SUPREME COURT: 1 EXODUS INTERNATIONAL : 0...

The Church's Score: -10

LGBT ACTIVISTS:

Supreme Court gives a boost to Gay Rights

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/26/supreme-court-gay-lesbian-marriage-california/2364015/

 

This may sound really odd coming from me, but I'm having a good laugh right now.  I saw all of this coming years ago.  I have a love/hate relationship with being right.  I'm human so I love being proved right, I've been telling Christians for years and years now, "God isn't in what you've been doing in the  past.  You're going to have to change."   The truth is the Church doesn't have to change at all, and that is the part about being right that I hate.  I knew Christian's attitudes and behaviors were all wrong, but I also knew that the more firmly entrenched Christians became in their positions, the harder it would be to dig out.  The Right condemns sin and sinner alike.  The Left turns a blind eye to sin, and simply swallows it whole.  And today we have the fence sitting Christian who has no strong opinion either way.  No one can find the way through.  No one can find the way, because no one wants to do things God's way.
 
Somewhere along the way Christianity became grounded in the world.  Instead of God calling the shots directly someone decided if we hated something, and God loved us, then God must hate what we hate.   Then came the next leap in logic:
 

"If I can make an argument for God hating something, but that God loves me, then I can make the argument that God will bless whatever I do against what we both hate." 

 

The Bible, of course, goes completely against any argument that if God loves me, and we both hate sin, that God will bless whatever I want to do against sin.  The message of the Bible is that Jesus is God's answer to all sin problems, and Jesus also presents to us the way Father desires to deal with a sinful world and it's sin.  Thus we have many approaches to a sin problem, but the Church is failing miserably because the Church will not obey God.  In the process of attempting to use the same means a very sinful world uses the Church has changed nothing, but, ironically, Herself.   The Church hasn't allowed God to overcome the world's sin and brokenness, but they have become as impotent as the world at dealing with beliefs and behaviors which deal death and damnation to themselves.  Instead of leading a broken humanity lost to sin, to a new hope, peace, and eternal life, the Church is in the throws of her own identity crisis.  And since the Church has sold out so much to a worldly way of doing, they've lost how to work with God toward his eternal goals.
 
Am I now giving over to complete and total pessimism?  No.  If the Church will repent, and Christians will deny themselves their ways of being and doing, as Christ commands, then everything will change for the Church.  Not much will change in the society around us, the hope for a positive impact on the culture's conscience is a train which left the station long long ago.  The road for the Church is going to be a much harder one, than we'd have had if we'd repented and turned back to obeying and following God's ways.

So Christians you have choice to make.  Were I a betting man, and I'm not, I'd bet against Christians doing the right thing.  Once you start doing the wrong thing doing the right thing gets harder and harder.  The Church has been doing the wrong thing for a long time, but that isn't the problem.  The problem is Christians have found it easier to settle for a great deal less than God's best, and keep hobbling along without change.  It's sin of settling for less that's the real problem.  

Part 2 of: EXODUS INTERNATIONAL IS HISTORY!

Doomed From The Start

In the Summer of 1969, NYC police had been carrying out a series of raids on gay bars.  Gay men enraged by the harassment started a riot.  With the Stonewall Riots the modern gay rights movement began.  In 44 years gay activists, in America, have achieved more civil rights gains than any other minority people group ever has.   I came of age during the greatest backlash against the gay rights movement; The Reagan Era.  Beginning in the mid 70's and continuing through the 80's, conservative Christians started speaking out, loud and clear, against what they saw as a great Christian nation about to morally crash and burn.  Leaders like Anita Bryant, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and D. James Kennedy started taking steps they thought would straighten out Christian America.  Jerry Falwell, perhaps more than any other conservative Christian leader gave voice to what he and others of his ilk believed:

"The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country."

~ Jerry Falwell

Conservative Christians had found their voice.  And with Jerry Falwell they also got a grassroots religious Political Action Committee (PAC); "The Moral Majority".   The Moral Majority grew in membership and power nearly as fast as the gay rights movement, a decade before them.  The Moral Majority received the most credit for Ronald Reagan winning two terms in the White House.   Coming of age as a gay man, in the Reagan 80's was a frightening experience.  The Reagan era and the beginning of the AIDS epidemic sometimes seemed like the end of all hope for gay people.  The 70's and 80's, far from bringing down gay rights activism served as a refining crucible, and in the 90's the LGBT movement gained ground even faster than before.  The political activism of the Religious Right started to stall.  Religious activism fragmented, The Moral Majority closed up shop, and the heir apparent, "The Christian Coalition" was lost almost before it started.

  

When conservative Christians were confronted with gay activism at the end of the 60's and then by legalized abortion, they were deeply offended.  I can't think of two other issues which could have made Christians as mad as a kicked hornet's nest.  When God finally brought me to salvation through Christ Jesus one of the first questions I had for God was, "Why?"  I not only didn't understand why I was gay, but I didn't understand the Church which was supposed to belong to Christ.  God went to incredible lengths to come and find me.  God worked through the only person who could have brought me to saving faith in him.  I've talked about my own abusers/users, but have said little about the "brother monster" I was to my little sister.  I knew my sister could never forgive me.  I could never forgive the things dad and uncle monster had done to me, so I knew her forgiving me was impossible.  One night out of the blue my sister called me, told me she'd received Jesus Christ, and that she forgave me.   I was in terrible trouble.  I knew it was impossible for my sister to forgive me.  I knew the only way for her to forgive was for a higher power to give her that forgiveness for me.  I was an atheist, but now I had absolutely no doubt God existed.  God, despite the very best efforts of Christians to keep me away from salvation, got me anyway.

 

I've had a very unconventional Christian experience from the very beginning.  About 6 months after coming to Christ I thought I'd better find an Exodus chapter and join up.  I'm very thankful the only chapter close to me was 50 miles away, and I couldn't afford the gas for the 100 mile round trip each week.  But that wouldn't have made any difference anyway.  I never had a moments peace with the idea of approaching Exodus.  I kept clear, but did find a ministry outreach to men struggling with Same-Sex Attraction supported by a local church which was not Exodus affiliated.  I'd been truly free for about 5 years at the time, and hanging out with those "strugglers" was an incredible eye opener.  There was very little struggling, and a whole lot of sex and porn for these guys.  After the weekly meeting we'd go hang out a nearby restaurants for "fellowship".  During the meeting they all talked about their struggles, but at the restaurant it became more about their escapades.  When I talked about the freedom Christ had given me, they laughed and sneered at me.  It didn't hurt my feelings.  I'd never cared about what gay guys had said to me.  They weren't struggling, they weren't even trying, and they made no bones about it.  To this day I don't understand why these men bothered with this group.  They'd have been a great deal more honest if they'd skipped the restaurant and went to a hotel for an orgy. 

 

As the old saying goes, "You can't get blood out of a turnip."   These gay guys weren't ever going to change, because none of them knew how to be anything but gay.  Get a big group of Christians who want to leave homosexuality, put them in a room together, and you've got a dating service for religious gays, but not change.  When Exodus started the intent was to come along side church leaders to advise and guide them when dealing with same-sex attracted people.  The problem, of course, was that churches didn't want to be advised they wanted a place to dump LGBT people.  Exodus, instead of sticking its guns, caved, and Exodus hobbled along for far too long.   If Christians want to see change in the lives of Christians dealing with SSA then their going to have to get into the lives of these men and women.  The straight guys and gals, who've walked with Christ, and seen real change in their own lives are going to have to reach out and begin modeling, teaching, and leading SSA struggling Christians into healthy, God centered, God serving lives.

  

Like I said, I've had a very unconventional Christian walk.  While my fellow Christians were out picketing, politicking, and attacking LGBT people, "...for the glory of God," no less, I was busy asking a question..."WHY"?  Why had God removed his protective hand from America?  Why had God allowed America to legalize the mass murder of innocent unborn children?!  Why had God allowed gay activists to gain so much ground so fast.  I mean as a gay man, looking at gay activism from the inside, I was always amazed at what gay activists could accomplish.   And as a gay man gay activists and their power scared me to death.  I've never known such ruthless and mercenary people, gay activists.  "WHY!" nagged me all the time, and still does today.  There's another old saying, "Ignorance is bliss."  After God started giving me the answers to my questions, I learned the true meaning of "Ignorance is bliss."  I've actually prayed for God to put me back into ignorance, but God doesn't work that way.
 
I have known for years that the Church needs LGBT people more than LGBT people need the Church.  The Church wouldn't go into the gay enclaves and the back alleys where abortions took place, with the love, mercy and world overcoming grace of God.  So God let homosexuals and abortionists come out after the Christians.   You see homosexuality and abortion are mirrors God is holding up to the Church.  Our relationship with God has increasingly become a reflection of the kind of breakdown which come with abortion and homosexuality.  There is the loss of identity; loss of world overcoming faith and love, even for the worst of sinners; a loss of purpose and dynamic; a loss obedience to Christ's teaching; a loss of dedication to doing things God's way; a loss of understanding that we are aliens in a foreign world, and that no kingdom of the world is or could be Christs kingdom; and we've become blind, deaf, and hardhearted to the brokenness of sexually immoral people because instead of compassion and faith in the cross of Jesus Christ we are overcome with offense.  The Church will find her way back to God when she takes up the plight of least and allow God to love and overcome through them.  When confronted with what seems impossible, but God's love overcomes the impossible the result is incredibly life transforming. The world needs the love, mercy, grace, and eternal salvation of Jesus Christ, and the Church needs to, once again, take her place where God has called us to be.  "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."  Jesus has called to join him in his yoke; become his coworker with him. 

What can I tell you, Christian?  Either become available for God's purposes, and dedicate yourself to working God's way, or be tossed onto the ash heap of history?   Of course, many, perhaps most of you, will disagree with what I say here, and/or excuse yourself from responsibility.  The only way to discover the truth of what I'm saying here is, ultimately, to do what I'm saying.
  
The end of Exodus International is an exciting opportunity for the Church of Jesus Christ.  Exodus could never bring about the change God can bring through his Church.  As the Church learns again that God's love is a power, which cannot fail, to free people from the slave master, sin.   The change Exodus sought, but so rarely realized is achievable through Christ in his Church. 
 
If you want to become a billionaire you have to learn from people who already know how to amass wealth.  If you want to know freedom from homosexuality then you can't hang out with gay people, even religious gay people.  Freedom only comes from the heart of the One we are told is love; God.  With his Son, God established how he would work in the world, and how he would love the world to salvation through that Son, in his Church.  People cannot be segregated, because we don't like their sin, or because we, "don't know what to do."  Not knowing what to do is not an acceptable excuse to God.  God's love will either set us all free, or we'll all go down together.  It is a terrible sin to attempt to shift responsibility for loving broken people into a new kind of closet; Exodus.  Nice try, but Jesus will judge us for our unloving disobedience of his command, "Go!"  Jesus also told us, “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does."  Not only does God send Jesus to save the world, but also to establish how God will work in and through us.  Just as Jesus always did what Father wanted, precisely the way Father wanted it done, but so it must be for the Church of Jesus Christ.  We must follow the example of Jesus.  Not only do we answer the call to "Go", but we pursue that call by carrying it out the way Christ carried out Fathers call.  Like Jesus, "We can do nothing by ourselves, and we too will do only what we see the Father doing." 

EXODUS INTERNATIONAL IS HISTORY!!

I'm Coming Out of the Closet!

Now that Exodus International is no longer the bastion of "ex-gayness", I can now stop being "ex-gay"!!   Now I can be just, well...yeah, coming right up with that...any minute now.   Its a hard call, or used to be.   When you don't belong to anyone you are never sure who or what you are.  Oh, I had a family I belonged to, but that family was headed by a husband and father who didn't love the family he created.  The cherry on this yummy familial confection was a an uncle who moved in with us, when I was about three years old.  If you've read my blog, you know I call this uncle, "Uncle Monster", he's a psychopath who finished the incredible works of unlove dear old dad had begun.  I'm not sure when I figured out, the two men who had complete control of my young life, not only didn't love me, but also convinced me no one ever could or would love me.  Was it when uncle monster made me cry out in fear and pain, but dad shouted at me to shut up?  Was it when uncle monster plunked my 4 or 5 year old butt on the roof of our house?  I don't need any pity for what happened in the past.  I'm establishing that there are very good reasons why I always felt different and ultimately cut off from relationship and my own identity as a male.  What about mom?  What about my siblings?  Their circumstances were the same as mine.  The two most powerful dictators in their lives were the same two men.  I do not have the permission to tell their stories, but I can say all of us suffered.  I was cut adrift before the of 5.

 

I did have Ben.  Ben was my imaginary friend when I was 6.  Ben was actually a lot like me, but he was loved, popular at his school, a good athlete, and incredibly nice.  I was none of those things, so I was lucky to have Ben.  Ben and I would hang out in my yard, in the field behind one of the house's in the neighborhood, or on the cool jungle gym and rope swing in the Cowyn's back yard.  Ben and I had a bit of a rocky start.  I'd want to talk and push each other on the rope swing, but Ben would simply stand silently looking at me.  He never said a word, or played, he'd just stare at me, in total science, and without moving.  The only time Ben ever moved was when I had to go home for supper.  He'd turn and walk briskly away from me, until the next time I wanted to hang out. Needless to say I ended the friendship.   I'm the only person I know whose imaginary friend didn't like him.

Actually fantasy would save my life.  The only people I had were the ones I imagined. After Ben I got better at creating fantasy friends. I was the creator of my own world, because I needed it.  My real world was incredibly toxic.  I didn't know my imaginary world was also toxic.   I didn't know that other people might like me...maybe even love me one day if given a chance.  I had my own little emotional prison in the real world, and my own little imaginary prison to escape the real one.

 

Do you remember Elizabeth Smart?  The young teenaged girl, kidnapped from her own bed, in her families home in Salt Lake City, by a handyman and self-proclaimed Mormon prophet?   For months the little girl and her captors eluded discovery, even though they were often right under the nose of the people searching for her.   Do you remember when she was found?  The police stopped three homeless vagabonds in the middle of the street.  The officers separated a heavily disguised Elizabeth Smart from the older couple with her.  If you'll remember the officer who questioned Elizabeth pulled her out of her kidnapper's hearing, and even placed himself between her direct line of sight and her attacker.  Still, when questioned; asked point blank, "Are you Elizabeth Smart?"  Smart denied she was Elizabeth.  Over and over again the officer had to ask Elizabeth, "Are you Elizabeth Smart?"  When Smart finally admitted who she was it was in a barely audible whisper.

 

Trauma takes prisoners.  Abusers take prisoners; molester's take prisoners; manipulating control freaks take prisoners; drug addicts and adulterers take prisoners; illness and deprivation takes prisoners too.  Sometimes the trauma in life comes from the illness or death of either a child or a caregiver.  And guess what?   How people respond to trauma also takes prisoners.   My dad/uncle trauma took me prisoner, but I built my own walls in an attempt to escape.  When I escaped every day I pushed myself further and further away from others, because I was honestly convinced that if my dad and uncle would or could not love me, no one else could either.

Why did the cop in Salt Lake City have to ask Elizabeth Smart over and over again, "Are you Elizabeth...?"  Elizabeth had developed a "slave" mentality.  Her abuser/users had convinced of their threats, power, and authority.  She accepted, against her will, that she was powerless to do anything else.  Why is it so hard for Christians to overcome sin, even in the face of God's incredible promises?   We've been sinning all our lives, and we're enslaved.  Smart's kidnapper had renamed her, and when the cop asked, the first time she gave the false name given her by her jailer.  Elizabeth was completely out of the power of her abusers/users, but she held to the lie.  Could Elizabeth have escaped that day without the intervention of a police officer?   No, Elizabeth would have remained in her master's hands.   The same is true of people who are sexually broken.  So long have we lived in the cages thrown down deep dark holes, that even in the light, power, and promises of God in Christ Jesus, we'll stay in those cages.  We'll allow people to label, and keep sticking them back on us, even after Christ has stripped them all away.  Even Exodus International wanted to stick label's on people, "ex-gay".   I needed someone to intervene on my behalf.  I needed someone to keep telling me the truth, to keep walking with me, away from sin's prison.  I need someone to keep reading my rights, "If the Son shall make you free you will be free indeed."   "There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.  For through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death."   THOSE ARE MY RIGHTS!!   "If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; the old has passed away.  Behold everything has been made new."   The law of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, set me free.  The laws of sin and death have been handcuffed.   Should Elizabeth Smart be forced to add the name, her kidnappers gave her, to the name her parents gave her?   No, of course not!  But to be honest about who she is, and what happened in the past she really should add the false name she was given, because it did happen, Smart's kidnappers had the power to make her go by the false name they forced upon her.  Those are among the facts of the case.  For the sake of honesty, she should add her false name as well.  Smart is just in denial and someone really should help her be who she really is.  I mean she could say, "I'm Elizabeth Smart "ex- (state your false name here)..."  That would be honest.

 

Elizabeth Smart doesn't have to accept the labels her kidnapper forced on her.  So why is it I have to live with the labels forced on me by those who abused, misused, and neglected me?  Why do I even have to accept past labels I stuck on myself?  Oh, yeah, those feelings of attraction for other guys.  Those feelings don't just evaporate, and there is simply no, "praying the gay away."  And God doesn't simply take feelings away.   Feelings begin to change when we change our behaviors.  But before our behaviors change, the direction of our thoughts must change.  Change thinking, change behaving, and feelings will change.  It can be quite a battle, but that is life.  Life doesn't work the way fantasies work.  If life is worth living then living it truthfully; not hiding, not escaping the hard stuff; not avoiding the deeper feelings, or childishly demanding that God just make it all go away.  In the name of protecting the truth, i.e. "I am unloved and unlovable."  I never had the chance to find out if anyone could honestly love me, and who cared anyway, I'd been settling for sex so long it was a part of me.  I'm a college educated guy who, though not a biology or psychology major, have always followed both sciences very carefully.   I knew that choices which lead to behaviors change the brain's chemistry; habitual behaviors literally create a neural pathways, kinda like a shortcut.  Just like a foot path which is often walked becomes a recognizable path the more it is used, so behaviors make firmly entrenched and well worn paths in our brains.  The fact is once a shortcut is made that path never completely goes away.  That does not mean that behaviors cannot be changed permanently.  New pathways can be made, and old paths will deteriorate with the passage of time and disuse.

 

There is another factor when it comes to Christians and changing.  The message of Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles is of spiritual new birth.  The Bible teaches a literal new birth, through a new act of creation within the human being.  This new spirit is linked directly to Jesus Christ, through something many of us imagine as a spiritual umbilical cord.  Through this new spirit created from the stuff of God's own Spirit, the Christian is remade from the inside out.  So Christians are not merely changing brain chemistry, but change is powered by a spirit empowered to live eternally in the presence of their eternal God.  The change comes from a new spirit, not an old brain with well worn sin paths cut into the brain.  It is the Holy Spirit who does the real hard work of change, but part of God's work includes making us part and parcel of that work.  Christians aren't simply to sit around and "pray the sin away."  Real change in thought and deed begun, guaranteed, and completed by God in and through us means we have to agree with and move with God toward the freedom he has worked and continues to work in us.  I am no longer the sum total of the harm of abusers and users.  I am now the sum total of God's promises, and the final result is that God will utterly conform me into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.  Neither I nor any other person can conform a mere human being into the image and likeness of God the Son.  Only God can conform a human into the image and likeness of his Son.  It is not I who overcome my sin and the scars those sins have made on my brain.  I am in the hands of the almighty who is molding and making into a new creation in every faculty and part of me.  When God is done nothing I was made of will exist.  None of the brokenness will remain, none of the damage done by other to me, and none of the damage from my sin will exist.

In Christ there are no "gay Christians", no "ex-gay Christians", no "murdering Christians", no "racist Christians," and etc.  What the world needs from the Church is not a condemning judge, not acceptance of sin, and most certainly not Christians who have no opinion.  When God clearly says, "You shall not..."  then that is the judgment of God, and every true believer holds to the judgment of God.  It is God's standard and he will enforce that standard.

 

It is fitting that Exodus International go the way of the DoDo.  No Christian should label another Christian with "ex-" anything.  No Christian should label or wear the label, "gay Christian".  No believer in Jesus Christ needs or deserves any other kind of label besides, "New creation."   No one should be segregated and labeled because of their past.  If you are a brother or sister in Christ then regardless of your past I'm deputized by living God to walk with you away from your sin and slavery.  I'm authorized to read you the rights you have in Jesus Christ. 

Exodus was a good idea, it just wasn't God's idea.  God's idea is and always will be the Church, and if the Church will do what he tells us to do, and do it his way, the chains fall off, the prisoner walks free, and all the past labels fall off, including "prisoner". 

XANGA IS DYING

I started blogging on Xanga in November, 2005.  It has always been my favorite place to post blogs.  Now, sadly, it is dying.  I do not like Facebook, I do not like Tumbler.  I am playing around with a WordPress blog, but I don't find it very user friendly.  I suppose I shall miss how completely user friendly Xanga has always been.  Xanga had a plethora of problems, and they were a pain in the neck at times, but they were also sort of endearing at the same time.  If Xanga takes the big dirt nap, I'm going to be very sad.  I certainly criticized Xanga on many occasions, but it doesn't mean I didn't love the old girl.  

I'm prepared to move on, but it will be a trail of tears leading me back to this site, and maybe to others.  Nothing will ever be the same if Xanga dies, but that is how life works isn't it?