What Draws Us Toward God

A reading from the first chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans:

¹⁸The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, ¹⁹since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. ²⁰For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

²¹For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.

²⁴Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. ²⁵They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

²⁶Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. ²⁷In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.

After my post last night, I've been thinking about what has drawn me toward God. The ironic answer has been the fact that I'm gay. For many gay people, this sends them away from God, or at least the church, God's representative to many people. True, my initial disgust and shame at being gay is what sent me to God in intense prayer, asking for change, cure, redemption. It is the intense prayer that, in turn, brought me to an understanding of the wideness of God's mercy, love, redemption.

I also thought of these famous verses from the first chapter of Romans. These are well known to GLBT Christians, as they are one of the handful of "clobber" passages used against us. Setting aside the fact that this is in the first chapter of Romans and that in the eighth chapter, Paul goes to some length to tell us that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ (making me think that maybe Paul was setting up the problem in chapter one and solving it in chapter eight), let's look at what these verses actually say.

"For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another."

Here, Paul clearly sets up a cause and effect situation. The effect is turning people over to sinful desires, to sexual impurity. The cause was people not glorifying or giving thanks to God.

As I struggled to find peace with my own sexuality, this made no sense to me. From as early as I could say so, I wanted to go to church. I was the kid who wanted to go to Sunday school and looked forward to it. I never had a "rebellious" stage in college but was very involved in Lutheran Campus Ministry the whole time I was there. (My mother once joked that I got my degree in theater, but I majored in campus ministry.) I searched my life for a time where I was not part of a worshiping community or not seeking out a worshiping community. I'd spent my entire life, to the best of my ability, glorifying and giving thanks to God.

Why had God turned me over to "sinful desires" and "sexual impurity?"

I won't belabor the point, as I believe it's right there. I suppose there are people who would argue that I had not worshiped, glorified, or gave thanks in the proper manner, not "in spirit and truth." It's why there are some people who pray for a million dollars and get it while others don't.

But I'm not hear to debate a prosperity/"name it, claim it" theology. I'm here to simply say that if God turned me over to sinful desires, God also used it to draw me closer and to ultimately convince me that the desires weren't inherently sinful anymore than a straight man's desire for a woman is inherently sinful (although I confess that I know something about the sinful desires, too---perhaps we all do).

Being gay is a thorn in my side. It is also my blessing. It is not the same for all people. For some it's never a thorn, for others it's never a blessing. But this is my story and it's sticking to me.