have you ever thought what it must be like to 'come out' as gay to your friends and family?
[if any of you have actually been through the experience i would love to hear your story (if not on the site here, then by email maybe). how did you feel before, during and after? what were the consequences? are you treated differently now?]
there is much that i admire in the gay community, much that the church as a whole can learn and take example from. walk a mile in the moccasins of a gay person coming out, reflect and then comment. imagine turning your back on everything you have been brought up to believe; everything that other people (including those closest to you, whose approval and validation you most need and crave) expect from and for you; risking lasting rejection from your parents, neighbours, 'friends', wider society and even the church.
and the rejection comes, in spades, from all the expected (and several devastatingly unexpected) places. life-long friendships and even blood ties, are re-assessed, revised, revoked; wounded, and struggling you seek solace in your new-found community. the desire to live, work, breath, eat and die there is almost palpably strong; yet you resist, in part for practical reasons - you still need to earn a living, to leave the kids to school, to buy milk from the local grocery store - and partly due to a deep-felt desire for vindication, validation, acceptance, love.
and so, with the threat of discrimination and even violence ever hanging over you, you walk the streets - an embodied challenge to all those with the effrontery to call themselves 'normal', only because their peccadilloes and indiscretions are less obvious and/or more socially acceptable. simply by being, you call all others into question. threatened by your very identity, they hear a clarion call to self-examination and, fearing the implications of that level of scrutiny perhaps, sublimate their own fears and uncertainties into abject hatred for you.
and yet still you act; still you are compelled by you-know-not-what - genes? your upbringing? the devil? god? - to step out and take a stand.
compare this with the average westerner 'coming out' as a christian and the contrast could not be more stark (i am deliberately not including those who convert from different religions, as i am aware that this experience can be much closer to that of the 'out' gay person). rarely is there a sense in the convert that they are standing in stark relief to the prevailing mores; rarely is there any sense of loneliness, isolation, rejection, fear of reprisal. news of one's conversion is more likely to be greeted with warm congratulations or bored yawns of indifference at worst.
yet when jesus of nazareth called men and women to accept the implications of his teachings and to follow him, his allusions are in equal measure to death and suffering as well as to life and wholeness. the cross is the enduring icon of christianity - representing the death of jesus himself and the desire of his followers to "share in the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death and so, somehow, to attain the resurrection of the dead." it seems to me that if we can imagine a way to follow christ here in the 21st century which does not have a high probability of physical martyrdom, even here, in the "christian" west, we are reading the scriptures incorrectly. and so it seems that the usual experience of a 'follower of the way' ought to be something more akin to the gay experience than that of the regular evangelical (myself obviously included). indeed, as with the gay community and as it was for jesus and his original followers, the biggest threat, the biggest alienation and rejection, will more than likely come from within the religious community, rather than from those outside.
this, of course, begs the question, where and how ought the christian to be so counter-cultural. aye, there's the rub, the controversy, the debate and, no doubt, the subject of a subsequent posting. for now simply pray for the gay community and thank god for the lessons they can teach those of us who walk an easier path.
