God loves me as a gay man
By Raymond Alikpala, GMANews
July 30, 2012

Recently, I received a long text message that hijacked my whole day and left me shaken and unable to do anything. It was from an old college classmate, one of my best friends. He had just finished reading my book, “Of God and Men.” We lost touch over the years, and he expressed surprise when he learned that I had come out of the closet. It turned out that he was hiding under a rock, in a manner of speaking, and he was not on Facebook either, so what was big news for our Ateneo College Batch 1988 had never reached him, until this past weekend.

In his text message, he admired my writing and praised my sincerity, but added, “You are sincerely wrong.” He said that my views on God were inconsistent with the Bible. He chastised me, pointing out that I should not say who God was based on my personal views, but that I should know God through His revealed Word in the Bible. He cited the usual passages—Romans 1:24-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, Galatians 5:19-26—to prove that God abhors homosexuality. The God that I talk about in my book, he said, does not resemble in any way the God that St. Paul speaks of in his Epistles.

I have read those passages before, but the loving concern of an old friend had me picking up the Bible and reading them again. And once more, I felt hurt, because here again, it seemed, that the Bible was clearly condemning all “practicing” homosexuals to eternal damnation. I could hear my friend pleading, in tears, please, Bong, please save yourself, repent and change your ways.

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