Today I found out about Timothy Kurek, a Christian man from Nashville who is going to cause quite a stir in both the Christian and LGBT communties. The reason he is going to cause this stir is because he dared to use himself as a bridge between them.
Kurek grew up in a way very similar to many sheltered Christians in our society. He was home schooled. Most of his exposure was to Christian friends and family. Most everyone he knew was someone from his church. When he was a teen, he would council other teens about staying close to their faith . . . usually at the behest of their parents.
He believed his church and their teachings. When they said something was wrong, he believed it was wrong. This included homosexuality. When he would find out someone was gay, he would witness to them about their 'sin' and tell them they needed to repent. From his perspective, he was doing the right thing. It was, after all, how he was raised to be.
Of course, over the years, many churches have moved past the point of just saying they see homosexuality as a sin. Many of them now view homosexuals, their allies, and anyone who would try to aid them in becoming equally protected citizens as the enemy. Instead of being A sin, homosexuality has moved into the spotlight of being THE sin that is targeted, hated, and reviled.
Kurek states he began to have a problem with this because it went against the teaching of Jesus that spoke of mercy and love. He talked to some people about this, but received very little in terms of solid answers. A turning point for him came one night when a lesbian friend he met at karaoke cried to him about how her family had abandoned her when she came out. He said he felt a lot of conflict because part of him wanted to just comfort her, but another part was urging him to witness to her about her 'sin.' At some point in all of this, he realized that the witnessing wasn't the right thing to do.
Instead, he decided to learn what it was like to live as a gay man, specifically a gay Christian man, in modern Nashville. He told three people what he was going to do, but no one else knew. Besides his aunt (who would act as a spy to see how his family was acting when he wasn't around, another friend, and the gay guy who would pose as his boyfriend, no one else knew this was just an experiment.
He began to tell people he was gay. He told his family, who slowly became supportive, though he did find out that his mother had written in her journal that she would rather be told she had cancer than be told she had a gay son. He told his church, his friends, and anyone else who needed to know. He said his busy social circle soon dwindled. Only about 5% of his friends stayed close to him. Christians began to react to him differently. Some even told him he couldn't be gay AND be a Christian. When he told them he was gay but still loved God, it was met with hostility.
Kurek says he would never presume to truly know how difficult this can be for a gay person. After all, he knew that at any moment, he could call it all off and go back to his life. He did, however, begin to understand how drastically people's reactions can change when someone comes out. Even though he knew he was still the same person and still cared about people in the same way he had before, they now saw him differently, over an aspect of his life that probably wouldn't have directly affected most of them.
He's writing a book about his experience. He says the book is meant for Christians and that it isn't a scripture-based book over homosexuality being right or wrong. Instead, it is a book about the right way and the wrong way to treat people. It's about how horrible we can make other people feel when they don't live in the ways we find appropriate. In other words, it's about how shitty we can be when we think we're in the right.
I feel for Kurek because he's in for an uphill battle here. Some people are going to believe this was just a stunt he did in order to write the book. Others will believe he truly is gay but just not ready to really come out of the closet yet. Other people will say he's working for the Devil and that the Devil is trying to trick Christians into being nice to people. Westboro Baptist Church will probably protest him a couple of times . . .boring fuckers.
But maybe, just maybe, there will be some people who hear his story or read the book and understand the bigger message here. Christianity is a religion that talks about sins, even lists those sins. It is also a religion that talks a lot about how people should treat each other. Ephesians 4:32, for example, says, "And be ye kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving of one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you." Other people's sins really aren't any of your business. Your business is how you treat them.
No comments:
Post a Comment