Adam Hamilton's Middle Way

What everyone longs for is certainty. What's interesting is that God doesn't give us certainty. He gives us mystery. He doesn't require proof; he requires faith. On homosexuality, at first, I saw things in really black-and-white terms. Scripture offers a handful of pretty clear indicators that homosexuality is not what God intended. Everybody who was gay was choosing to be gay -- and it was no different from any other choice that people make to sin. And yet, the more stories I listened to, the more complex this issue seemed. What I finally figured out is that I don't have it figured out. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13 that we see through a glass darkly, but three things remain: faith, hope and love. So, I told my congregation, I am going to invite you, whether you are gay or straight, to do what God wants to do in your life. I preached on this just before the last General Conference, and over the next year there were probably 800 people who left our church. We had another 1,000 people who joined. They said things like, "I'm not gay but my kids are." I consider myself orthodox, yet we have to find a way to see the gray here. I mean, good grief, are we going to divide over this issue? -- The Rev. Adam Hamilton, founder of the 14,000-member UMC of the Resurrection, Leawood, Kansas, on his new book Seeing Gray in a World of Black and White (Abington Press, March 2008), quoted in the United Methodist Reporter, March 28, 2008.