Source: Evangelicalism, You Have Traumatized Me. – The Gay Post-Evangical

I am pressing this post…it is by way of confession for me.  I have done these things to people back in the old days…mostly in the early 90s, and my thinking well on the path of evolving and transforming by the late 90s…but I did them.

Said them.

Thanks be to our God of Love and Grace that They opened the eyes of my heart.

Someone I love deeply recently told me that they will never forgive me for those things said then…no matter that they ignore so much else.  They told me that I was not allowed to change my mind or views and that they would despise me forever if I tried to “claim” a road to Damascus experience and now “get off scot-free”.  They were cruel, intentionally so, and consigned me to their dungeon of never having status as a free person ever again.

Well…that was tough to read, and the choices that they make do not dictate my future nor deny me the grace of growing and changing and evolving.

But even if I spent my whole life in their dungeon, it would not make “right” the things I said and lived in those times…I truly thought I was saying and doing the right thing.

I was wrong.

In the spirit of forgetting what lies behind and pressing onward to the glory of God in Christ, I am rejoicing that I still have some years to help the ones in my life now who I have the chance to show grace to.

May any who read this who have been wounded and othered by the likes of such as I once was find healing in my confession…and may the ones who say they will never forgive quickly find opportunity to change their own views…it will broaden their forgiveness qualifications most helpfully, and empower them to forgive themselves.