Open Minded

I actually had some kid free time today and was bouncing around the internet - okay, mostly on pinterest. I happened to notice a woman's blog that has gone viral and is getting quite a bit of controversy. Here is the link, but the basic story is her son is in love with a gay character from Glee. He's calling him his boyfriend. She's not saying he's gay. But she's teaching him to be open minded about gay couples and the changing world around him.

As a child, I grew up almost completely surrounded by Christians. I didn't meet a gay couple until I was working for my dad while in college. My parents didn't teach me to view people in color. Everyone was unique in their own way. When dealing with someone different than me I was to remember that I was very different from them as well and to act out the Golden Rule. But being interested in someone of the same sex wasn't even on their radar.

Someone on one of the blog posts made a comment that I wish I could remember word for word. It went something along the lines of "We need to teach our children differently than we were taught because they are growing up in a different world."

I completely agree with this. But it's hard because I don't know how to word it so that my son realizes what is going on around him. A small part of me wants to shelter him from the hate, the wrong, the ugly that is everywhere. But if I don't want him to be hateful, wrong and ugly then I have to somehow tell him what it is without making it appealing. One thing I keep drilling into my children is treating other people with respect. It doesn't matter who you are - you deserve respect.

As a Christian I believe that everyone deserves respect and courtesy because they are a child of God.

So while I also believe that living a homosexual life is a sin, I don't believe that these people are unloved by God. It's my belief and I have Christians friends who do not share my convictions. And it may be wrong, but unless God convicts them of the same thing as He has me then I firmly believe it isn't a sin for them. It is NOT my place to judge. So I'm going to leave that to Him.

My job is to be loving and respectful to those who I come in contact with. It is also to teach my children the same and that hate is an even larger sin than the ones that we (as Christians) are so gleeful to point out in others.

Children are so absolute. The blog author mentions that she found her son (at age 3) laughing about a picture. It was a woman cooking something. She couldn't figure out what was so funny. 

"It's a mommy cooking. Mommies don't cook." Because her husband cooked the little boy thought that all mommies didn't cook. I remember my son thinking that all dads were engineers because his daddy and his friend's daddy were. Their view of the world is seen in black and white and they accept that.

My children will see things different from them and be okay with that. 

Maybe that is why Jesus begged us to be like little children.

I guess the main reason for this post was to get some of my thoughts on "paper". My son is in school now. I need to be ready to answer him if he asks me questions about people different from us; give him answers that will make him love and not hate.