Guest post.

I've been wanting to link for awhile to my friend Steve. Steve keeps an incredible blog about being a Christian guy, who likes guys. I would say in total non-hyperbolic speech that I really think every Christian (and I'm sure many non-Christians) would benefit from reading it:

• The essays he writes are not just about being gay: they are about living a life of faith and faithfulness, and having everything in your life point you to falling more in love with your Lord. Every time I have read his writing, that has been the effect it's had on me. He writes about living as a guy who likes guys, and how to live seeking God and loving Him and others in that. I am not homosexual, but his words guide me to turn my heart to the Lord in my own struggles, joys, and pains. We're all more the same than we are different.

• You might not be gay, but you probably know someone who is. Statistically 1/10* people are attracted to the same sex. In my opinion (and experience) that's not different in the Christian community, including Wheaton. Knowing what our friends and neighbors are going through helps us to know how to support and love them. Which is really important!
• *Update: Okay, actually according to Steve the percentage may be smaller... BUT the point is it is definitely a significant number.
  

• His writing is beautiful, his voice is clear and also hilarious. (Title of his blog: "I Like Guys. There, I Said It." Need I say more?)
  

• And just in case anyone is reading my blog who doesn't read his and this is relevant, I'll extend the same invitation he posted in his first entry: If you are gay and have never told anyone, email him. Right now. (Or me, if you'd rather!).

OK. So now the actual awesome excerpt that made me post all this in the first place... bolds are mine. I freaking love his writing and I connected with this so much with where I am theologically/freaking-out-about-life-wise right now. (Linked from this recent post).

"...When God has actually spoken to me, two things tend to happen. Sometimes I think He has spoken to me and later realize He hasn't; usually in that case one of these two things hasn't happened. Both of them happened in that moment: I was overcome with relief, and I suddenly wanted to fall to my knees and confess.

Here is what I think God said. I think he said, "I demand obedience." Here is why I was relieved: there is nothing sexy about obedience. My ghost faculty fled in the wake of a higher authority, with much higher standards and a much easier yoke. In this case the relief was tied to the confession: I was relieved to be able to confess the right thing--not the intellectual copout I was so afraid (yet so much wanted) to make, but something much more important.

Here is what I confessed. I confessed placing an idolic importance on being right. I confessed my impossibly high standards of what right is. I confessed lying to myself and others to appear to be right. I confessed an underlying fear of being wrong. I confessed avoiding Amber and slandering Kayla out of fear that they were wrong.

And then I confessed being wrong. How to even articulate this? "As high as the sky is above Wyoming, so are Your ways higher than mine." I am wrong about so many things. For every thing I know there are a hundred I don't. The things I do know I don't even know; I know that because that's the idea that keeps me up at night, the idea that makes being wrong so scary--because if I'm wrong about one thing, am I wrong about everything? Have I ever known a damn thing in my whole life? All creation starts to slip away through a sieve--ideas, beliefs, even relationships--until it's just me, alone, at 2AM, in a bed I don't recognize, with a snoring roommate who could be Florence Nightingale for all I know.

This problem scares me so much, and I'm sad to say that fear drives almost everything I do. This is something bigger and deeper than Gay and Not Gay; if you really want to know what troubles me, read that last paragraph again.

So I confessed that.

And here I have this God--this God who knows me more than I can ever know, a God who I know, in some complicated way that I do not understand. There He is and has always been, just as plain as the sky I see through this windshield darkly, just as close, just as incomprehensible. If I have the capacity to know anything, even one thing, even half-well, it is only in that He knows me. And if I can know more, not in full but in part, it is because He is a God who teaches. Here is why I think God told me he demands obedience--because I came to Him seeking knowledge. Seek the Scriptures--obedience trumps knowing, and it frequently precedes it.

That said, what do I know? I am in a car in Wyoming. I am driving to Bend, Oregon. I like guys. I was loved into existence by the God of the universe. By His grace I know that, if nothing else. And for the first time ever, I really believe gay is OK. But I might be wrong. I'm probably wrong, in fact. I just don't know. I do know I don't know, which is all I need to know right now. And I know I follow a God who does not desire to lead me into untruth. And I know He demands obedience..."

I know right?