Today, a dear loved one reached out to me because their parents rejected them.  This LGBT young person has been out for about a year and has struggled with their relationship with their parents the entire time.  Recently, they wrote a long and very detailed email explaining how they reconciled their sexuality with their Christian faith and how they believed the Bible does not condemn them.  This was a very personal email, very open with tons of emotions, vulnerability, and hope.  Hope that, maybe with all the details and the proof that this person has been heavily in the Word and prayer, they would come to understand how much Jesus meant to their child even though they are also gay.  Days had passed and even with the history of a year of anger, rejection, and even torment from this person’s parents, the writer held out hope and trusted; in the Lord and in their parents.

But, instead the parents responded with rejection.  Hatred, and I am not just using a buzzword because “they are standing up for their religion”.  They have condemned their child to hell and used words that I would not use on my worst enemy.  And that, in a word, made FURY rise in my heart.

Love is patient.  Love is kind.  Love does not insist on its own way.  And yet, the response from the parents, in the name of Christ, made impatient demands.  Were unkind.  Insisted that the only way their child could be saved was to adopt and walk in the exact same manner established in their own heterosexual lives.  They said there was no hope for their child, that things would never work out for them.  It was filled with doom and distain.  Disgust.  Love does not do that.

FURY.  I am consumed with it.

They do not trust in their God, for the Bible they so heavily throw about says in Romans 8 that all things work out for those who love God.  I don’t think these parents lack love for God, but if they TRUSTED Him, they’d know that they need not fear for their child who is in Christ.  Yet, I am sure they think their child is NOT in Christ, which is so frustrating as well.  This human is so evidently a Child of God in word and deed, one that sacrifices for their neighbor and loves unconditionally.  In fact, 1 John says if people don’t love, God is not in them.  So, to learn of the condition of their parents’ love brings up FURY within me.  But maybe, based on their own “strong beliefs”, their child could be saved based on the Word and promises of God.  But again, it appears they don’t trust the Word.

And yet, I must take a step back and remember……I trust in the same God.  I know this will work out for this dear one, even though right now the pain is all consuming.  Even though the rejection and the harsh words and the outright condemnation being sent to this loving person is real and painful.  And my FURY, whether based on biblical verses or not, makes me no different than the parents, who used the Bible as a sword against their own child.  I am not like them.  I don’t want to be like them.  I need to LOVE, even when it is hard.

So, I am reminding myself (and everyone else)……

1 Cor 13:4-13 ESV

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Please pray for this dear one.  Please pray that their heart is surrounded by the Love of Christ, that He removes the bleeding and pain.  Pray that the Lord fills the loss of their parents with many, many more who can assist in this role.  Pray for my FURY.  Pray for the parents, who must believe they’re doing the right thing, and have suddenly lost their child by choice.  And, also, if you think about it……..love people.  Where they are.  No conditions.