LGBTQ+

AND CHURCH UNITY

LGBTQ+ and Church Unity

We judge by taking what we learned (perhaps from God, and perhaps from other people) and intellectually applying that completely human judgment to a person God loves. And when we do that, God is not a part of what just happened. 

And when we take our superficial, hopelessly externalized judgment of this person God loves and exclude them to protect what we have come to understand of the bible (and not really to protect the relationship God is forming between people in their community and Him), we are transferring what was an embodiment of Jesus to an embodiment of our pride in our understanding of the bible.

If, instead, when faced with a person whom God loves, who bears some kind of circumstance we think the bible disproves of, we humbly set our simplistic, externalized, typically projected judgments aside and wait to hear from God, God would not settle for merely telling us what is right and what is wrong. God would tell us what is in that person’s heart.

For example, God might say they are trusting Me to tell them what I want for them, and they are trusting Me to give them what they need to implement My will for them. In this case, excluding this person because they are doing something wrong (and whether it is or is not wrong is not the issue at this point, so it becomes pointless to debate the moral value of what they are doing) is to work against them trusting in God to be the source of their spiritual life.

And let's say that when waiting to hear from God, God revealed the heart of this person to be carrying a mentality of rebellion against God, and that this mentality came to this person through the violence of a father's selfish brutal condemnation of them, and that He wanted us to with great empathy for how they came to this place of rebellion let them know that opposing God's will for them will effectively place them outside of the community of those wanting God's will. And coming from this place of great empathy, one would be able to also let them know that they realize there are very real past unresolved circumstances forcing this mentality on their heart. And if they were willing, they could continue to be in fellowship with this group by admitting this was a problem for them, and working to get those unresolved experiences of terrible emotional wounding resolved in a therapeutic setting.

If such an approach were used, exclusion of this person who God loves would be solely to restore them to a connection with God and His love for them, and not to protect the understanding of the bible held by the leaders of this church. 

If this kind of judgment had been used throughout the history of the church, there would be none of the separate religious organizations we see today. There would only be an embodiment of Jesus in one unified community. That there is not one global unified community of people embodying Jesus on earth means that the church systems we have inherited are embodiments of disbelief in God's ability to govern the human heart, and of the rebellious opposition to the will of God.

And God will have to resolve this disbelief and rebellion in us. We are a very broken communion of followers of Jesus. Our trust in God needs to undergo immense purification by God's hand. And that purification will involve immense suffering, both individually and collectively.

We all need to face this reality with the humbling reality that we are this broken church system. All of us are. Not just those people over there.  And we need to do the equivalent of putting sackcloth and ashes on us. We need to stay in a state of humbly pleading to God for Him to save us from ourselves.

What we do not need to do is continue to externalize our collective condition of broken trust in God and contend with each other over whose vision for Jesus' body is the correct one.

We are actually at a crossroads just now in our history. We will either, in pride, contend for the dominance of our vision, or we will humbly plead for God to save us from ourselves. And the result of this choice will manifest as the separation ofJesus's trustingly submitted sheep from the goats of Satan's pride.

© John Brusseau, June 5, 2026