Escaping From The Bubble

My Journey To Freedom - for me and others

My journey: part 1

I was raised in a bubble. It was a very comfortable, insulated and safe bubble. Honestly, I always thought I had a great life. I really did have a great life. But I now realize that there are lots of people who I grew up with, who didn’t have such a great life. The bubble I grew up in was very churchy. It was very politically conservative, very privileged, very white, and very—well lets just say it was not very affirming of those who were different.

Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s in Nashville, I didn’t think I knew anyone who was queer. If anyone didn’t obviously fit into the traditional gender roles, they would have most certainly been talked about in hushed whispers as groups of us pointed and called them ugly names. I believe it’s very fair to say that because of this insulated upbringing, I made the blanket assumption that for someone to be L-G-B-T-or-Q in any expression was totally a choice.

My particular branch of the Americanized evangelical churchy tree taught me to believe that there was no such thing as a DNA-level, same-sex orientation. I’m certainly not proud that this was what I believed, and I’m even less proud that I still held this extremely hurtful view as recently as a decade ago. But that was the world into which I was born and raised.

Having reconnected with so many of my childhood, high school and young adult friends who I now know are queer, I have come to learn that most of them knew this fact about themselves even in their earliest childhood. Unfortunately, in those days they could have never publicly admitted this orientation in front of the world we grew up in without the very real fear of social, emotional and likely physical harm coming to them. Today, while there is much greater acceptance of all kinds of differences in much of our country, there is still great reason for queer folks to be justifiably fearful.

About 30 years ago, I began serving in the Nazarene Church, a conservative evangelical denomination that broke from the Methodists a little over 100 years ago because they were becoming “too liberal”. Over the last decade, I began to question most of my previously assumed to be right social positions. These were positions that I held primarily because our church, as well as most other evangelical Christians held them.

The church provided quick, simple and easy answers to big, hairy, and often profound questions. I began to examine immigration, refugee acceptance, justice for the poor, rampant racism and systemic sexism. But the issue that pierced and racked my soul the deepest was the church’s exclusion of LGBTQ+ people. It wasn’t just the exclusion that troubled me, but it was the disgustingly ugly and deeply harmful mistreatment of so many young vulnerable people.

Many of these precious young people were humiliated, kicked out and ostracized by the only church they had ever known and by the church leaders who had been the representation of God in their lives. They would go on to experience devastating consequences such as depression, self harming and even suicide attempts. They were led to believe falsely that not just the church had turned them out, but that God himself had banished them from His presence and from his love.

After hearing so many of these stories, I realized this position the church held was completely opposite from the character of the Jesus. I simply had to dive in to the scripture and study hard over the relevant passages and all of their context. I had to know for myself that this change I was sensing deep in my heart was right and was indeed true to scripture. It turns out that scripture did not support the church’s position.

I spent the better part of 3 years in deep personal study while pastoring my local church congregation in Michigan and wrestling hard with this eternally important issue. So I climbed out of my bubble and out into the beautiful and sometimes terrifying world outside to find the old beliefs I once held to be untenable. This blog post is not the place to walk through the intensive, deep weeds study that I undertook, but I can certainly point you to several excellent resources if you are interested in this study for yourself. I will end this post with a listing of a few great resources.

A year ago we began to tell some of our friends and close family members of this change in our thinking and belief system. Most of them were very happy for us, although not all of them. This has definitely been the hardest part for us in this whole change. One of my very beloved transgender friends told me that this was a bit like my own coming out. I understood what he meant by that and appreciated his understanding and great love for me. I do want to make it clear that while I completely understand that the pain of losing some friends and close relationships (some with family members) is nothing in comparison to the traumatic and devastating losses that a LGBTQ+ person experiences.

My path is chosen, but theirs is not. The only choice that a queer person makes is to stop hiding the truth from themselves and the world around them. To make the choice to be true to themselves has life altering consequences that can be devastating, but it is also incredibly freeing. I do find myself in that particular place. I am saddened by loss, but exhilarated by freedom and empowered by purpose.

The next blog post will speak a bit more to the sadness and the consequences of our decision. The real purpose of this blog is to be helpful in the lives of the precious folks who are the targets of isolation, horrible remarks, and political attacks from intellectual neanderthals such as the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

So to you, my precious queer friends, I want you to know that there are cisgender people who are actually on your side. I am a straight guy, married to my high school sweetheart for 30 years. I am a white, former conservative evangelical, former FoxNews watching, former GOP voting pastor, who has now been kicked out of his denomination because I truly love you. I believe that the church has gotten this issue and several others completely wrong. I can’t continue to rock along hoping they will get it right from within. I have to do something to tangibly express my care for you while pressing the church to move toward getting it right.

I really want you to know that you are actually fully loved, fully accepted, and fully cared for just as you are! Know that who you love and who you are, in the very deepest places of your spirit, are in no need of being fixed. Please hear theses words and believe them. You are not broken! You are exactly as you were designed and created to be. You are not an aberration or a mutation. You are perfectly crafted. Many of you have former churches or even family members who will tell you just the opposite, but I’m telling you that they are wrong!

To my LGBTQ+ friends, I’m available for you! If you would like to connect with me directly to talk, cry, vent, scream, rant or whatever, you can do so in several different ways. You can connect with me through the contact tab of this blog site or connect with me by email at: Murphy@MurphyGill.com. Message me through Facebook at: www.facebook.com/murphy.gill. I’m also on Twitter (@Nvstalot) and Instagram.

I was raised in a bubble. It was a very comfortable, insulated and safe bubble. Honestly I always thought I had a great life. I really did have a great life. I now realize that there are lots of people who I grew up with, in that same world, who didn’t have such a great life.

Peace,

Murphy

RESOURCES: (There are many great resources but these 3 are the ones I started with)

“Torn” by Justin Lee This is his personal story of growing up in a fundamentalist church and coming to terms with his orientation

“God and the Gay Christian” by Matthew Vines Very good non-academic book about the 6 “clobber” passages)

“Bible Gender and Sexuality” by James Brownsen Very deep weeds book. Textbook type reading EXCELLENT, but deep