. No chains, no ceiling, no amount that it is “too much.” Grace upon Grace, upon Grace, upon Grace, all the more. More and more love, as far as the eyes, the heart, and the mind can see.

Free at last, free at last, thank God, we are free at last.

God created you to be fully human.

But that’s not what you’ve become, that’s not what your Christianity has done to you. Not to you, not to us.

We’re not fully human, our Christianity has made us into something far less.

We’ve made God into a schizophrenic drunk, storming out of a bar, wrapping His arms of love around you one moment, sending His son to secure the world’s salvation, only to drop-kick countless souls into a hell of eternal torture, while singing choruses of divine justice and holiness, with beer steins raised, as He winks at you with a grin in His eyes. He’s no more than the elf on the shelf, watching, judging, waiting for that opportune moment to push humanity under His thumb and yank us all back from too much happiness. Never knowing when you might push Him too far and dislodge the pin of His wrath-grenade. His love is the warm-up band, the appetizer for the main thing… your repentance, allegiance, rule-keeping, and good behavior. Don’t give Him what He wants, you don’t get what He’s got. The valves are turned off, the supply is sanctioned, and a blockade is formed, welling up to an eternal separation of fiery, skin melting despair.

You don’t need Hollywood to know that anything with more than one head, one heart, one vision is a monster.

This is what we’ve done. All of us.

Turned God into a monster, a two-headed, two hearted, two-visioned monster. A crazed, conflicted god who loves… but.

Sadly, the very image we’ve made of God, is very the person, the very people we’ve become…

Sure, you love people… but. There’s always a “but.” “But” this, “but” that. Your “Sir Mix-A Lot” version of love sings, “I like love with big ‘buts’ and I cannot lie.” Always with a condition, some kind of spiritual fine-print. A loop hole, a way out. Checkpoints here, checkpoints there, gotta make sure it doesn’t go too far, too soon. Grace is dangerous, you just can’t go around giving it to everyone and anyone. Always stopping short of acceptance and affirmation, as if yours are the hands that wield God’s stamp of approval. Your love is labeled, compartmentalized, predicated to those who are willing to subscribe to a terms of agreement. Dished out for free, but with silverware you have to pay for. Your love is not love at all, it’s a monster. And we, the walking dead, devouring whole groups of people… enemies, people with whom we disagree. Races, genders, gay people, transgender people, the rich, the poor. Killing countless with the poison we are pimping as love. Casket, after casket, after casket.

Sure, you have faith… but. There’s always a “but.” You just can’t let go of your addiction to the sound of your own performance. To-do lists, rules to keep, sins to overcome. It’s all so flesh intoxicating. Building your kingdom, your own following, your own story of success. Jesus and you, changing the world. Sounds so spiritual. Trying to line it all up, to fruit-up the vines, all to convince yourself of what you are not; that you are lovable, valuable, qualified, and worthy, as is. Dare I say, forgiven, equal, and whole. Nothing to improve, heal, or reconcile that Jesus hasn’t already. The self-righteousness is bleeding out of your every pore. All your hand raising, money giving, engraved Bible studying, self-promoting, enough is never enough. So much going on with your lips, but your heart, it’s restless. More and more to do, to become, to improve, to achieve, to show. Building your tower to God, calling it faith and faithfulness. Like Mary in the scriptures, making sandwiches Jesus never ordered. To believe is to rest. But on the bed of rest, you will not rest. You got to have some skin in the game, a security blanket of your own weaving. Jesus is not enough. The cross not finishing. His Grace, not sufficient. With every striving and trying, doing and performing, your proclamation of un-faith. Hoping to sign-up the world to chase with you on the this endless treadmill of spiritual, hypocritical exhaustion, praying they won’t see it’s all one big veil to an empty life. Your Christian life is no life at all, it’s a monster. And we, the walking dead, devouring people into this slow death of spiritual futility disguised as faith.

Sure, you have Grace… but. There’s always a “but.” We need to have a balance. It’s just can’t be all good news. God’s not soft, He’s rock-sovereign. Condemnation, sin-deciding, it feels so right, so good, so leather-bound biblical. Bringing another low, putting them in their place. Discipline, confronting, punishment. Positions, platforms from which to look down. The Bible says… the Bible tells me so. Verse quoting, debate engaging, enemy declaring. We gotta speak the truth in love, the proctologist who’s smiling so gently with his truth-finger up your rear end. Playing spiritual doctor, posturing yourself as the divine physician. As if your eyes can x-ray the disease, and you’re skilled enough to cure it, let alone, the one commissioned to do it. It’s all one big game of spiritual hide in seek in compounds with crosses on top. Talking amongst ourselves and judging the world. Spiritually navel gazing as we complain about how bad the world is, with thankfulness for how good we are. The Bible replacing Jesus, words about God trumping the Word of God. It’s all so convenient. Yet, all so irrelevant. The world and Jesus, just wants to spit it all out of their mouths. Your Grace is not Grace at all, it’s a monster. And we, the walking dead, imprisoning the very people Jesus has set free.

No one falls from the Law, you only fall from Grace, the summit of all that is God and all that is good.

Oh, how we have fallen, the decay that has set in.

We’ve swallowed the blade whole, numb to the death we think is life.

You call it a Gospel, but it’s no Gospel at all. It’s the worse news ever. That God loves you… but, that I love you… but.

That’s not heaven, that’s hell.

A two-headed Monster.

That’s what we have become, what our Christianity has done.

Religion creates the illusion you are experiencing and pleasing God when in reality you are hiding from Him and missing His heart.

We, who so boastfully declare to have it, have completely missed it.

They, the world, are not the monsters, the ignorant, the inhumane, the Godless… we are.

Most Christians don’t realize what their Christianity has done to them.

It’s about time we do.

To Those Hurt By Franklin Graham And His Supporters

December 2, 2015 / / 36 Comments

There’s is no denying the hurtful, deplorable words recently communicated by Franklin Graham to the LGBT community.

His timing, message, and condemning posture are extremely disappointing and disturbing at best. The hateful march of many of his supporters rallying around their captain has left ditches full of casualties, shot at point-blank range with fiery darts of condemnation, hate, and judgment.

Yet Franklin Graham and his supporters are a symptom and product of a much deeper cancer in our Christian culture, the Evangelical highjacking of the Gospel, God, and what it means to follow Jesus. Until this spiritual disease in our nation is healed and the heart of Christ reclaimed, this religious spirit will continue to spread and spew its vomit. Hurting, harming, misleading, and destroying the lives of many in its path.

For those of us who are of the LGBT community or allies thereof, these are difficult times requiring great courage, honesty, togetherness, patience, faith, and Grace. Now more than ever, it’s time to be brave.

There is real hurt, pain, and hardship caused by those who would use Jesus to spiritually justify their bigotry, hate, and the pimping of a Gospel that is no Gospel at all. Never apologize nor shrink back from your cries being cried and your voices being heard. We must never become the evil done against us. We are a people of love because God is love. But that does not mean for us to be silent, or perfectly varnished in our feelings or even in our expressing. Jesus confronted the religious spirit of His day openly and honestly, and we are no less Jesus in our doing so.

In fact, in two instances, Jesus is specifically recorded as becoming angry. Not violent, but angry. Both times, at people who interestingly enough, were withholding Grace.

It is indeed right and salutary that we should be emotional, even carefully confrontational where we see Grace withheld, and condemnation and judgment its replacement. Opening wide the floodgates, with honesty in our sails. Yet, all a river leading us to become servants, lovers of our enemies, compassion overflowing. A stream that cannot be stopped, because love is unstoppable. For that is the gift of an enemy, that we learn to love anyway. Furiously and fearlessly.

Even as we hurt, even as we cry, even as we confront, even as we defend, even as we are crucified, we love anyway. Washing the very feet of those who would stomp on ours.

Please understand, Franklin Graham’s voice and those of his supporters, do not represent the Gospel nor Jesus. That is my opinion. His words, their words, are nothing like Him, nor the Gospel He brings. For God is love, Jesus is Grace, and His message is peace. Love, unconditionally without conditions. All affirmed, all included, all delightfully delighted in Him and by Him.

Just imagine what it’s like to be Franklin Graham. Immersed in a religious system at such a level that few ever have the discernment or courage of heart from which to break free. Constantly placing the footings of his faith, life, relationship with God and self on his performance. Forever being preoccupied with sin management, rule-following, and closeness-keeping with God. Imagine, the daily spiritual struggle and unrest in his life. Always having to live up to spiritual expectations, sleeping with one eye open, justifying and medicating shame with self-righteousness. Believing in a Gospel where God loves you… but. If you don’t do this, or you do that, all could be as nothing. A God whose justice, holiness, and love look like the eternal torture of billions of people who simply didn’t follow certain prescribed religious steps and expectations. Where there is no room for incongruent thinking, spiritual exploration beyond the tracks. Where you never get to fully love without restraint. There is always a governor affixed to the pedal of your heart. I love you… but. Just imagine what it’s like to be Franklin Graham.

I, and others, have been there, done that, and have the t-shirt. And I can tell you it’s a living hell that you’re fooled to believe is heaven.

The more Franklin Graham and his supporters speak, the more our hearts should be filled with deep sadness, even compassion. If it hurts so much for us to hear him, imagine what it feels like to be him. For the language he speaks out, is first the language he echoes to himself, believing God first decreed it. And perhaps there is not greater hell then self-condemnation, growing full term into religion, all the while believing its the best of heaven. Imagine what it’s like to be Franklin Graham. We are getting a mere taste of his reality.

Be doubly assured, God is working in Franklin Graham’s life just as He is with you and me. Not through punishment, fear, guilt-trips, manipulation, rules, or condemnation. All through Grace.

In the same way, we can be, we must be… a manifestation and message of Grace to him.

Especially as it hurts, even as it hurts. Where life is a cross, not a couch. This is when Grace is most convincing.

To hurt and to give Grace at the same time, is to be fully human, fully Jesus. On the cross, blood flowing down, agony upon agony, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Grace upon Grace.

For Grace is the only thing that changes anything and anyone. Grace wins where everything else does not and cannot.

At the heart of Grace is… forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean that what Franklin Graham has said is now somehow true or acceptable. It doesn’t mean what he has done, is somehow now approvable. It doesn’t mean the hurt should somehow now be instantly removable; the anger subsided, and the injustice now somehow justified. It doesn’t mean any of that. For him or anyone else beside him.

It does mean, however, we emotionally release the false-accusers in our lives of the debt they owe that they cannot or will not repay.

Franklin Graham and those among him, they owe, and they owe big time. An apology, innocence returned, sleepless nights re-slept, tears removed, depressions lifted, tragedies averted. They owe big time. We all have our list.

Yet chances are, they cannot or will not repay. That apology is not coming. The affirmation is not coming. The compassion is not coming. The change of heart and mind… not coming.

Forgiveness means we no longer live with the bitterness, longing, and emptiness that comes from the expecting, even the demanding of a return. It gives us the power to be free, to never let the lack of integrity in another become the lack of integrity in us. To sing choruses crying, “It is well with my soul” not because it is necessarily all well with them, but forgiveness has necessarily made it all well in us. They no longer rent space in our heads, nor can their words unravel what God has knit together. Forgiveness has developed our immunity from the false-accusers within our faith. For we know who we are, and Whose we are. Beautifully and wonderfully made, the divine artistry of our Maker.

Forgiveness is releasing our offender only to realize we were the prisoner.

Franklin Graham, to all who gather around him, we love you as is. There is no condemnation for you, not from God, not from me, not from us. You are unconditionally loved without conditions. None of us are better, only different. We consider you, and all among you, cherished members of the family, completely included and affirmed.

To those who have been hurt by Franklin Graham and his supporters, walk with confidence today, that you are loved, affirmed and celebrated by your Father in heaven. Your LGBT child is loved, affirmed, and celebrated by your Father in heaven. Nothing to change, nothing to be rearranged. No sin, no darkness within. None.

You are secure in His arms of approval and pride. You are the joy set before Him, His affections are ever upon you. Unmovable and undeniable.

Lift up your head, lift up your head I say! You are the revival God is bringing to the world.

For such a time as this, you were born.

Be brave!

Love furiously and fearlessly.

Be brave!

Learning To Love ISIS, Starting With The ISIS In You

November 22, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Everything is spiritual.

We can mud-sling political views around. Debate historical data. All, painting each other into corners. We may feel a release, but there won’t be a resolution.

ISIS is a spiritual manifestation and a human problem.

On the surface, it reveals itself as terrorism, murder, hatred, war, and violence. Terrible realities, worthy of our anger and conversation. Yet underneath, there is a cancer much deeper, a catalyst much darker. Until this is healed, there will be no healing. It is beyond the reach of missiles, religion, sanctions, politics, rhetoric, ideologies, and war. All, perpetuating the cycle.

Everything is spiritual. Requiring spiritual evaluation and application. This is why we must talk about the root of all that is terror… condemnation.

It’s a simple story.

In the creation poem that opens its scroll at the front of the Christian Bible, God speaks the world into being. With hands coursing His artistic beard, He pauses between breathes to evaluate His living imagery. In rhythmic cadence, with each step He declares, “it is good.”

Soon after, the Tempter in serpent form, exploited the Garden of its goodness, playing his sole card of condemnation, the only one in hand. The first human ones bit the bluff, that God is holding out because of something they can’t handle. Convinced they lacked in some way, unworthy of the worthiness etched into their being. What was natural became naked, and the yarns of shame and guilt slithered their coil through the threads of inherent goodness. It is a complex weave. And we, are a complex people in the arduous journey of trying to unravel from condemnation’s relentless entanglement.

This is the story of every human being, bobbing and weaving, wrestling to come out from under condemnation believed. The genesis of all contortions, twisted personas, and justifications. It is the root of all sin. The birth of all religion. Compelling us into the dance to heal or conceal a shamed heart. All of us have a life that tells a unique, complicated story and reveals a personal shaping from our quest to be released from the lie we swallow as truth… condemnation.

This is the essence of all religion. The soul trying to heal its concluded unworthiness through efforts of appeasement and pleasing… people, self, Gods, standards, expectations. A never ending list.

Religion, it is a contrived system, all to place the conquering of condemnation in human hands and within human reach. It has names like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, but it’s reach is far greater, and origin far more universal. For it is first a human system, and then a human system falsely projected onto God. Starting from humans, and within all of humanity. Religion is not of God, it’s of us.

Living up to the Jones’ next door, or living up to a Diety in heaven, it is all equally religion. Striving to feel good about you, people feel good about you, a Being above to feel good about you. It’s all religion.

People pleasing, God pleasing. Earning self approval, God approval. Call it what you may, a path, a pursuit, a faith. Jesus calls it religion. Evil, from its beginning, especially in what it becomes at its fruition.

For the ultimate manifestation of condemnation is religion. The ultimate expression of religion is… violence.

Just ask Cain and Abel.

A mere stones throw from the Garden, the first act of terrorism. From condemnation’s stem, the religious barbs grow. Cain and Abel believe they must please God, offerings of show. Covering over guilt, justifying their concluded lack. Cain and Abel enter the sanctuary to perform their religious act.

Cain’s perception? God sees his offering as inferior compared to that of Abel. It’s lacking, unworthy. He is therefore, lacking and unworthy. Internalized condemnation. Sentenced to disapproval, the cell is too much. If only to break free. To even the score. To bring one down, to lift one’s self up.

Murder, terrorism, its origins the same. Cain bites the bluff and kills out of shame. All in attempt to clean, clear, lift, and better his name. To win at playing this religious game.

Be it Christianity, Islam, or ISIS, there is no difference. The root of terrorism is condemnation fully grown into religion.

Violence is born out of people who see the lowering, hurting, or death of another as a path to the validation or justification of self. It is born out of those seeking to perpetuate or defend the religious system they use to justify away concluded condemnation. For the death of their religion is the death of their self-justification, the self-healing of self, their very salvation.

All the way to believing they are better, instead of only different.

Crusades, planes, bombs. Christian or Islam, makes no difference. All is religion.

Isn’t that what most of Christianity has become, just another religion?

Isn’t that who we are as people, mostly religious in prescription?

Living to overcome condemnation through our performance, be it spiritual or secular, it makes no difference. Causing us to believe we are better than another, where in truth, we are only different.

All is spiritual, and most all, have simply become religious.

In doing so, terrorism is already here.

For we are a terrorist nation, because we are a religious nation. Our violence just looks different.

Infidels declared. Homosexuals, transgenders, all condemned. Those on the left, those on the right. Immigrants, refugees, or somewhere in between. Pro-life, pro-choice. Those who have, those who have not. All sighted as targets, candidates for open season. None, it seems are exempt from hate. We are a hating, violent country, because of our religions.

Where we are a religious person we are a terrorist person, our violence and evil nonetheless violent and evil.

Bringing people low to lift ourselves up, terrorizing with the planes of our disapproval. Crashing people to pieces to fabricate an affirmation of self and shame’s removal. Pushing people behind simply to get ahead. Pimping dreams that are merely schemes. Condemning, judging, isolating, labeling, all to win in this religious game. Ultimately, to believe we are better, instead of merely one in the same.

Missiles of marginalization, bombs of bigotry. Shrapnel-laced blog posts, and weaponized rants of ideology. Whether it’s a pen or a pipe-bomb, legislations, labels, or land-mines, they are nonetheless, mere extensions of a heart poisoned by religion. Purposed primarily on justifying ourselves, our faith system, or our position.

Even that we are better, instead of merely different.

Murdering people, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. All is terrorism, nonetheless.

Just ask Jesus.

For Jesus, to hate in heart is to murder in action. At the core, either choice changes not our position. To pray “thy Kingdom come,” to give Jesus your adoration. This diagnosis must become our admission. We all need Grace, and all equally. Non are better, only different.

There is ISIS in us all, because there is the religious in us all.

This is the true battle within and without. Where external or inner condemnation attempts to engage our performance, spiritual or otherwise, to cover over or rise above areas where one feels lack. Be it appeasing a God, living up to religious standards, using success to medicate inner insecurities, bringing another down to lift one’s self up, ISIS is within us all. To choose religion over Grace.

Grace is God’s best idea to show the heart that believes it’s condemned, that there is no condemnation to believe. Grace is based on the eternal truth, that through Jesus none are condemned, none are lacking, all our whole, righteous, complete, and without blemish, all because of Jesus’ performance, our only hope.

Religion is based on the lie from Satan, that all are condemned, lacking, incomplete, poisoned, and their only hope ultimately rests in some level of their performance to appease an angry, conditional-loving God who requires something of their actions to trigger His.

Where we choose religion over Grace, ISIS is not just them over there, it’s you and me, right here.

Until the world awakens to Grace and dies to religion, there will always be an ISIS within and without.

Until you can see the ISIS in the mirror, you will not see yourself in ISIS. We are all human, none are better, only different. This is the scandal and humbling of Grace.

Terrorism is a complex issue that needs many levels of response.

But until we believe within Grace lies the way, we really don’t believe Grace all the way, and we will forever miss its capacity to heal the true root of all that is terrorism, and rid our planet of its power.

Until ISIS is you, you will not believe you need the same enormity of Grace necessary to be given, for ISIS to be no more.

You can’t give what you don’t have, and you don’t have what you don’t believe you need.

Religion, retaliation, revenge, only serve to arm and rearm.

Only Grace, disarms.

Our only chance to find true healing, of the ISIS within and the ISIS without.

Why I Wish I Were Gay, And Maybe You Should Too

November 18, 2015 / / 6 Comments

Some of my gay friends would do just about anything to not be gay. Not out of some confusion complex or deep inner shame, but solely because of the abuse, condemnation, and flat out emotional torture they endure from our bigoted culture. For many, there are times of deep introspection, the searching for self-affirmation, navigating through a jungle of external to internal condemnation. I would never wish this experience on anyone and deeply empathize with their journey. The walk of being gay is uphill at best. It can be a special kind of living hell. Day by day, by day, no rest.

Yet, at times, I do wish I were gay.

Being gay affords an intrinsic discovery of profound awarenesses and the development of a depth of personhood that is to be highly prized. Gains that can tip the scales of loss and yield a treasure, over flowing. A vault of gold that only being gay can unlock.

At times, I wish I were gay.

Being so, you quickly find out with whom there is true friendship and true family. There’s no wasting time spending years in veiled relationships only to find out it was conditional love all along. The reality of people is quickly chased out of the shadows. There’s a kind of weeding out, a stripping down. Surface pleasantries and sunny-sky friendships quickly lose their appeal. One possesses a kind of relationship authentication system, revealing who is truly with you and who is truly not. And that, sooner than later. How much relational longing that only ended up in disappointment could have been usurped had I only been gay. Years of giving headspace to people who don’t matter. Tirelessly coaxing people into having an interest in my life and desperately trying to keep them caring. Some heterosexuals claim to have a kind of “gay-dar.” A radar-like sense for who is gay and who is not. Well let me tell you, gay people have a “crap-dar” I quick sense of who is full of crap and who is not.

Oh how at times, I wish I were gay.

I would have jettisoned the Evangelical brand of Jesus much sooner. The house of cards that is much of modern Christianity would have blown over in the wind of my God-breathed homosexuality, revealing religion’s evil scheme. To think about all the years I spent completely oblivious, clueless to this legalistic, self-righteous, elitist, religiously-spirited, arrogant, condemning, and theologically twisted take on Christianity. The blindest of the blind. Never seeing my faith from the other side. Therefore, never seeing faith at all. Rather condemning, judging, misleading, and flat out being wrong. A complete and utter jackass in the name of Jesus. Oh, the shame that could have been averted from the show-stopping, jaw dropping discovery that what I thought was the Way, was no way at all.

Had only I been gay.

I would have known more; earlier, faster, deeper, quicker, of what it means to be truly human. To be humane. To love without condition. To be loved without hesitation. For love that hesitates is no love at all. All that religion and conservatism wanted to rid me, God wanted to give me. My humanity. Not a disease but a divinity. You don’t learn to truly love until you learn what it feels to be truly hated. That’s the gift of an enemy, that we rise above to love, anyway. None grow to be more accepting than those deemed unacceptable. Loving, than those deemed to be unloveable. There is a special sound that Grace makes, a special sound that Grace quakes from those who are gay. Compassion for human suffering, a tolerance for intolerance. Grace upon Grace. None are better, only different. These are the diamonds of being gay.

Oh how I wish at times, I were gay.

To rest in my identity in Christ would have come much sooner. Years spent people pleasing, God pleasing. As if people pleasing and God pleasing were possible. Believing in a God who is displeased, full of an anger that needed to be appeased. What a freedom there could have been, more towards the beginning not the end. That God is Grace. He is love. Perfectly loving me, always delighting in me. Without hesitation, but complete affirmation. He is so much better, so much greater than I ever believed. Higher, deeper, wider, stronger. One can never exaggerate the goodness of God. Seeing Jesus through the lens of being gay, one can see God as being fully grey, loving every shade.

It’s never been about me, and all my me-ness. It’s only and always been about Him, and His loveliness. To finally awaken, to breathe for the first time, when having thought I was breathing all the time. This is what happens, when what you once believed and have been told is that you are breaking the mold, turns out to rather be the Father’s fashioning of a wholeness to behold. Held in the same hands as the stars. That you are.

Had I only been gay.

I would have loved the Bible as I’ve come to love it now, in all its complexity and errancy. The progressive revelation of humanity’s experience with God, completely completed in Jesus. The perfect Word, not a page, but a Person. Longing to reveal Himself to me and through me, as Love. Not a weapon, but a whiskey, intoxicating me in one hundred proof Grace, drinking in the forever favor of His face. Used by the religious to condemn. By Jesus to reveal the beautify of the Father. The beauty of them in which the world sees none. Only a quest from a heart pierced by religion’s claws sees the true divinity within us all. Not just a book, but an anthem affirming all of life.

How at times, I wish I were gay.

Playing in the garden of vulnerability, watching flowers grow in colors of uncertainty, learning to stand in the tension and stay connected with those stretching the connections. Where honesty and openness lose their threatening, and cuts and scars need no pre-packaging. Learning and living in true worship. Hands in the air with words singing, “Oh God, my life sucks and I’m having serious doubts about You.” Beautiful songs that need not reach the throne, because He has already drawn near, long before. Weeping, crying, laughing, living, struggling, searching, learning, questioning… all together. True community. Wanted, welcomed, celebrated, affirmed. Where church happens best where the marginalized, discarded, condemned, cast out, are happening most.

Had I only been gay.

I would have come in touch with my racism much sooner. The inner bigot that was me. The false accuser declaring what is no error, to be error. For this is the bottom line of homosexuality, where the heart meets heaven. No choice, no sin, no different than the color of a person’s skin. To be against one who is gay, is to be against myself, and myself against Him. To stand in opposition to the handiwork of the Creator who created me from within.

If only I had been gay.

To experience such revelation, to have this awareness, discover these discoveries, to garner pure wisdom. To love deeper, be known more fully, embrace more widely, to see more wholly. His beauty, His favor, His essence, His plan.

Sooner, clearer, greater… the heart expand.

To finally see, scales falling from our eyes, the evil so many of us as Christians have embraced and become, you ought to wish you were gay.

Oh, how at times, I do wish… I were gay, and maybe you should too.

Maybe… you should too.

If You Didn’t Before, You Do Now : A Pastor’s Love Letter To The LGBT Community

October 24, 2015 / / 15 Comments

I’m not sure how this all started. All I know is, it has.

You are of the LGBT community, I am not, but I might as well be. You have a LGBT child, I do not, but who knows what could be.

A pastor who was once lost in anti-LGBT’s ignorance and delusion, now a pastor whose fight is to bring Light to the confusion.

Your story is my story, and my story, your story. Not exactly, but yet exactly—a glue that cannot be unglued from what God has knit together. You in my heart, and my heart with you—together.

Not out of some benevolence, as if you were some come kind of mission, but out of pissed-off objection to truths that have seen their evil omission. This is a violent world, and you, a prime recipient. Blind spots here, ignorance there—religion, both the product and the primary cause. You are a beautiful creation of the Creator and the victim of a darkness that only Truth can give pause.

A terrible, disgusting injustice has been done, you have been lied to flat out, and lies about you. Poisons of the Poisoner, hate from the Hater, deceptions of the Deceiver—proof texts, and cons from the removal of context, all from the Accuser. The waterfall of evil’s river, holding you under with shame, it’s time for the captive to be set free, to awaken to your true Name.

“Beloved”

There is nothing to be changed, not a problem to be solved, nor a choice to regret—no shame from which to hide, or a mistake for which to apologize. Nothing to cure, run from, remove, discipline, or overcome. You are not a blemish solved by Grace or some sympathetic exception, but a divine creation, no less than all the others, you are God’s intention.

Tolerance is reserved for things that annoy us, acceptance reserved for that which we deem abnormal. Run from it, all of it, a spiritual veil to an empty offering. Beauty and blessing are things to be desired—you deserve to be desired and I, desire you.

From the affection of the Father, the pride of His gleam, His favor poured over—I desire you.

I want to curse dark skies with you, wrestle out depression’s claws with you. I want to battle haunts in your head, stomach rejections’s vomit with you. I want to stand in “straight” lines, dine at homophobic tables with you. I want to walk on broken family glass with you, pull back the knife in your hands with you.

I want to catch fading breaths with you, beat ignorance’s chest with you. I want to dance in parades with you, laugh to the point of peeing with you. I want to rejoice at the dawn of a new day and celebrate the God-affirmation of being lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or gay.

If you didn’t have before, you do now—a warrior defending your side, a wing under which you can reside, a protector proclaiming your innocence, an ear that hears with no pretense, a mutual tear crying, a mutual heart sighing.

You have never been alone. You are not alone. Not ever before, not now.

Let’s take this hill together, run the race together—until strength we have no more. Let’s raises our glasses, stand up to the masses, “greater is He that is in us, more are they in heaven that are with us.”

Never giving up, never giving in—we will not stop, we will not retreat, we will not be silent

No chance, no way, not ever.

This is our day.

This is our time.

This is our life.

This is our truth!

If you didn’t have a pastor, you do now—never received a love letter from a pastor? You have now.

It’s about damn time.

You deserve to be desired, and I… desire you.

Standing With The People You Can’t Stand

October 23, 2015 / / 4 Comments

The root essence of every person that was, is, or will ever be… is goodness.

In the creation poem that opens its scroll at the front of the Christian Bible, God speaks the world into being. With hands coursing His artistic beard, He pauses between breathes to evaluate His living imagery. In rhythmic cadence, with each step He declares, “it is good.”

I love that God creates creation good, not perfect. It can go here, it can go there. Loaded with life force, the cosmic tapestry awaiting humanity’s weaving. Not without the capacity for hands to sew devilish patterns out of divine art. It’s good, remember, not perfect.

The Tempter in serpent form, exploited the Garden of its goodness. Playing his sole card of condemnation, the first human ones bit the bluff. Convinced they lacked in some way, unworthy of the worthiness etched into their being. What was natural became naked, and the yarns of shame and guilt slithered their coil through the threads of inherent goodness. It is a complex weave. And we, are a complex people in the arduous journey of trying to unravel from condemnation’s relentless entanglement.

This is the story of every human being, bobbing and weaving, wrestling to come out from under condemnation believed. It is the root of all sin. The catalyst of all that is religious. The genesis of all contortions, twisted personas, and justifications. Compelling us into the dance to heal or conceal a shamed heart. All of us have a life that tells a unique, complicated story and reveals a personal shaping from our quest to be released from the lie we swallow as truth… condemnation. Adopted perspectives, twitches, scars, blind spots, aversions and conclusions along the way. However beautiful or deplorable the verses we write, the views we take, the paths we travel. From this, the many layers and branches of our complexities are sprouted. Beliefs, attitudes, actions. The whole nest.

We are, complex people.

Yet, thousands of years later, chapters into humanity’s stumble-filled stewarding of life. A biblical writer Paul to a younger man Timothy, re-articulates the Spirit. Seeing underneath humanity’s blunder of intricate cuts, knots, and lose ends fabricated to mend the wounds of a soul believed to be shamed. God still deems our essence as… good. Always has been, always will be… good. After all the religious patches and patchwork, it is still… all good.

Sin was never who we are, it’s always been the fruit of a heart believed to be forever rooted in unworthiness and its garments of guilt and shame. Condemnation’s great deception, that we are lacking life, not loaded with it. Bad seed, not good.

No matter the different complexities, for good or evil, this Serpent-shame has wrought, the root essence of every person that was, is, or will ever be… is goodness.

Until Grace.

Grace, the only cure for a condemned heart.

Grace, the true catalyst for all this is right.

Grace, the maker of our new-creation identities.

Grace, the final triumph, resurrecting us beyond goodness.

Completely whole, in-condemnable in Him. At the cross, one and done. All finished, for all. Grace upon Grace!

This is not my evaluation, it is in fact the Christ’s re-creation. It is His mark, it is His stamp, it is His declaration. No matter how reckless, evil, eschew, or vile our wrestle from condemnation’s pursuit becomes us. All is still… good. Not just good… but now whole, pure, blemish free. Fully human, fully holy.

This is our mutual humanity. No one excluded.

This is our human story. All included.

The Finisher calls out, “All is Grace, and all are whole in Me.”

Even in full awareness and rest in this Jesus-proclamation. Realizing there is no longer any hold from which to wrestle out. The Tempter still tempts, to crawl back under Law, to bite the old bluff, to weave a curtain already removed, to escape from that which one is are already free. Ancient and modern messages, all to sew condemnation’s bitter seed anew.

This, we must remember.

It’s not where our humanity meets another human that sparks fly, it’s where our complexities collide. You say “Tomato” I say “Tamato.” You road is traveling here, my road is traveling there. Your understanding says this, my understanding doesn’t say that. Your coping looks likes this, my run from coping looks like that. Behind every person’s eyes is a story, that if they told you, would break your heart. We are all just trying, our best. To come out, stay out, from under… condemnation.

We are all human, and complex in being so.

Where that complexity needs Grace who can always be for sure, all we know is Grace is sufficient for all our complexities. In the tapestry we spin, we all need Grace.

No more, “Hate the sin, love the sinner.” We love others, as them, not just towards them.

This, we must remember.

Pushing out from condemnation’s relentless entanglement. Standing watch from being dragged back into the web of lies from which Truth has set us free. This is a shared story, from which we all read and must read others.

That Jesus died for all, we must stand with all… in all our complexities.

Not that I agree with all in mind, action, or spirit. But agreeing with Jesus. His evaluation of all is sufficient for my all.

I may not be able to stand you at times, but I am going stand with you for all time, as a fellow human being, in all of our complexity, God-imaged by our Creator, and included in Jesus and His finished work. Eternally loved, valued, and embraced in Christ. Free to be, who we are… human. In all our complexity.

Cutting through, with the sword of Grace that our differences might give way to our common goodness; not just goodness, but wholeness. That my insecurities may no longer eclipse my view of your God-imaged essence. That my ignorance of your story might give way to my standing under it, and even with it.

I may not be able, at times, to stand your theology, behaviors, attitudes, decisions, even telling you so, the same. But I will stand with you, nonetheless, even if you should walk away.

That I agree with your story, is not a requirement. That you have a story, is reason enough.

This is the Jesus call, for all of us… standing with people, particular the ones, we can’t stand.

Grace wins, yet again.

Be Brave : God’s Ardent Message to Every Gay Person, and The People In Their Life

October 16, 2015 / / 8 Comments

It wasn’t your choice, it may not have been your desire, but the stage is set. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

For some of you, the curtain awaits, but coming out… the apprehensions are too overwhelming. You’ve rehearsed your lines a thousand times, looked into the crystal ball of every person’s response, plotted the strands of dominoes that are sure to fall the moment you sing your first note…  “I’m gay.” “My son is gay.” “Yah, my sister… she’s gay.”

For others, you’ve taken the stage. You began your song, the crowd looked down at the Playbill. They were quick to the disconnect. This wasn’t in the script, it’s not how the story was supposed to go. The plot twist sounded… gasps, chatter… then silence. Some picking up their things, searching for exit signs.

One thing is clear, the audience of your life is uncomfortable with this scene, if not in complete rebellion. Relatives can’t seem to understand. Your spouse, hugging an old baby picture off the mantle, still convinced “denial” is just a river in Egypt. Once intimate friendships have now evaporated. The people who should be drawing you close are pushing you away. With spotlights burning your gaze, you struggle to see who’s in and who’s out.

This if your life. This is your scene. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

A rush of anxiety wells up from your toes to your head. You scan the auditorium. It’s funhouse mirrors without the fun. Everything that once was so familiar looks so unfamiliar. You ad-lib a closing verse knelt down with fists shaking…. “This can’t be real, this can’t be happening. Oh my God, my hands and feet are bleeding. Somebody, pull the damn curtain, and get me the hell out of here.”

In tears, you scamper off stage. If only it ended there.

You search for quietness, but the quietness won’t be quiet. You have questions for God. Why me? Why us? Isn’t there some other way?

It’s gut wrenching, it’s hard, aloneness never felt so lonely.

This if your life. This is your scene. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

In the very midst. Right here, right now, God speaks a message, to you. He’s sitting on your lap, grasping your shoulders, speaking straight into your eyes…

Be brave.

It’s time to be brave.

You’re gay. You are fearfully and wonderfully made… gay. There was no mistake. You’re not a question, you’re a statement. From the voice of the Father, of the beauty of Jesus.

For such a time as this, you are born. You are the revival God is bringing to this world. Stop wishing for everybody else’s life, this is your life. Holy, pure, without blemish, overwhelmed with purpose. Stand up, take your place.

If God created you to be you, and you aren’t willing to be you, then why in the frigging universe, did God create you in the first place?

Sing your song, damn it, sing your song!

The moment is now. Don’t you dare give up, and don’t you dare shrink back.

It’s time to be brave.

God is not ashamed of your child, why are you? Look at me eyeball to eyeball. You are their family, for crying out loud. You are God’s best idea as to how to manifest His Grace and love to this divine-imaged human being.

What? You think those people’s backseat opinions really matter? You’re actually giving them a voice? I’m not trying to minimize the challenge. But, you don’t owe them anything. Not an explanation, a plan, a Bible verse, and surely not a space in your head. This is your scene, not theirs, this is your family, not theirs. This is your child, not theirs.

For Christ’s sake, it’s time to be brave!

Fine, you’re having an honest debate in your mind regarding the Scriptures. But, it’s our children that deserve our strongest stance and defense, not the Bible. Jesus would have it no other way. It’s unconditional love, or it’s not love at all.

Your homosexual child isn’t a cross to bear, don’t ever think or speak that poison again. They are no less than the Christ you carry into this world.  Stop fiddling, stop fumbling, start embracing, with the same pride and delight your Father has in you.

It’s time to be brave.

Friends don’t let gay friends be gay, alone. They don’t let families with gay children, be families, alone. This is friendship, to lay down one’s life. You could be the only ray of heaven in that person’s hell. If you walk away, what will be left?

It’s time to be brave.

If you are going to be a church, and claim that “ALL are welcome,” with all your branding, slick staging, and spiritual posturing. You better make for damn sure that ALL aren’t just welcomed.. but wanted, loved, empowered, protected and dare I say… affirmed, and celebrated.  You represent Jesus. Who for the joy set before Him… endured. For the God-smiling affirmation and heaven-bursting celebration of ALL set before Him… He endured. Not just endured, but died.

If you aren’t enduring for the ALL, and the joy Jesus takes in ALL, you are not enduring for Heaven’s sake, you are enabling… for Hell’s.

You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

It’s time to be brave.

Be brave.

For Christ’s sake. Be brave.

Be Brave : God’s Ardent Message to Every Gay Person, and The People In Their Life

October 16, 2015 / / 2 Comments

It wasn’t your choice, it may not have been your desire, but the stage is set. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

For some of you, the curtain awaits, but coming out… the apprehensions are too overwhelming.  You’ve rehearsed your lines a thousand times, looked into the crystal ball of every person’s response, plotted the strands of dominoes that are sure to fall the moment you sing your first note…  “I’m gay.” “My son is gay.” “Yah, my sister… she’s gay.”

For others, you’ve taken the stage. You began your song, the crowd looked down at the Playbill. They were quick to the disconnect. This wasn’t in the script, it’s not how the story was supposed to go. The plot twist sounded… gasps, chatter… then silence. Some picking up their things, searching for exit signs.

One thing is clear, the audience of your life is uncomfortable with this scene, if not in complete rebellion. Relatives can’t seem to understand. Your spouse, hugging an old baby picture off the mantle, still convinced “denial” is just a river in Egypt. Once intimate friendships have now evaporated. The people who should be drawing you close are pushing you away. With spotlights burning your gaze, you struggle to see who’s in and who’s out.

This if your life. This is your scene. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

A rush of anxiety wells up from your toes to your head. You scan the auditorium. It’s funhouse mirrors without the fun. Everything that once was so familiar looks so unfamiliar. You ad-lib a closing verse knelt down with fists shaking…. “This can’t be real, this can’t be happening. Oh my God, my hands and feet are bleeding. Somebody, pull the damn curtain, and get me the hell out of here.”

In tears, you scamper off stage. If only it ended there.

You search for quietness, but the quietness won’t be quiet. You have questions for God. Why me? Why us? Isn’t there some other way?

It’s gut wrenching, it’s hard, aloneness never felt so lonely.

This if your life. This is your scene. You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

In the very midst. Right here, right now, God speaks a message, to you. He’s sitting on your lap, grasping your shoulders, speaking straight into your eyes…

Be brave.

It’s time to be brave.

You’re gay. You are fearfully and wonderfully made… gay. There was no mistake. You’re not a question, you’re a statement. From the voice of the Father, of the beauty of Jesus.

For such a time as this, you are born. You are the revival God is bringing to this world. Stop wishing for everybody else’s life, this is your life. Holy, pure, without blemish, overwhelmed with purpose. Stand up, take your place.

If God created you to be you, and you aren’t willing to be you, then why in the frigging universe, did God create you in the first place?

Sing your song, damn it, sing your song!

The moment is now. Don’t you dare give up, and don’t you dare shrink back.

It’s time to be brave.

God is not ashamed of your child, why are you? Look at me eyeball to eyeball. You are their family, for crying out loud. You are God’s best idea as to how to manifest His Grace and love to this divine-imaged human being.

What? You think those people’s backseat opinions really matter? You’re actually giving them a voice? I’m not trying to minimize the challenge. But, you don’t owe them anything. Not an explanation, a plan, a Bible verse, and surely not a space in your head. This is your scene, not theirs, this is your family, not theirs. This is your child, not theirs.

For Christ’s sake, it’s time to be brave!

Fine, you’re having an honest debate in your mind regarding the Scriptures. But, it’s our children that deserve our strongest stance and defense, not the Bible. Jesus would have it no other way. It’s unconditional love, or it’s not love at all.

Your homosexual child isn’t a cross to bear, don’t ever think or speak that poison again. They are no less than the Christ you carry into this world.  Stop fiddling, stop fumbling, start embracing, with the same pride and delight your Father has in you.

It’s time to be brave.

Friends don’t let gay friends be gay, alone. They don’t let families with gay children, be families, alone. This is friendship, to lay down one’s life. You could be the only ray of heaven in that person’s hell. If you walk away, what will be left?

It’s time to be brave.

If you are going to be a church, and claim that “ALL are welcome,” with all your branding, slick staging, and spiritual posturing. You better make for damn sure that ALL aren’t just welcomed.. but wanted, loved, empowered, protected and dare I say… affirmed, and celebrated.  You represent Jesus. Who for the joy set before Him… endured. For the God-smiling affirmation and heaven-bursting celebration of ALL set before Him… He endured. Not just endured, but died.

If you aren’t enduring for the ALL, and the joy Jesus takes in ALL, you are not enduring for Heaven’s sake, you are enabling… for Hell’s.

You are gay, you have a gay child, your brother, sister, or friend is gay.

It’s time to be brave.

Be brave.

For Christ’s sake. Be brave.

If You Really Were “Unashamed”

October 9, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Rallying kids to bring their Bibles to school, Facebook status pictures declaring “I’m a Christian,” Sharpie pens used to write “I am unashamed” on a hand or two. Really, this is the best idea we can come up with to present Jesus to our planet?

I know, you feel attacked as a “conservative” Christian, believing there is a growing “war” against your flavor of faith. You fear you aren’t getting your “way” in American culture, and in your mind, it’s all going to straight to hell… homosexuality, gun control, religious discrimination, loss of “family” values, and on and on. Shoot, old episodes of “Leave it Beaver” are even hard to find these days. Stop the madness.

And then, your freedoms. As if somehow they are under vicious attack as well. Last time I checked, you can still pray, worship, study, and do everything Jesus exampled. No, not where separation of Church and State applies. It’s been that way for how long now? But evidently, that’s not good enough as you conclude your leverage and influence is slipping. Truth be told, the rules have long been bent on the side of extending Christian favor in American society. That things are perhaps leveling a bit is truly nothing to get your panties in a wad. In fact, it presents great opportunity, maybe not for your religiosity, but for Jesus. Besides, worst case scenario, don’t we believe in the God who holds all the stars in His hands? What posture of fear or angst could we ever take if we were truly “unashamed?”

Do you really want to represent Jesus like that spoiled kid in the sandbox who always has to get his way, whines when he doesn’t, and pushes people around? Do you think we Christians getting together and standing sideways against the world as we declare our “unashamed” Christian allegiance, is making any impact at all? Congratulations, you are “a Christian.” We get it. Your Facebook status, twitter tags, t-shirts, and body art declare it. Applause, applause, you got your kids to carry a Bible to school. Wow, you are so faithful and uber-devoted. Your “Braveheart” battle field defense of team-Christian has even Mel Gibson taking notes.

Though it may look and feel all Jesus-serving to you with high-fives and spiritual pats on the bottom from your church-peeps, the rest of us aren’t fooled at all. Nope, we’re actually repulsed. And quite honestly, we are ashamed, not of the Gospel, but of your religious, elitist, pretentious, “I am… unashamed, a Christian…look at my Bible… blah, blah, blah…” stand against the world and all that you deem wrong, offensive, or unfair. Your version of Jesus and His Gospel has become so “spit it out of my mouth” worthy. I’m struggling for words right now to describe the taste on my tongue, so how does “crap” sound to you? Defensive, self-serving, arrogant, religious.

If you really were “unashamed” of the Gospel…

Your outward obedience and spiritual show would be flat out nothing to you, and the spotlighting of Jesus’s obedience, the complete sufficiency of His Grace, and the beauty of His perfect love would be everything.

You’d be licking your chops for opportunities to declare to the world, “we are unashamed of you.” Writing it on the hearts of every kind of person of every kind of lifestyle, skin color, creed, status, morality, nationality, or background. Not resting until all are aware, and never forget the Father’s true heart for them.

You’d care less if the world is accommodating your Christian agenda and values, giving them fair play and perpetuation. Simply serving people, unconditionally without conditions would be opportunity overflowing.

You wouldn’t be so cocked and loaded to defend Christianity, rallying the troops to demonstrate your resolve. To simply be Jesus to your neighbor, defending the poor, the marginalized, and the ones so confidently deemed to be sinning. That would be your cross.

You’d be far less interested in appearances, people knowing you are a Christian and a devoted player on the team. That people would see Jesus, His ardent delight in them that compels His eternal smile and forever embrace. That would be heaven to you.

Things like “bring a Bible to school” would be so less attractive to you, and show itself to be ridiculously self serving and lame, while washing the feet of those you least like and who are least like you would become so compelling.

If you really were “unashamed” of the Gospel…

You’d be brave with Grace, believing it all the way, daring to live it… all the way.

You’d be reading the world, the Scriptures, and the issues of our day through the lens of Jesus.

Jesus who is Grace, and Grace which is the Gospel.

But perhaps there in lies the crux of the matter… maybe it’s more like you are “unashamed” of club-Christianity, but Grace is another story.

Grace disturbs you, it shakes your foundations, it levels the playing field, and renders all your religious posturing and precepts as gonging, clanging cymbals… out of beat. A Grace that strips all the religious playing cards out of your hands and in return gives you plowshares. But you want to point fingers, not plow. You want to proclaim your faithfulness, not plow. You want to protect your agenda, not plow. You want to promote your ideology, not plow. You want to perpetuate your brand, your team, your institution, not plow. And then you wonder why so many don’t respond to your religious, Christian whistle blows, follow your cadence, or stay committed to marching in your band.

The more you religiously declare “I am unashamed” the more you in fact show yourself to be “ashamed,” not of your religious allegiance, but of a Grace that renders your allegiance as filthy rags, and admonishes you to serve rather than be served, love rather than label, and accept rather than condemn.

You see the house of cards your conservatism has built falling to the ground, one scriptural contextualization, one church statistic, one condemning, bible thumping Christian at a time. And so your best idea is to dig your religious heels in the ground, do something that looks and feels spiritual to show the world, you still mean business, and your God isn’t dead. All while, refusing the cure… Grace.

At best, your freedom to be religious has been challenged here and there, but not your freedom to be Jesus, if it’s Jesus you are truly “unashamed”… to be.

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