Open Letter to Matthew...

Dear Matthew,

I am writing to you as a brother protestant Christian. Does it surprise you that there are Christians who claim Jesus as their personal Lord and Saviour, have received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, take the bible as the authority for their lives and yet do not find Christianity and LGBT mutually exclusive?

In the church you attend you have been taught to take the word of God in the bible as authority. You are a new Christian and praise God for that. I have been born again for many years and have read the bible from cover to cover over ten times studying and meditating on God's word. There is a lot in the Old Testament that was for its time. Today, we do not circumcise our male children, we do eat pork and rabbit, we do not have slaves or multiple wives, etc. We are blessed by having the new covenant through Jesus, we are new creations living by faith not by law. There is a wonderful passage by Saint Paul in Galatians - I will copy it for you below but you can check it in your bible it is at Chapter 3 verses 24 to the end

24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. 26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith,27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

You should learn Verse 28 as a memory verse. In the Old Testament Gentiles, slaves, women and LGBT people were excluded but now we live by faith and are one in Christ Jesus. So do not have people tell you that when our almighty God made people gay he made a mistake. Or that living a loving faithful life as two gay men is sinful. Or that you can change your sexuality because what you can do by force of determination, peer pressure and prayer is simply to suppress it for a time. The problem you will encounter is that your dreams will still be gay and you will find yourself in a constant battle to restrain your God given desires. I would encourage you to watch the You Tube clip from the leaders of exgay exodus seeking forgiveness for misleading people into thinking what you have been taught about curing homosexuality.

What I want to say to you simply is that it is great that you have come to faith in Jesus. It is good that you have a fellowship of believers around you to love and care for you. However, when you find that your sexuality re-emerges and you find that your current fellowship will not accept you because of that, then please do not reject Jesus. There are protestant Christians within Drachma who will love and accept you as you are as a gay man. When that day comes please get in touch, and in a non-threatening way we can talk about what it means to be an authentic follower of Jesus without denying your own sexual identity.

With every blessing in Jesus

Barnabas

PS In case you are wondering about the account of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19 this was about the rejection of hospitality and gang rape rather than homosexuality. Just as the similar account of Gibeah in Judges 19 was also about the rejection of hospitality and gang rape rather than heterosexuality. I urge you to read all the bible for yourself under the direction of the Holy Spirit and not just accept the bits that others show you to support their agenda.