There has been a lot of change going on in my life and in my head. Some of it has been chronicled here, but to be honest I haven’t had much time to update the blog and haven’t much felt like it when I have.

I am not a psychologist, but it seems to me that I am undergoing a process perhaps best termed as identity integration. What I mean by this is the following: “I’m okay being gay. So what now?” My life is comprised of many parts, and there is this additional part – being gay – that now has to become part of the whole. It cannot be misshapen or disproportionate, yet it is there and it affects – to some degree – the tenor and path of my life.

It was difficult to even get to the point of acknowledging I needed to come to a conclusion on my same-sex attractions. I spent a great deal of time looking at information on the issue, studying Scripture and praying, and came to a point where I can now be fine with how I am, and with the potential of a future husband. Yet my struggle (to be straight) used to be a big deal to me, and my own assessments of how “gay” I was were indications of my spiritual well-being. That’s all been thrown out the window now. My reconciliation, while answering many, has brought up these rather important questions:

• How now do I judge the closeness of my relationship with God?
• Who do I out myself to, and in what situations am I obliged to remain quiet?
• How do I participate in church community with those who disagree?
• What emphasis do I place on connections with other gay people?
• What does the process of finding a godly mate look like?

The first one I think I may have the beginnings of an answer to. Consider Paul:

I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men’s hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.

Hmm, so if St. Paul’s clean conscience didn’t justify him, does mine justify me? Not at all! Then perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to judge – not even myself – but wait for God, while pursuing him in the best way I know, however faltering that might be. In the end, I can only trust in the grace of Christ: my spiritual state does not need my mark of passing or failing. Nevertheless, I would like to know how I ought to be improving before God. This is where I am still unsure: I suppose he will guide me and show me as he needs to, and as I continue to wonder about this.

The question of with who and in what circumstances to be “out” is much more difficult. I know I want to tell my parents because not doing so would only lead to problems. Honesty is one of my most favorite virtues – which is to say, one I am very attracted to and try to engender in myself. Not only do I feel uncomfortable being dishonest with my parents, but what if I were to marry one day: what would happen if they called the house and some strange man answered the phone? Whoops! If there’s going to be distance between us, I think they have a right to know why. But how long do I wait? I have, though, both to my surprise and hers, come out to my sister. She’s not real comfortable with it, but she’s very loving, which is all I ask. She’s been excellent as she’s been dealing with it the past couple weeks.

What about things like being out with my Bible study? This one I’ve been struggling over quite a bit. The whole faith community issue has been looming large, as where I feel condemned is not in my heart but, most often, in community with other Christians as they, occasionally, bring up the subject or make a remark. I feel as a puzzle piece out of place, but that is not unusual these days. What to do? I definitely – way definitely – get gaydar vibes from some of the guys in my on-campus group. But I don’t know where they’re at in dealing with it, and I get the impression from the leadership that it would not be well-received. They may help me to change, but I wonder if they would really still show love. The feeling of having to be dishonest is disconcerting. If I want to walk with them in the truth of Christ, why is it necessary to hide other truths?

This dilemma expands out into other questions such as whether, should I find community is no longer possible where I’m at, I should get plugged in at my current church, which I love but is almost certainly Side B, or seek sanctuary elsewhere. I went to an accepting Presbyterian church last Sunday, and found many things I liked – no heresies, good Scriptural teaching, etc. It’s a well-balanced church, and I’m fairly sure they’d never give a “gay sermon” but at least they’d be accepting of me, without expecting change, but just Christ-centeredness. I would have to have discussions with the leadership about several things – and more questions I have that I am not listing here – but I’m fairly sure it would be an alright church for me to attend and, more importantly, be involved in and serve alongside.

As to the other two questions – what I do about connections with other gay folk and what the process of looking for a husband looks like – I have even less figured out, and will leave them unaddressed.

Change, change, change.

I have called this blog Resolving Realities, as I am trying to take pieces of what is real and combine them into a whole. When I think of what I am attempting to do, I think of rotating lenses, like what the eye doctor uses. There are all these pieces of glass which revolve before my eyes in an attempt for me see the real world more clearly. Only the process I am in is more abstract and more difficult. These lenses, once aligned, reveal something beautiful; or so I am told, or so I have convinced myself. But they must be resolved in the right way, or else they will bend and refract the light filtered through to me in the wrong ways, and I will have a distorted view of the world around me. My faith, and my worldview as a whole, I fear, was based on nice metaphors I heard at church and what was passed down to me. I am in desperate need of wresting this worldview – this conglomeration of lenses – away from such teachings and bringing it back to Christ. There was the issue of coming to terms with my orientation, immediately followed by two other serious challenges: beginning reading through the entire Old Testament for the first time, and my first exposure to textual criticism. Both of these contain matters I never heard about in church, and I am finding many of the traditional ‘resolutions’ woefully inadequate – mere arm-waving. It’s a bit unfair to have it all at once. My doctrinal framework is beginning to tear down, and slowly something needs to be put around it. But – and this is key – at the center of it is Christ. If nothing else, I am sure of him: his diety, his grace, his love, his cross (which expresses all of these things), and his resurrection, all proclaiming the salvation of humanity to his side, the side of God, for those who love him. Perhaps I’ll write about this doctrinal flux when I next come to blog, and I still need to explain where my sexual ethics are coming from (and for this one I actually have a draft typed up).

In the meantime, I have the abyss of schoolwork, the mess and the fun that is figuring out interpersonal relationships, and an exciting internship to look forward to for the summer. Life does seem to be chugging along.

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!–Paul, to the church at Galatia (Gal 1:7-8)

I am not here to condemn anyone, but let us not take lightly Paul’s zeal for the Gospel. Galatians is an excellent explanation of the necessity, and supremacy, of the Gospel of Christ. Paul was worried because those who had turned to Christ were being led astray by false gospels. But what is a false gospel? And what is so special about the true Gospel? What is it the Gospel of Christ, and what is it not? There are many who preach the gospel, but the gospel of what?

These are of course only the thoughts of a young guy living in the American South at the turn of the third millenium, but there are not a few false gospels that have taken root in the minds and hearts of many men and women. I have undertaken a brief enumeration of these false gospels – by no means a full list, but those that I see and hear most often. Note that these are not wholly wrong, but begin with some truth, or fragment of it, and exaggerate it, placing it at the center of their faiths. Some of these I list knowing full well my propensity toward adopting them, and deviating from the gospel of Christ, and I give them in part as an examination and in part as a warning, both to you and to me.

The Gospel of America (Gospel of Culture)

This gospel is profoundly patriotic, and deeply concerned with social morality, and it is on these pillars of nation and culture that it builds its holy temple, enshrining a particular notion of corporate godliness at its center. Hell is a nation that lacks this social/moral construct, and heaven is a nation that attains it. The gospel’s mission is to go about transforming its hell into its heaven. While this gospel’s apostles may speak about individual morality, don’t be deceived: their concern is not for the individual, but for the moral standing of the group. This is why its leaders are so concerned with politics, church attendance and general perceptions of morality. It is why its preachers strive for national laws and cultural changes by any means possible, for the gospel’s concern is not with the immortal souls of women and men but for mortal cultures and nations.

The rhetoric of this gospel centers around talk of values (a set of taboos and norms shared by a collective group), and talk of group decay and group improvement. Here there are Judeo-Christian values (for such talk includes a number of like-minded and politically agreeable Jews), which are the set of social and cultural rules that a nation must follow in order to attain God’s favor. Here there is also an impending sense of divine blessing and punishment depending on group mentality, for a cornerstone of this gospel is the association of America with “God’s people”.

One of this gospel’s favorite biblical quotes is 2 Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

This is a quintessential verse for the Gospel of America, resting, as does the whole gospel, heavily on a correlation between America and ancient Israel. With this metaphor, all the blessings and curses afforded to Israel under the Law are extended to America. In fact, this metaphor extends so far that God’s covenant with the his people Israel becomes inseparable from his covenant with America. The founding fathers of America become the equivalent of the founding kings of Israel. Wars of America become wars waged by God’s own people. Elections and cultural memes determine the state of America’s end of the covenant, and thus predictors of God’s response.

With covenant in mind, battles fought overseas and over culture are divine struggles, and evangelists are seen as being like the prophets of the Old Testament. Sin, to this gospel, is a corporate act of cultural decay, and salvation lies not in the resurrected Christ, but in the engineering of a social and cultural fabric like that outlined in the Israeli covenant, and so as a result to merit God’s favor as a people.

The Gospel of Family

This gospel is protective, reproductive, and isolated. Its center of worship lies with the nuclear family: a mother, a father, and their (preferrably biological) children, to which it adheres at the expense of anything else. This gospel is perhaps the most insidious of those found in modern America, as it can be found everywhere from the tacky use of the word “family” (I cannot count how many Christian organizations use phrases like ’safe for the family’ or ‘building a stronger family’) to the public advertising of a church by pictures of its pastoral family to the volumes of literature produced for adherents on how to maintain (bizarrely) a family-centered family.

If the Gospel of America finds its catchphrase in Judeo-Christian values, the Gospel of Family finds it in traditional family values. Like Judeo-Christian values, traditional family values is a lure for the uninitiated, giving something vague enough for unbelievers to readily consent to. No one would claim to be against family, the notion of traditional recalls a nostalgic (and non-existent) time when things “were better”, and the term values imparts moral rectitude to the whole package. It is not until the member has been initiated that the gospel’s precise view of what traditional family values are is disclosed.

The Gospel of Family’s idea of a family is, in the majority of cases, decidedly patriarchal. A handful of verses speaking on male headship are commonly used to support this, and a chief prooftext has become the narrative of Adam and Eve. Adam, being created first, is seen as a divine mandate of male primacy, and a delineation of distinct male-female roles, corresponding to leader-follower, and actor-responder. This is not to say there is no command for love on the part of the male – there is – and nor does it promote tyranny as such, but the system does see, at its root, leadership as a predominantly male function, and submission as a predominantly female one. Though wrapped in language of “equal roles”, eerily recalling speech of “separate but equal”, masculine primacy is essential to its view of mankind.

Within this gospel, family is both means and end. The family, as defined by this gospel, is the only vehicle for ensuring the creation of new families, which then in turn create more families, and so on. There is no room, or only room as second-class, for those who are celibate or homosexual, for they are not actively participating in the promulgation and proliferation of the gospel. Here, sin is anything that obstructs or unsettles the nuclear family, and salvation is the ever-continuing cycle of family begetting family. Jesus is the upholder of the family.

The Gospel of End-Times (Gospel of Eschatology)

This gospel is characterized by an unnatural obsession with the end of time. In America, it normally takes the form dispensational premillenialism, and it was largely behind the success some years back of the Left Behind books. The Gospel of End-Times offers its believers specific events and timelines for the future termination of planet earth and, often, the termination of the universe as a whole. These events are detailed and extensive enough to make this the most complex gospel on the list.

There is an emphasis on prophetic books and passages of the Bible, or books that are perceived to prophetic, including Revelation, Daniel, Matthew 24:36-e and Luke 17:22-e, and some choice passages from the epistles. From the Matthew and Luke accounts is derived the popular phrase “as in the days of Noah”, referring to a state of worldwide sin before the impending apocalypse. This underscores one of this gospel’s major themes: a pessimistic outlook on the future, already determined to be full of the most unthinkable gratuitous sins, and soon to be erradicated in a show of bloodied justice. The more extreme cults will make specific claims on future world events, while the more mainstream will talk about a nebulous point in the future, characterized by a series of specific occurances, and an imminent return of Christ to the earth.

Because the worldwide state of sin – “as in the days of Noah” – and because of the interpretation and amalgamation of certain apocalyptic symbols, there is the notion of “Anti-Christ” as a specific, individual world leader. And since the Antichrist is supposedly going to appear to be a peacemaker, strict adherents of the Gospel of Eschatology are often suspicious of any peaceful leader, and particularly suspicious of any event or series of events that unites people groups, since this again is seen as a sign of the looming apocalypse. Words of Christ, such as “blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, are effectively ignored in light of apocalyptic revelation. This gospel’s salvation is the promise to physically remove believers from a period of worldwide suffering and judgement.

The Gospel of Self-Fulfillment

This gospel, sometimes manifested in its more obvious form as the “health and wealth” gospel, has at its center its individual believers. Holding to no strict doctrines, it is the simplest of the false gospels listed here. In the Gospel of Self-Fulfillment, Jesus and God take a prominent role, but it is a role centered around the comfort, or at least the benefit, of the believer. God becomes a means to an end of personal satisfaction, and not himself the total and utter satisfaction of each individual.

Like the other gospels, this one too offers Scripture to validate itself, often inviting believers to substitute their own name for various general words in the text (such as placing one’s own name in John 3:16). One of this gospel’s favorite quotes is from John 10:10.

I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.

Having life to the full is here interpreted as the personal fulfillment of the believer, whether by a sense of spiritual peace or physical blessing. The believer’s relationship with God is often assessed by the presence of these things: in more materialistic sects, by the presence of material blessing; and in more spiritual sects, by the presence of an “inner peace” or spiritual emotion. That this view is at odds with much of the rest of Scripture, such as Job – a righteous man who had both peace and blessing stripped from him – or Jesus – who, though he was obedient, was also robbed of peace and blessing, for the redemption of mankind – is rarely, if ever addressed. This gospel’s idea of sin is any need or desire in the life of an individual, and the salvation it offers is the fulfillment of that perceived need.

The Gospel of Law

This is an ancient gospel, dating back to the dawn of Christianity, and existed for eons before it. In fact, it was the gospel that Paul wrote Galatians to address. The Gospel of Law centers itself on obedience to a set of rules (often a mix drawn unevenly from Scripture, tradition, and culture), and Christ becomes the believer’s enabler to follow the set of rules. He becomes means, not end. Obedience to these rules – and therefore, obedience to God – is the centerpiece of this gospel’s message, and Christ’s death and atonement is seen as the vehicle to a life in accordance with the law.

Holiness (legal purity) is seen as a mark differentiating true believers from the world, and the calling of the individual is to live a life in increasing obedience. It is not that this gospel denies any place to love, but that love is subservient, or witness to, legality. In this paradigm, Christ did not come to free anyone from law, nor even to fulfill the law, but to empower people to themselves fulfill the law. There is no room for freedom, for submission to law is equated with submission to God. This gospel’s leaders speak frequently of being “slaves” or “bondservants to Christ”, and offer Scripture to support this. Romans 6:18:

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.

Yet they ignore the very next sentence:

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves.

Paul immediately qualifies that he is using slavery as a human example, and not as a pure indicator of spiritual truth. While there is a great degree of beautiful and holy submission to God expressed in the view of God as king and believers as his people, the Gospel of Law takes this and makes it, well, gospel. Or consider these passages from John chapters 14 and 15:

If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. … If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love… You are my friends if you do what I command.

And yet the verse all these hang around and are dependent on is

My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

So Christ’s command to obedience does not end with obedience, and it does not even end with love: it ends with himself. He is not calling disciples to obedience to a law system in general, but to a particular part of obedience in specific: to display his own character, being revolutionized by his character, which is most profoundly given in his great love on an undeserving people. It is this love that changes his people to be able to do the same, and this is his calling: to live out that love as a reflection of an eternal encounter with his divine being.

But this is a prolific gospel, and another favorite for its believers is Romans 12:1:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

Again, this is a beautiful text expressing the love of the Christian for Christ in the pouring out of self in an act of love for the sake of God. But taken as overly emphatic, this easily devolves into ascetism and legalism. But this overemphasis, like the other false gospels, is decidedly one-sided, for as I have already said, Christ did not come to call us to obedience in the law, for “what the law was powerless to do, God did by sending his own Son.”

Galatians, which is where we began, is where we shall end; 5:1-2:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law.

We are not under a new law, but under Christ. He, and nothing else, is the true Gospel.