How did I get to the point of being LGBTQ+ affirming in my theology?

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Well, I’ll tell you that it was in large part the result of broadening my concept of God! At the root of becoming affirming, it was going through a few years of experiences and philosophies of life that caused my God-concepts to broaden as well as my understanding of the role of Scripture in our faith lives (including the spiritual AND natural origins of the Bible).

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We hold so many concepts of God that are fashioned from our early formative years, cultural norms, and religious affiliations. In seminary, we were instructed to delve into our embedded theology (understandings of God that we were given or grew up with) and then differentiate it from our deliberative theology (understandings of God that we have grown into or intelligibly claimed).

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I'm grateful for my time in seminary because it caused me to get down to the root of why I believe what I believe. My education in that setting was not indoctrination, but rather it was a strategic equipping for how to think systematically and theologically. In fact, one of my favorite classes was Systematic Theology, which requires one to develop a consistent and coherent framework for their God-concept(s).

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Are our concepts of God consistent with our sense of social health and humane treatment of others? How do our God-concepts interplay with our view of self, life, the church, our mission or purpose in the world?

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Our embedded concepts of God were unearthed in seminary, and we were forced to wrestle with how those concepts were life-giving (or not), while also tracing the origins of those God-concepts in church history and political history. As a result, many had to ascribe their embedded beliefs to origins sometimes rooted in human culture that innately held deeply ingrained social prejudices in their societies. Some of us came to find out that those prejudiced perspectives were erroneously attached to the nature of God.

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‍Many of the religious views that could be lifted from Scripture, that we consider to be socially inhumane today, [more often than not] represented the views of the dominant social group, and were not necessarily identical to the identity of God. In other words, even through the Biblical text, humans have tried to paint God with humanity's own small-mindedness, and it's important to "rightly divide the Word of truth" so that what we are digesting is the pure essence of God's intention for humanity and not the God-concepts of a segmented, elite group of humans who wish to domineer their social paradigm, in the Name of God, to the detriment of all outliers.

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I often say, the Bible didn't drop out of the sky.

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That can be difficult for some to accept. Sometimes we treat it as if it did fall from the sky. Bibliolatry is idolatry of the Bible - it's when we worship the book, instead of the Spirit of Life behind the book! Even the Apostle Paul (author of 2/3 of the New Testament) in all of his zeal, passion and imperfection, understood this from his deeply studious and religious life:  "the letter kills, but the spirit gives life".

“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:5-6)

Let’s seek to honor Scripture, apply it humanely, and over all, follow the Spirit of Love and Life as we grow in our faith.

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~Jason Powell

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