Five reasons to make your faith and sexual orientation a match
The bridge between Faith and sexuality was distroyed over years but the one of Faith and homosexuality seems to never existed. This leads to misunderstanding and self sabotage for LGBT+ christians who fails daily to obtain the help they need and desire. Every person might have an idea of why LGBT+ people are not God’s prefered children and unfortunatly this lie is believed by many christians. It it so sad that even today this negative and false message is still preached and spread by many church leaders. To understand better how deep and immeasurable God’s love is, here are five reasons why you are a loved child of God regardless your sexual orienation:
1. You are not a disgrace: everything created by God is good
How many times is one made to feel a shame in one’s own community, even Christian communities? This feeling is made more intense by the comments, words and preaching we hear from people we care about, our loved ones and people we look up to and consider our role models. However, we are all created by God and in 1 Timothy 4:4, we know that we are good because He created us: “Everything God has created is good, and nothing is to be rejected, provided it is received with thanksgiving“. If we believe to be created by God then there is no reason to think otherwise.
2.You are not a mistake: You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
I had a chance to meet numerous LGBT+ persons from different countries and it is so heart-wrenching to hear what some of them had to endure. Imagine being told by your loved ones that you are a mistake, you are a punishment to your family and that God could have given this family something better than this. Some were exposed to this kind of insults and negative comments on a daily basis. However, many forget that God does not do things by mistake nor abandon his creatures. He forms and shapes his creatures with great love and care. Psalm 139:14 highlights the work of God and emphasizes the need for us to be thankful for who we are. “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
3. There is nothing wrong about you: before you were born God knew you.
“We will pray for you, and I know you will be healed“. I heard this statement many times in various situations. Unfortunately, I still hear it from some friends. I am sure that many LGBT + persons who are also Christians are told these words many times when they come out to their Christian friends. However good the intention might be or profound the sympathy and love for them, such statements leave us with a sense of incompleteness and with a feeling that there is something wrong about us. Their lack of malice or ignorance on the topic should be addressed through our confidence in God and our desire to help them understand better. It could be a huge challenge but we should be the ones to help our fellow Christians to understand that there is nothing wrong about us. Our sexual orientation never stops us from being beloved sons and daughters of God. If we are able to claim this truth, we can help others understand it. It is undoubtedly a challenging but much needed path to follow in order for the Church to be more open and welcoming. God does not have any issue with our sexuality because as it is written in Jeremiah 1:5, God knew us before we were born. He knows us more than we know ourselves and we are called to something greater than our sexuality. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
4. You are Perfect: you are made in God’s Image.
Most of the things we hear our friends say are the direct result of misunderstanding and misinterpreting the condition of the LGBT+ person. In our day and age, there is greater focus on sexuality than on any other aspect of our being such as the soul and spirit. Many people need to embark on a journey to deconstruct their incorrect and inexact notions of the LGBT+ persons and understand that sexual orientation should never be a problem for Christianity. It is equally important for us LGBT+ Christians to understand that not only there is nothing wrong with us but that we are perfect. We are cast in God’s image. The beauty that we hold runs in our heart and in our souls. There is nothing that can take away the light of God, the reflection of heaven, the pure image of God in our life. In Genesis 1:27 it is said: “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”
5. You are loved: Even if a mother forgets her child, God cannot forget.
When you are considered to be a shame, to have something wrong or to be a mistake, you have to learn to survive. You tend to see the world as judgmental and non-accepting toward you. You lose the ability of seeing the world in a positive light. You learn how to love others but grow daily in self-hatred, both consciously and unconsciously. You gradually despise yourself more and more. Notwithstanding our active participation in Church services and our endless acts of service for the community, the feeling of being unworthy of love grows stronger. This, in turn, causes internalised homophobia and creates in us the false image of a God who is not accepting nor welcoming but discriminates his own creatures. However, in Isaiah 49:15, we read what kind of God he truly is and how strong and deep his Love is for each one of us. Yes, we tend to consider God as a Father but in order to understand his fatherhood we need to rid ourselves of the incomplete and flawed images of fatherhood which our personal experiences ingrained in us. Unfortunately, some parents were not a good example for us, even vis-à-vis our sexuality. Yet, in Isaiah, we can learn what kind of parent he can be to us and the way he watches us: “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion for the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!”
Nothing can take you away from the sight of God. God loves us unconditionally, through and through.
