There are those days when the fog in your head seems to lift enough for you to see a clear vision of your future, what you want to be about in this world - perhaps enough to even articulate it. A proverb says, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." This happened to me today. I was confronted by the Facebook friend mentioned in my last post, who generously read my blog and had a thoughtful response for me. Her response was like iron sharpening iron - it enabled me to think critically about my passions and why I believe what I believe. I'm posting my reply to her below because I feel I've captured in it the passion behind the things I believe and what I choose to build my life around.

I'll admit, what I initially wanted to say was very different. In fact, I simply wanted to write off my friend's thoughts as the type of conservative, traditional thinking that isn't all that helpful in opening a dialogue and a compassionate conversation. But the realization as I started to write back was that if I really and sincerely want to be a bridge-builder, engaging these conversations is imperative. I can't just ignore them. I feel very directed right now - some label it a "calling." I don't know if I would call today a watershed or landmark moment, but I certainly feel I found a voice to the impulses and beliefs I hold inside. Here it is, for better or worse...

You need to know why I prioritize things the way I do. You need to know why it's more important to me that the church chooses to be passive instead of fight, to love instead of picket, to be a voice of compassion instead of being a voice insistent on its own rights. Why I believe with all my heart that the church should stop fighting the war against abortion, gay marriage, and whatever "anti-Christian" activity it is you're referring to.

I am gay. I am the one who grew up in the conservative world, condemned from the pulpit and by my own family without anyone ever knowing what they were doing to me. I am the one who grew up with a secret so horrible I couldn't tell anyone, who grew up with an understanding that God could not possibly love me because of what I was. My only chance, only hope at being received into this family of believers into which I was born was to keep hidden this terrible secret. To smother it, to kill it if I could. To change into something that God, and everyone around me, would accept. Do you know why there is such a high suicide rate among gay people? It is because so many of us have been instilled with an idea that we are something unacceptable, unlovable, and unwanted. For the better portion of my life, every ounce of my energy was poured into creating the person I believed I had to be in order to find love and acceptance from God, from you, from everyone else. It is a devastating way to live.

Everyone struggles with issues of self-worth, with the desire to be loved. We all make decisions as we grow up based on the need to be affirmed, desired, valued, wanted. But the problem goes deeper for the homosexual. For a gay person born into a conservative, religious home, they grow up with the understanding that they personify the most abhorrent, perverse sin in the list of things God hates. An unknowing parent may do everything to show their child he is loved, but when that parent adds his or her voice to the wave of noise that is the church's antagonism toward the "sin of homosexuality," he or she confirms their own child's greatest fear: that God hates him. That he is separate, other, different. Disconnected from his family, friends, and from God. So, inevitably, that child will try to change, will pray for change, will hide his "sin," will do everything possible to cover it up. And that child will fail. There will be no change in that child's orientation. No matter what that child, that teen, that young adult does, he will feel like a failure every day of his life because he does not, cannot meet the standards of holiness that have been set for him.

And you will say, "But that's why Jesus died, to cover our sins and make us holy and presentable to God."

Try telling that to a gay person who can only see a church that spends the majority of it's time, energy, and money pouring into a war against the gay agenda - whatever that is. There is no such thing as real grace, real compassion, real, authentic love for the gays in the face the church puts forth in our world. Those picket signs, the "No on Prop 8" campaign, the insistence that orientation change is possible and that God's wish for all gay people is that they become straight - all these things drown out any love that might be trying to break through.

God did not leave us a mission to fight moral battles. Jesus did not fight moral battles. If anything, he challenged the accepted notions of morality in his day. He ate with tax collectors and "sinners." He exhibited grace and love to prostitutes. He (gasp!) healed on the Sabbath!

Until the church can prioritize people before an issue, faces before morality, we will continue to miss the mark. Until we acknowledge that God does not need or ask us to wage war on "sin," we will continue to alienate the very people he so much loves and so much longs to include in his kingdom. The church is working against the heart of God; we are counter-productive.

None of this has anything to do with what one believes about Obama and his policies. None of this has anything to do with aligning oneself with one political party or another. Yes, I was at times critical of Bush's policies. But only because he claimed to be a follower of Christ, and some things he chose to do did not align with the way of Jesus and the heart of God. Because I believe in the way of Jesus, in his mission to reconcile all people to God, it is my own mission to make that way evident to everyone. To give people every opportunity to "come as they are," to not block the gates with picket signs and a version of morality that is better than other people's morality. Right and wrong are not the crux upon which the entire church stands - they are NOT. Morality is not what makes a follower of Christ - it is NOT.

LOVE. Love is what makes someone a follower of Christ. "They will know you are Christians by your love." Love trumps everything - it trumps our "rights." It trumps whatever sin we may think separates someone from God. It blows away the need to white-knuckle the truth. It is sacrificial - it does not retaliate. Jesus straight-up told us that in this world we will have trouble - but, he says, "I give you my peace. Not peace as the world gives..." Christians will have trouble, and we're not told to fight back. Christians don't need to fight for morality because of the peace we have been given. We are free to simply love. Simply love. No fighting, no condemnation, no judgment - God can take care of himself. He doesn't need us to defend what is right and wrong in moral terms. He needs us to love. God needs a body - that was why Jesus came. God needed a body to physically reach out and touch the people he loves. And that mission has been left to us. We have bodies, we have hands. We must use those hands to reach out, to hold, to comfort - NEVER to close to the door on someone. NEVER to hold a picket sign. NEVER to write messages that will make God's beloved children believe that they are unloved, unwanted, and unacceptable.

Because that is what we do when we fight against gay marriage. That is what we do when we picket abortion clinics. We may believe we are defending physical life - but we are smothering spiritual life. In those moments, we are not going into all the world and spreading the Good News - we are spreading hate.

And you can be sure that I will continue to distinguish myself from a church that spreads hate.