{"id":17157,"date":"2018-03-22T11:18:31","date_gmt":"2018-03-22T18:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17157"},"modified":"2018-03-22T11:18:31","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T18:18:31","slug":"we-arent-so-different","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/we-arent-so-different\/","title":{"rendered":"WE AREN’T SO DIFFERENT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0This book will push the traditional Christian either into their hiding place or to engage in conversation. In the traditional black Baptist church, we knew our musicians, were homosexual but we didn\u2019t talk about it. They were men and heavenly musically blessed. They kept their private affairs outside the church members view. Our youth choir director, famous in his own right in the music industry, was an older gentleman and we knew as teenagers that he was the queen.<\/p>\n

Marin stated in his book, Love is an Orientation<\/em>, that Christians owe the Gay community an apology. The church leaders and members have ostracized, demonized, tarred and feathered them because they were not like them. They forgot the love of Jesus but want to quickly exercise the chastisement of God on them.\u00a0 Marin addressed a common comment made by Christians, \u2018Love the Sinner but hate the sin,\u2019 and he encourages Christians to stop saying that statement. (46) I remember Jerry Falwell\u2019s attack on the Teletubbies, a children\u2019s show. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=hcaGFGxqUD4<\/a><\/p>\n

My interaction with the gay community (before they were considered gays) began as a high school teenager. I had two male homosexual friends in school. Now, this was in the late 60\u2019s. Earnest was very flamboyant and didn\u2019t care what others thought. I loved his courage. As a heterosexual woman, having a male homosexual friend was an asset. He was a great listener, personal adviser, and fashion expert. I always said they were great as best friends.<\/p>\n

I was president of our church\u2019s children\u2019s parent group and I had to stand up to my male vice president regarding our church\u2019s children music director. His statement to me was, \u201cOur director is soft and I teach my son\u2019s to be strong. I don\u2019t want them to be around someone that is that way.\u201d My response was, \u201che is a great guy, and wonderful with the children. There is always an adult presence, not because of who he is but because a director needs help with these number of children. I know him and he is staying.\u201d Needless to say, I lost my vice president and the church lost a member. We were a great team.<\/p>\n

During a battle with the health insurance industry for rights to ensure their partners, I found myself supporting their cause. I was always against the insurance companies telling us who we could claim as a dependent or even who we can insure. We should be allowed to ensure anyone we wanted to, we are paying the insurance company for service. During the battle for the right to marry, I had struggles picking up the torch. Even with my married gay friends, I have accepted in love but not yet embraced.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I attended seminary, a few of my classmates were members of the gay community. \u00a0I have always been surrounded by members of the gay community and fought for their individual rights.\u00a0 Yet, this began to challenge me spiritually. I wrestled with the pastoral ship in the gay community. I had to continue to pray and talk to myself remember who I was as a person and the new feelings I was experiencing. Marin shared his experiences interacting with the gay community. God led him to live and serve in the gay community.\u00a0 His book covers his journey interacting with the gay community. His assignment to the gay community reminded me of the God assignment of Rev. Michelle Boonzaaier, a speaker at our South Africa Advance, who work with the gay community. \u00a0Marin found himself in conversation with an aggressively professed gay pastor and he was taken back by his behavior and comment regarding not preaching on scriptures that negatively spoke again who he was, so he had his guard up. He spoke about his feelings on gay pastors and his plan of action on approaching them based on that negative experience but God spoke to him. God said, \u201cWhat does that have to do with what I told you to do. Go and do what I commanded you to do.\u201d (68)<\/p>\n

My experience with my gay seminary classmates was similar to my high school life. One classmate, I\u2019ll call her Ellen, and her partner, Susan, opened their home to us, her classmates, for study sessions and feed us.\u00a0 We all graduated and were pursuing our God-assigned Journey. \u00a0Ellen invited me to her installation as a pastor of a gay church.\u00a0 I felt honored that she invited me to her special day. I prayed and talked to myself about attending. \u00a0I wrestled with the question, \u2018was I supporting something God may be against?\u2019 \u00a0I began brainstorming with myself to reach a decision. Question: If I knew any pastor\u2019s sin, would I not attend? \u00a0I have that same struggle with deacons and pastors who have even married their mistress. Pastors who are still pastors after four different wives in the same church and the leaders are afraid to exercise accountability. I concluded that her sexual orientation does not deny her anointing. \u00a0I made the decision to attend the installation and I was glad I did. It was an awesome service and we still communicate.\u00a0 I plan on attending her worship service but I want to ensure that I go as a worshipper and not a spectator.<\/p>\n

Marin developed ways that heterosexual Christians can communicate with the Gay community. \u00a0In Chapter 4 he discussed several gay apologetics and I am not sure if I agree with all because I am not knowledgeable on the Hebrew and Greek language nor have I had the desire to research God\u2019s view on homosexuality. God loves us all and he commanded us to do the same with each other. Chapters 8 through 10 he addressed sixteen commitments with scriptures on how to build a bridge. He is quite candid about his feelings toward the Gay community and his experiences. \u00a0The overall point of his book is to encourage Christians to have a conversation with the Gay community. We aren\u2019t that different after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0This book will push the traditional Christian either into their hiding place or to engage in conversation. In the traditional black Baptist church, we knew our musicians, were homosexual but we didn\u2019t talk about it. They were men and heavenly musically blessed. They kept their private affairs outside the church members view. Our youth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1203],"class_list":["post-17157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-marin-gay-orientation","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17157"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17161,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17157\/revisions\/17161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}