#1-Feb. 15, 2016

"I don't need that book!"

by Dave Jackson

When we first mentioned on Facebook that I was writing RISKING GRACE, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus, most people were very supportive and eager to see it. But a few were bewildered, similar to this comment: “I don’t need a book telling me to love because the Bible already tells me that, and I don’t need a book telling me that homosexuality is not a sin because the Bible tells me it is.”

My short response might be, “And, how’s that working out for you and the gay people you love?” or, “How is the kind of homosexuality the Bible condemns different from the kind of heterosexuality it calls sin?”

But that would be getting into the content of the book, which I hope will be out about May 30. We’ll be sure and let you know if you’ve signed up (click HERE) to receive our occasional newsletters about our books.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few posts about some significant spiritual growth God has been taking me through over the last few years to bring me to a place where I could risk a project like what the following back cover copy describes.

• As someone who helped write a book advocating reparative therapy for gay people back in 1987, it was with gut-wrenching love that Neta and I did not let our daughter go when she came out to us 16 years ago. We first prayed that God would change her, then that he would work out his purpose in her life, and finally, “Lord, what are you trying to teach us?” God answered with insights that led me to write RISKING GRACE, Loving Our Gay Family and Friends Like Jesus.
  
  
• It’s a father’s story about my agonizing personal journey to realize as an evangelical that we have lost our way when it comes to gay people by substituting a works/righteousness requirement for the clear Gospel message that salvation comes by grace through faith alone. I do offer alternative interpretations to the “prohibitive texts,” but the main foundation for my change of heart is the life and ministry of Jesus, how he embraced marginalized people, and the way the early church dealt with difficult issues.
  
  
• My target audience is evangelical family and friends of gay people, which encompasses many of us, and we all need help in learning to love like Jesus. I write with transparent vulnerability as I wrestle with all the questions and presuppositions of the average straight dad (or mom) . . . who loves his daughter and his church but discovers that we have been driving gay people away from Jesus.

Watch for more #RiskingGrace posts in the weeks to come to see how God set about “Rehabbing My Faith” and deepening my relationship with Jesus—not so much content from the upcoming book as how God prepared me for writing it and how he deepened my relationship with him during the process.
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Next installment: What brought me so low I despaired of life itself.