I wanted to respond to this post:
7 Way Christian Homeschooling Parents Can Support LGBT Kids.
It’s one of those cathartic rants dripping with emotion that complains about how “my life has been ruined because I was homeschooled by crazy Fundamentalist parents.” The Homeschool Apostates, I mean, Anonymous blog also cross-posted it at their place. I thought I would use it as a spring board to offer a rebuttal and response to the author.
Let me begin with some of my own background for the author’s consideration.
Look it. We all understand that you were raised in a wacky, Fundamentalist atmosphere. You’re ashamed and embarrassed about your past. Now that you have freed yourself from the shackles of your Fundy upbringing, you believe you have ascended to a fuller life. We get it, okay.
I can sympathize. I spent some time floating in those orbits as well. In fact, I’ve been in both spheres — The liberal ones as well as the wacky IFB ones.
I was raised in a liberal United Methodist church pretty much all of my early life until about high school. At the Methodist church, I rarely, if ever, learned anything about Jesus. I was exposed to weirdie, quasi-spirituality that you probably now think is “Christianity.” The worship songs we sang were old 60s-70s hippy songs like “One Tin Soldier,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head.” We didn’t really believe in a “historical” Jesus. He was more of a religious figure from long ago who had some good ethical advice. Occasionally we studied the Bible — the Good News translation with the stick figure illustrations. My 6th grade Sunday school teacher was a local public school teacher who wrote trashy Harlequin romance novels as a hobby, so I didn’t get a whole lot in way of “sword drills” if you know what I mean.
When the family moved to Arkansas later when I was a teen, we began attending the Free-Will Baptist church where the family on my mother’s side went. That was a major paradigm shift for me. There I learned about Jesus and legalism. I experienced the prying eyes of the community Dolores Umbridges who scrutinized the length of my hair and the sheen of my parachute pants. So believe me, I know all about stifling religious ideology.
I genuinely was saved during the last week of my freshman year at college, and even there I became involved with an extremely conservative, SBC church and even became a passionate KJV-onlyist. But God is gracious, and steadily the work of the Spirit straightened me out.
All of that to say that even though I may have been raised in misguided Fundamental Christianity, that doesn’t mean a biblical Christianity that affirms all the things you now despise, like creationism and inerrancy, is untrue. No matter what sort of twisted nonsense your parents may have subjected you to in the name of being “spiritual,” their warped views of Fundamentalism does not mean Fundamentalism itself is warped. You seriously need to keep in mind that your so-called new found “faith journey” is just as warped and twisted as your parents’ Fundamentalism.
If I may, let me offer seven truths I think you need to seriously ponder. I warn you now that they will sting; but you need to read them.
Consider the fact that you may be wrong – fatally so. Like I stated in my opening remarks, you have convinced yourself that you now transcend your Christian Fundamentalist past. You believe your shunning of your parents and their ways is sophisticated, so if they shun you in return, then the feeling is mutual. As much as you think they are wrong about everything in life, you are just as equally wrong. In your case, however, your rebellion against your parents’ form of Christianity extends to rebellion against the genuine truth: that homosexuality is a damnable sin against our Creator.
Declaring homosexuality as sinful and being pro-family values is NOT bigoted. I know you probably would say you would never think a Christian is a “bigot” for standing against homosexual sin, but you do. When you are by yourself with your friends, you all sneer at those “stupid Fundies” and those “family values retards” and you satisfy yourselves by saying how you are happy you learned better than what your parents believe. So don’t act all self-righteous when you tell homeschool parents, who you hate to begin with, to “prove” their love to you. When they weep privately together before God imploring Him to bring you to repentance, and yet stand firm in the biblical conviction that homosexuality is sin, that is not bigotry, but love calling you back to the truth.
If you believe your parents are wrong about textual criticism, do your own research into textual criticism. You’ve probably have gathered around yourself a bunch of apostate textual critics like Bart Ehrman and others of his ilk who provide you with intellectual comfort for your re-reading of the Bible and its dismissal as God’s infallible revelation. Please understand that such men, as smart as they may be, are dishonest frauds, and they DO NOT represent all of textual criticism. Their warped take on the discipline has been soundly answered and refuted by capable men.
If you are actively involved with a “faith community” now, you are blindly being led to the destruction of your soul. You need to bravely confront the historical truth: Biblical Christianity does not, nor cannot, affirm homosexual behavior as normative and still remain biblical Christianity. Homosexual sin has never been affirmed as normal by any genuine Christian body of believers, nor will it ever be. Christ’s Church cannot affirm homosexual behavior and remain biblical Christianity. Only liars and deceivers tell you that being gay is normal. If you attend a “church” now that tells you you’re okay being gay, you are being woefully deceived. The leaders there are heaping upon you massive amounts of spiritual abuse the same as your Fundamentalist parents may have heaped when you were homeschooled.
Thoroughly research the rebuttals to the gay “Christian” literature you have more than likely read. When you began your new “faith journey” you probably secretly read gay revisionist literature that told you the Bible mistranslated specific passages that condemn homosexuality. Such things as Paul was condemning just pederasty in Romans 1 and not homosexuality, and that David and Jonathan were lovers, that sort of nonsense.
Just because an author has “Dr.” in front of his or her name, or graduated from some Ivory league school, does not mean the person is a scholar and thus competent with handling the biblical text. The person has an agenda. Additionally, the arguments in those books have been soundly refuted and shown to be propaganda rather than genuine scholarship. I would exhort you to go HERE and read a scholarly refutation of such works, or HERE to hear a lengthy audio presentation interacting with pro-gay “Christian” apologetics. Just make sure you don’t smugly go away falsely believing no one has offered any response. That is not true.
Treat the Evangelical Christians in your life with mutual love and respect. You implore Christian homeschooling parents to treat the LGBT kids in their lives with mutual love and respect, but that cuts both ways. You cannot hypocritically suggest they treat you with love and respect, yet at the same time demand they overturn what historical, biblical Christianity has fundamentally taught concerning gender, marriage, and sex, so as to embrace your false revisionistic version that confirms homosexuality. Such is not being mutually loving and respectful.
Don’t interpret any pointed criticism as an ignorant, bigoted attack against you. Stop wearing your feelings on your sleeve. The people who are offering pointed challenges to your new found “convictions” don’t do it because they think gays are “icky” or they are attempting to shut-down some social iconoclasts that are rocking the boat of tradition.
You alone have chosen to stir up your inordinate affections and rush headlong into a lifestyle that will not only lead to the physical destruction of your health, but also the spiritual destruction of your soul. Moreover, you insist that the entire Christian worldview that you were taught as a kid, no matter how misappropriated by your well-intentioned, but misguided parents, be overturned and done away with all for the purpose of soothing your hurt sensibilities.
Right here you need to draw a dividing line. We, the Christian Fundamentalists homeschooling parents, will never yield to your assaults against our God and our faith. We will never accommodate your sexual perversion just to prop up some phony canard about “reaching out” and “showing respect” and so forth. Though you may not believe it, we do love you. We have hope for you because we know our God is a redeeming God who can restore broken sinners and the broken relationships their sin has caused with the people who love them.
But we also realize that Jesus Himself stated clearly,
“For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household. “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. “And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.” (Matthew 10:35-38)
And if regrettably, that means you may chose to continually be our enemy in spite of our best efforts to bring our restoration, then I decide to follow Jesus.
hipandthigh 
A well thought out response Fred this is just what is needed both as a response to the article and as an example of graciousness.
Reblogged this on Musings&Rants and commented:
Hi Fred I had to reblog this one whew!!! Blessings, Sharon.
Silly old person. None of these children are your enemy. They are just sad. They miss you.
“It was because you ceased to fight the war with heaven that you relaxed into this hideous adventure, mutilating the bodies and souls of men. You chose injustice- and sided with the gods.”
Albert Camus. Letter to a German Friend. During the final years of WWII.
You are too old to have not grown up. But continue mutilating if you must. We will still be here- waiting for you to come back to us.
Are you endorsing a tough love, aka abusive or bullying, response to LGBT children? We all know people will have theological disagreements, but the larger question is how to love those you care about most in the midst of those disagreements.
To interpret a hurt child’s longing for affection and understanding as an assault on your faith is not a gracious response on any level. If you want to weep in your closet and pray, be my guest, but when you interact with people you disagree with, especially if they are people who look up to you, what they need is acceptance of *their inherent worth,* regardless of their theological positions or lifestyle choices. (You would even agree with that, theologically, wouldn’t you — we are all made in the image of God?) If you develop a real relationship with people, and they see you have a life they would prefer, you’ll get questions, but running around throwing metaphysical stones like this is just bullying.
Getting up on your high horse is not going to convince anyone else to come down off of theirs.
WCL writes,
Are you endorsing a tough love, aka abusive or bullying, response to LGBT children?…. but running around throwing metaphysical stones like this is just bullying.
The typical reaction today is to see any sharp, bold criticism as being abusive and bullying. It’s a reaction that results primarily from our postmodern, feminized culture. Honestly, it is a mindset that is dangerous, because it does away with any meaningful, critical thinking and enslaves people to the whims of their emotions. Any serious exercise of discernment and evaluation is muted. It is the attitude that has bred the nanny-state ideas like zero tolerance that suspends a 6 year-old boy from school because he brought a Star Wars action figure to show his friends that happened to have a tiny, plastic gun. Those are ideas that are entirely abusive and bullying, but regrettably, you don’t see that.
continuing,
….but when you interact with people you disagree with, especially if they are people who look up to you, what they need is acceptance of *their inherent worth,* regardless of their theological positions or lifestyle choices.
I doubt seriously that the original author of that piece even knows who I am and could care less about “looking up to me.” Regardless, I am troubled more by your suggestion that you see this person as merely making a non-traditional lifestyle choice rather than involving himself in behavior that is sinful against God. As if his decisions to pursue sodomy is akin to someone who happens to put salt on his watermelon. Theology does matter and any “Theology” that accommodates a person’s grievous sin and allows him aid and comfort to pursue that sin with reckless abandon is not biblical theology, nor is it “Christianity.” It certainly isn’t loving, and in point of fact, is spiritual abuse of the worst kind.
Fred
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Fred, I don’t understand how it’s ok (and important) for you to have very strong differences of opinion and express them publicly in a way that assumes the intellectual invalidity of the people you are talking to — and that’s not bullying — but when people who have been hurt by something speak out against their own experiences and try to help others keep from hurting people they care about, that is attacking Christianity. You seem to assume an awful lot about what others think or don’t think, have read or haven’t, based on whether they dare to disagree with you. My point is that is inconsistent and seems a little ridiculous.
The people who post on HA have varied experiences, some of them are Christian and some are not. But regardless of whether you agree with someone’s theology, your attitude of dismissal and holier-than-thou-ness, is not consistent with the new testament. If you are really concerned with the state of someone’s soul, wouldn’t you be better served praying in secret or offering support than tearing someone down because she or he disagrees with you? The post you referred to discusses how easy it is to let our theology become more important than communicating love to our children. Maybe no one has ever loved you this way, but I assure you — it is possible to communicate real love, show acceptance of someone as a person, and still disagree with them. It’s very difficult, and I can understand why you wouldn’t want to do it, but I think people are worth that effort. It seems to me that Jesus thought that too.
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WCL, you may be interested in seeing this post over at TeamPyro that interacts a bit with your premise, http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2013/06/assuming-jesus-lied-and-is-dead.html
@whitechocolatelatte,
Praying silently while somebody is leading a person down the path to hell is not loving, kind, or caring. The truth needs to be spoken to people on the path to hell so that they can see the dire circumstances they find themselves in. I could care less if people wind up offended at the truth of the Bible…so long as we can preach the Word we should. As Paul wrote, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” (Romans 1:16)
With all due respect… I call bull-skubala on your comments. The reason Fred is “on his high horse” is that these people are actively _trying_ to lead people down a path that will, whether they admit it or not, lead them to hell. It’s complete affirmation of the lifestyle qua lifestyle, it betrays a shocking ignorance of the destructiveness of this behavior, and on top of all that it betrays a patronizing pretense of knowledge about textual criticism, which could easily sway young people who don’t know any better. In short, the author of the original post is doing something evil. THAT’s what got Fred angry. There’s a difference between suffering from a broken sexuality and confessing it with a broken heart, and proudly flaunting it in the world’s face while at the same time assuring others that “they’re okay” just the way they are even when they’re patently not.
“It’s easy to be that infernal salesman who ignores the ‘No Soliciting’ sign on someone’s spiritual front door, but such an approach demonstrates a lack of trust in God’s grace and timing.”
http://theaberrantpen.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/a-response-to-pushy-christians-and-people-who-disagree/
There is no implicit need to assume the death of Jesus or the irrelevance of the Gospel to hold the positions I am supporting. The approach you all seem to be advocating is giving yourselves far too much credit in the work of salvation.
“There’s a thing the church has been doing for centuries, that I don’t think it can do any longer. It goes like this:
‘Jesus is the son of God.’
‘How do I know that?’
‘Because if you don’t know that, then you will burn in Hell for eternity.’
“No. Uh-uh. If you want people to live their life in a certain way, based on a certain fact, you can’t substitute a threat for evidence.
“You have to lead by example. . . .
“Trust me, if they introduce a new energy drink tomorrow and I observe that everybody who drinks it suddenly can dunk a basketball from their knees, I’m going to notice. So will everyone else.
“That drink will be unstoppable.”
http://www.cracked.com/article_15663_10-things-christians-atheists-can-and-must-agree-on.html
whitechocolatelatte,
Take a read at Acts 2 for a moment, and pay special attention to v23. See that? Peter sure didn’t pull any punches. And then pay attention to the response of the people in v37. See that? Now read the entire sermon Peter gives. He definitely pulls no punches in calling out their sin. But can you see his motive? He calls them brothers. His words are firm, and it’s to the end that their hearts will be pricked, that they’ll know their sin has found them out, and that they’d repent and be saved.
See, in response to your “grace and timing” bit, God uses ordinary things to accomplish his work, and He has decided that the hearing of the Gospel is the means by which men, when they hear, repent and believe. That we will address what God has plainly said is sin, and what He has plainly accomplished in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is to the end that whomever hears turns from their sin to Christ. If we do what you suggest, staying in our closets praying without going out and preaching, we’re no better than a man who sees his brother hungry and wishes him well, but doesn’t dig into his ordinary pockets to buy him bread and feed him – and I know you’d be against that.
WCL cites an article from “Cracked” magazine,
“There’s a thing the church has been doing for centuries, that I don’t think it can do any longer. It goes like this:
‘Jesus is the son of God.’
‘How do I know that?’
‘Because if you don’t know that, then you will burn in Hell for eternity.’
“No. Uh-uh. If you want people to live their life in a certain way, based on a certain fact, you can’t substitute a threat for evidence.
“You have to lead by example. . . .
“Trust me, if they introduce a new energy drink tomorrow and I observe that everybody who drinks it suddenly can dunk a basketball from their knees, I’m going to notice. So will everyone else.
“That drink will be unstoppable.”
I really don’t know what is more troubling: This absurd argumentation against the Christian doctrine of Christ’s deity or the fact that you seriously cited from an on-line parody/crude humor magazine as offering relevant, critical thought with evaluating Christian attitudes.
I shouldn’t even respond to this, but here it goes: Jesus is the Son of God because the Bible says so. That is the “evidence;” that is how a person “knows.” Scripture is a historical document that records events that happened in real time, involving real people, real events. Christianity is not calling people to a “blind” faith. It is a faith upon a real person who lived and died and rose again and is alive today.
We call men to repentance and faith in Jesus because He commanded His people to do so. Not because we think our ice cream is better than your ice cream. Eternal consequences are at stake, not because I say so, but because Christ Himself said so and those men He commissioned to write Scripture say so. You may not like the “exclusive” message or what it demands of your life, or even the messengers who deliver it, but it is the means by which men know how to be saved and receive eternal life.
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“If you want people to live their life in a certain way,” No. Uh-uh. Don’t want men to live a certain way. Don’t care how men live. Up to them.
It’s God who calls men to a certain path. Believe the bible and do what it says. Don’t believe the bible, then ignore it and what men say, and quit arguing about it.
Do you all realize this is not a “theological debate”? . . . This is about real people.
“[W]hen we treat the very humanity of another human being as a theological question to be tossed about and debated, we do harm to people. . . . The Church labels itself as unsafe the very second it treats something that is vitally important to someone as a legitimate question, up for discussion.”
http://diannaeanderson.net/blog/2013/6/my-life-is-not-a-question-mark-the-harm-of-harmless-questions
Shouldn’t we all be more concerned about the well being of another person than we are about how many times we have beaten over them the head with our theology? (Please don’t give me the “They could choose to feel differently” argument — we all know you couldn’t choose to be homosexual if you tried.)
I disagree. It is very much a “theological debate,” because what people believe about their creator, or rejects about their creator, impacts how an individual acts and behaves as a person. The beginning of wisdom and knowledge begins with a fear of God. This axiom is presented over and over again in Scripture.
Moreover, I am concerned about the “well-being” of the person, because I am warning the person that the inordinate affections he or she has chosen to pursue are destructive to the person’s health and soul. You may not like how I stated my challenges, but my tone is irrelevant to my overall argument.
All men and women are sexually broken due to our sin. I fully accept the fact that his person may have “desires” of the flesh that compels him or her to be sexually attracted to the same-sex. Those feelings, however, do not trump what God, our creator, has declared is sinful, nor does it give the person the “right” to redefine what is natural, what God has established as the focus of how human sexuality is to be worked out, a relationship between one man and one woman.
I would further add that your assertion that a person couldn’t choose to be a homosexual if one tried also applies to those who have desires for pubescent children. It doesn’t matter if you think it is wrong, their desire is still there and applying your logic for same-sex attraction, you would have to conclude the same thing for pubescent attracted adults, because we all know they couldn’t choose to be a pedosexual if they tried.
Mr. Fred Butler, with all due respect, you are preaching to the choir. Those of us in the LGBT community who were raised in the Christian Fundamentalist homeschool culture have heard all of this before. We have lived it. I feared for years that I was fatally wrong… so much so that I figured it was better to die now and go to hell than wait for life to take its course and still go to hell. I have done lots and lots of research, mostly anti-gay research, because of enormous pressure and abuse from my family. “My own research” on textual criticism is what led me to reject those previous views. I have had much experience to blindly being led to the destruction of my soul by people that professed that abuse was love and now the blinders are off and I finally think for myself. I have always treated Evangelicals with love and respect… often with too much as it opened me to submission to vicious abuse. I now recognize that love and respect does not require capitulating to their demands and beliefs, just as I do not expect them to change their beliefs on my behalf. And finally, I do not consider criticism to be bigoted unless the person is, in fact, making sweeping generalizations about me and treating me poorly simply for who I am. You fall into that category, Mr. Butler.
Please, do not assume that anything you are saying here is news to us. You sound like our abusers with your condescending tone, your belligerent attitude, and your insistence on telling us the same trite message that you love us too much to stop treating us like crap. You have the same message to preach to us, we’ve all heard it, and you are doing nothing to change us. It is not for my sake that I am writing to you… it is for the sake of others who are still living in the fear and guilt and shame who might hear your words and decide to give up. That was almost me (I’m sorry for “wearing my heart on my sleeve” but the truth is important to speak.) There are many more on the verge of suffering the same fate.
I doubt that what I say will change your opinion on anything, but it can’t hurt to try to open a reasonable dialogue about this, right? This is my advice: believe what you want about homosexuality. If you believe it is a sin, that is okay. However, sneering at victims of abuse (yes, every single person on HA is an abuse victim, so you are standing on a soap-box to attack child abuse victims) is NOT going to help your cause. Rather, you are needlessly injuring people who are finally learning to respect and value themselves again. We know what you believe. We have been beaten, abandoned, abused, and shunned in the name of what you believe. Why do you feel a need to repeat it to us? Have you ever considered that, for some of us, this change in our lives truly IS better than the twisted situation that we were in before? Have you ever considered that God might be in control of leading us away from those old values, even if you also believe he will lead us away from homosexuality as well? Maybe you have; those are not just rhetorical questions meant to sound sneering. I want an answer, and I want to know what you hope to accomplish by belittling and sneering at abuse victims with the words of their abusers.
Thank you for reading. All the best!
GE writes,
Mr. Fred Butler, with all due respect, you are preaching to the choir. Those of us in the LGBT community who were raised in the Christian Fundamentalist homeschool culture have heard all of this before.
With all due respect back to you, no, you all haven’t heard all of that before. I think you think you have, but you more than likely haven’t. Of every person I have talked with who now “identifies” as a former homeschooler (or former Christian/fundamentalist) with all this “abuse” baggage, when I have raised similar challenges to them, none of them have “heard it all.” In fact, in many cases, which are at least 10 or so with me personally, the person in question was “hearing” what I was telling him or her for the very first time.
Continuing,
“My own research” on textual criticism is what led me to reject those previous views.
Really? Who did you “research” and for how long? And I take it you read serious counter arguments and positions?
Continuing,
Please, do not assume that anything you are saying here is news to us.
I do assume that because it is true. Again, I know you think you have heard it all, but you haven’t.
Continuing,
This is my advice: believe what you want about homosexuality.
It doesn’t matter what I believe about homosexuality. It matters what God has said about it. I am taking it that you no longer even identify as a Christian right? Then what do you believe? Are you and atheist? You have some sort of worldview that drives your philosophical outlook on life. Some non-Christian “authority” you submit to as informing your life and what you believe.
Continuing,
However, sneering at victims of abuse (yes, every single person on HA is an abuse victim, so you are standing on a soap-box to attack child abuse victims) is NOT going to help your cause.
Continuing,
Every single one? Every one of them had monsters for parents and pastors? Every one? Look it, contrary to what you may think about me, I don’t sneer at serious child abuse. I deplore it just as much as you do. But here is my question: How does the abuse you suffered, what ever that may had been, disprove God, the authority of Scripture, and what the Bible clearly and undeniably teaches about homosexual sin?
Continuing,
Have you ever considered that, for some of us, this change in our lives truly IS better than the twisted situation that we were in before?
It is the blind leading the blind. God would never lead you to embrace sin that He has so clearly condemned. You have essentially exchanged one form of spiritual abuse for another. It is like the Mormon who becomes a Muslim or the atheist who becomes a deist. Maybe you are “happy” but you are in a worst position as you once were.
Blah blah blah I want to tell already bullied LGBT kids that they suck and to shut up about how much my words hurt them blah blah blah dirty sinners stop being upset when I treat you as less than human blah blah blah. It’s so cute how sure you are that the filth spewing from your keyboard is correct. God would be ashamed of you.
I really honestly have to wonder here whether or not it is understood what ‘love’ is. Because we are told ‘love the sinner, hate the sin.’ I think that a single expression of ‘I don’t agree with this’ should be MORE than sufficient because anymore than that makes it very hard for the ‘sinner’ to feel any love coming from the other person.
Are not all God’s laws equal? When this one thing is harped on and chosen to be reminded to students again and again that it is a problem and you will NOT be supported or tolerated through it, does it not turn the student off of learning any other of God’s laws? I feel like this is being set up as less one of God’s laws and more a crisis of identity. It is as though people who commit this one specific sin are being set up as worse sinners than anyone else. I have never heard any sin harped on like this one.
Why is this so? When the various churches and congregations tell victims of child and sexual abuse to forgive their abusers and that their abusers are welcome in the church, why can we not forgive the sin of homosexuality? Is it not a sin that is between a person and their God?
I cannot have a serious discussion with someone who outright claims I am lying about my own experiences. You said “With all due respect back to you, no, you all haven’t heard all of that before. I think you think you have, but you more than likely haven’t.” and “I do assume that because it is true. Again, I know you think you have heard it all, but you haven’t.” Really? You can’t even have the decency to take me at my word when I tell you everything you wrote in this article I’ve heard before? You are simply invalidating my experience based on nothing but your own conjured up opinion of me. That is startlingly arrogant, and utterly useless to a discussion.
As for the rest, yes, every person on HA was abused. That is what the site is for: for homeschoolers to share their personal stories of abuse. If you spend the time to read it and listen to what is said there, you will see that. I never said their parents were monsters, only that they were abusive. None of the abuse I endured disproves God. Again, contrary to your assumption, I still believe in God. However, I do not believe in the same sort of God I was raised to believe in. The God I have come to know loves unconditionally, even when I fail, rather than abandoning me. I have certainly not disproved that the God of my upbringing exists; rather I have decided that such a God would not be worth serving.
As for being in a worse position than I was… I have to disagree. Without knowing me, you cannot truly judge that. The situation I was in before would have led me to kill myself. Is that sin so much better than the sin of homosexuality? I don’t think the Bible can give you a definite answer on that. At least while I am alive I have a chance to change, right? You may objectively think my situation is not good, but you have no way to know whether it is better or worse than the previous. You are not God, and you cannot know the state of my soul before and after. The arrogance of your assumptions is, again, startling.
It is quite apparent that reasoning with you, with your current attitude, is pointless. You do nothing but claim that everything I say is a willful or ignorant lie. That is not a rational form of discourse! Rather than making you an authority, this kind of behavior just makes you seem arrogant, judgmental, and completely out of touch. Until you are willing to respect my experiences with, at least, the benefit of the doubt that I am not telling falsehoods, I cannot reason with you. Thank you for your time and I wish you the best.
GE complains,
I cannot have a serious discussion with someone who outright claims I am lying about my own experiences.
I wouldn’t say you are “lying” in the sense you are attempting to deceive me, but I do believe you have created for yourself this delusion perspective on your experience that is exposed as fraudulent when met with honest cross-examination that challenges your assertion. I asked you specifically to tell me who it was you “researched” regarding textual criticism that brought you to the conclusions you now hold about the Bible. If you believe I am as “startlingly arrogant” as you seem to believe, do you still care to answer that question?
continuing,
If you spend the time to read it and listen to what is said there, you will see that. I never said their parents were monsters, only that they were abusive.
How can one be abusive and not be a monstrous individual? Unless what you consider “abuse” really isn’t “abuse” or is being exaggerated. Legalism may be bad and damaging to one’s spirituality, but it is a bit of a stretch to say it is “abuse” on the level of physical abuse or even sexual abuse.
Again, contrary to your assumption, I still believe in God. However, I do not believe in the same sort of God I was raised to believe in. The God I have come to know loves unconditionally, even when I fail, rather than abandoning me.
The self-disclosed God of the Bible who revealed Himself in Jesus Christ loves unconditionally when I fail and would never abandon me (See John 10). That is the doctrine of perseverance. However, the God of the Bible does not condone homosexuality as a valid, God blessed and spiritually healthy lifestyle.
If your god does condone your homosexual desires as spiritually healthy, then it is not the God of Scripture who has revealed Himself in the person of Jesus Christ and commands sinners everywhere to repent and believe the Gospel and be saved. That is a false, man-made god of your imagination. I would also add that anyone who is telling you otherwise is spiritually abusing you just as much if not more as your Fundy parents allegedly once did. Even though you may be “happy” with this abuse.
You may not like what I am telling you, but it is the truth, regardless of how “startling arrogant” you may think I am. I pray that God imparts saving faith and leads you away from that bitterness that has ensnared your heart.
1) Burden of proof. If you are going to make the wild claim that my experiences are fully fabricated, I somehow don’t know what has actually happened in my life, and I am either lying or clearly mad, even though you have never met me in your life, YOU are the one who needs to prove your assertion, not me. I claimed that I had been told everything you wrote in this article before. The rational and reasonable thing to do is accept that at face value, rather than making unsupportable claims that I am either delusional or lying. Can you accept the possibility that maybe someone has actually heard what you have to say? Is that so threatening? It shouldn’t be.
However, I will list a few things that I have read. I read a good deal of Gagnon’s book (Homosexuality and the Bible, I think), another book called “the Gay Gospel?” (can’t remember the author) and a slew of articles (I can’t remember them all), and a radio lecture all condemning homosexuality.
2) YES it is possible for a parent to be abusive and not be a monster. Why on earth must we assume that anyone who does something wrong is a monster? Some child abusers are monsters. Some are just horribly, horribly misled. Legalism is not abuse in itself, but it can easily become emotional abuse, physical abuse, or even sexual abuse. THAT is what HA is about and again, if you read it, I would not have to tell you this. The entire site is devoted to cases of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse. Trying to minimize these peoples’ sufferings is abhorrent.
3) I disagree with you about God. I don’t care to engage in a lengthy “you’re wrong and I’m right” argument about God because that’s all that this portion of the discussion has boiled down to.
By the way, I don’t need to be told something to believe it is true. I can create my own opinions now. These opinions are not without outside influence, of course, but one of the great freeing parts of escaping my old worldview is that I don’t need someone to tell me what I believe. So thank you for your concern about someone misleading me, but I am not taking one person’s word for anything unless I can match it with other evidence and experience.
And finally, there’s this: “you may not like what I’m telling you but it’s the truth, no matter how startlingly arrogant you think I am.” You’ve clearly missed the point that, whether or not you are right about homosexuality, you are WRONG in your presumptions about me, and you are presenting yourself in a startlingly arrogant way that is making your words completely ineffective towards persuasion. That is the attitude you might want to reconsider. I don’t want or expect you to change your beliefs. But you claim someone’s entire life experiences are being made up or lied about, make wild assumptions about them, try to belittle the abuse they suffered, and THEN think you have any chance of persuading them to your side. That is what is truly backwards.
GE, glad you stuck around and didn’t bail. I’ll try to make it quick:
Regarding #1 Again, I never said you were lying or fabricating your experience. Read what I wrote. I do believe you now live in a bubble that has become your intellectual echo chamber affirming what you now believe. In a way, you went from a fundamentalist bubble to now a progressive, anti-fundamentalist bubble. Where as with the first you remember it as stifling and controlling, but now with the second you believe it is liberating. It is just as stifling, you are just blind to it.
Originally, you claimed to have read books on textual criticism that led you to where you are now. Gagnon is not a textual critic, but a professor of the Bible. Regardless of that quibble, what did you think of his argumentation? I have read that book as well along with a good portion of his online material and he is thorough and precise with debunking homosexual claims that the Bible affirms gay desires and lifestyle. It just isn’t there and those who say otherwise are seriously deluded. So how exactly did Gagnon’s book lead you away from the truth?
Regarding #2 I just had one of the moderators of HA link me to a dozen or so articles about the torture and rape of children at the hands of alleged homeschooling, fundamentalist parents. I put legalistic spiritual abuse in an entirely different category and genre as child torture and rape. If those stories represent the norm for the writers for HA, then their parents are monsters.
Regarding #3 You write, These opinions are not without outside influence, of course, but one of the great freeing parts of escaping my old worldview is that I don’t need someone to tell me what I believe. I have to chuckle at this comment. Especially the last part where you express how freeing it is to not have someone telling you what to believe, except I guess those “outside influences.”
As to your claim against my alleged presumption, I never presumed anything about you. Unless of course you are the person who wrote that article I was responding to. If that is the case, you need to own your words you put in print on the internet.
“You never presumed anything about me”… except to claim that I was either delusional or deceiving myself when I said that I had heard everything you wrote before. I have read what you wrote. You said “I do believe you have created for yourself this delusion perspective on your experience that is exposed as fraudulent when met with honest cross-examination.” In other words, you, in your infinite wisdom, somehow know that my experiences are figments of my imagination, caused by a skewed worldview. You have no evidence. You have no standing to make this judgment. You make it anyway for no reason and you still have not answered why my experiences MUST be false. The fact that I’ve been told everything that you wrote and that I have indeed been abused shouldn’t threaten your position at all. But rather than simply being content with disagreeing with my beliefs, you have insisted on trying to claim that my life experience itself is not real. If you back off of that claim, maybe we can have a rational conversation. Otherwise, I will have to bow out of this discussion, for I refuse to defend myself against baseless claims by a complete stranger that I am so delusional that I don’t even know what happened in my own life.
While I’m at it, let me list some other presumptions you have made. “I do believe you now live in a bubble that has become your intellectual echo chamber affirming what you now believe.” You have no evidence for this. You would be wrong. I am still in contact with my family and other people who do not affirm my identity. I read your blog post. I talk to people who question me. I am not isolated from other ideas like I was when I was young and in the homeschooling community. It is possible for me to hear people who disagree with me and not actually believe what they say. It is possible for my beliefs to keep changing… and they have. “Unless what you consider “abuse” really isn’t “abuse” or is being exaggerated.” So, just because I do not consider my parents monsters, I was not actually abused? I will state that I was not abused emotionally as a child (spiritually, yes) but I was abused emotionally as an adult. Severely. I think you could consider encouraging someone to commit suicide emotional abuse? And my upbringing as a child left me susceptible to surrendering to this abuse. Emotional abuse is not the same as physical which is not the same as sexual, but that does not make any of them less important. (By the way, there are many, many different stories of abuse on HA. Some of them were committed by monsters. Some were committed by mislead parents who were honestly taught that their abusive behavior was the best way to secure a good future for their children. That doesn’t invalidate anyone’s experience. Some of us have come to accept that our parents were not evil, just horribly lacking in judgment.)
I also was not “led away” by Gagnon’s book. I found that some of his arguments were somewhat compelling and others I disagreed with. However, it meant a lot less to me since I do not believe the Bible to be inerrant. I’m sure you strongly disagree with me there, but that is what I believe. I find that the Bible is slightly anti-homosexual, and VERY anti-woman. I consider that a product of its time, not a reflection of God himself. If it is a reflection of God, as I said, I would not serve him.
I find it surprising that you find my comment about “outside influences” so damning. There is a world of difference between being sheltered and shamed away from all disparate views, and being open to listening to many many different views, and if you cannot see this, I admit myself flummoxed. Of course, every person’s opinions are influenced by their surroundings. We can hardly help that. Often times we don’t even realize how many ways we are being influenced just by our cultural assumptions, upbringing, experiences, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that we can either listen to many voices and choose our beliefs, or listen to only one and thus have only one option of beliefs to choose from. There’s a big difference there.
As I said in my first paragraph, unless you are willing to retract your claims that my experiences are invalid or untrue or delusional, I see no point in continuing this discussion. I will not continue to defend myself against such arrogant ignorance. If, however, you wish to retract that statement and have a discussion with me that recognizes my personal experiences and respects them, even if you disagree with my beliefs, I will be willing to continue talking. All the best.
GE writes,
except to claim that I was either delusional or deceiving myself when I said that I had heard everything you wrote before…. In other words, you, in your infinite wisdom, somehow know that my experiences are figments of my imagination, caused by a skewed worldview. … unless you are willing to retract your claims that my experiences are invalid or untrue or delusional, I see no point in continuing this discussion.
Well, so be it then. But before you disappear in a huff, If you go back and read carefully what I wrote, I never said your experiences were “invalid” or “untrue” or “delusional,” “delusional” meaning your experiences make you “crazy” or something. I originally wrote,
Perhaps this will help clarify: You have your experiences and you have gathered around yourself the “authorities” that affirm those “experiences” as being right for you. I am telling you that your new “authorities” are misleading you which makes your perspective delusional, particularly when it comes to evaluating biblical Christianity. The Bible is quite clear that man’s heart is deceitful and lying, and the one person that our hearts lie to is ourselves. Every person has experiences, but what they do with those experiences, ie, how they react to them, what they conclude about them, etc., does not mean those experiences are to be embraced as right and good.
continuing,
I find it surprising that you find my comment about “outside influences” so damning. There is a world of difference between being sheltered and shamed away from all disparate views
If the outside influences are leading you to the destruction of your life, then it is abusive not to warn you. I can provide you with numerous anecdotal examples of this axiom playing out in real life, but time does not permit.
continuing,
I find that the Bible is slightly anti-homosexual, and VERY anti-woman. I consider that a product of its time, not a reflection of God himself. If it is a reflection of God, as I said, I would not serve him.
The Bible is VERY anti-homosexual because it is beyond doubt that God created men and women to function together in healthy, sexual relationships that are defined by marriage. To claim otherwise is not only denying reality, it denies God’s Word, but you already do that.
The Bible is not anti-woman. That is a lie that has been told to you by those new “outside influences” you find appealing. However, the Bible is anti-feminist. That is an example of what I mean about creating for yourself an “anti-fundamentalist bubble.” You have seized upon modern-day feministic ideology and filtered the Bible through it and now you have a warped understanding of what Scripture teaches about gender roles, masculinity and femininity, and marriage. Have you actually spoken with women who make their ministry their husbands and families? I’d encourage you to visit here, http://rosariabutterfield.com/ read her story, see how the scriptures can be confirmed when Paul writes, “such were some of you…” 1 Cor. 6:11.
Oh my word… you still seem to think I have never heard all of this before. I have not just spoken to women who make their ministry their husbands and families… I LIVED IT. My mother was a stay-at-home, cooking, cleaning, sewing-our-own-clothes, deferring-to-the-father woman. My entire homeschooling community was made up of mothers like this. The more you try to make assumptions about me the more off-the-mark you become.
By the way, I didn’t go to any “outside influences” to decide that the Bible was anti-woman. I came the that conclusion completely on my own, long before I dared to even speak the word “feminism”, before I spoke to a single feminist, and before I ever read a feminist blog. I spoke to my first feminist YEARS after I had already come to that conclusion on my own. Once again, you have proven that you know nothing about me, but have a pathological need to tell my own story for me. Mr. Butler, not everyone is the same. Some people have different experiences than what you’d expect. If you would take some time to LISTEN to my story instead of trying to explain my own life to me (without any information regarding what actually happened in my life) maybe you would learn how to reach me. However, if the best argument you can create is to try to explain to me how I think and what I’ve done, and even claim “you say you have heard this before, but you haven’t,” you are just making yourself look out-of-touch.
And don’t try to move the goal posts. My objection was to your baseless claim that “You say you have heard this before, but you haven’t” which you have still refused to retract (look back to the beginning of our conversation if you’ve forgotten what you said). This has nothing to do with whether “authorities” have surrounded me to tell me what I want to hear about my homosexuality (they haven’t). It has everything to do with you directly contradicting my experience of having heard your arguments before. You can either own up to that and apologize, or continue to claim that you have somehow watched my life and know it better than I do.
I apologize if I seem a bit snippy at this point… I’m trying not to. I’m honestly not sure whether to be more annoyed or amused at your constant need to tell my story (poorly) for me. You cannot psychoanalyze a person before you actually know them, have heard their story, and spend some time trying to understand that. Every good psychiatrist knows this. You should take note as well, if you ever want to be effective at anything besides shouting down or shaming people like me. Thank you for your time.
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If your God would condemn someone to eternal torment just because they love the wrong gender, then your God is evil and doesn’t deserve worship. I mean, how sadistic would you have to be to deliberately make someone turn out a certain way, and then punish them for it?
Nice little challenge here, but maybe you should consider your own advice. If your research the history of the Bible and the historical context for the Greek word mis-translated to “homosexual” you’ll find that declaring “homosexuality a sin” is a modern and skewed take on the point that Paul and others were trying to impart. This info was mistakenly taught to me by Bible scholars/translators themselves, not some articles by what you claim are smear campaigns against scripture. Here is why your a bigot, it is perfectly ok to say “I THINK homosexuality is a sin” but people like you insist “homosexuality IS a sin” and delving into scripture both Canon and not Canon, proves your stance on what you THINK was set in stone, was not. Your rules are ambiguous. We have similar upbringing but your assuming we all are the same. Two kinds of people raised by homeschool fundies, those who rebel from what they learn because of their parents….and those who rebel from their parents because of what they learn. Learn the difference. Furthermore it’s incredibly narcissistic to call anyone else’s “faith journey” just as warped as people who believe the dead will walk, Earth will be consumed in fire, dinosaurs lived next to us, and most importantly, the soul threatening nature of consuming shellfish and masterbation.