Welcome Bryan, so awesome to have you with us 😀

Hehe, thanks Maggie. 🙂 I have a longer story, but I might end up sharing it later. 🙂

Haha, I know I could have had up to 1000 words and I probably could have used every single of them. Honestly, I’m kinda tired of thinking about my story over and over again so I decided I would just give a short version. But a long version will probably be put up eventually. 🙂 Honestly though, the summary really is a good framework of my story as a gay Christian, even if it’s not at all detailed.

Learned about how God loves gay people and began to re-evaluate my own beliefs

What was the catalyst/thing that helped you come to this point? Unfortunately I never encountered anything like this in my experience of church.

Well, honestly, I always did believe that God loved everybody. I was big on mercy and God’s love and all that. But it never really clicked in my head that God loved gay people or did it click that God was actually perfectly fine with the fact they were gay. So while the information was there, I just didn’t reach that conclusion (mostly because I was told, not always explicitly, but you know what the church says, that such a conclusion was flawed.)

So honestly, I never did reach that conclusion due to things I heard in church. I discovered these ideas through the internet. I can tell you exactly how it worked. My memory rocks, haha. My dad once told me that some people thought David and Jonathan were gay, and how stupid of an idea that was. Well, as a young kid just getting in touch with his gay feelings that intrigued me, so I got out my Bible and read about it. Over and over and over again. I kind of let my imagination run wild, especially 1 Sam. 18: 1-4. You know, where David and Jonathan make their covenant of love and then Jonathan starts stripping? Yes. Those verses. It felt erotic and romantic and it drove me wild. I read the scripture where they kissed like a bunch of times. Every time, I felt a little bit embarrassed. Imagining them as two lovers, cruelly being separated, and having one last passionate kiss to say goodbye turned me on. Yes. I was turned on by a Bible story. I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Anyway, that led me to start looking up things on the Internet, because you can find anything on the Internet. You can also find a lot of trash on the Internet, which I also fell into. That’s a long story as well and my struggles there are also an important part of my coming to terms with my feelings. But anyway aside from that, I also found gay Christian resources. I started with Exodus International. I read the blog of Mike Ensley. I loved his stuff, thought he was brilliant (in a way, I still do. I think he’s an okay guy.) That was kind of the first time I realized God loves gay people. Of course, I thought I needed to change my orientation, but hey, at least God loved me. That was a step up from where I was before. Through his blog, I found a guy called CollegeJay who writes an amazing blog from the Side B perspective. I still read it and I still love it even if I don’t agree with all he says. I think reading his stuff made me slowly ease up to the idea of accepting myself as gay. I continued reading and studying. Eventually I found Side A material. It was a long, long process, but eventually I accepted it. (And then I unaccepted it, but that’s a long story. My beliefs went back and forth for a time, but now they are solid. It’s really not a this happened then this happened kind of thing. It really was a process.)

So there you go. It started with David and Jonathan, then Exodus International, then I read a whole host of other perspectives, before finally believing that God loves me as I am, a gay Christian, and he has no problem at all with that.

Hey Bryan, great to hear from another young gay christian.

Hope coming out goes ok if you go through with it. I can tell you firsthand it was terrifying, exciting and indeed worthwhile, even though I lost a few ‘friends’ and I gained a lot of respect too.

Yours,

Isobel