All the gay marriage controversy in the news has caused some interesting conversations to arise. I'm here to report on perhaps the most illuminating of them. It involves 2 stories of gay men and how the reactions of the Christians around them affected them.

The first story is relayed second hand and was told to me by my sister-in-law (if I mess up any of the details I will trust my in-laws to correct me). A family friend grew up in a Catholic household and repressed homosexual desires for fear of how his parents would react. When they passed away he decided it was time to quit hiding it. Some years later he lay on his deathbed surrounded by those who loved him and would miss him upon his passing which included my wife's Christian family. He realized that despite the decisions he had made, those special people had not ceased to love him. They didn't agree with his lifestyle choice, but that didn't mean that they weren't beside him in his time of need nor would it keep them from mourning his passing. The recognition of their love hit him hard.

He died and had a vision of blackness and torment. Thankfully the hospital was able to revive him. Because of the influence of his loving Christian friends and this revelation of what he saw and believed was waiting for him in the afterlife he cried out to Jesus and was saved shortly before his final passing. He died a changed person wishing only that he had not wasted his life when he could have known Jesus all along.

I felt that this contrasted dramatically with a scenario I witnessed. A Christian friend had once struggled with homosexuality. Upon turning to God he resisted his past urges to the point that I had no idea it had ever been a part of his life when I met him. To the best of my knowledge, at the point in his life that he was serving God he did not partake of a homosexual lifestyle in any way. I seem to remember him even having a girlfriend for a short while.

At some point the people in his church fellowship heard of either his past or of current internal struggles. Despite the fact that he was not leading a homosexual lifestyle their treatment of him changed. Gossip and exclusion drove him from their fellowship. He finally decided to actually become what they thought him to be. I was one of very few Christian friends to remain on good terms with him. (15 years or so later we still remain in contact). He has embraced a fully homosexual lifestyle and rejected the God he once served thanks to the treatment he received. I noticed drastic changes in him including vocabulary, attitude, and outlook. The love of a couple of Christian friends wasn't enough to overcome the hurt and betrayal of his larger church family.

Some Christians seem to think of homosexuality as a super-sin, some pet grievance of God's that He can't or won't forgive. They seem to think that so much as a homosexual temptation is enough to incur the full wrath of the Creator and by extension His church. Some even like to wave signs about how much God hates certain people while protesting funerals (I'm sorry, but I just can't think of those people as being truly Christian). But I want you to think about the two stories above. If I were sitting down for coffee with Jesus and telling him about these two people which do you think would make him smile and which do you think would make him cry? 

Fear not.