I met a gay man at Starbucks a few weeks ago. "All my friends are dead so I decided to move to Georgia," he said. He's an artist. A former fashion designer for people like Beyonce. And a victim of a bad theology of love. "My sister and I used to go to a church when I was seven," he said. "We'd go every Sunday and Wednesday and whenever there was something going on there."
One day though a leader saw us getting out of my parents' car and later asked us why our parents didn't come into church as well. You know? We didn't have to go to church there. My parents didn't care. We could have stopped going anytime we wanted."
Anyway, I could tell the attitude of the leaders changed. We stopped being invited places with the church group. We realized we were no longer on the in-crowd there. And I decided 'you know what? I don't need this.'"
So my friend told me he's been to church since then, but not to any Christian churches. He appreciates all forms of spirituality: Hinduism, Native American animism. He celebrates Hannukah with his Jewish friends and Ramadan with his Muslim friends and in all of his words that day I sensed a hurt and a real desire to love. To love and to be loved. To be known and to be loved all the same. This, I believe, is why the homosexual lifestyle is so attractive to sensitive and injured people. It provides a community that hints at love and hints at acceptance and provides a safe haven for a guilty conscience: a guilt caused by acting out of a false sense of love. It could simply be said (of course this overly simple) that my friend left the place where he could find true love because a leader's theology of love didn't very well include the idea of accepting someone for the same reason Christ accepts and loves them: because they are his creation.
Now I realize that in every story of burn victims (those who've been burned by Christians in this case) there is a story behind a story. Somebody had to set the fire. But somebody had to fuel it. And someone had to add oxygen to that flame to make it grow into a fatal force. It's a more complex story than what I'm recounting here. But it does at least bring up a good point: what is our theology of love. What does it mean to love your neighbor as yourself? What does it mean to love God with all your heart? Why does Christ combine the two?
Well, loving God means you'll love your neighbor. And this is why I love the story of Missionary Service Corps missionary Kerry Jackson who has moved into Atlanta to live among the arts community down there. His love for God has poured into his love for his fellow artists. He wants to provide them with gallery space, work space, worship space and space to be who they are--men and women created in God's image and therefore worthy of redemption.
So, I gave my friend Kerry's contact info. And took my friend's card to give to Kerry. On it he has a picture of himself dressed in drag. I hope one day God's grace will remind him to dress like himself.
Adam