The key thing that Brenda Hopkins surfaces within this book is the difference between being ashamed of things you do and being ashamed of things you are.
So much in society, and even more in the church, tells us to be ashamed that we are gay (or LGBT+), in theory love the sinner hate the sin but it rarely comes across like that.
We all do things that we regret, an the shame that comes with that is in part protective, it is a part of learning lessons and not making the same mistakes again.
But when shame becomes attached who you are as a person there is no resolution.
To illustrate this Brenda Hopkins quotes James Alison, who is quoting a hypothetical God
“You are not. I did not create you. I only create heterosexual people. You are a defective heterosexual. Agree to be a defect and I’ll rescue you. But if you claim to be, then your very being is constructed over against me, and you are lost.”
It also made me reflect on my own journey with vocation, after they had stepped away Brenda recounts a conversation “He sighs… ‘no one said it was going to be easy’ … [she replied] ‘I didn’t leave because it was hard. I left because it was unhealthy.’” (p76)
I have many LGBT+ friends that are ordained, that have found ways to go on that journey, and in different ways it will have been really a hard journey for each of them. At times I struggle with that, I stepped away, giving up – I have to remember that for me it had become a toxic process, I was denying who I was, editing myself – and I could not go forward to make profound promises before God that would have been based on a pack of lies.
In naming the shame Brenda disempowers it.
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