Openly Gay, Openly Christian: How the Bible Really Is Gay Friendly

By Rev. Samuel Kader

The Bible really is gay-friendly and affirming says Rev. Samuel Kader as he shows in his ground-breaking book what lessons can be learned from Scripture, history and experience. Here is direct language we find what is really contained in the Bible regarding homosexuality and gay relationships, and the results are truly surprising. Scriptural and anecdotal evidence is given to show that "gay and Christian" is a powerful move of God on earth. Rev. Kader's pastoral and personal insights make this pioneering book a must read for all people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781619200203

Book preview

Conclusions

Openly Gay, Openly Christian: An Introduction

OVER THE LAST SEVERAL YEARS, there has been a great deal of preached and printed rhetoric against the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community coming from various segments of the Christian Church. In some cases this stems from blatant homophobia and disdain for anyone different than the cultural norms. But, I believe in many cases this stems from a sincere desire to see others get right with God. Yet, by not fully understanding what they are talking about, people are only badgering the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community (GLBT) with the Bible, the very book that was designed to bring freedom. This stems from an ignorance of what the Bible actually says about homosexuality as well as relying on traditions of Biblical interpretations handed down through the ages. These traditions are often steeped in ignorance of both scientific data as well as ignorance of the new discoveries from the word of God itself.

It is my desire to dispel the myths, bring the truth to light, and open our hearts to the understanding that fosters love. It is not necessary to draw all of the same conclusions that I do or to necessarily agree with me on all points. I am presenting the conclusions I have drawn after three decades of research. Yet it is my desire to see people get revelation from the Word of God for themselves, and my task is to help you along that journey.

I have been a pastor in the gay community since 1980. I have pastored four churches, spoken in countless others, been to a variety of Christian conferences both within and without the identified gay Christian community, and taught, preached, and served on denominational committees in a variety of capacities. I have been on task forces, chaired committees, and in general been very involved in the Christian community. It is my life.

Over the years, I have certainly met thousands of sincere Christians, who also happen to be gay, or another sexual minority. I have seen only the tip of the iceberg. There are millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Christians already serving God and their local congregations in churches, as well as in denominational committees. Many church elders are gay. There are gay pastors, even in organizations that would immediately revoke their credentials if their orientation were to become either public knowledge or even suspected.

The Christian Church is in bondage to a tradition that has no basis in fact. Countless lives are being battered, bruised, and damaged, by maintaining this tradition. In order to continue membership in good standing within innumerable congregations, many gay people try to do everything they can to keep the secret in their hearts quiet and out of public view. They have been to Christian counselors, they have had hands laid on them in prayer, they have fasted, prayed, and begged God to remove the desire in their heart. They have suffered abuse, mistreatment, and when all else failed, they have been ostracized, removed from membership, shunned,and even physically thrown out of church and told to never return. Had there been a way to change their orientation they would have done so. With their prayer to change unanswered, I know personally of gay Christians who have taken their lives because they could no longer bear the pressure to conform.

Chapters of so called self-help groups have sprung up overnight within churches as para-church ministries to help homosexuals get out of the lifestyle. The most they have been able to offer is support for a gay person to remain as celibate as possible and offer forgiveness when they slip. Occasionally a person who can sexually function as a bisexual opts to get heterosexually married, then that cure and deliverance from a homosexual lifestyle is advertised much within the church.

One organization which for decades held the stance that prayer, fasting, and therapy could change sexual orientation has now reversed its’ position completely.

The leaders of Exodus International are dropping their previously held principle that most people’s homosexual attractions can be converted through prayer, and the president of Exodus disclosed Monday night that he still has same-sex attractions. Alan Chambers has been one of the faces of reparative therapy and has appeared in ads for Exodus International …However, as of late, the organization has been distancing itself from saying so-called reparative therapy can work for any person with homosexual attractions. With regards to reparative therapy, so much of that type of technique and therapy is focused on changing attraction or changing temptation when I don’t find that there is a biblical reality that says people will necessarily change their temptations or change their struggles, he said….. Chambers contends that saying someone can pray the gay away, is a lazy way of simplifying a person’s sexual orientation.¹

In fact, because they could no longer justify attempts to convert gays into heterosexuals, Exodus International apologized publicly for the harm they had done to gays over the years, and decided it was best to close their doors altogether.

The president of Exodus reported that After 37 years of ministry the Exodus Board of Directors including Exodus President Alan Chambers determined the Lord was leading us to end Exodus’ season of ministry. On June 19th 2013. Alan Chambers announced the closing of Exodus International, North America.²

I have a pastor friend named Karl. He is gay. Karl’s brother-in-law is also a pastor. Karl’s brother-in-law said one time that the only thing gay people have to do is come to the altar, pray, and they will be delivered from homosexuality. Karl’s sexual orientation was unknown to his brother-in-law, and Karl posed this question to him. If that were so, then suppose a person in your church came for prayer, repented of their sins, and for the next year were a model Christian member of your church. After a year had gone by, if they wanted to take your 14 year old on a camping trip would you let them go?

The brother-in-law said No!

Then you see, Karl replied, You don’t really believe that a person’s orientation does change if they are prayed for and become a Christian.

People who have tried everything the church offered discovered their innate feelings have never gone away. These feelings are as much a part of who they are as feelings in the heterosexual are innate to them. In so many cases the church is not offering help and hope. Rather, they are offering bondage and legalism; bound to a tradition that has no power to help. People are incredibly resilient. When situations dictate, heterosexuals and homosexuals alike can keep their sexual urges in check, without acting upon them. But nothing they do can stop them from being attracted to another person.

Sexual attraction does not go away with prayer and fasting. That is a person’s innate orientation. It can be sublimated, it can be denied, but it cannot be driven out.

Steve Parker, for example, is a young man who discovered that his Christianity and homosexuality were compatible. He consented to share his testimony. Steve writes:

"I became a Christian at age 20 after a spiritual experience convinced me of the existence of God. I was eager to learn all about my new faith, and earnestly tried to live a life which I felt would be pleasing to God. I joined a church and eagerly adopted the lifestyle of those around me whom I felt to be Godly individuals. I quit drinking, smoking, and cursing. I started a daily regimen of prayer and Bible study. At the age of 23, I was licensed as a minister in my denomination and started a campus ministry at a local college. I became active in conservative politics. On the outside, I looked like the perfect candidate to join the Christian Coalition. There was only one problem. I was gay.

I had known I was gay since I was thirteen years old. When I became a Christian, I was told that Christians could not be gay and that God could change me. Not knowing any better, I believed them. I spent hours fervently praying for God to change me. I studied Scriptural principles and applied them to my life. I fasted. And I waited for God to change me. It didn’t happen.

For five years, I lived a celibate life…yet, inside, I knew that I was attracted to men. I met a wonderful woman to whom I became very close. I asked her to marry me, feeling that surely that would finally cure me. It did not. Two months into the marriage, I told her about my secret feelings. She was devastated. Our marriage ended in divorce. My denomination would not renew my credentials. My life came to a screeching halt.

In the months that followed, I tried to make sense of what had happened in my life. I felt God had abandoned me. Meanwhile, my sexual desires grew stronger. Finally, with a sense of utter frustration and despair, I quit fighting. On a cold winter night in January, 1988, I went to a gay bar. This marked the beginning of a slow but steady descent into a world of alcoholism, drugs, and meaningless sex.

For the next seven years, my life slowly deteriorated. By January of 1995, I stayed drunk nearly all of the time and was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine. In March of that year, I lost my job and totaled my car. My father, who had never been one to offer much advice, came to me and said what probably were the wisest words he had ever uttered: You need help. I really couldn’t disagree.

I entered a substance abuse treatment center. Once there, my counselor designed my treatment program to help me deal with the fact that I was gay, something I had never come to terms with. As I came to accept that I was a homosexual, something else happened as well. I came to a very real awareness that the God I had run away from seven years previously was still there, and even more amazingly, still loved me! I was amazed. This went against everything that I believed and everything I was taught.

Yet, as I became more comfortable with being gay, I sensed God’s presence even more strongly. I began to pray on a daily basis again. Then, one morning after I had been in the center for about two weeks, I was in prayer and felt a tremendous power flow through my body. Suddenly the cocaine addiction that I had struggled with for years was gone. Inside my head, I heard a voice as clear as a bell say I died for you. Jesus Christ had set me free. From that moment on I knew that I was okay with God. And I knew it was okay to be gay.

During the five weeks I spent in that treatment center, I learned more about the love of God than in the entire five years I had spent in church so many years before. Because I came to accept myself and love myself as I was, homosexuality and all, I could now accept God’s unconditional love for me. And just as importantly, I could love other people as they were, just as God does.

Before, I thought that my sexual nature was perverse, twisted and evil. Because of that, I was constantly critical of myself and others. I felt it was necessary to compensate by being a super-Christian, praying more than anyone, reading the Bible more than anyone, being more holy than anyone. Nothing I did was ever enough to please God; there was always a need to do more. Now, realizing that my sexuality was God-given and God-ordained, I could freely accept Christ’s unmerited favor.

Since that time, my relationship with God has grown and prospered. God has blessed my life in numerous ways. I am back in school, quickly approaching a degree in sociology. I am conducting research that I will continue in graduate school next fall, exploring the role that negative images of God play in keeping gays from coming to terms with their sexuality, and how that can lead to substance abuse in order to dull the pain that results. What started as a part time job in a small business on the verge of failure has grown into part ownership of a company that grossed approximately three-quarters of a million dollars in 1996. I have met a wonderful Christian man and am engaged to be married to him this spring. I feel closer to the Lord than I ever have. My life is truly rich and full by every measure.

God is very active in my life, calling me to higher levels of honesty and personal integrity. The fruit of the Spirit are manifest as I find love, joy, peace, etc. becoming ever more evident. This is something I never knew before. I think it should be obvious why I feel that being gay and being a Christian is not incompatible."

Steve’s testimony is like that of so many others. After accepting the party line, the tradition that said homosexuality and Christianity were incompatible, many did everything they thought was necessary to forget the secret desires in their hearts. And they did those things for years. Finally it dawned on them, that this orientation was not going away, and it was not going to change.

Many people over the years have telephoned or made counseling appointments because they were on the verge of suicide, frustrated because everything they had been taught did not stop their orientation from manifesting in their feelings and desires. They can’t help who they find attractive. Why do people seek a mate with one characteristic over another? They find one trait more attractive than another. No one taught them to prefer a person of a certain sex, height, or eye color. They just do.

When the topic of sexuality hits the church there are few or no answers that work. There are platitudes. There are plenty of traditional theologies based on scriptural interpretations. But when those traditions fail, the person seeking help is considered a moral failure and asked to leave. The tradition is never questioned.

The tradition declares that all non-heterosexual orientations are evil, and must be changed. This tradition, however, has never brought freedom. It has brought bondage, legalism, ostracism, depression, psychiatric institutional admissions, despondency, and suicide. It has driven people from God and the church and offered no hope.

Still, there are countless numbers of gay people and others who are experiencing a meaningful relationship with God and Jesus Christ despite church traditions to the contrary. A similar phenomenon happened in the early first century church as well. Tradition, to the newly created Jewish sect, meant gentiles could not be a part of the church unless they first converted and became just like the Jewish believers. They had councils over the issue. Peter was called on the carpet for going to visit non-Jews. Yet in spite of what people thought, God was moving in the earth and bringing gentiles to Christ anyway, without the consent of the Jews. Today, without the consent of pastors, church boards, or deacons, God is drawing gay people to Himself, raising up new and affirming churches faster than any one can count, and adding these outcasts to His Body anyway. God is way ahead of His people, and the church is lagging behind God by decades. It is time to examine the tradition that keeps the rest of the body from following the Shepherd who has already gone into the highways and byways and compelled them to come in. He is already adding gay people to His church roster daily whether heterosexual Christians know it or not.

It has too long been assumed a person could not be gay and Christian. But too many gay people have experienced a genuine encounter with the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ to accept this fallacy any longer.

Also it has been assumed that if a gay person became a Christian they would no longer be gay, or at the very least would remain forever celibate. Again this fallacy is not born out in the everyday experiences of gay Christians. Believers who are also gay are asking and discovering what God requires of them. They discover it is neither heterosexuality nor celibacy.

They are finding it possible to be both holy and homosexual with no discrepancy in lifestyle. The two states are totally compatible. The Holy Spirit is the reliable source to lead a person through their conscience into right and wrong behaviors. Many are even finding a helpmate as they walk with the Lord. Many are discovering that promiscuity is not an option, but that a stable love life with a lifetime partner is the place they best honor God. Many such Christian couples will testify that their relationship came about through their walk with God. It is again time to challenge false stereotypes, and see who God is and what He has been saying to His people.

In an age when people are dying of AIDS, and are in need of love and compassion, the church, or many who call themselves the church, has gotten entangled in a web of legalism and bondage. Rather than helping people discover the Savior, the church is alienating people and pushing them further away. The church is not called to be the judge of the world. The church has been given the ministry of reconciling the world to God.

Galatians 5:1 Tells us to stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. So the Gospel is good news. It brings liberation, it doesn’t bring bondage.