A Letter to my LGBT friends

Dear brothers and sisters loved by God,

Today is a day of celebration for you. I feel your pride and sense of victory. This is a community that has endured much hatred and stigma, has fought for love and freedom, has come so far. I recognize with deep remorse the atrocities that have been committed against you over the course of history. I am contrite to acknowledge the failings of the Church to respond with grace and love. I am so sorry that we who have been sent to represent God's love to the world have at best awkwardly stumbled through this topic which is so central to your sense of identity, and at worst have piled on repeated injuries in our ignorance. Today is a day that you celebrate overcoming. Friends, I am the last person in the world who wishes to take that sense of joyful victory away from you.

That is why I find myself grieved, torn on this day. I am SO GLAD the LGBT community now has a voice is society when it was shamefully silenced before! I DO want you to feel proud and beautiful and loved and valued for being who you are. I desire for you to continue to live in the sense of belonging you are experiencing today. So please stay with me at this point, dear reader: please hear me.

While part of me rejoices, I can not celebrate that which carries a person or a culture further away from a life which was designed for our good. I simply can't ignore the clear message that an active homosexual lifestyle is not God's good purpose for humanity. My disagreement is not hate speech; it is a conflict of conscience. Honestly, I don't expect you to understand my position or agree, because you and I recognize different sources of authority. But thank you for hearing me. The concern of myself and my evangelical community now share is that of our freedom to practice our religious conviction. Thank you for hearing that concern. I hope and pray that continuing a loving dialogue can prevent further injuries.

But that's not even my main point. You see, the Bible is not a book about how to live right. Jesus' message isn't even about how to love one another. That's all part of it, yes, but love as this world defines it is like watered down apple juice compared to the rich red wine of the whole story. The main message of the bible is this: that God gets glory by dumping Grace and Love and Forgiveness on Sinners (of whom I am the worst!). See, we were all in the same damned boat, sinking down under the wreckage of our broken lives and the evil of our own hearts, completely helpless in bridging the immeasurable distance between ourselves and God's awesome perfection. So instead of watching us sink, Jesus saved us by joining us. He drowned under the weight of human depravity, giving us the opportunity to escape. Not only that, but now He helps us to live in the complete joy and freedom of friendship with God, the creator of everything. You feel victory and joy and belonging on this day? All that is PEBBLES compared to the wonder of knowing you are forgiven and accepted by God.

That's the true joy I want desperately for you to experience, because I've found it and I want to share it with you. Knowing God will change you completely, but not into someone you don't want to be. Once you offer your life to Him, He will make you more and more like the person you were intended to be. It's not about being straight, its about becoming completely and freely You, perfected, restored, and healed in every way. And God will perfect that work he began until you don't recognize yourself in all your shining glory, because He made you to be glorified like Himself.

So, friend, we disagree about today. I want you to know that I love you. The reason I can't celebrate with you today is because I see something far more worth celebrating. I hope you can understand.