I’m not sure if I’m understanding your question. Are you talking about sharing your own beliefs and struggle as they relate to yourself, or about trying to persuade your friends to our point of view?

If the latter, I have to honestly admit I don’t do too much of that, trying to argue with and persuade them. Maybe I should do more, I don’t know. Right now it’s sort of irrelevant anyway, because I don’t really have any close friends who are gay Christians who are in relationships now. But in general, my approach to gay Christians has been as follows:

Mostly I just try to be present in their lives, be their friends. As part of sharing myself with them, letting them get to know me as I get to know them, I am upfront and honest about my faith and my belief that all homosexual sex is sin. But I try not to do it in a preachy way, but more in a way of sharing where I am coming from. Which is easy to do, because my conviction about homosexuality has shaped my life in signifcant ways. (It would probably harder for a straight person to bring up his convictions about homosexuality as a sort of personal sharing.)

Once that belief of mine has been clearly communicated, I tend to leave it up to them. If they want to argue with me about it, I try to give thoughtful and reasonable explanations for why I believe what I do, for why I read the Scriptures the way I do. If they don’t want to argue but are curious about what I think, I try to share my views humbly (one sinner to another) but straightforwardly. Most of all, I try not to condescend to them and treat them as though they’ve never opened a Bible before.

But mostly I pray for them, as I pray for myself–that God would guide us all more fully into His truth, and soften our hearts wherever they might be hardened. And I try to encourage them, as I try to encourage all my Christian friends, to grow in the faith.

In my experience there’s not much point to constantly nagging and picking fights over this, or by getting all fire-and-brimstoney. But maybe I just never nagged long enough? I do worry about this sometimes, that I have not been enough of a “watchman.”

But I just feel there’s not too much to be gained by arguing unless *they* are interested in the argument and in thinking about these issues. If they don’t want to think about it, they won’t, no matter how logically and Scripturally devastating you may be. And while I don’t want to overgeneralize or judge others’ hearts, I can confidently say that for myself, my own past struggles with embracing what I believe the Bible teaches about homosexuality were NEVER about intellectual issues. I wasn’t periodically drawn to the pro-gay arguments because they were rationally compelling, but because they offered me “cover” for what I so desperately wanted to do. So those who tried to argue with me and talk sense into me were sort of missing the point. Again, I don’t want to overgeneralize or project, but I suspect I’m not the only person who has ever done that.

dm

NNR: “So why don’t we all just state that being exgay IS in fact primarily about a change in behavior, and that the majority of those who are exgay for religious reasons are douing so in (their perception of?) obedience to God’s law.”
I think alot of people do know this, both gay and ex-gay, but often ex-gay’s portray this as an ORIENTATION change, rather than just a BEHAVIOUR change. Perhaps its because ex-gays are afraid of gays going “A HA! I knew conversion therapy never worked!”, or maybe its because most of the testimonies we hear are from those who found change ‘easy’ (At least they seem to speak the loudest). Because only God knows the motives of our heart (sorry Christian reference), we can never know if an orientation change truly did result. IF all ex-gays did reveal that it was mainly only a behaviour change then this would cut alot of confusion. Until then shuold we believe them or not? It’s a bit of a tough decision.

Hope my comment was coherent, and hope to hear more from u DM!
Ed

Yes, exactly. If you listen to the organizations, you get the impression that the typical, desired result is that “successful” exgays are freed of their SSA impulses (see “Ted Haggard is now completely heterosexual”), whereas the reality is usually a lot more complicated than that (from celibate exgays who struggle daily with profound temptation, to married exgays who struggle occasionally, to people who are completely cured and never have another homo thought. Actually, I don’t know of any of these – do they actually happen?). So why don’t we all just state that being exgay IS in fact primarily about a change in behavior, and that the majority of those who are exgay for religious reasons are douing so in (their perception of?) obedience to God’s law. Enough of whether it’s a biological, immutable characterisitc, or a sinful lifestyle choice.

To summarise: Being a real monk means cutting oneself off from everything in the world, he said, including parents, friends, things, habits, ambitions, …, complete and utter self denial. This process of emptying results in what he calls a ‘psychic chaos’, ‘a terrible void’, ‘a darkness’, ‘a hell’. At this point, the only source of hope is God. In a sense, we empty ourselves to leave the maximum space for God, and after a while, we manage to fill this space with the perfect relationship with God, leading to perfect relationships with all human beings.

I haven’t done it justice here, but I guess the point is one made often, that it can be a tough, tough road to the perfect relationship with God, and though for some the road is short, for others, it may take a lifetime to travel.

kentuckyliz:Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts, wisely and beautifully expressed. I also needed a great deal of whacking…I’m always baffled by my brothers and sisters in the Lord who don’t seem to need to learn everything the hard way. You’re so right about the happiness/joy thing. I feel like I spent way too long on the gerbil wheel of chasing personal happiness.

Saul:I didn’t know you were into the Desert Fathers. Tell me more!

Clay Cane: So, what about you now really makes you heterosexual?

Charlene: Nothing. My prayer was not, “Fix me, repair me, and make me straight”—that was not my prayer. My prayer was, “God make me whole in every sense of the word. . . . ”

Are you saying that you are not heterosexual? I am saying that I am celibate right now. I’m not saying there won’t ever be a man in my life. You’re asking me about where I am and that’s all I can speak to. Today I am celibate . . . But . . . there is one thing I can say and one thing I will go on record and say—I will never be entangled with the bondage of lesbianism again. . . .

Are you physically attracted to men? [Pauses.] I am physically attracted to the spirit of Christ right now.

Are you still attracted to women or is that attraction completely gone? I would say after 29 years of walking in the sin of lesbianism that if the devil were going to try and tempt me that he’s probably not going to send a football player, if you will, because that didn’t do it for me. You follow me?

So basically we have a recently ex-ex-gay and a recently ex-gay apparently completely agreeing on what it truly means to be ex-gay: it typically means renouncing the behavior, and struggling with the temptations (or intrisic orientation, depending on which politically loaded set of vocabulary one uses).

The Desert Fathers couldn’t have said it better!