Today’s a big day for me in my ministry. Today is the day that I decided to lead and teach and preach according to my theology. In my theology there is no conflict in my theology I believe very much did the Lord teaches us about inclusion not exclusion. I’m afraid that it seems like much of our teaching much of our growing up much of our belief system much of that which we carry with us has a theology that has a great deal to do with exclusion.  I am a pastor who happens to be queer. I have wrestled with my theology and plan to preach according to where I feel god has led me.

What would I mean by exclusion? Most people if not all people know that there is conflict in the church. If this is new for you reading this then stop by any of your local churches and you will find conflict. There shouldn’t be much of a surprise for me to suggest that there is conflict in the church. We all go to church to find peace to find the love of Christ to find a better life to find meeting for life and purpose but at the same time we need to realize that going into a place like that is going in joining forces with a group of people who are just as broken as you are when you enter. We all have a bit of brokenness in our lives. Whether it be from a difficult upbringing or perhaps current difficult circumstances. I don’t have to sell the idea very hard that life is very hard, but we all get to deal with it.

What I’m talking about is a theology that some people believe in even celebrate the fact that some people are included in the club and some people or not. It’s the same people that are not that is the problem. If you followed faith in your belief system at all you would understand that the scriptures speak about the fact that we are fallen beings – we have fallen from grace because of sin. Sin is no more than a practice or an action that separates us from God. Now scripture teaches us all about redemption and forgiveness and in scripture will go on and on and on about including those and giving those that have fallen and are broken that I was speaking of a second chance.

There’s a theology that suggest that there are some people that are seen as being beyond repair. This theology pays attention to those that seem to be living in the sin rather than turning from and repenting from that sin. Focusing on what scripture has said to a certain group at a certain time about a certain life that they should lead has led this group or this belief system to think that anyone that practice a faith different from their own is bad. OK I’ve tried to put into so many words a classic way of talking about the fact that some people think that the LGBTQ group are the bane of existence. This group has chosen to live a life of sin. The believers of this theology feel that there is no way there can be redemption in the life of a queer person because of their choice to not turn from their sin and live their life. Therein lies the problem.

It’s the thought that this is a choice this of course being the life of an LGBTQ person. I’m not going to be around the bush. If you have ever met someone from the LGBTQ community, you probably already realize that it’s not a choice. A man is born gay he doesn’t choose to be gay. A woman is born a lesbian she doesn’t one day wake up and decide OK today I want to be a lesbian and live her life persecuted the rest of her life. If you’ve ever met someone who is transgender, and I hope you have you quickly realize that choosing to be this person is a choice to be persecuted and verbally abused if not physically abused. Those that I have met in the LGBTQ community do not look at themselves and feel like victims. They do not look at themselves and think what me was I must live a life I never intended to. But that is the feeling that you get from some people on the outside that expect this person to turn from their life to turn from the Way God made them to be into live according to some other doctrine. People in the LGBTQ community were born that way. Period. To suggest otherwise is no more than an attempt to make an argument that an opponent could win. Choice is not relevant when it comes to speaking of anyone in the LGBTQ community.

Choice however is what someone allows to enter a thought process it is what allows someone to think about when they set their belief system. Religion is the practice of one’s faith. To practice one’s faith you must inform what your faith is going to follow and what your faith is going to believe. Faith in him itself is an action… it’s a leaning into what you come to understand about God. The religion part of this is what it is that you hold fast to your heart what it is that you teach yourself that you have learned from others from the way that you read scripture or from the way that you practice. To practice a faith that focuses on exclusion is far more blasphemous than practicing a faith that excludes people from the love of Christ.

I grew up evangelical. It’s what I was taught. It was all around me. Whenever I heard something taught otherwise, I felt threatened. My faith something that I believed all my being in what does question. I went to seminary at a very conservative cemetery where rather than being taught a reformed Faith I learned how to develop my own faith. That was at the core of what they were trying to do for us meaning we bring ideas as to what we believe or what we follow, and we study the scripture we study previous teachings to help us to either own that or break it down in reform it. I learned in my time in seminary and then even more so in my years of ministry that the evangelical faith and I believe Lyn wouldn’t add up for me. 

I was a finance major in undergrad. I worked as an investment banker for almost 20 years before entering seminary. Things adding up was a part of my everyday life. When I say that my faith no longer was adding up for me in my evangelical beliefs what I meant was scripture taught me one thing it was being contradicted in another we give you an example: very simply put when Jesus said he came for all in all in HE wasn’t excluding some people he made everybody. Everybody. Not everybody that follows the rules set out by the church. Not everybody that does the same thing. Not everybody that looks the same ask the same sings the same talks the same. 

Everybody. 

Now, when we understand that some people were giving same-sex attractions, and some people are not it’s hard to understand how someone can take a text like Romans 1 where Paul is suggesting that people have no business sleeping with same sex because that’s wrong. People who do that are breaking God’s law. Yeah, that’s a paraphrase but the idea there is that some people don’t follow the rules the way Paul was suggesting. What people don’t understand is that doesn’t add up. Paul was suggesting that men were giving up their natural desire for women to sleep with men. A man who was gay from birth. A man who has attraction to men from birth. That man never had a desire to be with a woman so how can that man be an abomination or how can that man be wrong when that man is exactly the way God made him to be. I don’t know about you, but I think God is perfect and I don’t believe God makes mistakes. When Jesus said that he came for all it was even that guy that God made in some people’s minds wrong. So, they don’t add up. I believe the Scripture is God breathed or scripture wouldn’t teach us that. I believe that somethings may be attempted to be left out because it was put together by man. But I also believe that if God wanted his creation to understand his words for the rest of his life, he would be sure that those words that he wanted in the Bible to be passed along would be included. Yes, I just spoke out both sides of my mouth. The difference is I don’t believe that God would intentionally contradict the main message the Bible strive to share and that is the gospel. 

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”. John 3:16. 

So, to create a doctrine or a belief system which turns into a religious theology that contradicts that, let me just suggest it was easy to understand that an evangelical theology wasn’t going to work for me. It would not add up. God speaks of reaching out to the least of these. Jesus teaches us about loving others especially our neighbors as our self. God doesn’t suggest to us do the teaching of his son Jesus to try to find people that don’t act the way we do to be sure that they’re not included in the cool kid’s club called Christianity.

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Matthew 25:40 NIV)

What I found missing in my evangelical faith was loving the least of these. 

What I found missing what is the focus on a justice that all of God’s creation is beautiful and available for redemption. 

What I missed was a focus on inclusion – a focus on love. 

I spoke to a pastor friend of mine in Asheville North Carolina one time asking about some of these difficulties of the divisions in the church between an evangelical faith in a progressive faith and she gave me the best advice I has ever heard. She said, “if I’m going to make a mistake here on earth it’s going to be a mistake where God tells me when we meet for the first time you were so busy loving everyone that you forgot to not love some of them. If I’m going to make a mistake, I’m going to make a mistake by loving everybody God puts in front of me.” I fear that my evangelical friends developed a remarkable love for the Lord. Have a wonderful love for scripture. But don’t have a deep abiding love for people especially those that are lesser or those that deserve to be loved the same way that the Lord loved them. Clearly, I can’t speak of the entire evangelical faith. That would be wrong. All I can share is how my faith has changed in that my faith is recovering.