Love Without Lying

5 ways to love your LGBTQ Neighbors without compromise.

10 years ago, Facebook told me (Katy) my high school friend Bradley was in Seattle.

"Get over here and have coffee with me!" I messaged him.

We spent two hours on a sunny bench outside of Starbucks. Almost the entire time he was detailing his break up from his boyfriend, literally crying on my shoulder. I loved this kid. We were part of the same elite high school chamber choir, performed in plays and musicals together, and both had one liners in the same blockbuster 90s movie.

I didn't know that our coffee time (plus refills) conversation would be consumed with his gay relationship and sex life. I don't remember what I said as he detailed the origins of the relationship, and the crushing sequence of their break up. I just remember praying whenever he would take a breath, "what do you want me to say now, Lord?" My constant question: how could I fully love him and support him without encouraging or affirming the choices and identity that he thought defined him?

"Katy, this is exactly what I didn't know I needed!" he said upon our departure.

A year later, I got another message from him."Are you against gay marriage?" He had seen some posts from my public Facebook page.

These are the moments I dread. That make me sick to my stomach because the thought of losing a relationship terrifies me.

"Yes Bradley. Gay marriage is an injustice against children. And God hates injustice against the weak and vulnerable," I replied.

I saw that undulating " . . . " as he typed and feared the words that would populate my DM. "But, how could you be? You love me so much."

"I guess you've been misinformed," I wrote. "Turns out Christians can fiercely love their LGBTQ family and still believe in traditional marriage."

Bradley is not the first friend with whom I’ve tried to walk that line of grace and truth. Sometimes I’ve done it well, and sometimes I have not. But after three decades of striving to honor Christ in my relationships—with a variety of family and friends who do not live according to God’s sexual ethic—I’ve settled on five rules that help me hold God’s truth in one hand and the preciousness and dignity of my LGBT friends in the other.

They are grounded in what I call the 1 Peter 2 principle which flows from these verses:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,” and

“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”

What do we know about Christ and his truth from these verses? That He is a rock. Whether we accept or reject him, his truth and nature are consistent. He is either the cornerstone around which we build our life, or a block over which we will trip. But either way, his truth claims are hard, unbending, and immovable. And that’s for good reason.

1. Don't swap limestone for play doh in the name of love.

The truth about God's design for sex and marriage–that they belong together in a permanent heterosexual union– is one of the greatest stumbling blocks in our culture. Especially for friends who struggle with same-sex attraction or identify as LGBTQ. It can be painful for them to hear the truth about their bodies and sex and mothers and fathers and marriage. Some of us (indeed entire denominations) attempt to alleviate our LGBTQ friends of this doctrinal discomfort by recasting the stumbling block into something softer- “you can be gay or trans and Christian. What you do with your body is not as important as what's happening in your heart.”

In our more-compassionate-than-Jesus mentality, we seek to remake the rock of Christ into Play-Doh, so it doesn't hurt quite as much when our LGBT neighbor catches their foot on it. Of course, Play-Doh is much less likely to injure you, but neither can you build a house upon it. Modifying God’s truth in the name of love, kindness, compassion, maintaining relationships or any other modern idol not only robs them of a rare source of sexual sanity, it victimizes children. Better to believe God's word and speak it when He prompts rather than imperil yourself or your hearer. (1 Tim 4:16)

2. Stand on the Rock and Don’t Move

Understand clearly what God teaches about sex and gender and marriage.