At one point in my life, I found myself standing before a crowd, speaking on behalf of a faith I no longer fully understood. As I talked about the teachings I once held dear, I was grappling with emotions of loneliness, jealousy, envy, fear of missing out, anger and lust. These feelings consumed me and turned me away from the incredible, loving and sacrificial God who had been my anchor. In that dark season, I chose to pick a girl over God - she was a wonderful person, but she wasn’t God. I believed I had been betrayed by the church.
In December 2024, I published an academic paper entitled, “Too Gay for the Evangelicals. Too Evangelical for the Gays: A Narrative and Autoethnograpic Study of a Celibate-Gay Testimony”. In the paper, I was seeking to explore the place of testimonies by same-sex attracted Christians within the church.
I was brought up by two loving Christian parents. They both worked in full time Christian ministry, so I spent much of my childhood in or around church.
What is it that motivates you?
One thing that compounds any pain is the feeling that one is alone, abandoned, that there is no one else who understands. This sense of isolation and being unseen, cut off, is the very essence of what it means to feel lonely. However, one of things that has helped me personally to get up off the floor of my deepest moments of loneliness is the reminder that I am not the only person who has felt alone.
As an only child, I grew up in a small village called Livingston, just outside Edinburgh, with my mum and dad. It wasn’t a Christian home or with any Christian family members. Religion or God was never spoken about unless in the form of blasphemy. Family life was very complicated growing up. My dad was an alcoholic, so he wasn't really around much. I remember the many times he would come home drunk and start shouting abuse, setting fire alarms off early in the morning, windows being smashed and the police coming regularly to our door.
We recognise within TFT that there is a range of opinion on how people describe their sexual feelings and why. In the following three opinion pieces, David, Russ and Christine each explain the language that they prefer, along with their reasoning. At TFT, we don’t have an official “line” on the best vocabulary to use to describe a prevailing pattern of sexual feelings towards those of the same-sex. Whatever terms you choose to adopt, we would encourage you to respect that others will have settled on alternative preferred language for themselves, often for good reasons.
"Pride" is a book that was recommended by my Crosslands tutor for helping to clarify both the meaning of ‘concupiscence’ and the current issues surrounding it. I’m studying on their seminary programme, children’s and youth ministry track. When it came time to write my essay on ‘The Image of God’, I realised this book that was sitting on my shelf might be quite helpful! "Pride" is a book all about identity and how this gets distorted. It’s about worship and idolatry, and how we can end up worshipping ourselves (hence the name "Pride") instead of God.
I recently had to leave a local church because the new pastor and I disagreed about same-sex attraction (SSA). That church was no longer helping me grow in the likeness of Christ or allowing me to follow God’s call on my life for His kingdom. It was a prayer-filled, yet painful process to decide I could no longer be part of that church. So how did I get to that point and how did the pastor’s perspective impact my spiritual health during that time?