My wife and I went for groceries the other day. We live in a rural crossroads community a bit more than five miles from the nearest substantial town, and we grocery-shop at a supermarket in town, picking up a few essentials in between shopping trips at the surviving general store here. It's a nice mix of new and old.
About a mile this side of town is a small cemetery, one of those rural extended-family plots you see from time to time. It's not the newest grave there -- that belongs to a lovely old woman who passed on at age 89 -- but the one that catches my heartstrings was filled the year after we moved down here.
He'd be 19 now, in college or starting a job. He died at 12, hanging himself in his garage. Nobody ever went public with why, but the grapevine filled that in. He was in middle school, and was branded gay by his classmates, who picked on him until he took his own life. The school officials, of course, were ponderously unhelpful.
Was he gay? I don't know. In one sense, I don't care. What he was, was a kid driven to despair by taunts from his classmates, to the point that he killed himself. It was a tragic waste of a vibrant young life. He played french horn and baseball.
When I see that grave, I pray that people will repent. Not repent of being gay -- evidence indicates that that is unchosen, and without direct divine intervention, one is unable to change it by oneself (or by any manmade therapy).
No, I pray that they will repent of being the adult versions of those 12-year-olds who drove their classmate to kill himself.
I pray that they will learn and listen, show compassion and human understanding, whatever their views on homosexuality, they will treat other human beings as our Lord and Savior commanded us to do.
You want to drag out the Scriptures about abomination? What is abomination to me, though I don't have a scripture prooftext for it, is being so hateful to your fellow man that he or she despairs and kills him/herself.
Thus ends my message.
About a mile this side of town is a small cemetery, one of those rural extended-family plots you see from time to time. It's not the newest grave there -- that belongs to a lovely old woman who passed on at age 89 -- but the one that catches my heartstrings was filled the year after we moved down here.
He'd be 19 now, in college or starting a job. He died at 12, hanging himself in his garage. Nobody ever went public with why, but the grapevine filled that in. He was in middle school, and was branded gay by his classmates, who picked on him until he took his own life. The school officials, of course, were ponderously unhelpful.
Was he gay? I don't know. In one sense, I don't care. What he was, was a kid driven to despair by taunts from his classmates, to the point that he killed himself. It was a tragic waste of a vibrant young life. He played french horn and baseball.
When I see that grave, I pray that people will repent. Not repent of being gay -- evidence indicates that that is unchosen, and without direct divine intervention, one is unable to change it by oneself (or by any manmade therapy).
No, I pray that they will repent of being the adult versions of those 12-year-olds who drove their classmate to kill himself.
I pray that they will learn and listen, show compassion and human understanding, whatever their views on homosexuality, they will treat other human beings as our Lord and Savior commanded us to do.
You want to drag out the Scriptures about abomination? What is abomination to me, though I don't have a scripture prooftext for it, is being so hateful to your fellow man that he or she despairs and kills him/herself.
Thus ends my message.
