Since yesterday happened to be National Coming Out Day, I took the opportunity (albeit a day late) to express my thoughts on the topic.

My number one point is: we should love lesbians, gays, bi- and transexuals the same as everybody else. They don’t deserve to be despised or hated. In most ways, they are exactly like everybody else. In fact, they are everybody else. In one sense, it is as irrational to hate them as to hate left-handed people. Their differences from what one might call traditional views of sexuality do not justify hatred; neither does being a lefty.

Now, about this coming out bit. In a way that truly isn’t contrary to what I just said, I believe that in absolute truth, these sexual deviances are sinful. This fact directly makes the celebration of LGBT lifestyles sinful. While again that does not entitle you or me or anyone to hate these people. It does mean that they will suffer the consequences of their sin, whatever form that may take. That is not man’s responsibility but God’s right¹.

In the lives of our friends, family, larger culture, and selves, these lifestyles do create problems: STDs, breakdown of the family, loss of sexual profundity. We can take issue with that. Depending on who we are, we should take issue with that. People, especially Christians living in sin, can be confronted. We can engage. We can write, like I do now. We can rest in the satisfaction of godly sexuality and permeate the world with generational fruit. In fact, we’re supposed to.

But all that—never, never destroys our duty to love these people.

Is this what we want the world to think of our Christianity? Do we want people to see us as a cheesy, fuzzy, group of people “keeping it real with Jesus?” Should our music portray a sappy, over-baked “Jesus is my boyfriend” style or shouldn’t we rather portray what Christianity really is, the blood of Christ, the raging struggle of spirit against flesh, flesh against spirit, the persecution, the wrath of God, the (not sappy, not cheesy, but overpowering) love of Jesus when we were unlovable, wallowing in blood, sin and misery, the burden lifted from our shoulders by His sacrifice, the battle that He calls us to join, our victory against the power of Satan forever…now there’s something to sing about.

A lot of Christians would argue with me and say that using that kind of language doesn’t win people to Christ. If they hear about the bloody, gory, humiliating, overwhelming and rather harsh story of the Bible they will be repulsed. Therefore we should give them a mushy, half-hearted depiction of Jesus as a meek, Bambi-eyed, white-robed figure, trying to relate to people, begging them to just hold hands with Him, sway back and forth a little, throw a pine-cone in the fire, slip up their hand…? I think not.

People are desperate. People are miserable. People are wallowing in blood and tears waiting, searching for someone brave enough to make war on the misery of the world, someone strong enough to turn the world right side up, someone they can admire, love and fear. Someone awesome. They’re not ready to put the world in the hands of plastic, hippie-Jesus, but perhaps they would place the universe in the hands of the bloody but triumphant Son of God, one who has faced death and spat in it’s face, one who has crushed the head of sin and misery and sent it howling with it’s tail between it’s legs, one who is so beautiful, so holy, so awesome, so glorious we cannot look at Him without falling on our faces, one who loves us in our dirt and invites us in to eat at His table. This is what the world is looking for. Perhaps it’s time to start portraying our story in our music.  If we’re going to make “Christian” songs, let’s at least do it right.