The God Who Whispers in Our Ears

The God Who Whispers in Our Ears
Job 36 1-25

A young man comes to see me from time to time to discuss what is going on between him and God. He used to seem depressed, but the depression lifted when he came to acknowledge that he was attracted to other men rather than to women. He got involved in a number of same-sex relationships, then decided that while he didn’t have to feel guilty about his orientation, he did have to foreswear what amounted to promiscuity in his relationships. But living celibately was tough, too, and more recently he had (as he put it) “fallen” again into the lifestyle he had given up. But he had a sense that God was “following” him into places where he went and was “watching” him—not in a hostile way, but simply by virtue of being there. He knew he had to go back to the celibate practice he had abandoned. (I’m not here presupposing an answer to the broader ethical question about same-sex relationships of a committed, covenantal kind; it was the involvement in more short-term, passing relationships that raised the ethical question, as it would in the case of heterosexual relationships.)...