{"id":38015,"date":"2024-03-02T07:16:53","date_gmt":"2024-03-02T15:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/?p=38015"},"modified":"2024-03-02T07:16:53","modified_gmt":"2024-03-02T15:16:53","slug":"am-i-going-to-hell-because-im-bisexual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnshore\/2024\/03\/am-i-going-to-hell-because-im-bisexual\/","title":{"rendered":"Am I going to hell because I’m bisexual?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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(The following is excerpted from the book Ask John: John Shore\u2019s advice column from the Asheville Citizen-Times, 2016-2019.<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n
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Question: <\/i><\/b>I was baptized a fundamentalist Christian. I\u2019m beginning to think that I might be bisexual. John, will I go to hell if I am?<\/i><\/p>\n
Answer:\u00a0<\/b>Finding an answer to this question will inevitably mean answering it for yourself. Ultimately there\u2019s just no other way. People have always contemplated, pontificated and bloviated on the afterlife. But no person, no matter what they believed or how confidently they believed it, has ever died possessing one whit of actual knowledge about what will happens to them next.<\/p>\n
The door between this life and whatever follows it is permanently shut, sealed, and painted to blend. So the best anyone can do is thoughtfully reason about what might<\/i> lie beyond this Vale of Tears, as nobody calls life anymore because who says vale? <\/i>(It\u2019s\u00a0oldey\u00a0timey for valley.<\/em> I googled it. UPDATE:<\/strong> Google sucks now.)<\/p>\n
For what it\u2019s worth, the steps of my own personal reasoning through the question you just asked me would go like this:<\/p>\n
1. So. I\u2019m bi. Whoo-hoo!<\/em>\u00a0Except, wait. Does that mean I\u2019m going to hell?<\/p>\n
2. Would a loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God really will send me to hell?<\/em> Lord, I hope not.<\/p>\n
3. God either loves the fact that I was born bisexual, or he created me just<\/em> so I could end up being tortured throughout eternity. But no non-psychotic God would do that. Therefore God, whom the Bible tells me made me in his own image,<\/em> must love me, the same as he does everyone else.<\/p>\n
4. Speaking of all humans being made in God\u2019s image, it\u2019s profoundly disrespectful to women to always be referring to God as \u2018he\u2019 and \u2018him.\u2019 Surely God comprises in equal measure all that is male and female. Until a better pronoun comes along, the one I\u2019ll start using for God is They.<\/em><\/p>\n
5. Conservative Christians these days regularly assert that God only has a problem with my being bisexual if I fail to resist the \u201ctemptation\u201d of physically expressing my homosexual side \u2014 of acting, that is, in accordance with the very nature God gave me. But what does that actually mean?<\/i><\/p>\n
6. Well, that would mean that God wants me to force myself to be celibate, to constantly deny myself the same mutually satisfying physical intimacy that straight Christians cherish as the natural, God-given complement to romantic love. But to deny LGBT people the same freedom They give straight people to physically express their love makes no sense. It\u2019s not fair. And my God is a fair God. So it must be as fine for me to have loving sexual relations as it is for anyone else.<\/p>\n
6. Finally, what about the Bible\u2019s apparent condemnation of homosexuality? Well, today millions of Christians believe it is no more intellectually or morally defensible to use the Bible to condemn LGBT people than it ever was to use the Bible to justify slavery, deny women the vote, or commit genocide against Native Americans who were living on land that Christians really, really wanted.<\/p>\n
7. Christians\u2019 understanding of the Bible was always meant to evolve. And every time it does, things only improve for everyone. Isn\u2019t the personal and all-merciful Jesus himself a major upgrade from the distant and cruel God of the Old Testament? Oh, for sure.<\/p>\n
8. That God would condemn me to hell just because I love whomever I love makes zero<\/em> rational, moral or Biblical sense.\u00a0It flies directly in the face of everything Jesus taught.<\/p>\n
9. I\u2019m good with being bi. It rocks. On to the next problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That\u2019d be me, anyway.<\/p>\n
Now you go.<\/p>\n
\n
Ask John is\u00a0available\u00a0as a paperback<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Kindle book<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 (The following is excerpted from the book Ask John: John Shore\u2019s advice column from the Asheville Citizen-Times, 2016-2019.) \u00a0 Question: I was baptized a fundamentalist Christian. I\u2019m beginning to think that I might be bisexual. John, will I go to hell if I am? Answer:\u00a0Finding an answer to this question will inevitably mean answering […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1528,"featured_media":38024,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[273],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dear-john"],"yoast_head":"\nAm I going to hell because I'm bisexual?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" (The following is excerpted from the book Ask John: John Shore's advice column from the Asheville Citizen-Times, 2016-2019.) 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