‘Becoming Good News’ for Wandering Loved Ones
I am excited about a new booklet I just wrote–‘Becoming Good News’–a daily, 40-part prayer guide for those of us seeking to love persons mesmerized by the LGBT+ dragon. Jonathan Hunter prayerfully glimpsed this brute: a shimmering beast that entrances a generation with the promise of new identities and partnerships. Having lured them, the dragon then loses them with one swift flick of its tail. Our common enemy is merciless to those seduced by this multi-faceted mirror of deception. We are right to be concerned for loved ones.
Yet we are all creatures of free will. We cannot change anyone; still we try, and can be tempted to employ our faith to control and manipulate others. ‘Becoming Good News’ majors on the truth that another’s disorientation invites us to conversion. We discover in our helplessness and shame and fear that Jesus is actually calling us to Himself. Simply put, He employs another’s more obvious disorder to reveal our own.
That disorder may take on two forms, either becoming complicit or contemptuous of the dragon’s influence. The complicit are worldly in their thinking but do not know it. We believe that we are being merciful–non-judgey–to loved ones by altering our truth in order to accommodate their poor moral choices. Aren’t we just cowardly, afraid to see and feel the truth of our loved ones’ devolution? Out of unexpressed anxiety come silly statements like ‘my gay son is perfect’ or ‘my lesbian neighbors are the most Christ-like couple I know.’ Bleech. Me thinks we fawn too much. We are just dodging the truth that someone we care for is in danger and we do not know what to do. So we concede to the culture. And people-pleasing. We need conversion, not caving.
Another trap is contempt. Here we appear to have the right on our side: the truth of God’s will for human sexuality, etc. But our hearts are not right. Though we plead ‘righteous indignation,’ we are actually projecting our anxiety onto good people (however wounded and rebellious) and hating them for their bad choices. Instead of identifying the dragon, we take aim and fire at those under its sway. Easy to do. Sickened by media glamorization of identity confusion and adultery of all kinds, we conceive the temptation to hate the deceived. We are like the Pharisee (LK 18) who thanked God he wasn’t an adulterer. We must repent of religious pride that breeds contempt, and ask for mercy’s conversion.
Whether complicit or contemptuous, we need conversion. Jesus asks for our undivided devotion; He changes us so that our offer of transformation is matched by our becoming whole. That is the invitation of ‘Becoming Good News.’ You can request more info on this new book at BecomingGoodNews@desertstream.org. And you can calendar in Oct. 10th-Nov. 18th, 2018 for a prayer drive this fall, using this book. Let’s cry out together for loved ones under the dragon’s sway. May our repentance loose a stream of truth and mercy that will convert hearts, starting with our own.
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