Asking All the Wrong Questions about Homosexuality
When my daughter was stillborn in 1998, I learned something: Good Theology Must Answer Hard Issues. No glib word, Christian cliché, or reassuring pat on the back can ever put a new frame around what is bad and make it good, make the hard easy, or turn any wrong into a right.
Good theology meets us in the hard places, in the hard issues, and in the cold hard realities of life. And it offers the Gospel as an answer. It offers Compassion in the form of Love. And it offers Truth.
With that in mind, I want to confess up front that my “Wrong Questions” series began in my mind with the one I’m going to answer today, Asking All the Wrong Questions about Homosexuality. Over the past 3 months, a daily series of events has kept this issue in front of my eyes. I know I need to answer it because Good Theology Answers Hard Issues…and it does so with the Gospel’s Truth and Love.
The Gospel enters another person’s pain.
When you’ve been in the waters of deep pain, you are in a unique place to see the pain of others up close and personal. Many people preach from the glassy-walled observation room. I preach the Gospel from the deep waters of the ocean of pain.
From the depth of pain, I know the topic of homosexuality hits people in their hearts much like the women-in-ministry debate hits me in the heart.
For those of us affected by topics in a direct way, it’s not just a theological plank in a platform. It’s personal.
For the homosexual reading this, I want you to know that I understand. For you, it’s personal.
Over the course of the past decade, on AllExperts, a few brave souls publicly solicited my view of homosexuality. The questioners have been sincere and kind—as most homosexuals I know are. Note, however, that the vast majority of questions I’ve answered were flagged as private—private, because homosexual thoughts and tendencies are a source of deep confusion. It’s very personal to them. My answers remain between the questioner, myself and God. I bring my thoughts about the topic out of the closet today because I have something to say:
The question that I’ve been asked in a hundred different ways is the same, “Who made me homosexual: God or me?”
I’ve grown to see that this is the wrong question. The right question is “What will be my response?”
“Who made me this way?” is a question designed to affix blame—on God or on self. But the blame squarely rests with the broken world in which we live. It’s like my asking, “Who killed my daughter?” Do I blame God for why this happened…or me?
Pain looks for someone to blame. The Gospel ministers a response of hope.
I’d like to take this a step deeper as it relates to homosexuality. If you’d like to see how Christians can understand the difference between the wrong question and the right question, please join me on the next page.
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2 Comments
by Ingrid
On August 3, 2012
Thank you for your thoughts on this, born out your own questions and pain. What you wrote also reminded me of what Jesus said in response to the man born blind, “His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” (John 9:2-3) You gave me food for thought: Perhaps all of us are born with or into some kind of hardship with which we will have to struggle, and the question may always be – what are we going to do with it?
by seminarygal
On August 3, 2012
Amen, sister! You point out something important: the only thing we can truly control is our own response.
Whether we’re born into a situation, have a personality-driven predisposition to things, or a genetic one, these things might be out of our control. But we can always choose to let the Gospel redeem it…and let the “work of God” be displayed in our lives.
Maybe the hardships that come our way leave us yearning for the perfection of heaven, and looking to God as our response…