The Eunuch

Lisa Salazar is a trans-gender Christian who was married for many years, but then made the agonizing choice to become the female she always felt she was. You can hear her story on the Drew Marshall archive from last week if you want. Drew had a one hour Round Table segment with 3 different guests; Lisa, Wendy Gritter from New Direction ministries, and Dr. Lawrence Brice author of "The Uncomfortable Church: Can Gays be Reconciled to the Body of Christ". After Lisa told most of her story Drew turned the mic over to Brice to explain what his book was all about. From that point forward the conversation was dominated by the Church's lack of acceptance when it comes to LGBTQ's.

Brice's book was, in a nutshell, the concept of "love the sinner, hate the sin". After hearing him talk I was left with the impression that if anyone could actually live out that concept it would be him. He says we do it all the time; we love certain people even though we don't agree with them: we love our family, people at work, people in our social groups, even though we may not agree with certain thoughts or aspects of their lives.

On the surface this makes a lot of sense; however, there's something visceral, even primal, when someone disagrees with our basic belief system - something that defines who we are - it's not like disagreeing with a cat person when you're a dog person. And from what I have seen, and experienced, 99.999% of people, especially the religious community, are incapable of truly loving someone whom they fundamentally disagree with.

While Lisa was very appreciative of Brice's attitude of acceptance, she felt it didn't go far enough. You see, in Brice's church, even though they foster an attitude of acceptance, they won't let an LGBTQ person serve in any capacity.

In Lisa's eyes, and I suspect in most LGBTQ's eyes, this isn't true acceptance. She told of a pivotal moment in her life when she read the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in the book of Acts. Most Christians think a eunuch is someone who has chosen a life of celibacy, but this isn't accurate. I saw a TV show awhile ago about India where there is quite a large population of eunuchs. Eunuchs are people born with ambiguous gender - they are basically trans-gender people. Lisa then went on to make several points.

She wondered why the story even mentioned the person in Acts was a eunuch if it wasn't of some importance. If the story was simply about someone being baptized, or someone who comes to a sudden realization of the transcendence of the new Christian movement, or someone from the royal court, then there's no reason to even bring up their sexuality. Obviously it was significant.

She then brought up the part where the eunuch asks Philip, "What prevents me from being baptized?" The answer - nothing. The eunuch was fully accepted into the family of God, based completely on faith. There was no, "first you have to say the prayer", no "first you have to give up your lifestyle" - just complete and total acceptance.

Grace.

What became extremely obvious throughout the interview, bolstered by comments from Wendy Gritter who works with LGBTQ people, was that anything less than complete acceptance by the church equals rejection. While they appreciate anyone who is truly capable of "love the sinner, hate the sin" it doesn't go far enough. It's not the radical Grace exemplified by Jesus.

I deeply respect Dr. Brice and his views - it can't be easy putting forth even the limited view of LGBTQ acceptance that he has within the conservative Christian community. The problem is that he and his church still view LGBTQ's as a mission, a project, a person or group to be consumed.