I get my fair share of critics as an openly gay Christian, and I thought I might respond
to some of my critics—make some videos in which I respond to my critics. And in order to keep me
from getting too much in my head and trying to say too much in response to any one critic, I decided
to just print out a whole bunch of the criticism that I've gotten over the last couple years,
and cut up the different comments and put them in a big bowl, and then I'm just gonna grab
something at random and respond to it and we'll see how this goes. It may fail spectacularly.
Doot doo doo—oh!
Stuff is jumping out of the bowl. Maybe I should have taken that one.
All right, I got a comment...
I dropped it.
"People will experience freedom
when their identity is rooted in who the Scriptures say they are and not how they feel."
Boy, I have a lot of things I could say about this. Do I think that my
identity is rooted in who the Scriptures say I am? Of course. I'm a Christian. And
who do I believe the Scriptures say I am? I believe that they say that I'm a
child of God. I am redeemed, bought with a price. And that is at the core of my
identity. Like I don't know what else—you know. I can't imagine having an identity rooted in
"how I feel" from moment to moment. That would be a very disorienting kind of life,
because there are a lot of days when I don't feel great! You know? Especially during a pandemic.
I think what this comment is really getting at,
though, is something that that I often hear from folks, which is,
"You shouldn't call yourself gay at all if you're a Christian because your identity should only
be in Christ and if you call yourself gay then you're making your identity about something else."
There's nothing in the Bible that says that you can't use adjectives to describe yourself! It
is okay to be a Christian and to say, "The core of my identity is in who I am as a Christian—that's
the most important piece, that's at the center of who I am..." You can say that and then also say,
"...but there are other things about me." There are lots of Christians in the world
and we're not all the same. And if we could never describe ourselves in any
terms other than just to talk about how we're all Christians, what kind of a world would that be?
Can you imagine going to church and asking someone to tell you about themselves and all they'll
tell you is, "I'm a Christian. My identity is only in Christ. I can't tell you anything else about
myself because that would be some other piece of my identity and my identity is only in Christ"?
When I say that I'm gay, I'm not saying, "Oh my identity is all about being gay; that is
at its core—that's who I am, I'm 'The Gay Guy.'" Gay is an adjective. It describes one thing about
me. I'm white, I'm male, I'm an American, I'm a Southerner, I'm an evangelical, I'm a gamer,
I'm a geek.... You know, there are lots of things that I can tell you about me and and they're all
descriptions of who I am. They're all part of who I am. But I've never had anybody ever
say to me, "Oh, you shouldn't describe yourself as an American. You shouldn't say that you're a
Southerner. You shouldn't say that you're male. Because your identity should only be in Christ."
I mean, for goodness' sake, my website is "Geeky Justin." I've never had anybody say to me,
"You shouldn't call yourself a geek. You shouldn't say that you're geeky;
you shouldn't use that adjective, because your identity should only be in Christ."
My faith is way more important to me than any of the other things I might say about myself,
including the geeky part, but that's not the same thing as saying that you can't
ever describe yourself with other words.
And honestly, I think it's important for me to talk about being gay and Christian, because
otherwise, Christians out there who realize that they're gay would think that they're alone. Like
I thought I was alone for a really long time. Or gay people out there who are interested in
Christianity would think, "Oh but Christians are all anti-gay, so I can't become a Christian."
I think it's important for me to talk about it for that reason,
because I love my faith. Because my identity is in my faith. So this thing, this comment,
"Your identity shouldn't be rooted in—" presumably in being gay...
I mean it's not! But that doesn't mean I can't still use the adjective.
Well that's one down. There are lots more of these so I will have to do
more videos where I dig into some more of these because, some of these—oh boy.