Myths and Misconceptions...

“She was kissing another girl”, the teen on the phone shared with me. “Will you talk to her?” the teen asked.

Fifteen years have passed since that phone conversation, but I had a chance to revisit it this past week.

I got to spend a couple days with an old friend who was a part of this story. I worked then and now at a Christian summer camp and the teen on the phone had worked with me the previous summer. She was calling about a camper that we both knew and loved. 

I made a connection with the camper,  we met up at Wendy’s, along with her counselor from the summer (the friend I recently spent time with), and we talked long into the night.

A journey began for me that night in Wendy’s that brought me to writing this blog. Throughout the early years of this journey, the Lord helped me confront many preconceived ideas, myths, and misconceptions that I had about what it meant to be gay or to be trans.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that my ideas weren’t just my ideas- many were held by the broader evangelical community. They needed to be confronted.

You see, I don’t ever recall being exposed to any dedicated teaching in the area of homosexuality or gender. As Evangelicals, we have not done a great job teaching and training in the area of sexuality (straight or gay) or gender. I hadn’t heard a sermon in church.  I hadn’t received teaching in the college group that I attended. I never attended a women’s study devoted to understanding a Biblical sexual ethic. But somehow I had come to conclusions. It was like it came through the water in the drinking fountain.

I decided that I needed to pay the “brain bill” myself in these areas.  Are these ideas and beliefs I held true? The Lord grew my heart for the LGBTQ community during this fifteen year journey and exposed a lot of wrong thinking. I’d like to help us all think together through some preconceived ideas that I held. Perhaps you hold them now or held them in the past as well.

Growing into a spiritual adult in the evangelical church is something that I’ve been so thankful for over the years.

I have come to believe in sound doctrine. 

I’ve been held accountable to walk in a way that represents Christ well in my daily life. 

I’ve worked to become biblically literate. 

There are a lot of people like me in churches each week: people with the intent to love well. 

And yet, the church is perceived in the broader culture as unloving and anti-gay. How did we get an identity of “anti” anything? We want to be “pro-love”, “pro-people”, “pro-sound doctrine”. 

Perhaps we’ve become “anti-gay” simply because we do not know what the “pro’s” are?

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions out there among us.

We hold some things as true that, I believe, are false. Because of these entrenched ideas, we often relate out of fear to those outside the church. Because of these entrenched ideas we fail to listen to stories thinking that we already know the end, the cause, the root. We spend too much time with people that look and think just like we do and we ideate loving well but are not sure how to get there.

I believe we want to love well. I want to love well. You want to love well. 

But it doesn’t happen overnight or without cost. It takes work and thought. 

Are you willing to do some mental work? It is necessary to love well in our culture today.

I’m hoping to shine a spotlight on some biases and myths and create dialogue for you and those you spend time with. Talk through these ideas, pull them apart, stretch yourself.

In the coming weeks we will tackle myths like:

Same sex desires are chosen?

If you pray hard enough you can get rid of your same sex desires?

Is the goal heterosexuality?

Loving well means affirming gay marriage?

The gay ‘lifestyle’?

If you have other ideas- please write in! I’d love to chat!