Ray Boltz: "I don't believe God hates me anymore"

Ray Boltz: “I don’t believe God hates me anymore”

Posted on May 25, 2010
Viewed 3102 times
(92) comments

Remember Ray Boltz? It's been nearly seven years since Ray 'came out of the closet' and took a hiatus from Christian Music...

But now Boltz is back with a new album, and a new belief. And a call for Christians to not discriminate against homosexuals.

Here is one of the lyrics to a song called "Who Would Jesus Love?"

Would He only love the ones
Who looked the same as me
Would He only offer hope
When He saw similarity
Would He leave the others waiting
Like a stranger at the gate
Would He discriminate.

Or, part of the lyrics of his song "Don't Tell Me Who To Love"

Don't tell me who to love,
Don't tell me who to kiss,
Don't tell me that there's something wrong,
Because I feel like this.

Maybe you're in love today and you've been making wedding plans
But there is someone in your way shouting things cause they don't understand
The judge says that's not legal, the preacher calls it a sin
Oh you just remember they were wrong before and they're wrong again

On his transformation, Boltz says: "I don’t believe God hates me anymore...I always thought if people knew the true me, they’d be disgusted, and that included God. But for all the doubts, there’s this new belief that God accepts me and created me, and there’s peace.”

Make no doubt about it... how the church responds to the issue of homosexuality will be one of the major issues in the church over the next decade.

What do you think? You can read more on Boltz in a New York Times article written recently here...

Todd

(PS -- I was never a big Ray Boltz fan. Ever. But take a short listen to the song linked above. Let's just say, the music itself would not make me a fan, ever. Not one of Boltz's best songs, gay or not gay.)

Comments

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Q. on Thu, May 27, 2010

Hey George, are you saying that Jesus didn’t die for our sins but that it was more of an ‘object lesson’?
george on Thu, May 27, 2010

in part, yes. we are the memories of god. how we live our lives. how we react to the other will help determine whether like Christ we have died or are heading towards resurrection. do i believe he died? yes. do i believe he rose again? yes. but for the purpose we’ve been told, not necessarily. or i might say that it is just one of many reasons he could have died, i know its ambigious, but i am look at his death as a lesson for us all, rather than specifying to history alone, it also teaches us how to be and how we can be more like Him. but of course, the point of my post wasn’t this, it was that sin in the hebrew mind is different from sin in the christian mind (jesus was a jew, right?)
Brandon on Thu, May 27, 2010

@Peter Hamm:

IMO, it is a tenant of pop-church culture.

We can draw many historic parallels to homosexuality in the church: oppression of women, slavery, greed, murder, etc. They were all perfectly acceptable beliefs fully backed by a societal interpretation of biblical literature. But they were all determined to be wrong.

Revisionist Lexicology is not as detrimental a practice as it is made to be. In my opinion it’s a more honest approach to faith.

It says that we understand that we could be wrong in our interpretation and implementation of words in scripture and are open to new information which provides a catalyst to change and evolve, regardless of our preference.

For Christians, I believe we have far more faith in the Bible than we do in the Holy Spirit’s ability to guide and change us.

Again, this is not easy. Many people believe this position is the ‘easy way out’. That it’s an argument of convenience. ‘I don’t like the way this sounds, so I’m going to change the meanings of these words to better accommodate my worldview.’

I would submit that it’s the opposite. If you knew me and the family I come from, you would understand that this is not a convenient position that I’m taking. It’s not been convenient to the previous faith communities in which I’ve served. It’s not been convenient to my closest friends. It’s not been convenient with to family. And it’s not convenient to my wife.

But in my pursuit of the way of Jesus, my Spirit is at peace on this matter.

Understand that I’m not pushing anyone in to the position I hold. I believe my tenor in this discussion is evident of that. Your decision in this matter in no way effects my decision.

We have a choice to agree to disagree in this matter and still work together as the hands and feet of God. We also have the choice to let this issue divide us.

I’m choosing the former.
Peter Hamm on Thu, May 27, 2010

Brandon writes [Revisionist Lexicology is not as detrimental a practice as it is made to be. In my opinion it�s a more honest approach to faith.] Seems more like re-making the faith, the church, the Bible, and even God in the image we want them to be. Honesty would be making my faith into what God wants it to be, not what works for my own desires, passions, etc. I’m aware that many in the contemporary church do this with other issues. For instance, why is homosexual behavior railed at in the Evangelical community, but gluttony is celebrated. But using the contemporary church’s laxity in some areas to explain away a departure from what Scripture is clear on by revising our understanding of words, is far from an honest approach to faith.

I’ve heard and researched these arguments, and they are not compelling, I’m sorry to say.
fishon on Thu, May 27, 2010

george on Thu, May 27, 2010
i agree with brandon. i don�t think God ever hated Ray. I am glad Ray Boltz came out, I am glad Jennifer did. I think the Gay communty within/without Christianity has a lot to teach the Church.
———————No, they have nothing to teach the Church.
fishon on Thu, May 27, 2010

Time for me to bow out of this—-Time for me to stop dialoguing with “godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality.”

The Bible speaks plainly about “savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock.”

Harsh, yep, but then I didn’t write it; God’s apostles did. Enough for me of trying to reason with one who has ‘shipwrecked’ his faith, and is using this site to bring others down with him.

To continue to debate with him makes him wise in his own eyes.

You who would say I am harsh and judgmental, so be it. You continue to try and reason and coddle “certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among [us]. They are godless me, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality….”
Brandon on Thu, May 27, 2010

@fishon.

Fare enough. But we love you fishon.

Regardless of your words and judgment: We love you.

Regardless of our differences: We love you.

May God continue to direct your heart and mind in all matters.

Grace and Peace.
Peter Hamm on Thu, May 27, 2010

Fishon, hold the door open, I think I have to leave right behind you…
george on Thu, May 27, 2010

fishon. we do love you. but being black and white about something has nothing to do with whether you love homosexuals or not; i am not questioning that. but, are you willing to change? are you willing to see it a different way? if you think about truth like a room with many windows, than what you see out of one and what i see out of one aren’t wrong because we’re still in the same room, but see truth from different angles. are you willing to see that truth is bigger than your theology, bigger than my theology, bigger than the bible and christianity or do you believe truth as big as it is is oNLYcontained in all of the above?
Cj on Fri, May 28, 2010

Just to shine a little light of clarity here, God does not only hate the sin, but because of the sin he also hates the sinner, this only proves his love to be genuine:
Romans 12:9
Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.

This abhorring or hating what is evil is not limited to only hating the evil acts, but also hating the evil person as shown here:
Psalm 5:5
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers

and here

Psalm 11:5
The Lord tests the righteous,
but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.
6 Let him rain coals on the wicked;
fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.
7 For the Lord is righteous;
he loves righteous deeds;
the upright shall behold his face.

This just shows the magnitude of the affect that our sin has on our relationship with God. And it just magnifies his grace because even through this hate he has for those that are dead in their sins, he still finds away to love them and send his Son to die so that they can be conformed to his image and not die in their sins. Pure grace!
george on Fri, May 28, 2010

@ CJ: It seems youre defining clarity in an objective sense, but as you might agree, clarity to you and clarity to me can be two completely different things. Using scripture as a point of clarity isn’t clarity to me. Its misusing scripture.

I would also ask if you are aware of your historical contigency?

that there were authors who composed their oral stories. authors who lived and breathed in a culture with a language not our own. this is good to keep in mind when approaching scripture. that it wasn’t a book meant to forcefully direct nations or peoples. sure, it has that capacity. but so does a book by john grisham. i am saying that god can speak through anything not just a collection of 66 books of oral stories. to bind ourselves to the bible as being the only book that god can speak through is to follow a very small god. not to mention to one that has to be bound to something.

love is the ultimate reality, not sin. by focusing on sin as a big deal we denigrate the traditional orthodox view of jesus dying on the cross. it also focuses on a problem that was already taken care, and if we focus on a problem that has already been taken care we are actually saying it hasn’t been taken care of, if you agree to the orthodox view of the cross.
Danny on Fri, May 28, 2010

As I read over all the comments in this particular post I was extremely saddened.

Saddened by men who seem to have an abundant knowledge of Scripture yet would say that the truth contained in it is relative.

Saddened by our readiness to allow sin, any sin, to carry on as simply being the way one was created.

It seems that we have forgotten the words of Jesus to those that he healed and forgave. “Now go, and sin no more.” He did not say, “now go, and do whatever you want, however you see fit, you have liberty in me to do all things.”

I can already tell that some will say, “but what if it isn’t sin.” There has to be some way of knowing what is sin and what isn’t. Not just a mere gut feeling that we could all say, “well that’s what the spirit’s telling me.”

Maybe the largest problem in the church is that we haven’t learned how to distinguish between God and gas.
george on Fri, May 28, 2010

but why focus on an issue that has already been annihilated? i am going along with the belief that christ died for our sins right? i will agree to that for this discussion, if we do agree on that, than christ already annihilated sin. past tense. done. ‘it is finished’. so why focus on it?

and then if there STILL is sin, which yes there is evil, but evil and sin are differentiated in the hebrew mind. than who gets to determine what it is? and then who gets to determine who is righteous enough to judge another (let him who has no sin cast the first stone)—i am still waiting for a response to all these questions? because obviously it seems that there are some that think as humans we have a right to destructively point the finger, an act that has caused and is causing many wars. so how is pointing the finger healing the world? wouldn’t it make more sense to love others, embrace people. love the broken, the danger is that we forget that we never stop being broken.
Rick Redmond, Chicago on Fri, May 28, 2010

Christ never taught to “classify” or to “categorize” sinners. But He teach us that we are ALL sinners and that God is less concerned wiht the sin than He is with simply redeeming and reforming the heart of the sinner.

For the record, I am Straight. However, I will at least submit that all of those fellow believers who are continually berating the Homosexual Community each and everyone have their own personal “closets” of some type of weakness, vulnerability to temptation to come out of….regardless of whatever the specific weakness and/or vulnerability is or isn’t. There are 2 types of Christians in the world. 1) Those who admit they too have their own struggles and 2) those who LIE and say they don’t. And none of us are better or holier than another. And we will ALL continue on that path of growth and sanctification until we die.
Rick Redmond, Chicago on Fri, May 28, 2010

It was never given to us to judge or condemn. It was only given to us to discern, pray for others who struggle alongside on the Christian journey; to humbly forgive and to love them BEYOND their sin just as Christ did for us.