GOD DID NOT SCREW UP BY CREATING LGBT FOLKS - Don Hanley’s blog #66

As I looked forward to my next visit to Nazareth, I've been jolted out of my sense of optimism and hope by my American election of a very non-Jesus fellow who has been elected to be our leader - our president. I am sure there are some, maybe a majority of my fellow citizens who will sat that it is God's will but I still hold on to my belief that God does not micro-manage the world, nor our minds and hearts. I can't talk with Mary and John and others in Nazareth about my sadness and dismay because it would take too much time. So I will only give them a small bit of information about why I am so damn sad. 

The God I got to know while eating my pancakes created ALL THAT IS! And that means that I don’t know how He (or She) operates at all. I only know Him, or maybe Her, from studying His/her creatures, i.e., everything. Every person, like everything, is a bit different from every other thing that is most like him/her/it. So, God, I believe, created everything, and everything tumbled out perfect and imperfect, and “it was good” or “it is good.” I like the Zen thought that “I don’t know.” IS a kind of prayer. It means we are part of a vast and unknowable universe that we cannot know all about. I DON’T KNOW, AND THAT IS OK.

John, of my Nazarene family, asked me what 21^st-century Christians thought of homosexuality. I was not able to answer him because I suddenly vanished. But I have given it a lot of thought.  As far as he knew, John had said that Jesus never mentioned it. So that he was not going to be of help to me, he did say that Jesus indicated that God, or Yahweh, was not like a giant human who was creating everything in His imagination and sending each creation down to earth. Jesus, as far as John knew, said God created a tremendously powerful force that evolved into many different kinds of creations. So, humans came in different sizes, colors, levels of intelligence, dexterity, and all other possible combinations – and Jesus insisted that one version, like color, was not better than another. He insisted that it was wrong for one variation work to ‘lord’ it another version of humans. The most common wrong was the color of one’s skin. White was not better than brown or black. Jesus sought that all humans will accept and work with others to be co-creators and caregivers of all creation and never to destroy anyone or anything.

We had been talking about all of this, and I was glad that Mary shared with us that she was always pleased when Jesus, even at a young age, delighted to see a handicapped or crippled person smile and seem to love being alive. Also, her Son would disapprove of those who would say that the Father did not love those who were disfigured or handicapped from birth. We must learn to accept ourselves as we are, no matter how gifted or handicapped we are from birth. And we must work to help those less intelligent, strong, and all. He often said that no one is more pleasing to God than another person.

I asked John why God created some people as homosexuals. After all, they did not want or could not have children - and wasn’t that the reason He created humans as women or men? Some Christians even claimed that these people were simply going against the will of God. Again, John said that he heard people say that and that Jesus had responded that these people were simply being themselves. John hesitated a minute and then, in a near whisper, said, “We had two homosexuals among our twelve apostles, and Jesus insisted that they were equal to the rest of us. I wish that that had been repeated more often among the followers.”

I asked, “Is that the reason you are speaking in a near whisper?”

“Yes, I guess it is. It is a sad and troublesome issue, so I won’t tell you who they are. They are wonderful men, and I am proud to be among their friends. They are being who they are, and that is okay.” Mary, Ruth, and Joshua clapped and nodded, and I joined them.

I said, “Thank you, John. Our Christian world has been very slow in realizing that homosexuality is just a natural way of being in the world and in my country, the United States, and in Europe, nearer you, it is now considered normal and even now realizing that some folks have found that they are homosexual but in the body of the opposite gender - we call them 'transexual'. Now I know many in my century talk and think like you do, and I am one of them.”

Now, please keep an open heart and mind, don’t eat the menu, and keep co-creating all that is! AND PLEASE COMMENT.