The Gay Calvinist

"The Gay Calvinist" cartoon by nakedpastor David Hayward

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THE PARABLE:

Even right away you asked yourself, “How is a gay Calvinist possible?” Didn't you? I'll tell you how it's possible, being the gay Calvinist. I knew when I was 13 I was gay. I confessed it to my youth leader. These are the steps of theological logistics he dragged me through: He suggested I'm not gay. I just have depraved and corrupt thoughts that become temptations, and that God was allowing me to be so tempted in order to build humility and holiness in me. So, I tried that for a while. But I had to be honest with myself. The same-sex attractions I experience aren't a deviation from who I am, but a natural expression of who I am. A temptation is only a temptation if the appeal is made to something inherent in who I am. The temptation has to touch something within me. Right? I mean, if I didn't have any attraction to people of the same sex, then it wouldn't be a temptation, would it? I was gay. I didn't become gay. I came to realize I was already gay. I was upgraded to a meeting with the pastor. At first I was thankful because the pastor conceded I could be gay and that it was my orientation even before I knew it. God made me gay. What a relief! But wait. “No,” he said, “this is not a good thing. Yes, God made you thus, but being gay is still depraved. It is not God's perfect will, but his permissive will. You are a sinner and you need to repent. He loves you.” “Wait! God loves me?” “Well,” he insisted, “God loves in three ways: first, he loves everyone; then he loves the elect; finally he loves his covenant people most of all. You're in the he-loves-everyone category.” When I told him I've repented a million times to no avail, he clarified to me that no matter how much I repented, that I probably would not change because God has sealed me unto destruction, a vessel of his wrath, and that I was a living testimony to God's righteous will and judgment. “Wait!” I said, “Am I to understand that the sovereign God ordained me as gay and that I was bound in depravity to be an instrument of God's wrath in order to show the world how sinners are surely condemned and punished and that I will burn in Hell forever because God's will is perfect and his judgments are true and on top of all this I should worship him and be thankful that I am at least fulfilling his will for my life even though it's one destined for destruction? But he loves me?” Relieved, he said, “Yes, that's it. In a nutshell.” Genius. Just genius. This too was probably predestined, but I left laughing. And gay. And he remained confirmed in his theology.
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1 comment

It’s easy to have a nonsensical opinion about this when it’s not your struggle.

Steve Boyer

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