The second part of this treatment
of ex-gay ministries is focused on some of the Christian thinking behind these
ministries. You have probably worked this out by now, but Christians come in
all shapes and sizes. There are Christians and there are Christians. With some,
it feels like they just radiate love and God’s grace, while others sound more
like the Pharisees in Jesus’ time, full of sound and fury and telling everyone
who is prepared to listen exactly how it is. The former we want to be around.
We enjoy their company, we admire their spiritual walk. The latter, we just
feel like running a country mile in the opposite direction. They feel a bit
like God’s military police. So let’s dive straight in and take a look at where
the ex-gay people fit into all this and why they think the way they do.
Conservative / Traditional Christian Beliefs about Gay Sexuality
Before we commence an examination
of what ex-gay ministries believe and do, it’s important to know first what
they believe about gay sexuality in general. Here’s a basic list.
 |
| Cardinal Timothy Doaln New York outspoken anti-gay cleric |
2.
They deem it
unnatural because it goes against what they believe is a God-given order in
creation, male and female, found throughout nature and which potentiates the
creative act of generating new life
3.
Anything
that doesn’t potentiate life therefore cannot be natural
4.
Because it
is unnatural, they consider it to be sin
5.
If it is
sin, then by definition, it goes against God and is viewed as a rejection of
God and his ways
6.
If it is
sin, it is never to be entered into willingly and must be repented of, like
other sins
7.
In order to
maintain a good conscience, a person must determine not to repeat this sin ever
again
8.
If it is
repeated, there is forgiveness, but a good conscience demands a resolve not to do
it again
9.
They believe
that like other behavioural sins it is entirely possible not to do it
10.
They declare
also that the Bible condemns homosexuality as sin in a number of places and
describes it as an abomination
11.
They
interpret the Bible as saying that homosexuals will be judged and found wanting,
and in one place in the New testament, they interpret its inclusion in a list of
sins as declaring that it is wrong enough to keep individuals from inheriting the
Kingdom of God, which they interpret as being heaven
12.
Some
conservative Christians treat this issue as being the absolute deal breaker
(like no other) as to whether you are acceptable to God, whether you are an
authentic Christian, whether you should be accepted in the Church, and whether
you will go to heaven.
Who Are These Christians?
1.
They are
predominantly Protestant, although there are some who are Catholic and Orthodox
2.
They are
predominantly evangelical and / or pentecostal
3.
They base
their faith on the reformation precept of sola
scriptura, ie., scripture alone, and will not countenance any other
authority in their life
4.
They view
the Bible as being divinely inspired, ie., God is the ultimate author of all
the texts
5.
They state
therefore that the Bible is no less than the Word of God and must be obeyed and
followed as the Word of God, not a
man-made artefact
6.
They
strenuously argue for a face-value approach to scripture, ie., a literalist
approach to the Bible, where the scripture says what it means and means what it
says
7.
They believe
in a penal substitutionary atonement, ie., their belief about salvation is that
humanity should be judged by God, so God comes to earth himself and allows
himself to be murdered by the colluding Roman authorities and Jewish religious
leaders in Jerusalem, thus miraculously taking upon himself his own judgement,
thereby removing the necessity for humanity to be judged by God. In other
words, Jesus died for our sins and in our place so that we don’t have to die
for our sins or get judged by God
 |
| Pat Robertson outspoken anti-gay evangelical leader |
9.
They believe
that after your salvation, you have to allow God’s Holy Spirit to sanctify you
over the duration of your life, which occurs by spiritual practice, ie., going
to church and praying, and by eschewing sin
10.
They believe
that God will personally intervene in your life to perform miracles sometimes
and at least bless you in all your ways
11.
They believe
in a literal second coming of Christ physically to the earth – many of them
believe that humanity is already in the time when Christ will return soon
Their Style
Some of them are gentle and
humble and very loving. They will welcome you, smile at you, you will feel the
warmth of their bodies as they lay hands on you, you will feel the caress of
their voice as they pray over you or for you. You will feel the solace of
having like-minded people around you who all want the same thing for you as you
do. Others, not so much. Some are assertive and even acerbic. They can be
strident in their opinions and pass them off as God’s word to you. Some will
want to bring you in for ‘deliverance’ from demons, others will want to prophesy
over you and tell you that God has great things in store for you ‘as you leave
off and come out of this lifestyle’. Some will even be passive-aggressive with
you, countenancing no other position but their own.
Their Worldview
When you believe the things I
have just written, it sets you up with a certain worldview. A worldview is what
it sounds like, the way you view the world, other people, nature, money, work,
sex, relationships, illness, death, justice and every other thing you could
possibly think of that goes to make up what we call human existence on this
planet. A worldview is an all-encompassing prism or filter through which we
look at the whole of life. It skews our vision to the nature of the prism or
filter. Needless to say, evangelicals and / or fundamentalists have a very
strict and rigorous worldview that narrows their aspect and opinions down to a
set of very fundamental attitudes that need to be entirely congruent with the
above statements, the general ones and the ones about gay sexuality. This
worldview must be in agreement with those precepts otherwise an individual’s
Christian faith is brought under uncertainty and in some cases, even their
salvation.
Are you the right kind of person,
or not? Are you the right kind of Christian, or not? Do you believe the right
kind of things, or not? It is an appeal to orthodoxy. But it is also a
declaration that there exists this animal orthodoxy. There is a right way to think. There is
a right way to act. There is a right
way to believe. There is a right way
to be Christian. There is a right way
to have authentic spirituality. And you know already who they claim to have
this right way, don’t you? Of course, it is them. And if there is a right way,
which is theirs, then it follows logically that there is a wrong way, which
subsumes pretty much everyone else.
Us and Them
This means that everyone who does
not agree with their worldview is wrong. There is set up an ‘us and them’
dichotomy that sees some people as being in and everyone else out, some
acceptable, the rest not, some righteous before God, the rest not. They are not
at all reticent about declaring who is in and who is out, who is doing the
right thing and who is not, who is sinning and who is not. There appears to be
no reluctance whatsoever in such minded Christians to pass judgment on other
people and to evaluate where they are located according to their worldview.
Some Commentary
But here’s the thing. Not all of
Christianity thinks this way. Not all of Christian discourse uses this kind of
language or holds these precepts. Why? For a start, not all Christians around
the world hold the concept of orthodoxy quite so knuckle-white tightly. This
attitude to certainty, or the addiction to certainty as I call it in another
BGBC Blog post, has only been around in the format with which we are familiar
for just over one hundred years. It is strident fundamentalism - a faith
without heart. For many Christians the world over, such an attitude feels a
little juvenile. It feels like it does not correspond to what we know of human
life and the level of uncertainty there is in the world and in our existence.
It feels like it flies in the face of the reality of human suffering, pain,
loneliness, grief and anguish which we all must face to one degree or another
eventually. It feels like it is antithetical to the notion that we don’t know
it all, that there is so much that we do not understand.
We do not understand God despite
the wonderful teachings and example of Jesus (and even he said that he had not
told us everything because we would not be able to bear it all). We do not
understand the full meaning of life and how it all fits together, for us as individuals
and as a human race. We do not understand the place of suffering. We do not
understand the existence of injustice. We do not understand our own mortality
and often stand against it to the bitter end. In the face of such a reality,
such certainty feels like it is juvenile and immature.
Further to this, Christians
themselves can’t agree on everything. Not even in the first century in the time
of the first Christians was there a homogeneous orthodoxy that overarched all
belief and discourse in matters of the new faith. As a matter of fact, for the
first three centuries, there was significant to-ing and fro-ing as various
Christian groups vied and jockeyed to declare that they had the real thing.
And today, we have the same
situation. Put simply, there are literally thousands and thousands of different
Christian groupings around the world all with a different teaching, a different
focus, a different view of certain so-called orthodox precepts. They all love
God and they all follow Christ as his disciples yet there is disagreement on
issues and certain beliefs. Take for example, the ‘real presence.’ This is a sine qua non (indispensable element) precept
for Catholic people and some Anglicans that holds that the bread and wine in
the communion service literally becomes the body and blood of Christ. This is a
deal-breaker for Catholics such that a Mass without a Eucharist is not really
viewed as a full or proper Mass. Yet many non-Catholic denominations do not
hold this teaching at all. In Australia, the Baptists, the Uniting Church, the
Church of Christ and the pentecostal churches would not hold to such a view.
They have a very different theology of what communion means, yet both
theologies are based on exactly the same words that Jesus used at the Last Supper.
The same can be said of many different issues within Christian discourse
including even different theologies about the atonement, ie., what it is, how
it occurred, what Jesus’ role was, exactly what happened when Jesus died on the
cross, and the like. The penal substitutionary model that we saw above is not
the only model of redemption despite it being the one everyone knows and has
been taught.
This notion leads us into the
idea that there is uncertainty. Uncertainty is the enemy of fundamentalism. It
cannot cope with uncertainty. It needs certainty and orthodoxy to survive and
flourish and it enforces that orthodoxy rigorously. People get terribly upset
if you’re not orthodox. There is no room for the grey. There is no room for
question. There is no room for doubt. There is no room for nuance, the
development of ideas, growth, change, the search, the journey or the quest.
Orthodoxy is a done deal. It is most comfortable with dogma, with the past and
with received authoritative wisdom.
Ex-Gay Ministry Modus Operandi
The ex-gay ministry takes this
fundamentalist worldview and mixes it with a bit of out-dated, pop Freudian
psychology and comes up with the notion that:
1.
You’re gay
2.
That’s not
acceptable to us or to God
3.
You need to
change
4.
Because you
don’t fit our worldview of orthodoxy
5.
You can
change
6.
With God’s
help
7.
And with our
help in teaching and leading and guiding you
8.
And your
continuation in this group
9.
And your
life-long obligation to mandated celibacy
10.
And your
denial of your emotional life
11.
And your
immersion in Biblical scriptures that perpetuate you in sin consciousness and in
verses that speak of overcoming
12.
And your
resolve to act like a straight person for the rest of your life
13.
And marry an
opposite sex partner when you’re ready
Now different groups run different programs and there is not enough space here to describe them all in their intricate detail. I do give some description in BGBC which you will find helpful and there are copious personal stories on the on internet including YouTube.
Now different groups run different programs and there is not enough space here to describe them all in their intricate detail. I do give some description in BGBC which you will find helpful and there are copious personal stories on the on internet including YouTube.
Some More Commentary
It is important to know that
where the Bible says one thing, eg., the earth is about 6000 years old, and
science says another, in this age of enlightenment, we can let go the Bible
story as literal fact without losing our faith and treat it as a different kind
of truth, in this case, a creation myth designed to speak to us of the vast
creative act of God. We’ve done this in all sorts of areas, eg., sickness, mental
health, disability, war, cosmology, menstruation, marriage, revenge and slavery
to name a few. We have abandoned the strict Biblical view and values
surrounding these issues and adopted a modern world approach where despite our
change in attitude, we can still believe in God, follow Christ and call
ourselves Christians, yet take a different view to these issues because of the
discrepancy between the ancient world and our modern one, between their
understanding and our knowledge based in post-enlightenment modernity. I argue
strongly in my book that if we can do this in other areas of life, we should be
able to do the same thing with human sexuality and treat it from a more
sophisticated approach than would see all gay people the moral equivalent of temple
prostitutes, sexual idol worshippers, cruel partners and exploitative sex slave
traders or pimps; the focus of the Bible texts around homogenital activity.
Surely we know better than that in the twenty-first century.
One of the great modern
reformational movements in the Church today is that which encourages a more
nuanced reading of Scripture, one that takes into account the ancient world,
its ancient languages, ancient cultures, human agendas and competing voices.
But our Christian thinking is also informed by modern scholarship from the
disciplines of the sciences such as biology, genetics and psychology, the
social sciences such as sociology and anthropology, and the humanities such as
history, the antiquities and archaeology.
Our understanding of Jesus and his time and the birth of the Christian
church is now so much better than it ever has been before. So it’s not about
discarding the Bible, but using the Bible in a more a careful way, a more
sophisticated way and yes, a more loving way, a way that brings people together
not separates them apart, that focuses on the voices in the scripture that are
in keeping with the Jesus message and recognising that the other voices are
something else altogether.
Gay Christians
Thus, there is now a very large
and ever-growing group of gay people throughout the world, who have reclaimed
their Christian faith, have returned to church and who participate in the life
of their local church and who have integrated their sexuality and their faith.
Gay Christians are here to stay.
Why? Because:
1.
Gay
Christians understand that God really is love, that God’s essential nature is love and that God only
acts from a place of love
2.
Gay
Christians know that they were different when they were children, just like
other gay people knew, and that this became eroticised around the time of
puberty so that their natural sexual inclination emerged by itself in early
adolescence and that they did not choose it
3.
Gay
Christians understand that given their essential nature, they are the handiwork
of a loving creator God as much as any straight person is
4.
Gay
Christians know that a loving God would never judge or condemn an individual
over his or her sexual orientation, a component within their identity over which
they had no choice in allowing or no choice in changing
5.
Gay
Christians know that such a condemnatory God would be unjust and unfeeling and
understand that any hint of God being this way is the machinations of man not
God
6.
Gay
Christians know that such a Father is not in keeping with the teachings of
Jesus about the Father
7.
Gay
Christians know that their sexuality is as natural as their straight siblings’
sexuality is natural
8.
Gay
Christians know of the very plentiful literature and good scholarship about what
the Bible says and doesn’t say about gay sexuality
9.
Gay
Christians know that unlike the focus of the Biblical passages, their sexuality
is not about idolatry, temple prostitution or cruel or exploitative sexual acts
11.
Gay
Christians want to walk a life of spirituality, follow Jesus as their exemplar
in all things and treat other people with the kind of behaviour that Jesus
himself taught in his most important teachings, ie., loving, compassionate,
forgiving and self-sacrificing
12.
Gay
Christians know that there is no changing a person’s sexuality because it is
part of human identity, ie., you can’t change your sexual orientation any more
than you can change your personality
13.
Gay
Christians know God would never ask such an impossible change of anyone
14.
Gay
Christians know that God is not into torturing his children, casting them into
a life of meaningless striving for an impossible goal and drowning in inner turmoil
15.
Gay
Christians know that God wants humanity to flourish not wither, to have
‘abundant life’ as Jesus put it, which for all of us, means entering fully into
our total humanity
 |
| Me speaking to Sydney Freedom2b group 2012 |
17.
Gay
Christians know that according to Jesus, the first and greatest of all
commandments is love and that the second greatest commandment is also love
18.
Gay
Christians understand sin as estrangement: from God, from each other, from the
self, and that this sin is the cause of human suffering
19.
Gay
Christians have accepted themselves and try to love themselves because they
know that God loves them
20.
Gay
Christians understand that their sexuality is a gift of a wonderful creative
loving God who is not diminished by anything any human can do.
So, don’t fall for the prayer
meetings that try to change your orientation. They won’t. Don’t fall for the
kind words or the offered grace. These will not make you straight. Don’t fall
for the myriad Bible verses you are supposed to live. These will not change you
from being gay. Don’t fall for the laying on of hands or the prophesying or any
other spiritual phenomenon. For many,
these things have their place. But they will not change a gay person into a
straight person or make an easy life for someone who denies their natural self.
Make no mistake, any claims that spiritual effort will turn you straight are
false and will only serve to diminish your life by taking you down a path of
false spirituality linked to mental illness. And this is a dark path. YouTube
it if you don’t believe me. There are plenty of personal stories published that
you can see for yourself.
This is not what God had in mind for
you when you were created and brought into this incredible world. You were
meant for thriving. You were meant for flourishing. You were meant to grow and
become all that you are capable of. A life of becoming. And in your case, and
mine too, a gay life of becoming.
What Kind of God?
I marvel at what retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu said. "I
would refuse to go to a homophobic heaven. No, I would say sorry, I mean I
would much rather go to the other place. I would not worship a God who is
homophobic and that is how deeply I feel about this." He has caught
something here in this statement. It is about the kind of God who would create
someone gay, and science has shown us that we do not choose our sexuality but
that it is developed mostly in the womb, and then condemn them for it. What
kind of a God would do that? What kind of a God do we believe in? Is that kind
of God really worth all the trouble? I don’t think so. And I don’t think it
fits with the relational God whom Jesus talked about. It flies in the face of everything that Jesus taught us about a loving Father.Conclusions
Your walk with God I know is important to you, otherwise you would
not be here. You want to do the right thing. You want God to be pleased with
you and to accept you. You do not want to feel rejected. And you certainly
don’t want to lose your faith. My friend, you are not alone. Thousands upon
thousands of people all over the world have been here before, have tramped this
wilderness and arrived at the same conclusion.
“I am gay. I have always been this way. I didn’t choose it. I feel
like I’m not a bad person. I want to live out my faith and be true to myself. I
want to live an authentic happy life and find love. I want God to be part of my
life. I want to feel comfortable in knowing that God loves me as a gay person.”
If you are gay, you are gay because you were meant to be gay, just
like the rest of us. You are an awesome creation full of so much beauty, full
of so much love, full of so much potential. If you have not read my book, I
would urge you to do so. Borrow one or get your own copy and read it. BGBC
canvasses all the questions that gay people of faith have. I know, because I
had them and so I wrote about them and did so in some detail. Being Gay Being
Christian took me four years to write. It has a wealth of information in it
that will help you ask some reality
questions and help you get some reality
answers.
And the greatest answer of all is that if you are gay, you were
meant to be that way. God fashioned you in your mother’s womb just as much as
any straight person. I reckon God knows a thing or two about human beings. We
are the pinnacle of his creation and have been set in the wonder of this blue
planet sitting in the darkness of space to flourish and become all that we can.
Don’t waste that opportunity on living a life-lie. Don’t waste that opportunity
by living an inauthentic life. Don’t put some poor opposite-sex partner through years of turmoil only to break up and separate or offer a life of second-best for you both.
Be honest. Be yourself. Have a faith in a God who loves you and intended you for growth. It can mean the difference between hitting the mark and missing out why you’re here.
Be honest. Be yourself. Have a faith in a God who loves you and intended you for growth. It can mean the difference between hitting the mark and missing out why you’re here.
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