Author Archives: Sam Powell

This could also be called “more ammunition for my enemies to use against me…” if I cared, that is.

Interesting thing. When they have taken away everything that you thought you couldn’t live without, and you survived and are thriving, you no longer really care about their threats. Plus, I make liberal use of the block key, which is wonderful.

I changed my mind on the LGBTQ community. Most of you probably suspected that I was leaning that way. And, no, it isn’t because I suddenly abandoned the scripture. It is actually my love of God’s word that has led me to be gay affirming.

First, I don’t think that the handful of scripture used to condemn same sex attraction are about that at all. I changed my mind on that one. As I look at those passages, they are about abuse, degradation and idolatry.

Second, I also affirm that God created one man and one woman and brought them together. Before the fall. After the fall, everything got twisted around and men and women fled from God and tried to find their way home without him..

But the only hope of salvation is that God came looking for us. In fact, the heart of the gospel is that Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. You, me, the whole world.

And salvation never came through the law. All that the law can do is bring death. When you say, “Stop that behavior”, all that you are doing is increasing shame. And shame triggers hiding (what we call trauma response), and you cannot grow in love and peace and joy when you are hiding in terror from the face of God.

Nothing new here. I’ve been preaching that forever.

But the religious right is far more interested in the law. For some reason, they think that shouting at gay people will bring about peace on earth…

But I digress.

The only thing that will change a heart is love. Love without “yes, but I also find you repugnant.”

Or “Yes, but I’m going to need you to change”.

Or, “Yes, I love you, but hate your sin.”

You see, all of those responses are shame-based. Which bring guilt, fear, hiding and (you guessed it,) trauma.

Only when the brain is completely safe can it change and grow. But if you tell the brain to change and grow, it backfires, and you don’t get what you think you will get.

Paul calls that the “works of the flesh” and then he describes a whole list of things that we use to try to hide our shame from ourselves and from the world.

He could be describing the behavior of the religious right there.

So how can the brain grow and learn and bring the fruits of love?

Only by being implanted into Christ and his love, which absolutely MUST be free, unconditional, and without reproach, or it backfires.

And the love of Christ never, ever backfires.

Here’s what got me thinking:

I know personally, and I have heard the stories of others, many many times, of teenagers begging God to take away their gayness.

Every day new stories come. They have been told that they are going to hell. They know that their parents will abandon them if they “come out”.

And they are on their knees night after night begging God to take their gay away.

That leaves me with a problem theologically.

Either God doesn’t hear prayer.

OR God doesn’t hear prayer unless we muster up enough will-power to change our hearts.

OR God turns his back on people who truly and desperately are begging for help.

All of these scenarios are repugnant to me, not because I am suddenly “liberal”, but because I read the gospels.

Imagine a young man pursuing Jesus night after night. He finally gets up the courage to say, “Please, Jesus – take away my sin”

Or “make me clean”

Or “Love me, Lord. Please welcome me and help me.”

And Jesus saying, “Nah. I’m not going to help you. I hate your sin too much. But if you fix yourself up enough and save yourself, then I might not throw you into hell.”

This is not the Jesus who bore my sin and shame on the cross.

Does Jesus have the power to change “gayness”. He certainly does, if he desires.

Does Jesus ever send anyone away who comes to him for mercy? Never. “Whosoever comes to me, I will never, ever cast out.”

Do gay men and women beg Jesus for help? They do.

The only conclusion that I can come to is that Jesus doesn’t think about them the same way that the religious right thinks about them.

And that is why I changed my mind. Because I am really tired of young men and women killing themselves because all they have known is hatred for something they can do nothing about.

And now, the self-righteous among my readership are saying, “They CAN do something about it. They can choose not to act on it!”

So now Christianity is salvation by law?

Did you forget what the Bible says, “If righteousness comes by the law, then Christ died in vain.”?

If any of us could “choose not to act on it” or “choose to be better people” or “just stop…”

Then Christ came in vain.

But if Christ did not come in vain, but came in power, then he is powerful enough to have mercy to all who call upon him. And he will.

And he will change us into his glorious likeness.

But he will do it in such a way that we don’t lose the beautiful color, beautiful personhood, beautiful diversity of our wonderful, rainbow-filled humanity.

What does that look like? I have no idea. I live now in a world of death and misery. But how I long for that day.

Until then, I will let the Holy Spirit work on my AND work on my brothers and sisters and whatever other gender of those who walk this earth with me, all searching for their way home.

And you will now say, “Jesus loves us as we are, but he doesn’t leave us as we are.”

That is true. And yet when will we be like him? When will we be free of this body of death? What does that even look like?

Is it possible to rest in that love of Jesus if you are convinced that he hates you because you are still unclean in his eyes? How can you come to the Father’s embrace if you are sure that he will hate and reject you the minute you do?

No. It is the love that changes us in HIS time to be like HIM. Pure and holy, clean and beautiful in all of our glorious color and breadth of our beauty!

Through that love, which Jesus has promised he will never take away, we are safe. Safe in his arms, safe from rejection and death. Safe from being cast away forever.

And when we have psychological safety, the self is free to love and to grow and to change. And I will let the Holy Spirit decide what that looks like.

I promise you, though, that it won’t look like the abusive, power-hungry man that fills most of the pulpits of the religious right.

I will always reject covenant breakers, abusers, the unjust, the arrogant, the proud – those who cast the stones and then go home to hit their wives and abuse their slaves. Those who make and believe a lie. Those who trample the poor for new shoes and rob the houses of the widows. Those who make millions endorsing bibles and those who enrich themselves off the death of the poor.

That is a far different thing.