Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America

by Jeff Chu

We each choose our churches through unscientific, highly personal processes. Some people spend their whole lives worshipping in the same parish—just as their grandparents did and just as their grandchildren will. Others are ecclesiastical butterflies, flitting from congregation to congregation, feeding a little here and a little there. Some people must visit a church for weeks or many months until they decide it’s a good fit. Others know instantly that a church is not for them. A bad experience with one congregation can color a person’s sentiments about an entire denomination forever—or not.

Church should be a place where one can safely feel vulnerable. I’ve always thought of this vulnerability being spiritual and theological—a posture of questioning and hoping and examining.

“By reading the Bible as if it were fundamentally about us,” he tweeted, “we’ll totally miss Jesus.” And by building the church as if it were fundamentally about making ourselves feel better, I wonder if we also totally miss God.

What it comes down to for Mark is an acknowledgment that when we read Scripture, we are always filtering it through a lens—or perhaps multiple ones. What does “love” mean to me? How is “justice” interpreted? What cultural biases do I impose when I read about biblical rules for women, or laws about food, or regulations about sex? What societal mores existed then? Mark explains, “I run into people all the time who say, ‘The Bible says . . .’ They never say, ‘ . . . as it has been translated and interpreted.’ There is no hermeneutical awareness, and you shouldn’t be able to get away with that. We are all interpreting.”

Referring to 1 John 4:18, he says: “When you know you are being loved and not judged, fear has nothing to control. . . . Perfect love is the multivitamin every Highlander should take. Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with judgment.” The default setting for most of us, he continues, is to believe that God is judging us. “The epic tragedy is that the organization on earth that is supposed to represent the Good Shepherd is better known for sacrificing the lambs or scattering them. This bigotry in the name of Jesus must end!”

And then the people come forward to take a morsel of home-baked bread (or a gluten-free cracker) and dip it in grape juice. They are young and they are old, gay and straight, singles and couples, in jeans and T-shirts and chiffony frocks and biz-casual khakis, strappy sandals and flip-flops and killer heels. One tall, blond guy comes to the table barefoot. A mom approaches with her toddler son riding her shoulders. Another mom, a white woman, carries her Asian baby forward. All of them come to eat the body and drink the blood. They write words of thanksgiving on little strips of paper. They light candles on the altar; one boy, surely a child after my own pyromaniac heart, lights candle after candle, until the table is ablaze.

She spent countless hours in prayer, asking God’s guidance; always, she said, she would hear God saying, “Stop lying,” not “Stop being with women.”

what’s compelling is their argument that they are not trying to build a community of convenience. For instance, the church has so far declined to start a second service. “It just makes it a more consumer environment,” Jenny says. Instead they have talked about how, when the church outgrows its space, they’ll divide and plant another, thereby creating another church community rather than bifurcating this one and potentially weakening it.

“When Jenny gave her testimony, she said at the very end that we need to grapple with the question ‘What if we’re wrong?’ It takes a lot of humility to be able to ask that at a church that has declared a position! To hear her say that the cross is big enough for all our misconceptions—Jesus covered it!—that was a transformational moment in my understanding of God.”

Progressive evangelicals from around the United States have begun to visit Highlands, hoping to replicate its model. Some of them have fixated on Highlands’ embrace of gays and lesbians, and if this is what they take away as the core of the model, I think they will likely fail. What I find to be unique about Highlands is less its theological position on homosexuality than its stance on humanity. While remaining committed to deep and constant engagement with the Bible, it encourages people not just to come to services but to bring their whole selves, not just their sacred stances but also their profane fears and insecurities. They are called to do what is uncommon in the church: question boldly, without fear and in confidence.

Let’s take a look at my gay lifestyle: I go to work. I come home. I eat. I study my Bible. I hang out with friends. I watch movies. I go to church. I go jogging, and on occasion when I have the extra cash, I give rides to homeless people and feed them.

Most Sundays at my church, we recite the Apostles’ Creed, which includes a line about our belief in “the holy catholic church”—catholic, with its small c, meaning “universal” and “singular.” It’s a nice idea. But the first major lesson of my pilgrimage is that the church in America is neither holy—by which I mean entirely devoted to God’s work—nor catholic; in other words, one.

a church that is ill-equipped for honesty is not a church worthy of the Jesus of the Bible.

If the church is supposed to be the body of Christ, then what I saw on my trip were our Lord’s dismembered and terribly dishonored remains. Those of us who care at all about the concept of “the church” should look at these ruins and weep.

How do we proclaim our faith courageously if our pastors refuse to do the same? Why are these men and women afraid to state what they believe? Did Paul fear being misquoted? I’d rather be told by a principled pastor that I’m going to hell for my homosexuality than to have him think that but keep it to himself. But I certainly want nothing to do with a church where the leaders fear the hard work at the front.

My fear is that the people who pay the greatest price for pastoral failure are not those like me who flit in, ask a few questions, and then move on our way. The real unfortunates are those who do not get the nurture they hope for and need, and then find themselves marginalized from the family of faith, believing that there is no place for them in it.

If those of us who align ourselves with Jesus don’t seek to understand more deeply his language and what he meant by love, we’ll fail. If those of us who have some loyalty to this thing called the church do not consider what that requires of us in terms of openness and hospitality, we’ll continue to alienate and shut off conversation when we should be doing the opposite. We can—really, must—be firm in our faith and yet kind and open. We must personify grace. We must recognize our limitations and leave to God what is God’s.

my old conception of the love of Jesus was the mark of a selfish fool. It’s not to be kept private. It’s to be shared. It’s not just for me. It is for all. It’s not a luxury. It’s a necessity, especially in a world where so many have been told that the love of Jesus is off-limits to them.

In some ways, my faith has shrunk, but much of what I lost was imaginary anyway—illusions and dreams and wishful thoughts.

“Although Thomas did not believe in the resurrection of the Lord, he kept faithful to the community of the apostles. In that community the Lord appeared to him and strengthened his faith. I find this a very profound and consoling thought. In times of doubt or unbelief, the community can ‘carry you along,’ so to speak; it can even offer on your behalf what you yourself overlook, and can be the context in which you may recognize the Lord again.”

I’ve always loved the Book of Ecclesiastes—to me, it’s the least obnoxiously pious book of the Bible.

In my more nihilistic days, I obsessed over the more “bah humbug” parts of Ecclesiastes. They validated my angst, my frustration at my tattered faith, and my anger at how my church communities had treated me. Over time, I’ve come to see the Book less as an angry spiritual rant, a biblical throwing-up of the hands, and more as a palliative for the struggling soul. It’s twelve-chapter therapy, walking through despair and sadness, confusion and grief over the loss of certainty. But it doesn’t stop there. It then goes to a place where mystery is an object not of fear but for exploration, where doubt is not a barrier to God but an invitation to revel in His boundless grace.

“I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent,” she said. “And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”