Resentment & Forgiveness
I started dating a wonderful man this spring, and (as I had previously decided) stepped down from my position leading music unless/until the elders invited me back. There are people at my church who told me they would leave if I were leading music and dating simultaneously. This came at a good point in my life, as for the last six months (and the next year), I am spending more time focusing on school, work, and furthering my career. I had not given enough time to this due to all the time I was giving church. It’s okay to take a break.
But I’m learning that even after I graduate next spring, and when I can transition to a place where school and work become the same and I have fewer time commitments- there will likely still be no place for me to serve in the ways I feel called (music, teaching) at my church.
And people are still giving me verses…you know which verses. This is requiring so much patience on my part. It’s easy to feel resentful about how people conceptualize me, and what roles they think LGBT people should have. I get the impression that many hope I will change.
I was speaking with one of my closest friends about this- about how bitterness can build up in one’s heart, and choosing forgiveness is the way to break it down. Forgiveness is difficult. But that’s the Gospel. We are all forgiven. If I claim to be Christian, which to me means choosing to follow Jesus, then I must extend the same grace of forgiveness to others. Even if they say things that hurt, marginalize, and misrepresent me and other LGBT people and allies…I have to start with forgiveness. Don’t hold these things against them, Perrin.
Keep running.
runwithendurance 
i just found your blog and it really encouraged me – i feel like today of all days I really needed it. thanks for spreading this message of love. we need more christians out there who have soft and tender hearts, ones that do not jump to damning people based on sexual orientation. thanks again, brother. continue to run the race well.
October 31, 2015 at 23:29
I am a Christian also. To the best of my knowledge (based on scripture as well as the tradition of my 2000-year-old Eastern Orthodox Christian Church) I believe that you will be better off if you keep your same-sex relationships sexually chaste. I will add, though, that I agree with your comment elsewhere on this blog that it is good for people with different perspectives to try to understand why those who disagree with them think as they do. I also wholeheartedly agree that forgiveness of our enemies is an important commandment for us Christians.
In the history of my own church, there actually have been in the past quite a few people who chose to live sexually chaste lives in order to have a closer relationship with God. (Monasticism in our church is still alive and well, even in this century.) And I personally, though not a monastic, have been single all my life, and chaste for many years. So, I feel that I can say with honesty that it is not necessary to be in a sexual relationship in order to live a fulfilling life as a human being. That said, though, I realize that in contemporary America, it must feel extremely unfair, if one is a gay-oriented person, to be told by the church that gay people need to be celibate, while straight people can be free to enter sexually-fulfilling heterosexual marriages.
Good luck and God bless.
June 23, 2017 at 01:01