Well, it appears that I’ve struck a collective nerve — or identified a significant need — with my last post.
Last Thursday I posted on our need to find ways to relate to, and connect with, members of the GLBT community on campus (or in our church), while taking an honest look at the biblical text and trying to live according to God’s desires — you can read that post here: GLBTs, Christians and the College Campus.
This has been one of the most viewed posts on my blog — ever — even important enough for some of you to comment on (a very small percentage of the total viewers), which tells me I might need to spend some more time creating space here for us to try and figure out how we can better serve our students in this area.
A friend of mine recently pointed me to this article in the Huffington Post entitled, How Religion is Killing Our Most Vulnerable Youth. It’s an important article on the effects of bullying, specifically towards youth who are (or even appear to be) GLBT, and the ties (at least according to the author of this article) that exist to religion. Whether or not we agree with everything in this article, or not, is not the point.
What IS the point is that we are living in a world where this IS happening.
And we should care about it!
Young men and women are being bullied to the point where these young victims are choosing death as a way out — and WE need to be people who care enough to respond. (Tim Elmore has a good, recent post on bullying — Why Bullying is Hot Again and What You Can Do About It — totally worth your reading).
But how are we to respond?
Well, are we:
- intentional to expose this problem in our own context and spheres of influence,
- intentional to talk about it – openly, publicly and with representatives from ALL sides of the conversation,
- willing to seek to be peace-makers and keepers on our campuses, and
- willing to seek Truth and live Truth — in love — in the process?
If not, why not?
YES, this is a hard conversation to have.
But I believe Scripture calls for us to have tough conversations, even if Scripture is a big part of what makes this conversation particularly challenging.
Our students need to have this conversation.
We need to have it.
And our students need us to provide some leadership in this conversation… creating a safe space for tough questions to be asked and discussed.
I know this is easier said than done…
and I think for those of us who hold an “official” position within our ministries, or organizations, we can tend to feel restrained in leading out in this area because we:
- have a lack of personal knowledge and/or understanding in this area, or
- have a personal belief — hopefully based on a sincere and earnest study of scripture — about homosexuality that causes us to believe this isn’t a conversation worth having (which seems to neglect Jesus’ command to LOVE others — above ALL else), and/or
- work for an institution, organization or denomination that makes it hard to have these kinds of conversations (publicly) without a fear of backlash.
I believe we have a unique role with college students — to expose the elephant in the room that all of them already see, but no one else is willing to talk about — and to talk about it.
What do you think?
What ideas do you have?
Where would you begin?
4 thoughts on “Exposing Elephants”
I work with a ministry on the campus of a state university, and we have had students that struggle with their sexual identity, and students who confidently proclaim that they are homosexual identify themselves with us.
It is a very tough issue, and there are some things I’m more sure of than others.
One GLBT student joined us on a mission trip because “it sounded like fun”–but shared with us at the end of the trip that she was surprised at her growing interest in God and the Bible…something she had no interest in prior to joining us.
Conversations continued, and I would like to share two questions she asked another member of our staff (and a summary of the answer) that I think are important to consider:
1. Am I going to go to hell for being homosexual?
The answer is: no. Salvation is about Jesus. We can’t do anything or be good enough to save ourselves or deserve God’s love, and we can’t do anything bad enough to cause God’s love to fail. You are not going to hell for being a homosexual– but following Jesus will mean that your whole life is submitted to God, and it will mean surrendering anything and everything that keeps you from following the call of God and the leading of His Spirit in your life.
2. What have you had to give up to follow Jesus?Actually, I don’t know exactly how my co-worker answered this question, but it is the one that blew me away! I (can I say “we”?) am guilty of speaking of sacrifice from a position of comfort. It is easy to say that someone must reject whom they understand themselves to be, to view their desires and perceived identity as something offensive to God–it is easy to say very nonchalantly and condescendingly, and even easier to imply. But it is more difficult to look at ourselves and ask in what way we have rejected our (fleshly) understanding of ourselves, or what desires we have surrendered, and what things we have allowed ourselves to become part of our identity that we have forsaken for Christ (Philippians 3 comes to mind). If we cannot point to radical transformation by the grace of God in our life, it will be hard, I think, for us to relate to our GLBT friends (or most anyone, I suppose) in a way that communicates the full hope of the gospel in a way that doesn’t come across judgmental or condescending. My friend (this GLBT student) moved away at the end of that semester…and I believe it was the grace of God that allowed her to physically relocate away from many things that were harmful to her. But she has maintained contact and relationships with many of us, and is still seeking and asking questions. I believe that ultimately God will lead her to a place (maybe on her own, maybe in the midst of these continued conversations) where she knows that she must either surrender everything or turn and walk away, knowing the One whom she is rejecting.At this point, I believe my role is not to make her heterosexual, or even to convince her that homosexuality is outside of the will of God; but rather it is to continue to lead her to Jesus. If I were to be able to guilt her or will her into viewing her sexuality differently–even if she began to view homosexuality is sin–it’s all meaningless apart from the good news and transforming power of Jesus.
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