JOMC441 - John Freeman talk

I didn't get to stay for the entire lecture because of class, but the 45 minutes of the John Freeman talk I did get to attend were definitely interesting.

John is a journalist living in Philadelphia who works with Harvest USA, a Christian counseling group dealing mostly with sexual issues-- homosexuality, pornography addiction, etc. From an early age he identified as gay (he attributes this to peer influence, it seems), but at age 21 decided that had a lot more to do with inner turmoil than it did with his actual sexuality.

The majority of his talk dealt with the idea that Jesus sees us for what's inside, and that's his main concern-- not who we hang out with or who we present ourselves as being. Using passages from the Bible and several C.S. Lewis books, he emphasized that a lot of the issues we face on a daily basis and over long periods of time come from problems we aren't addressing on the inside, things weighing heavily on our hearts. And we don't want to ask for God's help, because God never gives us exactly the help we need and stops-- we'll get the "full treatment."

I'm not sure quite how I felt about the talk as a whole. It made me really uncomfortable that he was implying that homosexuals were all struggling with morality. I think everyone has issues that weigh heavy on their hearts-- we're humans and flawed -- but he never really said that. He mentioned praying for gay people, but never mentioned praying for everyone you meet. I'm sure many, many straight people have issues worse than being attracted to someone of the same sex, and we need to listen to them and pray for them as much or more than we do gay people. Also, when he talked about listening to stories and not writing people off, it was almost in a patronizing way that implied you shouldn't give up on them because they could change. What if they never change? Anyway, I think had the talk focused on, like he said at one point, the fact that "we become outwardly what we give our hearts to," it would have been much more inclusive and much more easily identified with. Instead, it came off as a way to "fix" homosexuality, which I don't think is possible or necessary.