As my father has reconciled his love for God and for his gay son. A jump in the dark

Article by Timothy White* Published on the De websiteThe New York Times(USA) on February 5, 2025, freely translated by Luigi and Valeria deLa Tenda di Gionata. Third and last part.

Read thebefore and the second part

From my father's diary. February 6, 2016. Timothy is sixteen.

This week some members of the Congregation sent an e-mail to me and Jason [then co-bearer of the Church] saying that they would leave the City Church. Jason said it made it sad. For me, well, it made me angry even more. I suppose that it is because anger covers sadness - you feel so helpless when you are sad, so I prefer anger. But a part of me is happy that these particular members are leaving: they moved away from me since I told them that Timothy was gay. I asked them if they could share the reasons why they had moved away from the City Church; They replied saying that they had not moved away. Then I received an e-mail that said they were leaving, without even having the dignity to tell me in the face.

Father, they must feel very frightened and perhaps betrayed to act in this way. Without a doubt they feel injured by me. Father, I feel I can't reconcile with them. I feel unable to make any change in what seems like a monolithic evangelist fundamentalism - And I feel like I had been overwhelmed. It is something much bigger than the removal of these members. Father, have mercy on me. Father, forgive them. Exhale my heart with love, creates a greater ability to endure and expand my understanding of your grace for me and for others. And please to have the opportunity to reconcile me with them.

Part of this itinerary of theological reflection has to do with the emotional situation of this week: I feel alone. Some other members of the Church sent me a message on Monday morning (after I had contacted them for the third time) saying that they did not want to meet me - that they were simply leaving and that they would not have talked to me face to face.

March 12, 2016

This week they asked me three times at what point I am with the LGBT+issue. The problem is that people know that they are the shepherd and that even if I am only a "participant" in the study group, they know that my opinion is much more relevant - so they want to know how I see things. Here's what I said.

I believe that sexual attraction can change and that God is involved in this change. I believe that a healthy Christian pastoral accompaniment can play and play a role in modifying orientation. I am currently working with at least one person in the path of change of his attraction for women in attraction for men, because I am convinced that this is the project of God in his life, and I want to be part of it.

I believe that God calls people to chastity. I believe in a disciple who is demanding. I believe that our sexual orientation is not our main identity, but that our main identity is determined by what God says that we are and what he calls us to be. They are in contact with a number of homosexual people who are undertaking the path of chastity and I am firmly convinced that they encourage their commitment to stay Casti, including a single gay man and a gay man married to a woman.

In the Bible I read that God gives Israel a king, even if the Israelites wanted him in open contrast to the will of God, and then God blesses the king, inspires Psalms in honor of the king and establishes with Davide an alliance that will always guarantee an heir on the throne. God adapted to situations that were not part of his original plan and also blessed people in non -perfect living conditions.

I cannot forget how radically Jesus was inclusive towards all people and how much he generously extended the welcome in the kingdom of God. He offers a recognition and constantly blessed foreigners, minorities and those who are on the margins. He has extended to everyone unconditional love and said that all the teachings of the Scriptures find their fulfillment in love.

It was heavy for me to read this passage of the diary. Thinking about my father who drove himself with ideas on chastity and the possibility that a Christian pastoral accompaniment could change the sexual orientation - these ideas echo the foundations of conversion therapies.

This paragraph, however, clarifies how much my father he was going through the difficult path of really understanding what he believed, not only to press a theological switch. He also reflects that, even while trying to elaborate his theological vision, with true anguish, he remained engaged in the pastoral care of his congregation, which included people with different experiences of sexuality and faith.

Although the annotation does not describe the arrival point of my father's theological reflection, it shows how it came to us: accompanying people on their personal path, as he did his own. Even if this song is heavy for me to read now, the last point shows perfectly how the basis of my father's faith has remained stable: Jesus in the center, which extends unconditional love to everyone and teaches that all the precepts of the scriptures find their fulfillment in love.

From my father's diary

March 16, 2016

I met another member of the community that will go away tomorrow to bless him. Ouch. I am worried about some others, which I imagine will be the next to leave the City Church. The LGBT+ issue was really terrible for people, and some are going to talk about it.

Father, I'm sad. I am giving my heart to this LGBT+path, it has already been very painful and we have not even started. All these people "out" are "so proud" of me, but here we are undergoing a blow after another.

10 August 2016

In July we had recorded the lowest Sunday turn of the last two years, with an average of one hundred and twenty -two people every Sunday. [In that month Jason left the community because his family had decided to move to Iowa; Some who left the congregation at that time did it because of Jason's departure].

August 21, 2016

Today we accompanied Timothy to Los Angeles airport [for his first year of college]. Many tears. Especially when, in the final embrace, I asked: "Who are you?". "Son of honor" has always been the same answer, since he started talking.

August 29, 2016

The Sunday participation of the community fell less than a hundred people yesterday. Father, I don't know what to do.

June 30, 2017

And, as if someone wanted to shout me in the ear to make sure that I don't escape the point, just today I received a ticket of two phrases that said: "Bill - is with deep displeasure and pain that I tell you that we are no longer friends! Please remove me from the list of people you pray and from any future e-mail ». It was a punch in the stomach.

7 September 2017

A person of the congregation pointed out to me that I could not be both the shepherd of the LGBT+ community and the City Church parish.

28 October 2017

Last Sunday we had fifty adults present at the function, which was nothing short of discouraging for me.

This week I was also stronged by a member who believed that I had not had enough courage in managing the LGBT+issue. [Bill included an aggressive message in the diary that defined his attempt to compromise another type of exclusion and an insult to the LGBT+ members of the Church, attributing Bill's approach to his identity like that typical of a heterosexual white male].

At this point, more than a year and a half had passed since what seemed an infinite sequence of people who left the City Church And they questioned my father's leadership. Some of those who went away were people that my father had known for years, people who had looked after me when I was little, who sat next to me in the church, with whose children I had grown up.

The following year in the 2016 elections was a period of contrasts in many churches; As if that were not enough, a river of people left because they did not agree and a study group was standing that resolved on one of the most controversial issues of contemporary Christianity - and all this was downloaded on my father's shoulders. He has always had an energy and optimism without limits, but when at that time he spoke of the City Church, I could feel doubt and fatigue insinuating himself into him.

When I read these pages of diary on sudden and painful departures and on the decrease in presences, I imagine it to think: the Church - and my job as a shepherd - will make it to overcome all this? What is a reasoned and solid process of defining a theological position for if there is no community in the end?

It is afraid to realize that he has grown or changed and not to return to his life as before; We are faced with the choice to remain anchored to the past, feeling insincere and out of place, or to speak with those around us honesty and risk losing their community. Talking about how we changed means really changing, leaping in the void and losing forever the stable base you had.

At the end of 2017, when the study group began to draw his conclusions, my father, with the approval of the group, began to lead our Church towards inclusion. Has even taken a position within the largest organization that governs our Church - the Classis - As you will see in this letter, which he included in his diary.

What I see in this letter is a person who, after a long journey, has now understood with certainty what his priorities are: he wants to offer a house to people who want to know Jesus. This is everything; The rest for him does not count.

From my father's diary

November 18, 2017 - Meeting of the Executive Committee of Classis

Long Beach's City Church has crossed many changes in recent times, and we are coming out with a clear sense of our goals and an energy that I am convinced from the heart of God - and we need your permit to go on.

Due to the path carried out by our LGBT+study group, now we are half of those we were eighteen months ago. The people who are coming are residents of our community and are of progressive orientation. They want to be part of a church that focuses on Jesus and that welcomes all types of people, including LGBT+people.

Our most convinced conservatives have all left in other local congregations and, even if there are still a good number of moderate conservatives in the community, they are all convincing that God is opening up the doors to serve those who are in our community, not those who have gone.

Conservatives have many places to go: none of the people who left our Church has remained without church. But if we ceased to exist, the seventies that remained would not have a place to go.

The neo-Revendenda Brenna Rubio and I have worked on a strategic planning program, clarifying our vision of being a welcoming community in a radical way, on the way to Jesus, joining him in the renewal of all things. And people are coming.

The problem is this: non -Christians ask for our position with regard to the LGBT+ issue before even crossing the threshold, as a litmus test to decide if they come or not. We can discuss whether this is right or not, but we cannot discuss whether it is reality. It is simple: they will only come to a religious community that really welcomes LGBT+ people and not in a church that does what they call "fake" reception in what they call "second class belonging".

In the last week I had conversations with half a dozen adults on this topic - some homosexuals, most of the heterosexual; Some Christians, most of them do not; And they asked me: "Is this church really what you say it is? Is it truly welcoming at all levels of the hierarchy or discriminating based on sexual orientation? Celebrate weddings of homo -affective couples? ". These are the critical questions that non -Christians ask themselves to decide if this is a place where they can take their spiritual path.

On Sunday a woman told me that she and her Jewish husband had just abandoned the church they frequented from time to time because she did not really welcome homosexual people, and that the choice was among us or the universalist unitarian church: what should I respond? «Of course, go to that church that teaches nothing about Jesus while our congregation tries to understand how things are".

Allow me to say it very clearly: I don't think the Long Beach City Church will be here in a year if we do not realize the mission that God has called us. If we reject the people he is sending us, our Sunday service will be frequented by an ever less number of people and in the end he will die. Furthermore, if we cannot live what we believe in, our souls will also impoverish and die. We will close our doors and close our hearts.

I don't want to explode the classis. And I no longer want to fight with anyone on these things. I just want to follow Jesus and make others know the splendid news that he bears through the Gospel, the family that bears his name and the mission to which he calls them in this world.

All I ask is that the Long Beach City Church does not oppose the path of non -Christian who seek God. I am willing to do everything that you tell me to do, except to put obstacles on the path of those who wish to want the salvation that we have received with such generosity in Christ.

Please give me indications on how to proceed. Only in Christ, Bill

January 28, 2018

As I happened for the completion of the fifty years, the last years of discussion on LGBT+ issues surprised me for the gift that have been for me. I feel much less frightened, less anxious.

When Timothy came out, I was full of insecurities and questions, doubts and fears. But now I am in a different situation. What has changed for me is that, entering the deep waters of difficult discussions within the Church, I was forced to undertake an inner journey to face the questions about what I believe, on what I consider right or wrong.

What is my faith based on? What will happen to me if they move away from the tradition of the Church? Will I love those who God called me to love - and if this includes people with whom I disagree?

It is as if God wanted to grow up through this process! Of course, questions about how to welcome LGBT+ people in the church are very important. However, by reflecting on the last few years, I realize what I have been attempted to leave out: that the main work of God was his work within me for me.

We try to remove the discomfort, to think about the abstract issues, to pretend not to be involved, to avoid having to do uncomfortable work to change. Yet God is always looking for our heart, without ever getting tired.

I started this journey without wanting to, but as it starts to the conclusion I find myself full of gratitude. I am grateful to God for having loved me along the way, for changing me along the way. And even if it is not easy, I am grateful for the call to become welcoming in a radical way - not only towards those with whom I agree, but also towards those with whom I disagree.

11 January 2019 – A year later

I include this text. [Bill copied a series of messages from a friend to his diary who said he was "forever grateful" for the support of Bill, but continued with "friend, you are taking your son and your church off the road" and called Bill "lost"].

January 13, 2019

The conference of the Q Christian Fellowship [An event for LGBT+Christians] It was a good conference. There is a feeling of freshness and encouragement in being surrounded by queer people. They spent so much time on the margins - there is much more room for Jesus.

Some things were a bit far from my vision: there was room for polyamore, with whom I don't feel comfortable, and some themes of sexual ethics seemed a little too free. But Jesus is still welcomed in such an explicit way.

In 2013 my father had written that he hated homosexuality "more than anything else in the world". I am happy, in the end, that he loved me so much that he is willing to review this belief.

When I read for the first time the letter of my father to my future wife, all his love and expectations for who I would have become jumped out of a time capsule and struck me deeply. I warned all the weight of his love, which overwhelmed me before I even born.

I also felt the clear vision that he had of how my life would have been, as he wanted so deeply that I had a profound relationship similar to that of Christ in the only way he believed possible: with a woman.

Yet, to be a letter written to the future wife of a child not yet born, it was not even particularly genderized. There were no submission expectations that so often evangelical culture projects to women. What struck me, while I read, is that this letter was structured as a letter to my future wife, but in reality it was a reflection on the care of relationships, both among people and with God. This, I believe, is the profound reason why my father was able to do what he did.

When I started reading his diaries, I already knew how much the life, opinions and work of my father had changed in the last twenty years. But I also struck me what was constant: his commitment to Jesus and his love for me, even when he did not know where he would conduct him from a theological or professional point of view.

At the beginning, he feared that my homosexual being not only would meant not having a daughter -in -law, as he had imagined before my birth, but also losing much of what he himself believed he was. In a sense, it was like this: he has a different job, many people have left our congregation and his understanding of the scriptures has changed profoundly. But he did not lose his God, nor his Son, as he once had feared he could happen.

Feeling that the foundations of one's theology are changing may seem abstract, but it is almost impossible to underestimate the terror that this entails for those who have done their lives of this. It would be much easier to get away from the type of questions that my father found himself having to face.

On the contrary, he faced that terror and faced the inner suffering that derived from realizing that the world had not gone as it should have had, as it had been told that it would go, as had been imagined. He evaluated what really counted for him deeply. And then he redefined his beliefs, his behaviors and his work on the basis of this - among other things, he recently founded a non -profit association dedicated to helping other shepherds and asked to reflect on their issues related to the inclusion of homosexual people and transgender.

My father recently described all this as a "reborn again and again". His is undoubtedly an itinerary of faith. But I don't think the qualities that have allowed this renewal are exclusive to the life of faith.

We live in dogmatic times; Each of us can learn what it means to pass through what can be defined as the process of revaluation of one's moral foundations - to do so, with the type of radical honesty of my father, means emerging on the other side with a stronger perception of who you are and what is really important.

From my father's diary

January 26, 2019 - Four years after Timothy's coming out

While Katy prayed last night, he thanked you for the extraordinary gift of Timothy's coming out - and for how we thought it was the end, but it was only the beginning of a full, true and vibrant life in Christ. Father, thank you for creating our homosexual son. Forgive me for how I accepted this gift badly.

*Timothy White works in the field of political communication. While he was at college, he was president of a student organization for Christians LGBTQ+. Attend theCity Church by Long Beachin California.

** Bill White has been a shepherd for twenty-five years and co-bearer of the City Church Long Beach for 12 years. Has co-founded and directs the organizationSmall church big table, which helps religious leaders who are thinking about LGBTQ+questions.

Original text:How My Dad Reconciled His God and his gay are