What Jesus Thinks of the LGBTQ Community (Part 2)
What Does Jesus Want?
Earlier this week, I posted a reflection I did about a month and a half ago where Christ talked to me about His love for people in the LGBTQ community.
It was a something that sparked a fire within me, and I hope it made you consider some things as well.
One thing that I didn't touch too much on in Part One was what Jesus wants from those in the LGBTQ community. That's what I want to focus on today.
Jesus Desires Us
I know people within the LGBTQ community that have professed faith in Christ in one way or another, and I know some that hesitate to even say His name.
The relationship that each individual has with Christ in the LGBTQ is based off of personal experience, and that should be taken into account when we bring up this subject.
At the same time, what we do or whether we believe in Christ or not, makes no difference in His desire for a relationship with us.
Christ's Sacred Heart remains open to all of us, even those who willingly choose to reject Him.
The love poured forth from the Heart of God could not be contained by Him alone. It must overflow from its cup, it must be given as a gift. This gift can be accepted or rejected, and Christ knows that. Still, He comes to meet us in this life, giving us this gift, because His desire is for us.
The people that associate themselves with the LGBTQ community are still the beloved of Christ. He still loves them, He still desires them, and He won't ever stop desiring Him.
He cries out to them, in the midst of the broken promises of the LGBTQ ideology, in the darkness of the intense loneliness and shame that can accompany the souls trapped there, and He begs for them to come to Him, and to return His love. He does this for every single one of us, and who are we to deny Him of that?
Jesus Desires That We Desire Him
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, in his book The World's First Love, says that "every person carries within his heart a blueprint of the one he loves." As Christians, we know this to be Christ. We know that God, as Creator, fashioned us for Himself, to draw near to Him, and to be in relationship and in communion with Him.
When we veer off of that path in anyway, when we deny ourselves of that love, of what it is that we truly desire, vice begins to come in and corrupt our view of the beloved.
We become blind to what we love; we turn our backs to the beloved, and we settle for lesser loves.
It pains the Heart of our Lord to see us, any of us, walk away from Him. And it destroys us to walk away from the one that we love.
There's inexpressible pain within the LGBTQ community that no one wants to talk about, but everyone knows is there. No one was made to settle for a lesser love, and the consequences for doing just that are excruciatingly painful.
Yet God gave us the option to choose Him, or to walk away, because our Lord knows that love cannot be true if it isn't freely given. He desires that we choose to love Him, and never ceases to give us the opportunity to do so.
The first love and the one love of our souls is He who fashioned our souls for Himself. The life we have so graciously been given is meant to be the journey back to Him.
The goal is Heaven, and anything less is Hell.
My main point that I want to convey in these two blog posts is that Christ does not and cannot think any less of those that associate themselves with the LGBTQ community. They too are His beloved, and they should be treated as such.
Does this mean that we have to agree with their lifestyle and allow them to go down a path of destruction? Absolutely not! That is the exact opposite of what we should be doing!
But there's a way to evangelize. Their is a way to tell people about Christ's love for them. The main way that has helped me is being invited into relationship with others. People wanting my friendship, desiring that I grow in communion with them, people wanting to know me and to love me for all that I am and all that I've gone through.
That is the key: relationship.
When we meet people within this community, let's do well to remember that Christ had them in mind when He gave up His life on the Cross. Let us remind ourselves that they are our brothers and our sisters. Let us remember Christ's proclamation, "I thirst," that it was spoken for them too.
Jesus loves us. All of us.
Remembering that fact, leaves little room for us to judge anyone.