How Does a Person Follow Jesus Christ If They're Gay?

 This is going to be a controversial but necessary topic for me to write on. It will probably anger not just a few people, and I may lose a few friends over it. But it is something which the Spirit of Christ compels me to write about.

     How does a person follow Jesus Christ if they're gay?

     The subject of being a Christian and being homosexual is a tense one and filled with emotion and passion on both sides of the argument. There was a time when I would have argued that it was impossible, but that time has come and gone.

     Homosexuality today and homosexual or bisexual practice in the first century Greco-Roman society are two distinctly different things if, for no other reason, because they are separated by two completely different cultures and worldviews. 

     In ancient society, there was no question of homosexual marriage, as marriage was a contract between a prospective husband and the father of a young woman for the purposes of joining two families and producing children. While the prospective bride and husband might have had feelings for one another, it certainly wasn't a necessity and wasn't always factored into the thinking of either prospective husband or father of the bride. It's clear from a deeper research into both the language and practices of the time that the homosexual practices mentioned by Paul in his letters, and written against, referred to both the cultural practice of pederasty (older men sodomizing younger boys), and the practices of the priesthood of certain goddesses where the male priests would emasculate themselves, live as women, and offer themselves as prostitutes in worship of their goddess. Outside of this, it was clear there were extra-marital bisexual and homosexual affairs between men who were close friends (Julius Caesar is mentioned in this regard, and 400 years earlier, Alexander's relationship with his childhood best friend is pretty well documented), but they could never result in "marriage" as they understood it. It was the same European mentality you would see much later on that "a Gentleman's business was his own and his wife had to endure it or be dealt with." This was true whether the affair was with a woman or a man. This was the culture in which Paul wrote as he mentioned these things in his letters. The Apostle could never have imagined accepted, stable, open homosexual marital relationships. And such relationships between women weren't even considered by him, as they weren't even forbidden in the Torah (the passage in Romans 1 more likely refers to bestiality in connection with pagan worship, something which is explicitly forbidden in the Torah). So, many of the homosexual or "queer" relationships today are something which simply wouldn't have existed in the first century, and couldn't have been conceived of by the New Testament authors.

     It goes without saying, or it should go without saying, that there are many homosexual or queer people today who have been ostracized, abandoned, rejected, and hurt by Christians and the Church at large. I too share a responsibility in that, something which I regret deeply. What is less understood is that there are also a great many such people who not only believe in God, but want to seek Jesus Christ. They just aren't let past the doors of the churches because of the way their brains are configured, regardless of the reason whether psychological or neurological.

     So, how does a person follow Jesus Christ if they're gay?

     First, understand that He would never turn you away or reject you. Had you needed healing, He wouldn't have made you fill out a questionnaire regarding your past history and sexuality. Had you wanted to follow Him, He would have taken you in and taught you more.

     Second, understand that He wouldn't have treated you any differently than the other disciples or Apostles. The same conditions of discipleship would have been placed on you as were placed on them. Nothing more, and nothing less. These conditions of discipleship were, in a nutshell, detachment from any relationships, possessions, self-identity, or anything to which you are attached which could or might become an obstacle to your relationship with Him and following His path. If something or someone was more important to you than Him, then He explicitly said you couldn't be His disciple. He wasn't being cruel, He was just stating a fact, because the path He taught required letting go of everything you were afraid to lose or which could trigger fear or anger upon threat of loss.

     Third, the Path He taught and demonstrated was one of total submission to His Father in everything He said and did. It was being a "channel" of Him, to where everything He said and did was really the Father through Him, as He Himself said, "I can't do anything at all from Myself..." And in this total, voluntary submission to His Father, and us to Him, we become the conduits of His absolute love, compassion, and mercy to all those around us no matter who they are. We treat no one differently, are attached to no one differently, but love all equally because God loves all equally through us. This is what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. Thus we love our spouses, not because we are attached to them, but because God loves them through us absolutely, and because He loves them through us, we keep their best interests close to heart and do good to them and care for them as though better than ourselves. We love them as Christ loved the church, and conversely we also submit to them as the Church is to submit to Christ. We be Christ for them, and we see them as Jesus Christ serving them as we serve Him. And this is true of our spouse, the rich, the homeless, great leaders, and total unknowns. There is no difference, we see Jesus in every individual that comes across our path and treat them accordingly just as Mother Teresa once remarked.

     What does this look like for our sexuality though? Our sexual desires are a part of our neurological survival response system controlled by the brain. Along with fear, aggression, and the feeding response, it is governed by the hypothalamus, amygdala, and the limbic system in general which, as I have previously described is the part of the brain which is overreacting and malfunctioning in human beings. Whether one is heterosexual or homosexual, this too must be brought under the control of the Spirit of Christ with whom you have been joined. It is not a matter of forcing yourself to remain celibate, in either case, but it is a matter of disengaging from your own responses and cooperating with Him so that He is the one who responds.

     As I have written before, the normal "sexual state" of Christian practice is not heterosexual marriage, but chastity or celibacy as the malfunctioning neurology is bypassed by the Spirit of Christ. Marriage, as described in the New Testament, is a special dispensation or exception for those who follow Christ, and as Paul described it in 1 Corinthians 7, one of the reasons for allowing this exception is for those who cannot handle absolute celibacy (such as myself). Furthermore, as such, it becomes a more concentrated and intimate devotion to Christ between the two spouses as they practice being Jesus for each other, forgiving, loving, and submitting to each other as Christ and His Church. In the case of a homosexual couple, the same understanding would still apply. Each would practice being a conduit for the Spirit of Christ towards his or her spouse. This would be the foundation and daily practice of any and every Christian marriage, whether heterosexual in nature or homosexual, and not one's personal sexual desires for their spouse or anyone else for that matter. The needs, wants, and best interests of the other person come first. Period.

     The way one's brain works should never been seen as a barrier to recognizing their malfunction and turning to follow Jesus Christ. In comparison with the rest of creation, there is no human being that is not malfunctioning. This malfunction presents in different ways, but it is the same malfunction nonetheless and in need of the same solution. To forbid anyone from coming to Him based on their not keeping a "law" or a "rule" is to ignore the decisions of the Apostles themselves who decided that the Torah wasn't necessary for the non-Jews to follow in order to be disciples, and those rules they did ask them to keep were so they could keep the peace with their Jewish brothers in terms of ritual cleanliness. To forbid anyone from coming to Him to be a disciple is to shut the doors to the kingdom to them while refusing to enter it yourself.