What Would I Do If My Daughter Told Me She Was Gay?

This post is not what it appears to be.

It’s actually about every kind of overwhelming sin desire you (and I, and our kids, and our spouses, and our friends) will ever experience. It’s about that thing that tends to grip our hearts and makes God seem distant. If we are honest, we all have one or more of them at any given time.

So be brutally honest and approach this as a fill-in-the-blank discovery exercise. If you do, you might find the next three minutes to be some of the best you’ve ever spent on a blog. Why? Because it shows you how to apply the Good News where it’s needed most.

You are the daughter in the story. The Father is the father.

This was written by Stephen Altrogge, from one of my favorite blogs, The Blazing Center.

What Would I Do If My Daughter Told Me She Was Gay?

by Stephen Altrogge

My oldest daughter, Charis, is four, so hopefully we’re a little while away from having any sort of sex talk. But at some point in the future I’m sure I’ll be talking to Charis, along with the rest of my kids, about sexuality, and there’s the possibility that one of my kids will experience homosexual attraction.

What would I do if Charis told me that she was experiencing homosexual attractions?

The first thing I’d do is give her a giant hug and tell her that nothing, nothing, nothing can ever change my love for her. She’s my precious little girl, and nothing is ever going to change that. I’d thank her for telling me about her feelings and tell her that she can always tell me anything, no matter how big or small. I want my kids to feel comfortable telling me anything, and to know that I won’t get angry with them no matter what they tell me.

I’d tell her that God loves her even more than I do. He created her in his image, and because of that, she is precious to him. He sent his son to die for her sins, which also proves that she is precious to him.

Then I’d tell her that if she follows Jesus, her sexuality is not her identity. Her identity is rooted in Christ. She is a child of God who has the Holy Spirit dwelling in her. Her fundamental identity is not her sexual desires, her fundamental identity is as a forgiven sinner, united to Christ, full of the Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul was talking about in 2 Corinthians 5:17 when he said:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

I’d say, “Sweetie, if you follow after Jesus, your identity is as a new creation in Jesus. These desires that you’re experiencing don’t define who you are. Jesus defines who you are. You are his. You belong to him. That is your identity. It’s who you are.”

Then I’d gently take her hand and say, “Charis, following Jesus is really costly. Jesus even said that we have to die to ourselves. He said we have to take up our cross and follow him. That means submitting every facet of our lives to King Jesus, including our sexual desires. If you’re going to follow Jesus, you’re going to have to submit these desires to Jesus. You can’t give in to them because the Bible says that any sexual expression outside of a marriage between a man and a woman is wrong.”

She might ask, “Will God take these desires away from me?”

“I don’t know,” I’d say. “But I do know this – he’ll give you the power not to give in to them. That’s the beauty of the gospel. Jesus forgives all of our sins and then gives us the power not to give in to our sinful desires. And it will be hard, and it will be costly, and there will be times when you will feel lonely, but Jesus is worth it. He is so worth it. When you hear Jesus say, ‘Well done good and faithful servant’, it will be worth it!”

“But why do I have these desires?” she might ask.

“Well sweetie,” I’d say. “Sin has distorted every person’s sexuality. Every time I’m tempted to lust after a woman, that’s a distortion of my sexuality. Every time you’re tempted to lust after a person of the same sex, that’s also distortion. See, you and I are the same. It just works itself out a little bit differently. We both desperately need Jesus. But the wonderful thing is, Jesus is in the process of repairing the distortions. He gives me power to not give in to lust, even though it feels really strong at times. He can give you that same power. And someday, when he comes back, everything sad and broken will finally be undone.”

Then I’d say, “You know what? We’ll keep talking about this, but right now, let’s go get ice cream.”

Susan Moore

Hi Bob. God loves me so much that he lets me make my own choices, even if it means I get to spend eternity burning in hell. God is perfectly merciful and perfectly just. When I remember that, I sleep well at nite.
But I’ve always wondered how married homosexual Christians rationalize not being able to follow God’s first command to us: “Be fruitful and increase in number…” (He commanded Adam and Eve in Genesis. And also Noah and his sons later in the book of Genesis, actually, he told them twice.)
Wanting to live with your friend is one thing, why make a mockery out of marriage?
bookworm

This was a compassionate and tenderly written article which really does present the truth and love of a father for his child. Where it falls down is that it is very ‘disney-like’ in its imagining. In reality christian parents of teens who go astray often are faced with a much more challenging and ‘in your face’ dilemma – like discovering your child has homosexual porn under their bed; seeing your daughter kissing another girl on facebook; having to have a discussion with your drunk child on their cell phone in the middle of the night when they are out and don’t know how to get home. Getting a call from the hospital that your child has over-dosed….

In these situations there can be no putting arms around them and telling them that you love them and they can share anything with you. The chances are that they are not going to share anything with you. The chances are that they will reject you and reject God and claim unbelief due to morality issues – they want to go their own way and you and God are standing in their way.

I don’t know what the solution is – perhaps you need to have those lovely conversations when they are 4, 8, 12 years old so that when the time comes that they want to pursue their own fleshly desires they remember what you said…only this is, they’ll come back to test you to see if you meant it.
- http://BobBevington.com/ Bob Bevington
  
  Very good insights. I totally agree.
  
  Where Stephen’s post is most valuable to me is in broadening it to apply to all sin desires, including my own. Your last paragraph is spot on. I’m doing this with Grace and Michael (ages 12 and 9).
  
  With my older son, Dave, now 26, we lived through some living nightmares. Due to divorce I had blown my chances to apply the thoughts from your last paragraph. I discovered another weapon: prayer!
dublinrealist

“You can’t give in to [your homosexual desires] because the Bible says that any sexual expression outside of a marriage between a man and a woman is wrong.” —– The Bible says lots of things, many of which are contradictory, and many of which are disregarded today as completely inappropriate to modern times. It says comparatively little about homosexuality, as you certainly know. As a template for how to talk about resisting the pressures of alcohol abuse, or an extramarital affair, or a gambling addiction, your speech works. I appreciate the conversational tone and the give and take. But in the context of human sexuality, I think it fails badly. Perhaps “her sexuality is not her identity” — although many would argue that point — but surely who she chooses to love, what lifestyle she adopts, who her friends are, what her politics are, who her family is — surely taken together these things ARE her identity. And in telling her that what she feels deep in her core is wrong — that somehow her own image of herself, what she feels about who she IS — you’re condemning her to a lifetime of angst and struggle and misery and pretending. She’ll pass up chances to be with other people she could really truly love and find bliss and happiness with, on the hope that it’s Jesus’ will. I’m sure your intentions are good, and you’ve obviously thought this through, but I completely disagree with this approach. If my daughter came to me with the same statement, I would keep it much simpler. “Darling, I love you for who you are, and you never need to change that.” It’s time for us to uncouple loving Jesus with ending homosexuality.
- http://BobBevington.com/ Bob Bevington
  
  Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts here. I understand your points and your view of how to apply compassion in this hypothetical situation. Perhaps you have lived through something like this, I have not.
  
  My broader point is to declare the love of God, as demonstrated in the death of the Son, as a life-transforming message of hope for anyone and everyone who sins and falls short of the glory of God. And that’s all of us.
  
  Let that love wash over you and me every day and see where it takes us.
- http://BobBevington.com/ Bob Bevington
  
  Ironically, this article was posted at The Gospel Coalition blog yesterday. I thought it might shed a little light on the conversation:
  
  http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/07/10/the-new-sexual-identity-crisis-2/
http://www.facebook.com/paula.k.collins.7 Paula Kechisen Collins

Bob, This is such an awesome post. So many times in student ministries kids will always ask what do I say to my friends when they ask me why Christian hate gay people. I tell them it is not true, but never quite have the correct words that they can convey to their friends. This is extremely helpful and a loving way to communicate it.
TParker3neo

Bob, This has to be the correct response to this or any other Bible-proscribed conduct, whether it is too much alcohol…drugs…idolatry for our job, our money, our sport teams. Some of these are trivial and some are essential, but all of them test us. All of them can cause us to veer to the left or the right of the path the Lord has marked out for us. He is that way. But what a beautiful example Altrogge gives us of how to respond to one of the most challenging issues of our day!
- http://BobBevington.com/ Bob Bevington
  
  Thanks for the comment, Tom. This approach helps me resist the temptation to be judgmental. Why should I look down my nose at the sins of others when I have the same thing only a different flavor? The death of Christ paid for all types of sin. It’s the ultimate Great Equalizer.