By the way…
People keep asking me when I’m going to be traveling to their area to speak, sign books, etc. My answer is, “Whenever you make it happen!”
I unfortunately don’t have a budget for a book tour, so my speaking engagements happen whenever people go to their church, school, LGBT organization, Bible study group, student group, or whatever else and talk to their leadership about hosting me as a speaker.
If you’re interested in bringing me to your area, contact Samantha in my office at 1-919-786-0000. (Yes, that’s really our number.)
Every year, at the Gay Christian Network’s annual conference, I get to give a Sunday morning keynote address. I’d call it a sermon, but I think of sermons as being boring, and I try not to be boring.
This year, I had a lot of fun, getting people to laugh and telling interesting stories, along with making some important points about sin, grace, and the messy world we live in. So if you missed it on this week’s GCN Radio, here’s another chance to catch the audio of my sermon keynote at this year’s GCN conference.
Direct download link | GCN Radio archive page | Subscribe in iTunes
Coming soon to a college/city near you!
Hey guys! Here’s my speaking schedule for the next few weeks; come by and see me if you’re in the area!
Mar 14-15 Newberg, Oregon (with Jennifer Knapp)
Mar 26-27 Lynchburg College (Lynchburg, Virginia)
Mar 28-29 Canton, Ohio (at New Vision UCC)
Apr 10 Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, California)
Apr 11-12 Pepperdine University (Malibu, California)
Apr 17-18 Purdue University (West Lafayette, Indiana)
Apr 23-24 Lubbock, Texas (at St. John’s United Methodist Church)
Apr 25-26 Abilene, Texas (location TBA)
May 2-3 UC San Diego (La Jolla, California)
[Updated with more specific location details!]
Since I haven’t posted anything for a few days, here’s what I’ve been up to!
Are Christians not interested in dialogue?
An interesting pattern has been emerging lately in the college events I’ve been overseeing.
Conservative Christians aren’t showing up.
At each campus, I’ve been giving one presentation just for the campus LGBT community and their friends, but the day before that, each campus hosts a “dialogue” event, designed to bring people on both sides of the issue together to have a productive conversation and break through the stereotypes that each side has of the other.
When it works, it’s beautiful. At several schools, the dialogue event has blown me away with the sincere, compassionate questions each side asks the other, and the great dialogue has continued beyond those events to late night dinners and conversations afterwards.
But it’s not always that way. At some of the schools, the only people showing up are LGBTs and a few of their straight friends.
It’s not that conservative Christians aren’t aware of the event. We’ve spent hundreds of dollars at each campus on Facebook ads, we’ve covered the campuses with fliers, and the campus Gay-Straight Alliances have contacted leaders of campus Christian groups to encourage them to share the information with their members.
The events are billed as opportunities for dialogue, specifically inviting campus Christians to sit down at the table with LGBT students and have a thoughtful, sincere conversation.
Hundreds of conservative Christian students on these campuses have flocked to our pre-event online surveys, sharing their views on why homosexuality is a sin and gay people need to repent. The surveys include reminders of the time and place for the dialogue, but of the hundreds of students who have taken the time to share their views online, few bother to show up for the actual dialogue.
Why? Are we Christians only interested in preaching our views, but not interested in engaging with people who actually want to talk to us?
Of course, college life is busy, and some of these students may have had other engagements during that time. But plenty of LGBT students are showing up, and there are many more conservative Christians than out LGBT students on any of these campuses.
Perhaps the conservative Christians fear that any request for dialogue is insincere, and that these events will just be opportunities for the other side to preach at them. But that fear works both ways, and if no one is willing to take a chance when the other side reaches out in a genuine attempt to build a bridge, how will we ever accomplish anything?
It’s not happening everywhere. At the most conservative campuses, a good number of conservative Christians have shown up. Even then, though, there seem to be far fewer people willing to show up to dialogue than are willing to be outspoken in condemning homosexuality.
Jesus didn’t just stand and preach. He got involved in people’s lives. We’re called to do the same.
So what do you guys think is the problem? If you’re a conservative Christian, what would it take to get you to come to a dialogue with the gay community?
Some disagreements are too important to debate.
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been traveling to different colleges to talk to students and begin campus conversations about homosexuality and Christianity. At each stop, we bring together a roomful of students who disagree with each other and then try to have a respectful conversation with each other.
The experiences have been fascinating, and many of the things I’m learning in these groups could be applied to passionate disagreements on any issue, not just this one.
Every time, I can feel the tension as the students make their way into the room. Some come on their own, but many come in small groups. They come for different reasons. Some are members of the campus Gay-Straight Alliance or similar group; others are members of campus Christian groups with a conservative view of homosexuality; still others have no particular group affiliation but are there because they have a personal interest in the issue.
A number of the students come with Bibles in hand and certain passages bookmarked. They’ve got their arguments prepared, and they’re ready for a debate. But my goal there isn’t to have a debate. It’s to have a conversation.
Normally, when someone says something like that, they’re about to hit you with some wishy-washy sort of garbage about how “everyone’s opinion is equally valid” and that “none of us can judge if someone else is right or wrong.” Pardon my bluntness on this, but that’s just silly. Yes, everyone is entitled to an opinion if the question is about which ice cream flavor is best or whether Avatar was a good movie, but some issues aren’t just a matter of opinion. Would we say that everyone’s opinion of whether child abuse is okay is equally valid? Or that we should all just agree to disagree about whether the Holocaust really happened? No, everyone is not equally right on these issues. Someone has to be wrong.
As I tell these students, we want to change each other’s minds. Let’s admit that. A conversation doesn’t mean that we’re just agreeing to disagree. What it does mean is that we’re showing respect for one another in the midst of that disagreement.
More importantly, it’s also the most powerful way to change minds.
Our natural inclination when we passionately disagree is to debate. We prepare our arguments from logic, philosophy, and the Bible, and we come out swinging, thinking that the sheer force of our brilliant and unstoppable argument will convert the other side. That’s what many of these students come prepared to do.
But it doesn’t work. As a pastor friend of mine used to say, you can’t argue people to the Lord. Debates almost never change minds—at least, not the minds of the people you’re debating with. They make us feel better, but they’re pretty ineffective.
(Of course, debates are a great tool if they’re happening in front of an undecided or conflicted audience, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about when we start debating directly with the people whose minds we’re trying to change.)
Debates don’t change minds because if I’m debating with you, both of us are focused on winning the debate. When you’re making your argument, I’m not really listening; I’m focused on what my rebuttal will be. The whole time you’re talking, I’m looking for the flaws in your argument that I can point out as soon as you stop to catch your breath. If by chance you do make a great point, it’s not going to change my mind; it’s just going to make me work that much harder to come up with an argument against it.
Debates are a lot like quarrels in that way. Neither side wants to admit defeat, so neither side backs down. The tension only escalates, and no one’s mind is changed. Instead, both sides tend to dig their heels in further.
Conversations are so much better at changing minds. In a conversation, we actually listen to each other, because our focus is on understanding each other. Paradoxically, when I stop focusing on winning the debate, I have a better chance of ultimately changing your mind. Why? Because I grow to understand more about why you believe what you do, and you grow to understand the same about me. That understanding is vital to making us both feel comfortable enough to consider other viewpoints, and it helps us both communicate about the areas in which we differ.
Conversations breed relationships, and relationships change minds. I believe this is part of the reason Jesus’ ministry was so much about building relationships with people rather than just preaching at them, and why Paul entered Athens with a spirit of understanding rather than simply deriding their worship of false gods.
So on the issues I care the most about, I want to be someone who opts for conversation instead of debate. Not because I don’t care enough to argue for my side, but because I care too much to use an ineffective tactic like debate.
I’d rather follow the example of Jesus, who was much better at this than I’ll ever be.
A quick update.
I’m on my way back home from Mississippi today, where I just helped coordinate some more campus conversations about Christianity and homosexuality. These went swimmingly! We were able to disagree respectfully, we all learned things, and there was absolutely no shouting on either side. Woohoo!
Meanwhile, I’ve been so excited to see the many awesome comments and questions coming in here on this blog and over on Rachel Held Evans’ blog, and my plan is to catch up with responding to them this weekend while I’m at home.
Stay tuned! Same blog time, same blog channel!
Physician, heal thyself.
Yesterday, I posted about a frustrating experience I had where a young woman accused me, in a very confrontational and hurtful way, of not being a Christian. It wasn’t the first time the charge had been leveled at me, but something about that particular interaction really got under my skin, so I decided to write about it. (This is a new blog, so I’m still getting a feel for how much I want it to be personal and how much I want it to be theological.)
I ended the post with a rhetorical question, asking how we prove our faith to someone who looks at us with hate.
I didn’t actually mean it as a real question; I know there’s no way to “prove” my faith to someone who doesn’t believe I’m a Christian. But it struck a chord with some of you, and the responses to that post have been interesting.
A number of you chimed in to reassure me that you know I’m a Christian and that there probably wasn’t anything else I could have done to help her understand me. This made me feel better, which is probably part of the reason I posted it in the first place.
But as the responses continued, I began to feel uncomfortable. Here we were, talking about someone who isn’t even in the room. Of course, I didn’t say anything to identify this woman, and I don’t even know her name. But still, something made me uneasy about the number of responses defending me and blasting her. Were we all just piling on, sitting in judgment of this woman, making assumptions about her based on that one interaction?
I often tell people that when someone says or does something you don’t like, it’s important to try to put yourself in their shoes: what’s their motivation? What are they thinking and feeling? Why are they making the decisions they’re making?
Everyone is the protagonist of their own story. We all sometimes make mistakes, but we also all make decisions based on trying to achieve ends we see as good. Only in movies do self-avowed villains cackle gleefully as they plot to bring down the heroes and hatch evil plans for the purpose of evil. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and Austin Powers’ nemesis notwithstanding, there is no “Evil League of Evil.” Even the most wicked people in the world are, in some way and on some level, motivated by something they view as good—even if they’re wrong, and even if that “good” is only for themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The antagonist in your story isn’t the antagonist in their own. So if you can get into their head and understand what it is they really want, it can totally change your interaction with them.
Anyway, that’s what I tell people. Two days ago, I was trying to do that with the young woman I encountered. But in the heat of the moment, I got hurt, and I stopped putting myself in her shoes and started focusing on defending myself.
A commenter named Jason challenged me on that in his response to my post. Was it really “hate” I saw in that young woman’s eyes, he asked me? Wasn’t it possible she was just angry, worried about the spread of false doctrine? Perhaps she was allowing her emotion to get the best of her, but wasn’t I falling victim to that as well, potentially mischaracterizing her in my quest to process my own emotions?
At first, that response frustrated me. Of course I knew that her response was provoked by anger and genuine concern for the Truth. I had said as much to her at the time. I had tried to reach out to her. What had surprised me was the intensity of her response even when I tried to reach out to her and listen to her. I had tried to put myself in her shoes, several times! And she had rebuffed me.
But.
Jason was right. No, that young woman didn’t handle her emotion well, and I wish she had accepted my attempts to dialogue instead of attacking me with her words. But you know, I have a major advantage over her. I’ve been thinking about these issues for many years. I’ve known what it’s like to be attracted to the same sex since I was 11. I’ve known I was gay since I was 18. I’ve been writing about homosexuality and Christianity, and talking to people on all sides of the issue, for 15 years now. This may well have been the first time she ever met a self-professed gay Christian or talked about these issues in depth. Surely she can be forgiven for not being quite as nuanced on the issue as I am!
Why was she so angry? Why did she look at me that way? Because she heard, for the first time, a guy who really knows his Bible and who believes that people can be gay and Christian. Before that night, she probably had never distinguished between celibate and non-celibate gay people, so even though I wasn’t arguing for acceptance of gay marriage, the very idea that I identified myself as a gay Christian must have seemed to her like a blatant heresy.
Not only that, but her understanding is that people living in unrepentant sin—which would include gay Christians—will burn in hell for all eternity. So if she looks at me and sees a guy who knows his Bible and makes shockingly strong arguments for gay Christians to be accepted, what does that mean to her? It means, this is a dangerous guy whose heretical teachings will condemn many people to hell for eternity. And someone like that, no matter what he claims, cannot be a Christian who is led by the Holy Spirit.
She doesn’t know me. Her only interaction with me was when I was speaking at her school. As far as she knows, I’m Hitler—worse than Hitler, because Hitler killed people’s bodies, but in her mind, I’m condemning people’s souls. And all my attempts to reach out compassionately, ask for dialogue, and show her I’m not such a bad guy? Well, how would any of us respond if Hitler tried to prove he wasn’t such a bad guy? If he was friendly or eloquent, wouldn’t that just make him more dangerous? Wouldn’t we see him as even more evil?
Thinking about it from her perspective, I think even I would hate me!
When she has more time to think about the issue, to meet gay people and hear their stories, I suspect she’ll begin to see the issue with more nuance. That’s what happened to me. With that perspective, she’d be more ready to hear the message I was trying to share that day. But in the meantime, let’s not judge her for reacting in passionate anger to someone who must have seemed like a truly evil person with a dangerous and evil message. We would surely do the same in her shoes.
Instead, I need to ask myself two things: One, how do I get the judgmental plank out of my own eye so that I can see where people like her are coming from, even in the heat of the moment? And two, once I’ve done that, how do I modify my approach to have more helpful conversations with people who aren’t ready for the more nuanced conversation I want to have?
I will probably never meet that young woman again. I thought that I had something to teach her, and I was frustrated that I wasn’t getting through. In truth, God was using her to teach me.
What. A. Night.
Yesterday was the first day of Transforming the Conversation, a new program I helped design to try to build bridges of understanding between gays and Christians (and, of course, those of us in the middle), specifically in more conservative areas where it’s most needed.
The program involves going to 20 universities, mostly in the Bible Belt, in one year. At each university, I’m leading a public discussion for the whole campus, designed to bring people from both sides together to share their stories and talk about ways to have productive dialogue in the future. I’m also having separate conversations with the LGBT community and their friends, to give them some of our resources and show them ways they can initiate more loving conversations in their families and churches.
If you know me, you know my passion is building bridges and helping people understand each other, especially on this issue. My goal isn’t to change everyone’s mind about what the Bible says; it’s to change the way we respond to that disagreement. Would I love for everyone to agree with me? Of course! Who wouldn’t? But we Christians have always disagreed on issues. What matters is whether we can continue to love one another.
So yeah… last night was our very first night, at Auburn Montgomery in Montgomery, Alabama. That’s right: my first attempt to use this program to build dialogue between gays and Christians was taking place in Alabama. Am I nuts?
I was more than a bit nervous, as you might imagine.
As if that weren’t enough, yesterday morning Rachel Held Evans posted my responses to questions from her readers on her blog. The response has been great but overwhelming. For the last 24 hours, my inbox has been filling up with notifications of comments both on Rachel’s blog and on this one, but I haven’t been able to read them all yet because I’ve been busy here in Alabama leading these conversations.
I apologize to all of you that I haven’t had time yet to respond to your comments, but I will as soon as I can!
So I know you’re wondering: How did our first night go?
Things started okay, but they almost went horribly wrong. As I shared about the two opposing viewpoints in the church about homosexuality and the need for those two sides to talk to each other if they want to make change, a young woman in the front row raised her hand.
She couldn’t get behind the idea of dialogue, because in her mind, there was no room for it. If being gay is sinful, she argued, then one side was condemning people to hell. But if the other side was wrong, there were “really no consequences.”
I agreed that the issues were serious, and that we couldn’t just say, “Let’s all just get along.” But I disagreed that there were “no consequences” if her side was wrong. If Christians are wrongly (though sincerely) condemning people’s relationships, and if that false condemnation is breaking up families, pushing people away from God, and destroying the reputation of the church, those are some pretty darn serious consequences!
If either side is wrong, it matters. Let’s not kid ourselves.
After those comments, it was tough to bring everyone back to the planned agenda. People began wanting to bring up Bible disagreements and other issues, and both sides grew frustrated and tense. For a moment, I was worried. So I changed strategies. Instead of continuing with the plan, I put the conversation on hold and asked people to share their own stories and talk about the misconceptions their side might have about the other side. The tension dissipated, and the nature of the conversation changed.
After the event, though, that same young woman and a number of her friends from a campus Christian group approached me to ask about my views on the Bible. My goal had been to moderate a conversation, not to share my own views, but since they asked, I did my best to condense many years of prayer, Bible study, and questions into a brief synopsis of the turmoil I had gone through on the subject and the Bible passages and other things that had ultimately changed my mind.
I wasn’t surprised that this young woman disagreed with my view. What did surprise me was what she said next.
“You, sir,” she said, her eyes burning and her voice hard, “do NOT have a relationship with Jesus. You do NOT have the Holy Spirit. I know what someone with the Holy Spirit looks like, and it’s not you. You will have the blood of many people on your hands, people you led straight to hell. And I cannot stand by and watch you do it.”
I didn’t know what to say. I’ve seen a lot of people get upset about this issue, and I’ve been accused many times of leading people astray (something I hope and pray every day that I never do), but this woman had more anger directed at me than I think I’ve ever seen. I actually wondered if she wanted to physically harm me.
Other people told me they got a lot out of the event, so I think it was a success, but I have to admit that that experience is tough to shake.
I think and pray deeply about the views I hold, but of course I have no way to be sure that I’m right about anything I believe. We’re all human, and we’re all fallible. The one thing I do know is that I am sincere and passionate about wanting to serve God with my life.
So how do you prove that to someone who looks at you with hate in their eyes?
