Gay Girl, Good God
Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was and Who God Has Always Been
By: Jackie Hill Perry
“I refused to give in to the convenient misery of being ambiguous about the truth.”
Whew. So much I could say about this book. I guess, first of all: if you are interested in the theological side of homosexuality, this is not the book for that- I would read Kevin DeYoung’s book “What Does the Bible Really Teach About Homosexuality.” If you want to see how God can reach you even when you aren’t looking for him, read this. If you want to know why you love Jesus but still struggle with sinful desires and temptations, read this. If you don’t know who you are and what the world is telling you doesn’t seem satisfying, read this.
The primary conversation around the topic of homosexuality is identity. And the world tells you that your sexuality is a huge piece of that. You are your sexuality. But what if that isn’t true? What if you can live a completely fulfilled and God-glorifying life without having sex? Didn’t Jesus do that?
Paul says in 2 Timothy 4 “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions and will turn away from listening to the truth.” This isn’t talking about just homosexuality as if that is worse than any other sin- No, it is talking about ALL of our sinful desires. The things we deem ‘good’ because they feel good. But ‘good’ and ‘right’ must be defined by the Creator, not the created.
This book is the poetic story of Jackie Hill Perry’s journey- her real-life struggle with homosexuality and how she found her true identity- like we all must do.
She says, “Being born human meant that I have the capacity for affection and logic. Begin born sinful meant both were inherently broken. The unnamed attraction I felt at an elemental level only highlighted how greedy sin can be. Desires exist because God gave them to us. But homosexual desires exist because sin does. Loving him, as we were created to do, involves both the will and the affections, but sin steals this love God placed in us for himself and tells it to go elsewhere. Same-sex desires are actual. Though born of sin, they aren’t an imaginary feeling… But the actuality of the affection doesn’t make them morally justifiable. It is the mind, when conformed to the image of sin, that moves us to call evil good simply because it feels good to us.”
It was helpful for me, as a Christian who does not experience this struggle, to understand the reality of same-sex attraction. As Jackie points out, the trend in most churches is to tell those struggling with same-sex attraction that if they just come to Jesus, they will magically become straight. If we want to show love to those who experience any kind of sinful desires and temptations (i.e. all of us) then we need to be truthful about what it looks like to follow Jesus. Becoming a Christian does not mean all of those feelings and thoughts go away- they won’t. God does have the power to remove them, and may choose to do so, but the reality is that we have to die to ourselves and our passions daily and seek the Lord. Churches also put a wrongful emphasis on marriage as if that, too, is how to live the most fulfilling life. And that is just not true.
She says, “Christ has simply come to make us right with God. And in making us right with God, he is satisfying us in God. Our sexuality is not our soul, marriage is not heaven, and singleness is not hell… Jesus has come so that all sinners, same-sex-attracted and opposite-sex-attracted, can be forgiven of their sins to love God and enjoy Him forever.”
And that is why she wrote this beautiful book. Because whatever our sin is- we are not defined by it.
“The same Bible that condemned me held in it the promises that could save me. I just had to believe it… Jesus had the guilty in mind when He was hung high and stretched wide. On it, He stood in my place, for my sin… Didn’t He know that that wrath was mine?... His love is what He wanted me to remember… a good God had come to my rescue.”
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