Read This More Than Once

Hey everyone! I have decided that Mondays are my best blogging days this year, so I hope you all make sure to stop by then! Scheduling things is becoming the norm for me this semester. I have so much to do and so little time to do it. I literally have charts that tell me when I should call my various family members, and on what days I should send e-mails to the various online friends I've made over the years. It's a little awkward to schedule social interactions like that, but between studying for the GRE, applying to grad school, planning programs for student organizations, and reading a lot of Hemingway, Stein, and Faulkner, I really have no other choice. If I don't plan out these kinds of things, they simply won't get done.

Other than being terribly busy, I don't really have much to blog about right now. I do want to write about my politics and my artistic philosophy but those will require quite a bit more effort and research on my part than the usual post. Following the interesting discussion that happened after last week's post, though, I did a little searching into heterosexually married men who still consider themselves gay (not ex-gay). I didn't have to look any further than a Christianity Today article from 2002, and it is quite heart-wrenching. Read it more than once.

There is a man who is faithful to his family, who understands what Christ can do to redeem us, what amazing joys and painful struggles can come from being obedient to Him, and who still loves His Savior with all his heart. There, also, is a man who is afraid to come out about his orientation for fear of ostracism, and this fear is not unfounded.

Why haven't I told my story to my church friends? Why is my identity anonymous? Because, despite all the claims by my heterosexual friends to "love the sinner but hate the sin," I do not trust them. I do not believe that they could know this about me and still want me to be their congregational president, their youth-group leader, their sons' coach. I wish I could believe it, but I don't. Perhaps I'm hypersensitive in not trusting, but I've overheard too many jokes, seen too many expressions of hate directed at homosexuals, to believe that these same people could be my friends if they knew.

I feel for this man deeply, and I know far too many guys personally who are in the same situation -- married or not. For the unmarried ones, it's often worse, because they can't hide behind a wife and kids, and they often have a difficult time finding a place in the church to begin with. It makes me concerned. I'm very open about my orientation here, but this is a pretty small and fairly liberal college town. What if I move to a more conservative area, and attend a church where people aren't as aware of homosexual issues? Christ alone is what satisfies and strengthens me, but like Wesley Hill states in this exceptional article, we need the full love and support of other Christians sometimes to make things easier.

And so that's the question: Do we love our neighbors as ourselves? Even those of us who deal with a homosexual orientation have to ask this question, because while we may be tolerant and open-minded about this particular issue there may be others where we treat others exactly how we don't want to be treated. As always, it's something to ponder.