Brother Tim was raised as a Christian and clearly has taken his walk with Christ seriously. As he put it, Christ was the ultimate example of empathy. Empathy means that you can feel the pain and suffering of others. It moves you to act in ways that show the love of God for others.
The trouble is that many Christians are taught not to love others as Christ taught. That is particularly true when it comes to the issue of homosexuality. Growing up in Tennessee, Tim was not only taught that homosexuality was a sin but that it was an abomination, the ultimate sin.
"You learned to be very afraid of God," said Kurek. According to the preachings of his church, "The loving thing to do is to tell my friend who is gay, 'Hey, listen, you are an abomination and you need to repent to go to heaven.' I absolutely believed in that lock, stock and barrel."Christians are being taught to hate. It is dressed up as loving the sinner and hating the sin, but it replaces God's love and grace with hatred. We are all sinners. We have all fallen short of the perfection that Jesus proved was possible. However, instead of loving others and leaving judgment to God, there has been a deliberate attempt to create outcasts from the children of God. We are taught to hate homosexuals. We are taught to hate people of other religions, especially Muslims. We are taught to hate atheists. We are even taught to hate people based on political ideation.
As Christians, we know John 3:16 by heart. It says that God so loved the world (all of humanity). Too many of us seem to think that it says that God so loved me and those that think, act, and believe like me. Well, God is much freer with his love than that. All are loved and encouraged to open their hearts to God.
Kurek's eyes started to open when a woman he was friends with confided in him that she was a lesbian and how terribly she had been treated by family and friends. His first reaction was to treat her as badly as the others in her life had done. The Holy Spirit kept pushing him to think and feel the empathy that Jesus practiced and taught.
He decided to do something extraordinary. He decided to live as a gay man for year and see life through the eyes of his friend. Only a handful of people knew the truth. It was a remarkable journey.
But one day, sitting in a café in a part of Nashville where the gay bars and Christian hang-outs intersect, Kurek had his first confrontation. While reading a gay-themed book, he became aware of the "snickers and sneers."
"A guy came up to me when he saw the cover and said, 'You know that is fundamentally false -- you can't be gay and Christian,'" said Kurek, who responded, "I am gay and I love God."Tim's friends stopped calling. His mother wrote in her journal that she would rather have cancer than a gay son. Their reaction shows how people of faith are being trained to be unloving towards others, even those that they have known and loved for many years.
When the year was up, Tim told his family and friends about his little experiment. For many, including his mother, it was eye-opening. The experience had changed him and all those around him. Their appreciation of the empathy of Christ had grown by leaps and bounds. It was a mustard seed of love that grew large and powerful.
Kurek says his book stays away from theology. That is not true. Theology is our understanding of God. His book says a great deal about God, particularly the love and grace freely given to all of us. It is a theology that is deep and true.
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