So I read this fantastic response to this original post called “I’m Christian unless you’re gay”. What a fantastic read. Earlier in my life, I was in a christian band. Somewhat surprising if you know that I was at the least an agnostic, and border-line atheist at that point in my life. I always held that music was the reason I did that, but I also felt it was a good exploration of faith for me. And I found it lacking. Specifically after two events that touched me.
First, we had a fan. Well we had many 😉 but one in particular was a young girl, who was very very strong in her faith, and probably one of the nicest persons I have known. I got to know her very well, invited her and her bf on a mini vacation to a country house we had access to. Etc. A perfect example of someone who lived her life for everyone else. She always had a smile, always wanted to help.
She died at a very early age of 17 coming back from work. A drunk driver entered the interstate going the wrong way and had a head on with her. She didn’t even get the dignity of passing quick, she ended up in the hospital in pain, for months, contracted staph and slowly faded away. Between that and losing my sister to SIDS early, it helped define my thought that faith was misplaced at the very least.
But to the point of this article, during this same period, we had a band we opened for routinely. They were better than we were, had albums, etc. The lead singer, had an amazing voice and was one of my favorite people. One day, he didn’t show up with the band to play with us. The rest of the band was angry and upset. I found out, that the singer “came out” to them that he was gay. They immediately fired him. This action too struck me as particularly un-christian like. Love the sinner and all that.
I have since pretty much solidified my unbelief (aka thomas covenant) and hearing of persecution of gay or ‘different’ viewers makes me at least as angry as the proud mother was in that article. I am happy that she has changed her views, however I think it’s tragic that it takes a personal matter to make that happen. Some christians are the ultimate hypocrites in my view. They pick and choose the parts of their faith that are the most hateful, while blithely ignoring (For the most part, there are exceptions) the ‘love thy neighbor’ parts and the parts that contradict. Sadly, it’s not even the ‘fringe’ but core to many parts of the tenants of the faith.
I can rant on this all day, but I felt that if I can make others aware of these articles, perhaps they too can have a personal change in how they approach ‘different’ people.