Another Teen Bullied To Death; Another Reason for a New Christianity

Last updated on: May 21, 2014 at 2:18 pm by John Shore

Another Teen Bullied To Death; Another Reason for a New Christianity 2014-05-21T14:18:51-08:00 John Shore

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Another kid has been bullied into killing himself. His name is Jacob Rogers. He went to Cheatham County Central High School, in Ashland City, TN. Apparently he’d been being pretty severely bullied for four years. It got so bad that around Thanksgiving he quit going to school.

A friend of Jacob’s told reporters, “He started coming home his senior year, saying ‘I don’t want to go back. Everyone is so mean. They call me a faggot, they call me gay, a queer.'”

Yesterday Jacob took his own life.

I’ve done a fair amount of writing on these sorts of tragedies (see this past Saturday’s Tell Me, Christian, That You Hear this Boy, Christians and the Blood of Jamey Rodemeyer, and My Gay Christian Cousin Committed Suicide, to name just three). And so I have no doubt that some will claim that the primary reason Jacob killed himself is not because he was bullied for being gay. They’ll say that we don’t know the whole story. They’ll point to the fact that Jacob lived with his grandmother, or that his family is poor, or anything else they can grab on to by way of “proving” that Jacob had problems that went beyond his being bullied.

And I will respond with what I always say, which is that certainly there are always myriad causes behind the suicide of any person. But that does not alter the fact that the root cause of kids being bullied for being gay is that strain of Christianity which continues to insist that homosexuality is an evil affront to God.

If Christians would actually read the Bible, instead of daring to insist that three or four isolated phrases within it justifies a theology that has no more to do with Christ than the KKK has to do with equality, we would arrive at a popular Christianity that is not, as so much of our Christianity is today, a pure affront to anyone with half a conscience.

And that Christianity would dissipate the motivation of those kids who bully in the name and spirit of condemning homosexuality. That particularly noxious train would simply come to a halt. Because there wouldn’t be left any enduring reason for anyone to ever condemn gay people at all.

Then gay people would just be … people. You know: that thing God made in his own image.

Fellow Christians: will you please stop treating the Bible like it’s a permission slip from God for you to not only be just as ignorant and cruel as your scared little self wants to be, but to also raise your children to be just like you?

If not, then be sure to buy a new Bible every year. It’s a lot easier than having to keep washing the blood off your old one.

Please watch this till the end:

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