Undivided

by Vicky Beeching

  Evangelical theology didn’t have much room for anger or grief; it mainly promoted forgiveness and gratitude and being gentle and gracious to everyone. Anger was an unattractive emotion in those circles. I found solace in the Psalms where David shouted at God and railed against injustice.

  “It’s okay to be angry,” my therapist, Chris, would say. “It’s a healthy emotion, signaling that you’ve been in situations that are not safe or good. You’ve been through so much, and you’re still not out the other side. It’s no wonder you feel grief and anger about what you’ve been through and what you are still facing.” It took a lot of therapy sessions to begin to unpack all of this mess.

  I knew things needed to change in my life, so I told Christopher that, as soon as I felt stronger, I wanted to revisit what the Bible actually said about same-sex relationships. He agreed that it sounded like a good plan.

  “All this shame and fear about being gay has knocked the life out of you completely,” he said. “Only you know what’s right for you, but I think doing that Bible reading and research sounds like a very good idea. You can’t keep running away from this issue. It’s crushed you to the ground.”

  It had, indeed, crushed me, and it took time for me to begin to heal. After six months of therapy, I slowly began to regain my strength. It had been a bleak experience, both the nervous breakdown and the chemo drugs. I still hadn’t told anyone besides Chris that I was gay. Therapy had helped, and I was determined to finally face my fears. I would revisit the Bible’s teachings on sexuality, and I would figure out, once and for all, what to do about the issue that had led to my breakdown and my autoimmune disease.

  Everyone was awaiting my return to Nashville, full-time Christian music, and my touring career. My health was improving, but I knew I couldn’t go back to life as usual. I had a list of megachurches keen to book me in the US and Canada. I’d also been offered the chance to sing at a few UK worship events later that year, and I said yes to a few local British ones, hoping I could stall a return to America. Something had to change, and everything was hanging in the balance.

  The Brompton Oratory, built in the 1880s, stands majestically in South Kensington, next to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. It is London’s second-largest Catholic church; only Westminster Cathedral is bigger. I’d visited the oratory a handful of times before, as it stands next door to one of the UK’s most popular evangelical churches, Holy Trinity Brompton.

  I remember the first time I walked inside on a dark wintery evening years earlier: the architecture took my breath away. Vaulted ceilings drew my eyes upward. The roof was decorated with mosaics and frescos, all embellished with gold. Black marble pillars stood underneath stone arches. It was an inspiring and yet also immensely calming place. Barely lit, with only a few candles illuminating the shadowy walls, it felt like stepping into another world.

  When I’d considered a good place to go and read theology books about faith and sexuality, the Brompton Oratory instantly came to mind. I didn’t want a library; I wanted a place of prayer and worship as my venue. At the oratory, prayers had soaked into the stones for decades. The building was always open, and there was rarely anyone in there between the lunchtime Mass and the evening service. It seemed ideal.

  I arrived for my first afternoon of reading with a backpack of books. It felt good to be out in London and around other people after so much time at home during my breakdown. A couple of hours passed quickly as I pored over books and took notes. Heavy, sonorous bells chimed, and the whole building echoed. Hearing them, I paused and prayed. Faith was still the heartbeat of my life; God was still the center of everything—as he had been since I was four, when I walked around the schoolyard telling him about my thoughts and feelings.

  Day after day, I returned to the oratory to read. A jumble of emotions surfaced as I studied and took notes: fear of what I’d do if I concluded God did not approve of gay relationships, and also fear of what I’d do if I concluded that he did. Both pathways sounded immensely challenging in different ways. At the end of each day of studying, I attended evening Mass, then sat in quiet for half an hour of silent prayer. I invited God to speak in the quiet, to direct my conscience, to help me understand what I’d been reading, and to guide me toward the right conclusion, whatever it might be. Therapy had shown me that I was hurt and angry, but, despite that, I was still totally committed to my faith. Thankfully, I felt able to process these theological questions with God, not without him, asking for answers and listening for his voice.

  A month had passed, and I’d made my way through a pile of books. There were six or seven Bible passages thought to relate to same-sex relationships, and I’d looked at what scholars had to say about each as well as studying the wider themes in scripture of creation and marriage. I’d also dusted off my Oxford notes about the desert fathers and the Christian mystics from my studies with Sister Benedicta and Bishop Kallistos. I’d revisited the topics of slavery and of women’s equality too, as they were a relevant reminder that the church’s official views had been seriously wrong before.

  I reread all the books I’d nervously skimmed through at Oxford, when I’d hidden myself in the library’s Sexual Ethics aisle. They seemed far more balanced and God-centered than I’d remembered. The authors weren’t the sly, cunning liberals I’d formerly considered them—leading people down a slippery slope. Instead, they had a deep love of the Bible and a vast understanding of the historical cultures in which the texts had been written. My studies in the oratory were bringing some clarity; it felt as though my eyes were being opened.

  Eventually, I neared the end of the couple of months I’d put aside to think about these issues. On the last day I planned to spend at the oratory, I decided to keep it simple. All I packed was one book—my Bible. It was the one I’d been given by my parents on my sixteenth birthday, and I’d used it daily ever since. It was marked with coffee, fingerprints, and a few teenage stickers and had countless notes scribbled in the margins. It had been with me for over fifteen years and felt like a familiar friend.

  I didn’t really know what I should read that day. I’d done exhaustive study on all the passages in the Old and New Testaments thought to relate to same-sex relationships. So today I was open to whatever would unfold, hoping for a sense of God’s leading. I flicked through the Bible and stopped at the New Testament book of Acts. It struck me that in the early days of the church, Christians were dealing with lots of complex questions about who could belong. So it seemed a good section of the Bible to look at again today.*

  I leafed through the pages of Acts, waiting for something to catch my eye. Suddenly, the silence was broken by the sound of the organist beginning his practice for the evening service. Chords filled the cavernous ceiling space and reverberated off the stone walls. Young voices joined in as the oratory boys choir began rehearsing the evening’s hymns. As the organ played and the voices soared, something in the pages of the book of Acts jumped out at me.

  The tenth chapter of Acts wasn’t a part of the New Testament I’d especially connected with in the past, but reading it that day, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I sensed I’d found the right passage for my final afternoon of study. The words jumped off the page, as though they’d been written just for me. My months of study had been rigorously academic. When I studied, I was naturally led by my mind, not by emotions, so this was far from my typical approach to Bible reading. It was an experience I couldn’t ignore, though; it felt like an answered prayer, as it was so out of character for me. Something significant seemed to be happening, and I wanted to fully take it all in.

  Acts 10 describes how St. Peter wanted a quiet place to pray. Houses in his culture often had flat rooftops, so he went onto the roof and started his devotions. Acts says that this happened in the middle of the day, around noon. Suddenly Peter had a vision. He saw a huge white sheet being lowered down from heaven. On the sheet were “all kinds of four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds.” As he looked at this bizar
re sight, he heard a voice saying, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat” (10:12–13).

  Peter was shocked, because the animals and birds on the sheet were ones prohibited by Jewish law—they were unclean food. Peter prided himself on keeping that law fastidiously, so he replied, “Surely not, Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.” The voice came back with an authoritative reply: “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean” (10:14–15, NIV).

  This conversation happened three times. Each time Peter heard: “Get up, Peter; kill and eat” (or paraphrased: “It’s okay, Peter; this food is clean and permitted”). Each time he was indignant, saying it would be wrong because it was against Jewish law. Each time the voice replied, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”

  If you’re not familiar with this story, you may be wondering what on earth it’s all about. Why would visions of animals on a giant sheet be in the pages of the Bible? Its meaning was highly important. So important, in fact, that it changed the trajectory of the Christian faith forever. The meaning of the story was this: God was announcing that the Gentiles (non-Jews) were now welcome into his kingdom; they could become followers of Jesus too.

  Previously, Jewish followers of Jesus believed only Jews were God’s chosen people and Gentiles were outsiders. To challenge this was unthinkable for Jewish Christians. Nowadays, most Christians are non-Jews. It’s easy to forget how shocking and radical this idea sounded to Peter and the rest of the early church. It was so unexpected that they could hardly take it in.

  Right after the vision, three people arrived at the house where Peter was praying. They’d been sent by a Gentile, a military commander named Cornelius, who was hoping Peter would visit him and explain how he could follow the teachings of Jesus. In that era, Jewish law considered it shameful for Jews to enter the homes of non-Jews. If they did so, they became ritually unclean. Peter was nervous—surely going to Cornelius’s house was not okay. But the voice from the vision told him, “Go with them without hesitation; for I have sent them” (10:20). God was showing him that Gentiles were clean, despite what Jewish law said. He was being asked to follow heaven’s inclusive agenda.

  Obediently, Peter went to the home of the Gentile centurion, Cornelius, and preached the gospel there, saying, “I understand now that God is not one to show partiality [as though Gentiles were excluded from God’s blessing], but in every nation the person who fears God and does what is right [by seeking Him] is acceptable and welcomed by him” (10:34–35, AMP).

  As Peter preached, Acts says, “the Holy Spirit fell upon all [the Gentiles] who heard the word” (10:44). This same baptism—experienced by the Jewish disciples earlier in the book of Acts at Pentecost—was not something they ever imagined God could give to non-Jews. Shock waves went through the crowd: “The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God” (10:45–46). How could God extend his welcome and the gift of his Spirit to these outsiders, people they’d been raised to see as unholy?

  But Peter took charge, inspired by the powerful vision of the white sheet, and said, “Surely no one can stand in the way of their being baptized with water. They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have.” Then he said the Gentiles present could be baptized in the name of Christ (10:47–48, NIV).

  It seems so normal now—of course non-Jews can be Christians. But back then it was jaw-dropping. God had done the unthinkable. Many Jewish Christians were offended to their core. “We’ve always done it this way,” they said. But God had opened a new door.

  As I read all of this, sitting in the Brompton Oratory, the chords of the organ music continued to rise and fall, rebounding from every inch of the ancient stone walls. The floor seemed to shake with the lowest notes. It was as if the entire building were singing its own song.

  The tenth chapter of Acts had really stirred me. Yes, it related to Gentiles being welcomed as Christians all those centuries ago. But the story felt as though it had wider relevance too, that it was about other “outsiders” hearing God’s voice saying they were welcome, saying that they were “clean.”

  As I read about Peter’s vision, I felt as though I were there myself, looking at the sheet falling from the sky. For me, the “unclean things” on that sheet represented my gay orientation. And, like Peter, I was arguing with God, saying, “Lord, I’ve never so much as touched a person of the same sex romantically. I’ve kept your law and commandments. I would never disobey your word.”

  And what God had said to Peter, I felt he said to me too: “Do not call unclean what I have made clean.”

  The main thing stopping Peter from taking in the news was his spiritual pride. “I’ve kept your laws perfectly!” was his instant, knee-jerk reaction. I realized my pride had also made me unable to hear this message before. I believed I was honoring God by shelving my gay orientation—by rejecting what I believed to be unclean—despite having known about it since I was thirteen. It was hard for me to accept a new perspective. I was offended at the idea of losing the badge of righteousness I had earned by holding to traditional Christian views.

  But only one voice ultimately matters in time and eternity—God’s voice. Peter realized that, and as I sat reflecting on it all, it felt as though it was sinking in for me as well.

  God was letting me in on a new perspective, one of radical acceptance and inclusion. “Do not call unclean what I have made clean” echoed around my head and heart. The person I’d always been—a gay person—was not something to be ashamed of. God accepted me and loved me, and my orientation was part of his grand design.

  There was nothing unclean about it, and nothing to run away from. Just as the Gentiles could fully join God’s family, now LGBTQ+ people could too. They were on an equal footing with straight people, so there was no reason why they couldn’t love and be loved, marry and raise families, and enjoy full membership in church and society. If there was nothing unclean about gay relationships, there was nothing to condemn. God had spoken.

  I closed the Bible and sat in silence for a long time. It was a lot to process. All the material I’d read over the previous two months was finally settling into a coherent whole. Acts 10 had brought it all together for me.

  It was now early evening, and people were arriving at the oratory for the final Mass of the day. I put my Bible into my bag and stepped out into the crisp air to walk to the Tube station. The sun was low in the sky as the day neared its end, but for me it felt as though dawn was finally breaking.

  21

  The French-born novelist Anaïs Nin once said: “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” That quote kept coming back to me as I tried to process my weeks of study and the way the tenth chapter of the book of Acts had impacted me so significantly.

  I was realizing more than ever that we all see the world through our own lens, shaped by our background, culture, and values. Because of this, it’s very difficult to see anything objectively. Our bias can keep us from adopting alternative viewpoints, even if we consider ourselves to be open to different ideas.

  This seemed particularly relevant to the way we read the Bible. When people argue that “the Bible clearly says . . . ,” it is primarily an individual interpretation based on their own values and life experience. It seemed to me that a huge dose of humility was needed in all discussions of theology; everyone had to be open to the possibility they needed to see things from a different angle.

  Yesterday, studying Acts 10 had been such a powerful experience. Today, I decided I would read more of Acts and see how the story progressed in the chapters that followed. I felt there was more for me to learn from Peter’s vision of the white sheet and the message for the Gentiles and deeper layers of meaning that related to LGBTQ+ people and the church.

  Where should I go to do that? I’d been to the oratory so much; perhaps a different venue might be called for. Over breakfast
, I thought, If I had to sum up the last eight weeks in one word, it would be “perspective.” I’d seen firsthand that a change in understanding could lead to a total change of view. Going somewhere to read where I can also physically do something related to “perspective” would be fun, I decided, trying to figure out where that might be.

  After another mug of Earl Grey tea, I decided St. Paul’s Cathedral would be a great choice; it had a staircase that led all the way to the top of the dome, where you could look out across the entire city. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the wisest thing for anyone to do after a drug treatment and a nervous breakdown; my body was still fairly fragile. But it seemed a good way to explore the idea of “perspective,” and I wanted to mark my new paradigm—the tangible, visual memory it would give me would be worth braving the hundreds of steps.

  Arriving at St. Paul’s, I walked through a crowd of pigeons as they pecked around at crumbs on the pavement. They scattered, taking to the air as I stepped past. The steps of the cathedral rose in front of me, flanked by giant pillars and heavy wooden doors. Inside, I walked past a statue of two angels—they stood at least seven feet tall—both carrying swords. Tourists lined the aisles as they too stared around at this masterpiece of a building. I made my way to the back of the sanctuary and turned toward a small doorway, the way up to the highest tower. A mind-spinning, narrow staircase led upward and upward, 528 steps and almost 365 feet in height.

  Everything was worth it the moment I ended the climb and stepped out into daylight. When I walked out onto the balcony, London was laid out below in a stunning panorama: Parliament and Big Ben, the Shard tower, the London Eye, the River Thames. It was glorious in the morning light. This gorgeous view and the theme of “perspective” injected energy into me for my reading that day, and I descended the hundreds of stairs, found a quiet pew, and opened my Bible to the book of Acts.