Discussing LGBT+ Questions Can Help Our Children Understand the Gospel
By Rachel Gilson, TGC.
My daughter has remarkable ears. Sometimes, when I speak to her, she cannot hear. Other times, when I whisper to my husband at the other end of the apartment, she calls out, “Wait, did that really happen?”
What I most want my child to hear from me is the good news of the gospel: that by faith, she can receive the true, good, and beautiful work of Jesus Christ on her behalf, which he accomplished through his death and resurrection, offering her forgiveness of sin and eternal life. I want her to hear that following Jesus means every part of her life can be transformed and made holy by him. And I want her to know that this good news is for everyone: that Jesus crosses every boundary in his determination to seek and save the lost.
The way I talk about LGBT+ questions in front of her can subvert or reinforce any of these truths about the gospel, and this will be the same for the children in your life as well.
So, let’s consider three approaches to discussing LGBT+ questions and how they might each affect how our children understand the gospel.
Us/Them
Sometimes Christians, who rightly believe that the Bible calls any sex outside of male-female marriage sinful, talk as if folks who identify as LGBT+ are uniquely hostile to God and are therefore our enemies who must be fought or shunned rather than loved. In reality, all our non-Christian neighbors who don’t follow Jesus are trapped in ideologies that don’t love them but rather seek to eat them whole. Like us, they’re made in God’s image, but right now, they’re blinded and enslaved—just as I was before I put my trust in Jesus. I believed life was to be found in following my same-sex sexual and romantic desires. But Jesus called me to himself, forgave my sin, and transferred me from darkness to light (Col. 1:12–14).
Related Posts
Tags
Share This
