Day 7 of 365 - when did God first have an opinion?

The judgement that some of us learned about LGBTQ people might have come from many different places.Here are some factors that might have had an influence on where this judgement about LGBTQ people appeared from, it might depend upon...

• where you were brought up...

• whether or not church was an integral part of that upbringing...

• if church was part of your upbringing, what type of church it was.

As I mentioned yesterday, my initial understanding about LGBTQ people came from school friends. Although I attended an Anglican church regularly from the age of about 10, I don't recall any sermons about homosexuality or similar topics. If God did have an opinion about LGBTQ people, then it wasn't considered important enough to talk about.

It wasn't until I joined a non-denominational, evangelical, charismatic church in my late teens that I discovered that the way the leaders there interpreted Scripture, it was clear to them that God's opinion about same-gender relationships was that He [these leaders were also confident that God was male 😊 ] did not approve of them at all, in fact they were considered sinful.

Sadly, I adopted their way of thinking as my own. For more than 12 years I sought every way I could think of to "cure" myself of my wayward sexual orientation.

As my friend Sue Laurie says, I "received a bad teaching." Maybe you did too?

Action: As we seek to understand how best to talk with others who are still not affirming of LGBTQ people it is helpful to understand our own journeys. Can you trace back to what and when you first learned about God's opinion on LGBTQ people? Was it affirming of LGBTQ people, or did you also "receive a bad teaching?"