TheoThoughts

The following is a compelling guest post from Anonymous, who asked for the identity to not be revealed. I think this is a fitting follow up to my conundrums post.

Dear Church,

I hear everyone talking about me.  Always debating about what to do with me.  Ferociously drawing lines in the sand.  Articles, blogs, political debate.  Movie and pop stars eagerly rally around me and throw money at my trendy plight.  To them I am another Darfur, an earthquake in Haiti, the Invisible Children.  The US president has used me as a political move to gain support; a pawn in his agenda for reelection, for power.  My former denomination (amongst others) split over me, misunderstanding their cause.  You say that you support me, but do you?  Do you even know me?

I lived a decade in the most decadent of ways: proud and lonely and lost.  Drug use was a lifestyle, a way to cope, a way to survive in a world that I knew I didn’t belong to.  It lulled my feelings to a quiet hum.  Hushed my self-control but, ironically, never the remorse.  I allowed my body to be used in ways that now make me blush.  Men, women, it didn’t matter.  I considered it all an ‘experience’.[i]  To top it all off, I aborted the evidence of my shameless lifestyle.  More than once.

I never imagined the price that I would pay for such indulgence.  Never knew that it would interfere with a marriage that I once had no hope for.  Never knew that it would keep me a safe distance away from friends.  From you.  I still cannot fathom how our Savior could pay the cost, but I accept it.[ii]  He paid the price of death so that I would be seen as pure and innocent to the Father.  Something that we all know I am not.  But that is how God sees me.  How do you?

Some of you say that it’s who I am, how I was born.  I know that.  I was born into sin and Christ came to give me a way out.[iii]  Some of you argue that I deserve to be happy, ignoring that what I actually deserve is death.[iv]  Christ conquered that as well.[v]  Some of you insist that the shame I feel is the fault of the rest of the Church.  Not so – it is the feeling that follows any sin; one that ought to lead to repentance.[vi]  Some of you boast that I am your friend or you’re related to me, as if that made you an expert on all-things-me.  I see your attempts to relate to me, to defend me.  And yet, even you dear Church, even you only identify me as my weakness.

Do you not see that it isn’t me that you are defending?  That instead you are defending the very bacteria that Christ died to wash away?  That crap is not me; nor is it my identity.  I have been given a new identity in Christ.[vii]  And yet you persist in tying me to something that I have been freed from,[viii] something that God promised me I could resist.[ix]

Do you not hear what you have been saying?  Do you deny it?  Church, you don’t even use my name when you talk about me.  You refer to me as if I am sin.  You call me gay.   And when you say that, I know that you are not advocating for me.[x]

If you truly supported me, you would see that sin isn’t my identity – it is a thing to resist.[xi]  And I need your help with that.  I need you to actually support me to fight the good fight so that our God will be glorified in my weakness.[xii]  We were made to do this together but how can you be fighting for me if you are defending my sin to me and to the world?[xiii]   The world will be blind to its condition, dear Church.  But will we?[xiv]

I need you.

If you did know me, the real me, what would you say?  Would you tell me what I want to hear or what I need to hear?[xv]  Would you see me apart from my sin as our Father does?

In Christ Alone,

Anonymous