what that essentially means is that i've been extremely busy. but i have a research paper due tomorrow that i haven't done much with yet, other than grab about 25 books from the library on the topic.
i for real started on it this weekend. so i've been reading and researching and writing about 1 topic all weekend = homosexuality.
it's been a good study and frankly i'm thankful for having to write a paper on this. i don't fully have it all worked out where i'm going with the paper just yet, but i am confident of one thing. Christians and churches must focus more on loving individuals. period. we've messed up bad.
of all the tons of reading i've done about science and orientation and hermeneutics of New Testament passages, etc... there's one story that sticks out most to me. 1 story still sticks in my mind beyond all the other stuff. and it's a REAL story from Tony Campolo's life. it's a story he tells from when he was in high school. below are Tony's words...
"Roger was gay, we all knew it, and we all made his life miserable. When we passed him in the hall we called out his name effeminately, we made the crude gestures, we made him the brunt of cheap jokes. He never took showers in P.E. because he knew we'd whip him with our wet towels.
I wasn't there, though, the day they dragged Roger into the shower room, and shoved him into the corner. Curled up there, he cried and begged for mercy as five guys urinaed on him.
The reports said that Roger went to bed that night as usual, and that sometime around two in the morning he got up, went down to the basement of his house, and hanged himself.
On that day I realized that I wasn't a Christian. I was a theologically sound evangelical, believed all points of the Apostles' Creed, declared Jesus to be my Savior. But if the Holy Spirit had actually been in me, I would have stood up for Roger. When the guys came to make fun of him, I would have put one arm around Roger's shoulders, waved the guys off with the other and told them to leave him alone, to not mess with him, because he was my friend.
But I was afraid to be Roger's friend. I knew that if you stood up for a homosexual, people said cruel things about you, too. So I kept my distance. If I hadn't, who knows if Roger might be alive today."
just love Roger. that's all we need to do first and foremost.
