My Friendship with my Brother – Part 3

Brad’s “girlfriend” Tiffany dropped out of college and moved back to our home town, and Brad started getting concerned about his sins and his need for a savior, so he joined Maranatha Campus Ministries (MCM). Soon, one of the leaders there discovered that Brad was having sex with another guy in that group and also having anonymous sex with many guys at gay meeting places on campus. If any of you know the history of MCM, you are cringing right now. You can guess what happened next. Brad was outed in a very painful, public way. He was thrown out of the group and his sins were told to all the members. It wasn’t pretty. One of the leaders made sure to tell me all the details, even though I was not a member of MCM.

It finally hit me that I needed to show Brad a little compassion. As you can imagine, he was bitter at Christians at that point. For him, the painful way he was treated by Christians motivated him to differentiate himself from Christians. At the time, being gay-identified implied someone was anti-Christian, so he expressed his disgust with Christians by flaunting his homosexuality in some contexts. I asked why he was “hanging around gays”. I will never forget his answer. He said, “They love me, and that is more than I can say about Christians!” All I could say to him was that I actually loved him and that I am a Christian. This memory still brings tears to my eyes years later.

To be continued…