By Darrel Rowland
Read the main article, “Balancing Grace and Truth with Homosexuals,” by Darrel Rowland
There’s sin.
There”s sexual SIN.
And then there”s HOMOSEXUAL SIN.
At least that”s how we Christians often act.
And that”s a big reason why Christian leaders” struggles with homosexuality (1) are more prevalent than many believe and (2) go unaddressed for so long.
Many times the inner battle remains secret until the all-but-inevitable blowup or crisis.
That”s usually when Dr. John Walker gets a call.
For more than 15 years, Walker, a licensed clinical psychologist, has run Blessing Ranch, a sprawling facility on 166 acres in the Rocky Mountain foothills of northern Colorado. The 6,500-foot elevation ranch deals with far more than sexual struggles as it aims to renew and restore church leaders, but several of the 3,000 from around the world who have found their way there over the years were contending with same-sex issues, Walker said.
“Usually what happens is that there has been some kind of precipitating event, within the marriage, within the family, within the leadership staff,” he said.
Seldom does he encounter a Christian leader saying, as Walker puts it, “You know what, I”ve lived with this thing a long time, I really need to do something about it.”
So can Christians step in before the “precipitating event” and benefit both the church and the leader? Perhaps more broadly, how can we help a brother or sister who may be struggling with homosexuality?
“Be willing to listen and be willing to come alongside, rather than shun,” Walker said. “To be able to really listen to somebody and to really understand makes you a safe person. And, consequently, then you have an ability to influence. With judgmental condemnation, the ability to influence is pretty limited and pretty small.
“That doesn”t mean helpers must agree, and it does not mean they endorse any type of sin or that they want to encourage any type of propensity toward sin. What they really want to do is love the individual. I think that”s the model we see in Christ”s ministry over and over.”
EASY . . . AND DIFFICULT
Easy to see, perhaps, but sometimes difficult to carry out in real life, Walker acknowledged.
“There”re a lot of people who just can”t go there, and I don”t fault them for that. But it would be nice if we could effectively deal with struggles in people”s lives, whether they”re sexually related or nonsexually related, and speak into their lives in a meaningful way that”s likely to be heard rather than just further alienating the individual.”
Such alienation drives Christian leaders further underground, which “just facilitates the power of the secret,” Walker said.
“There”s so much going on here because we”re not dealing with it. Most of it is locked within the individual, and there”s no real support, assurance, even confrontation taking place until it”s way, way farther down the road,” he said.
“The depth and degree of any form of sexual sin, extramarital or same-sex attraction . . . is much more prevalent and to a much more significant degree than the average person out there is aware of because it is so dangerous to be open and honest. So what that does is drive the individual deeper into themselves, into isolation instead of accountability. And they wind up having to live without the Christian community because they”re so afraid.”
Christians should not “cooperate with categorization and isolation of various sins,” Walker said. Instead, the goal should be to make it less dangerous to be open and honest, to love and care enough to make ourselves accessible, to start a meaningful dialogue beyond our comfort zone, to earn the right to be heard, Walker said.
And that goes well beyond dealing with homosexuality in the church.
“If this is so prevalent we”ve got to ask ourselves a question: When is the last time a brother or a sister approached us, not in a crisis, and said “˜I need to talk””there”s stuff going on in my life I need to deal with”? For most of us, we would say that rarely if ever happens until a crisis.”
Darrel Rowland is an adult Bible fellowship teacher at Worthington (Ohio) Christian Church and public affairs editor of The Columbus Dispatch.
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