And God isn’t interested in creating obstacles for you to earn heaven points.
“Everything within me wants [romantic and sexual] love, but as queer Christians, we have to trust that if God is denying us what we desire and making us suffer, then it’s for the best!”
OR perhaps you can trust that not only does God create you with good and holy desires but you weren’t meant to reject them. God is not interested in crafting tests for you so that you can prove you’re worthy. Trust God enough to see the evidence around you that you can call goodness good and not wait around for a secret mystical reveal that you can earn more holiness, prosperity, heavenly treasure, or a bigger payoff through a morality obstacle course divinely designed to trip you up.
The mythology of gods who make games of people’s lives out of boredom or demand tests to prove loyalty and worthiness are not our stories. That’s not Christianity rightly practiced, even if that’s Christianity traditionally practiced. We can stop doing this. The world has enough loneliness and suffering as it is. God has bigger stuff going on than toying with you or creating hero trials.
Collective liberation theology is the antidote to this. You do not have to manufacture pain for yourself. If you are denying healthy, natural, freeing love in favor of imposed suffering, there is nothing of God in that. We have too much to do here to be distracted by “how far is too far” rules.
God does not create you with an orientation or gender you are supposed to spend all your time, energy, resources, etc. changing or suppressing or creating elaborate rules for. Our time, energy, resources, and more are so precious and limited. Just be who you are and get to work for justice and good. The needs and crises around us are too great.
We have far too much pain in the world already that we are the God-given answer to. We are the solution, not burdened with creating more fake problems. When we’re busy over here debating whose romantic and sexual relationships are valid or who gets to be their gender, we can’t fulfill our calling.
I don’t understand those seeing hunger, loneliness, homelessness, fear, addiction, despair, prejudice, injustice, and more and then going, “You know what we need? MORE of this! God must have a plan to redeem it if we just trust and obey gender roles! That’s where our money and energy and time should go! More sex rules, exclusion, and rigid gender boxes!”
Collective liberation means affirming theology isn’t about “selfishness,” etc. It’s about getting all of this legalistic shit out of the way so we can be free to focus on the real work. Let people live, love, transition, marry, and be how they were made. The real stuff is too urgent.
If your “values” and “beliefs” are about creating gender-based rules and sexual morality codes and labeling it a “calling” to suffer through for the sake of holiness than creating more peace, hope, joy, and love in the world, change your values and reset your priorities. We have too many actual, practical problems we must act on. We can’t waste our lives policing our thoughts and behaviors and relationships to keep them from trying to align in integrity with our God-given identities. Not to mention other people’s relationships and bodies that don’t affect us! Every minute spent on trying to adhere to a norm we can never fit and creating more suffering to be one day rewarded for our heroic self-denial is a minute that could have been spent on alleviating the actual suffering in the world, including our own very real problems and the fallout of others’ queerphobia.
Biblical celibacy is part of biblical sexuality: It isn’t about which genders get married or have sex. Biblical celibacy and biblical sexuality are when you aren’t distracted from the real calling of loving others by rule-following, drama, angst, self-imposed or church-imposed misery, loneliness, temptation-resisting tests, and all the other manufactured fears and obstacles. These keep us focused on ourselves and our own purity so that we never get to the part where we get free, where we dismantle injustice, where we oppose and defeat patriarchy, White supremacy, queerphobia, ableism, systemic poverty, xenophobia, and all other evils.
You have to do what is more effective and efficient for the real work of bringing justice and flourishing, on earth as it is in heaven. Be celibate if that’s what is freeing you to do the work in authenticity, in wholeness, without distraction (like it is for me!). Have sex if that’s what frees you to do the work in authenticity, in wholeness, without distraction. Living your values should empower you to do justice and love mercy, not burden you with morality hand-wringing and pearl-clutching. Follow the fruit of the Spirit in your life toward liberation for all. That will have you focused more on bringing love, hope, and flourishing to the world than looking at your own behaviors and purity performance to pass a vague and cruel divine test.
Our God is not abusive or cruel or bored or dangling a carrot while hitting us with a stick. God is not a drill sergeant or a prosperity promiser or a manipulator or a lab rat maze designer or a puppet master. God doesn’t work like a capitalist or a merit badge system or a game show host or a trickster con man.
God IS Love. That love is demonstrated, unashamed, and unearned. It is not deception or a hustle or a scheme. It doesn’t create problems for the sake of a trust exercise or set contradictory expectations to raise life’s difficulty level. Love doesn’t hide at the finish line after a lifetime of gold stars and perfect grades and queerness-control performance reviews. Ours is the God of vibrant life, of integrity and of constancy, a God of Creation and joy, of overflowing goodness and hope and peace, a God of gentleness and patience, of faithfulness and kindness, of the self-control that comes with empathy and generosity. The truth sets us free, and with that freedom, we can tear down obstacles like holy hustle tests, purity culture, gender roles, unnecessary distractions, and systems of oppression. With collective liberation, we can focus on spreading love and flourishing throughout all the world.
Invisible Cake Society 