Kingdom Script

Here’s what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, “I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, “I always knew you could be like this. I got glimpses of it on earth, but now look at you!

Many of us view the world as an ugly place with a few beautiful redeeming characteristics. Unfortunately, that’s also how we view humans. But what I learned at Liberty was that this idea is the exact opposite of reality: The world and the people in it are really wonderful with just a smidge of ugliness about them.

Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart.

I will not change my views, and Dan will likely not change his, but we can continue to listen, learn and appreciate “the blessing of growth” that happens when we know each other better. I hope that our nation’s political leaders and campus leaders might do the same.

I look at each of my gay friends, who are now just friends, and I am thankful that after all they’ve had to put up with from Christians these days, they even let me love them at all.

Why does this matter? Well, let me take one phrase that Steve cites as an example of how appallingly the churches have treated LGBTQIA people: “objectively disordered”. This has become a famous phrase because it is used in the Catechism of the Roman Catholic Church to describe (what the Catechism calls) “homosexual inclination”. What is wrong with the phrase? It seems to me, if we take the big story of creation-fall-redemption-consummation seriously, the problem is not using it of gay men and lesbians, but using it only of them. All people are fallen and multiply broken; all our desires are warped and twisted out of their proper shape; my sexuality is objectively disordered, and - I trust and pray - being reordered by God’s Spirit at work in my life.