I can see why you are scared to tell your minister! What kind of church do you attend?

A short version of the Walter Wink book can be found at:

http://www.soulforce.org/article/homosexuality-bible-walter-wink

The following book is great on describing the historical context of the biblical scriptures about homosexuality:

The New Testament and Homosexuality Robin Scroggs

The following book is a supportive book for gay people in the church by a psychologist:
What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay Marriage
by David G. Myers & Letha Dawson Scanzoni

If you aren’t up to getting the book, a brief version of his argument can be found here:

http://www.davidmyers.org/Brix?pageID=90

The following is a link to a discussion of David Myers book from a Reformed theological journal, mainly by conservative Christian critics:

http://www.westernsem.edu/Brix?pageID=17236

This article by Louis Smedes, “like the wideness of the sea” was especially meaningful to me:

http://www.soulforce.org/article/638

On the conservative side of things, Leanne Payne is a major writer in ex-gay ministries who claims homosexuality is something that needs to be healed. “The Broken Image: Restoring Personal Wholeness Through Healing Prayer” is one of her most famous books, but she has many.

In terms of biblica/psychological arguments against acting on your sexual orientation, Stan Jone’s response to Mel While from the recent Equality Ride visit is fairly representative. It can be found at:

http://www.wheaton.edu/CACE/resources/booklets/StanJonesResponsetoMelWhite.pdf

I can see how this would be hard to navigate as a new Christian. I encourage you to fine people you feel safe talking to. Personally, I am at peace with my sexual orientation, but it was a struggle for me to work it through.

Blessings

Anonymous

You won’t find the word homosexual–at least not in an accurate translation–because the word was invented nearly 2000 years after the Bible was done being written. The Bible predominantly discusses practices associated with heathen temple prostitution. I could tell you more, but I’m sure these two sentences will invoke a miriad of angry responses and I am not interested in feeding that fodder. I am interested in helping you. Go to amazon.com (or any other place to buy books) and pick-up a copy of “Homosexuality and Christian Faith” by Walter Wink. Keep the faith. You don’t have to choose between being true to yourself and being true to God.

thanks

I find what you are allowing to happen here to be courageous and filled with integrity. It is rare to find a place that allows a format for conversation without commentary. I thank you for this format because it challenges those who profess to be followers of Christ to know what they believe and why they believe it, in their own voice. Whether that is through active participation in conversation or internal processing from reading. Carry on.

I’ve noticed a few problems with your approach that I think maybe stem from a lack of (or poor) definition of terms, specifically “alternative” and “Christian” that might help clarify things for me.

The problem with your use of “alternative” seems to be that you make no crucial delineation between faith/moral concerns, which are necessarily fixed, and pragmatic/prudential concerns, of which there may be legitimate disagreement. For example, your coverage of Soulforce seems to need demarcation from other concerns such as the wisdom of this or that method of global environmental stewardship. Your site seems to make all issues morally equivalent, giving voice to such “alternative” views as “homosexuality is the source and summit of all that is good, noble, true and beautiful” found in the Soulforce coverage and many of the comments there.

This leads into a needed clarification of your second term, “Christian”. You also seem to have no clear conception of what this term means in the context of you mission. It seems from the Soulforce coverage and comments that if someone calls themselves a Christian, then that is all that is necessary for inclusion of their “alternative” view. Thus, you can have Todd Zimmerman citing the Apostle’s Creed and yet reject any sense of traditional Christian morality to which that Creed refers.

Perhaps an example or two will suffice. If I wanted to present an “alternative” Christian view that “there was a time in which Christ was not”, and even through out Biblical prooftexts to support my view, would this classify as Christian in your scheme? It certainly was a legitimate “alternative Christian” voice in the fourth century. A more contemporary example may be the “many Christianities” fallacy popular today in the “Gospel of Judas” flap this Easter. Perhaps a more blatant example of an “alternative Christian” view: the early church apostasized immediately after the deaths of the apostles and the True Church did not exist until Joseph Smith received the magic glasses and tablets of Reformed Egyptian hieroglyphics from the angel Maroni. Are these examples “Christian” in your use of the term? The secular world would seem to think so. They are certainly “alternative”, which is why non-Christians (and many Christians) are attracted to them.

These were just thoughts prompted by your uncritical coverage of Soulforce that I thought might prove helpful in your stated goals. It is a willingness to make these types of definitions of terms and of belief that make Wheaton a fundamentally different sort of Christian college from others like Georgetown or Notre Dame and many others that are now indistinguishable from a public secular state school.

Many like to side step this and focus on the peace and love the Bible has to offer. It seems as though Equality Ride has guilt tripped many people into accepting the homosexual lifestyle, or else you aren’t showing the love of Christ. This is underhanded and deceitful. While we should accept the riders as people, we should not accept the lifestyle. The church should say that you are welcome to come, but we cannot recognize what you do as legitimate, much less righteousness.

God loves everyone, but He will not accept our sin. He will not accept my sin and He will not accept anyone else’s sin. God will accept you, but not what you do, and He will accept you because of Jesus, not because anything we have done. God wants us to get better as we go, and that means giving up and surrendering our sin, not modifying the Bible to accommodate it. The Bible was written to offend us. If it does not offend us, then it has lost all meaning and we might as well throw it out. We need to take the lessons to heart instead of rewriting the pages to make them say what we want.

The common misconception is that people who are against the gay lifestyle hate gay people. I do not hate gays, but I cannot accept what they do. Violence against gays is wrong, but the church cannot approve of the lifestyle out of misplaced guilt for gays. The violence is at the hands of those that make it, not the ones that simply disagree. Harboring complaints that Eastern’s policies are responsible for the suffering of gays is simply ridiculous. The responsibility of the church is to welcome everyone who is willing, but to make it clear that such lifestyles can not be supported.