I love your honest, open spirit. As I’m sure you know, there are many books and articles out there, taking all sides of the issue. I sense you truly want to please God, and pray with you that you’ll find the guidance you need to make the right decisions. –Philip

For years, I have struggled with the idea of being gay. Now, as a young twenty-something, I see people from my high school getting married and starting families. However, because of the stigma and beliefs surrounding homosexuality, I often feel like that will never be an option for me.

I don’t want a promiscuous, sinful lifestyle. What my heart desires is a committed, loving relationship with a God-fearing partner. The only difference, is I want my partner to be another man.

I have tried to live a biblical lifestyle, and still haven’t been with anyone. I haven’t even had my first kiss yet, since I want to save it all for the real thing. However, I feel like the relationship described in this blog post will never be one I can have.

I need God’s grace daily to not just give up on it all and choose to follow my heart instead of my beliefs. Part of me wonders whether our beliefs are wrong, if we are making wrong something that God actually blesses. But thinking that way only brings more pain, because I’m quickly reminded of the wider held beliefs about homosexuality.

I am not against sexuality.

My pondering in this area is about our concept of eros. Paul didn’t use the word. He didn’t tell people to find true love. He told people who were getting too sexual to get married and told married couples to keep coming together once they started being sexual, so that they wouldn’t fall into something called “porneo” and THAT is the problem with sexuality outside of a godly marriage in my mind.

I have wanted to topple eros as a type of love since I was 9 years old. I had an adult “fall in love with me” when I was 5 years old and, by the time I was 9, I was a lawyer trying to explain, “This is not love. Love does not behave like this.”

The problem was, when I became a Christian, I read the story of Amnon and had to wrestle through whether God really considered it that Amnon loved his sister, even if he had zero concern for her welfare and had zero protective impulses over her and did not want to marry her and didn’t even feel guilty for ruining her life. Was that God’s view of love? I was relieved that Paul didn’t use the word, “eros” and that he didn’t point to the promiscuous “One Night Stand with the King” king as a model for wisdom for a healthy romantic relationship. Thank God that marriages aren’t modeled on Solomon.

I felt like I couldn’t “topple it” because it was in the Hebrew and it grieved me that God didn’t think of what Amnon did as something other than love. I was grieved that God didn’t think of what Amnon was thinking as porneo and I came to the conclusion that we translate some things wrong, because we have this stupid concept called, “eros” and one stupid English word we use for all expressions of love and not one human being can EVER know what that word actually means, because it is not linked to a standard, like God, it is linked to a false scale standard called “the flesh.”

I had to go back to Solomon and figure out whether it was even possible that God would have wanted us to think that Jesus loved us as much as Solomon loved his 10,000 wives. He had to marry a woman every other day for most of his life to have that many, especially if he “courted” them for a whole day, negotiated with her father the next day, had a one night stand with them and searched for the next bride the day after. If he did that cycle every 4 days, including Sabbaths it would have taken him over 109 years to marry them all. He must have had the flu once or twice and had to actually run the Kingdom now and then, plus find time to build the temple, buy horses, and worship Molech and show how smart he was to dignitaries, so I am thinking it was a quicker process than that. I am thinking it was literally a see a female across a field and arrange a one night stand with the king, if that.

I don’t believe the love that is stronger than death has anything to do with eros or Solomon. I think Paul told the truth that it is a prophetic writing about Jesus and agape and that the love that is stronger than death isn’t that we are willing to kill someone or die over eros. The angels were willing to leave their first estate for eros, makes me think God wouldn’t compare eros to agape like that. Wrong fruit. Wrong message. He put couples under Jesus. He didn’t point couples to Solomon and say, spice up your relationships. He pointed to agape and Jesus…. [pyasst]

You have a major challenge in this current culture. Keep it up! –Philip

Mr Yancy, I forgot to say in my comments that the prisoner also said “and I am trying to tell her that I love her can you help me?”

Bless you, Anne. You are showing the rest of us the way–those of us not quite 80 but closing in on it. What wisdom and serenity you show as you face the end of life, something our culture tends to turn away from. You are using your days very well. After all, none of us have a promise of anything beyond today. I’m honored to hear that we were “virtual” friends, and pilgrims together. –Philip