I saw a link to an interview with Jackie Hill, a professed Ex-Lesbian. It’s titled “Ex-lesbian Spoken Word Poet Slams Macklemore’s Anthem ‘Same Love’ for Claiming Gays Can’t Change.” I was quite disturbed because of the message of eternal damnation for homosexuality, and the mixed messages about the concept of change.
In the lyrics of Macklemore’s song he says:
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
And I can’t change
Even if I tried
Even if I wanted to
Macklemore’s lyrics communicate the plight that so many have lived as they’ve tried their hardest and in faith, to change their sexual orientation.
For over twenty-five years I heard and taught the message “you can change” in connection to homosexuality. Thousands of people were deceived including myself due to an unclear message of what the word change means. Many, if not most us believed it meant we could experience an eradication of our homosexual desires. We were taught God could to anything, and if we believed in faith, God just might give us our miracle. So, we desperately sought to find changes in our sexual orientation. I believed that I would experience a damaged relationship with God if I didn’t find the change I looked for. I sought deliverance, counseling, prayer healing, and I spent $30,000 and invested most of my adult life seeking this kind of change. I found no change at all.
Very often the motives for people like me to experience such desperation was a theology that taught that someone who was homosexual would die an eternal death at the hand of God’s righteous judgment for what we called homosexual sin. I believe this theology is fraught with problems. If that were true, then habitual gossips, slanderers, and others would also find their eternity in jeopardy.
Jackie says in her article, “she saw that she “deserved Hell” for her lifestyle” She then goes on to say, “If God chooses not to change my desires, he has promised to give me his Holy Spirit that will help me flee from them.”
“I actually started to consider hell in exchange for her being my wifey,” Hill said in her poem. “Then one day the Lord spoke to me. He said, ‘She will be the death of you.’”
Jackie seems to believe she will lose her eternity because of being actively gay. It appears that her motivation to suppress her lesbianism is due to that intense fear. And yet, she has not found the changes that she says can occur and “slams Macklemore’s anthem ‘Same Love’ for claiming gays can’t change.” This is deceiving, and for some who experience homosexuality, it is potentially dangerous to their relationship with God because it conveys that someone can change their sexual orientation and yet Jackie speaks in her article as though she herself has not experienced that change.
This message also sends parents and loved ones into spiritual tailspins in fear that their children will also go to hell if they don’t change. This theology therefore beings destruction to the relationships between gay people and those they love because they fear hell for them.
The truth is people do not change their sexual orientation. Jackie has not. God does not condemn anyone to hell for being gay, or even for having a gay relationship. Jackie believes that could happen. People can make choices as to how they will respond to being gay. They may choose, as Jackie did, to live a celibate life. But let’s not call that change. I call that personal choice. God will not abandon us no matter what is chosen. Neither will He abandon any of us for our actions.
I hope that at some point, Jackie will find the true freedom within God’s intense love for her and that she will find freedom from shame and fear that God will snuff her out if she doesn’t act right.
I am confused as the nature of the website as it pertains to Orthodox Christian beliefs.
I find it interesting you say “God does not condemn anyone to hell for being gay, or even having gay relationships” yet Scripture clearly does not portray homosexual behavior as positive and frankly calls homosexual behavior a sin.
Please help me understand where you are coming from in an exegetical standpoint.
Roland,
According to your question, first of all God does not condemn anyone to hell for behavior. I have always understood the gospel to pertain to a belief in and and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Savior.
To you second comment, the Bible addresses certain sexual behaviors that occur between two people of the same gender such as pederasty, man/boy slave relationships, temple shrine prostitution and others. None of these are positive sexual relationships or behavior.
The Bible does not address same sex, love centered and committed faithful same sex relationships.
Therefore, going to the spirit of what the Bible does say about faithful relationships, sacrificial love and commitment, many gay people find tremendous fulfillment in same sex relationships that also enhance their relationship with God due to the grace that they know comes from God and the reflection in their relationships of God’s love for all mankind.
I don’t know how you do it, John, but you seem to really nail these topics like no other. The more I observe the way the (traditional) Church deals with homosexuality, the more I realize just how they (as we once were) have allowed themselves to be conditioned to believe this crazy idea that:
1)the Gospel magically doesn’t apply to gays who pursue a love relationship
2)the Gospel magically becomes valid once a gay person goes celibate
3)even though there are countless Christians universally who have cheated on their taxes (unrepentantly), daily break speeding laws (unrepentantly), gossip, slander, hate, practice gluttony, covet, etc…are perfectly safe from Hell..because, well, at least they’re straight!
4) it’s perfectly ok to demand gay believers to deny their own humanity – to live without love, bury their emotions, live alone, die alone, and never fall in love – even though all of these things are a core part of being human.
5) Romans-1 applies to all homosexuals (or homosexuals at all)
6) Sodom and Gomorrah was about homosexuals and not, for example, Ez 16:45-50.
Since coming out 3 years ago, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on these things and with the help of the Holy Spirit I am seeing clearer every day the futility, scriptural error, and outright cruelty of thinking this way. It’s bad enough when straight people impose celibacy, for instance, on real air-breathing, red- blooded gays, but for Christian gays to do the same is abhorrent to me. To say “I’m Christian, gay, and celibate by personal choice” is one thing, but to demonstrably imply “I’m Christian, gay, and celibate because I will most certainly go to Hell if I’m not…and SO WILL YOU!” is destructive to those unstable in their faith, terribly confusing to LGBT youth, and obviously continues to feed the anti-gay Christian mantra of “see?? if SHE can do it, YOU can do it as well!”
And as we both know, the only thing worse than a Christian such as “Sister Jackie”, are the handful of Joe Dallas-esque deceived “ex-gays” that the Church daily parades around as “proof” we weren’t born gay, that God will change us, and that salvation magically can’t apply to anyone who identifies as gay.
The willful ignorance and grossly inconsistent use of scripture on behalf of much of the ‘conservative Church’ is alarming.
Thank you for this blog and speaking the truth.