Read what this pastor says to Christians who spread gay hate to children

BY JOHN PAVLOVITZ

Love doesn’t always look like love.

When I published this blog a few weeks ago promising to love my kids if they were gay, I was fully prepared for waves of both support and hostility.

What I was not prepared for in any way, were the literally hundreds and hundreds of people who have reached out to me personally, to thank me for bringing some healing and hope to their families.

Parents, children, siblings, and adults have confided in me (some for the first time anywhere), telling of the pain, and bullying, and shunning they’re received from churches, pastors, and church members – from professed followers of Jesus.

Scores of people from all over the world have shared with me their devastating stories of exclusion and isolation, of unanswered prayers to change, of destructive conversion therapies, of repeated suicide attempts, and of being actively and passively driven from faith, by people of faith.

This is the reality of church theology on homosexuality.

This is the cost of our religion to the LGBTI community. More accurately, it’s the cost of our religion to LGBTI human beings. This is the painful collateral damage that comes when we see principles and ignore people; when we refuse to give them the dignity they deserve.

Apparently love does hurt; really, really badly.

The most common defense I’ve heard over the past 14 days from Christians who believe that being gay is both chosen and sinful, has been some variation of the supposedly well-meaning: ‘Well, we’re just loving people by being honest with them, by giving them “the Truth”. Telling people the truth is loving them.’

Really? The truth?

Are you sure you want the truth?

(I so want to quote Jack Nicholson right now).

I have a crammed, bursting inbox of ‘truth’ for you if you’re interested in reading, Church.

It’s full of vile profanity, and utter contempt, and crude jokes, and physical violence, and white-hot fear. It’s packed with school hallway harassment, and city street beat-downs, and church shunning, and workplace hazing, and brutal self-harm, and all sorts of perpetual, personal terrorism.

And none of it looks a thing like love to me.

It certainly doesn’t look like love to the sweet, 12-year old middle school girl in your church whose been repeatedly told she’s an abomination; that God already despises her.

It doesn’t look like love to the devastated parents who have watched their son hang himself because he was assured by his Christian schoolmates he’s better dead than gay.

It doesn’t look like love to the devoted, faithful Christian schoolteacher who has lost her life-long career for no other reason than her relationship status.

It doesn’t look like love to the 60-year old Christian man who has prayed his whole life to be ‘fixed’, and who God has refused to, yet is still an outcast in his family of faith.

It doesn’t look like love to the gay couple having their heads smashed-in by professed ‘Christian’ strangers while walking down the street.

It doesn’t look like love to the family of a transgender high school junior, who can’t find a church family that will welcome them or include them or acknowledge them.

And I’m totally comfortable believing it doesn’t look like love to Jesus either.

The real problem with so much Christian theology toward the LGBTI community, is that it seemingly works fine from a distance, for someone firing-off scripture passages or religious phrases. It just often falls apart for them when trying to translate it to actual human lives and within authentic, caring relationships.

When you have the guts and the decency and the compassion to crawl out from behind computer keyboards and plasma screens; from radio show phone calls and bullhorn shouting, you end up standing face-to-face with beautiful, wounded, scarred people with real stories, and you realize something’s wrong here.

Something’s badly broken.

This, is not what Christ’s love looks like.

Jesus’ love, even if it came with hard words, somehow always seemed and felt like love. People were seen. They were heard. They were touched. They were left with more dignity than when they started. I’m not sure LGBTI people can say the same about their encounters with most Christians.

Can they say it about you?

So many believers want to make this all about sin; about the theology of homosexuality that they’re claiming to be defending, but it really isn’t. Regardless of where you stand theologically as a Christian, this is about treating all people, like they are made by God and in the image of God.

Jesus’ command to love God and love others as we would desire to be loved; that is theology too. In fact, he said it was the greatest portion of it; our most pressing personal moral responsibility. You wanna argue that? Argue with Jesus.

Church, the blood and the bruises of the LGBTI community are on your hands and mine as believers, as long we allow any Christian to dehumanize them in the name of loving them.

However we want to frame it or justify it, the net result of our religion to so many gay people, is that entire families are being torn apart, sent to the shadows, and horribly mistreated in the name of Jesus.

Real flesh-and-blood people are going through uninvited, individual Hell every day at the hands of people who claim Christ. The Church’s treatment of the LGBTI community people has been downright sinful, and it’s killing our testimony to the world.

We’re making it virtually impossible for gay people to exist in our churches. Then we feel justified in damning them for walking away from God when they leave. The truth is, so often they aren’t turning away from God, they’re just removing themselves from harm’s way.

We are losing credibility to those outside the organized Christianity, not because we’re ‘condoning sin’, but because when the rubber meets the road, we really don’t know how to ‘love the sinner’ in any way that remotely resembles Jesus, and our ‘God is love’ platitudes ring hollow.

Church, this is our legacy that we are building in these days to the LGBTI community and those who love them, and I assure you it’s not legacy of love.

I don’t know what the answer is for you, and I can’t tell you how your theology gets expressed in the trenches of real people’s lives. I only know that we as Christ’s Church can do better, regardless of our theological stance. We have to do better.

This is where our faith is proven to be made of Jesus-stuff, or not.

This is where the love of God we like to preach about, is either clearly seen or terribly distorted.

Read Pavlovitz’s post below, and check out his blog at johnpavlovitz.com. - See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/read-what-christian-pastor-promises-do-if-his-children-are-gay270914#sthash.BFPdHXQY.dpuf

Check out John Pavlovitz’s blog at johnpavlovitz.com.

I'm An Otherwise Straight Man (Who Fell In Love With His Best Friend)

I’ve always prided myself on being open. I’ll try any new therapy or modality or New Age idea — and, believe me, I’ve tried them all. I’ve done the self-work. I’ve “found myself.” I’ve even practiced my affirmations. I knew who I was, without a doubt.

That’s why I found myself in unfamiliar territory when I — the open guy, the “figured out” guy, the unquestionably straight guy — realized that I was in love with my best friend, a man. A man I had known for seven years. A man I had never before even thought of in a romantic way. But, there I was, in love.

Only it didn’t start out as love. See, two summers ago, I came down with a mysterious illness. Not the common cold kind. Not even the achy back kind. This was the kind where you vomit massive amounts of blood throughout the day. The kind where doctors pass you from specialist to specialist. The kind where you’re bent over in pain with tears in your eyes.

And my roommate, Garrett, one of my best friends at the time, took pity on me. He took care of me. He picked up my prescriptions from the pharmacy. He cooked me dinner. He stayed in on Friday nights to watch movies. He’d even rub my back when I was in pain.

Each day, I waited anxiously until he came home from work. My face lit up when he surprised me with my favorite dinner. I replayed conversations we had when I was alone. I missed him when he was gone.

A Good Question......

How I Went From Rejecting My Gay Son To Loving Him Unconditionally

At the beginning of his second year of college, my son Nick told me he was gay, and that he didn‘t believe same-sex relationships were sinful. I am embarrassed and ashamed to say that I reacted horribly. I made him feel ashamed, unloved, and rejected.

I said things a loving mother never should, and I will deeply regret it for the rest of my life.

You will probably be surprised to hear that today Nick and I have a wonderful relationship. How did it happen? Well, it is hard to tell that part of the story because it wasn’t linear. I can’t remember the order of all that happened but I will attempt to tell you some of the things that helped us move in the right direction.

One thing that helped the process along was that Nick continued to fight for the relationship. Even when he was angry and hurt, he always said he wanted a relationship with our family and me. He wasn’t always kind and loving—he made mistakes just like we all did, but he never gave up.

My turning point came to me one day as I was reading a blog comment written by a gay man to someone saying he didn’t want to be friends with people who thought it was sinful for him to have same-sex relationships, because he was tired of being treated like he was “less than other people” and "a second rate citizen"—it struck me then that if I were in his shoes, I would probably feel the same way.

I realized it took a lot of love and grace for Nick to want to keep having a relationship with me, knowing I was judging him.

Within a day or two, I found an opportunity to let Nick know I recognized how much grace and love he was showing me, and how much I appreciated it. I told him I was not only thankful, but I was, as his mom, proud of him.

Love is Love - Valentine's Edition: Part VII

Love is Love - Valentine's Edition: Part VI

Love is Love - Valentine's Edition: Part V

Love is Love - Valentine's Edition: Part IV