The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the concept of questioning of sexuality and displacing those questions. There are people who seek to leave the homosexual lifestyle or struggle with same-sex attraction. One of those people is Elizabeth Woning, who discussed her story with Virginia Allen at The Daily Signal.
Woning said that she began
questioning her sexuality at age 16 and was “stereotypically butch” by her 30s.
However, she had an experience at a church that caused her to question what
lesbianism meant to her.
I recognized that it gave meaning and
purpose to my life…. And so, before the Lord, I began analyzing what that meant
and why it was so challenging for me, such a letdown, to be just a woman.
Trying to understand “the character
of God and where I fit in that,” she questioned her lesbianism. “And the Lord
was able to displace my sense of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of
belonging as a daughter of God.”
Woning made a change in her life and
began working with “people who are seeking to leave the homosexual lifestyle or
who are struggling with same-sex attraction.” She is the co-founder of a
Christian organization, the Changed Movement. She shared her experience of “walking
through homosexuality” and coming out.
As a Christian lesbian with no plans
to leave homosexuality, she attended a youth meeting where a 17-year-old boy
approached her and said, “I think the Lord is speaking to you.”
I’d never heard of anything like that. And
so, I remember thinking in that moment, “I don’t know what this is, but I need
to hear.” And so, he proceeded to tell me something that I had been praying about
for years.
And that caused me to question whether I
believed God knew me, specifically. So, here, I had gone all this way, which
seemed to me, great sacrifices for my faith. And I found myself in the position
where I was actually questioning what I knew of God. And that caused me to
think, “I need to know.”
So, I did the thing that I most relied on.
I picked up a new Bible, and I began highlighting in the Bible every place
where God describes himself. And it was really that journey over about 18 months
of rereading the Bible, looking at the character of God, and then interacting
with people who claim that they experienced the love of God and that they could
directly interact with that.
It was this experiential Christianity that
I had never been a part of before. I’d been a part of a strongly
intellectualized, academic Christianity, strongly weighted on the social
justice end, but never been exposed to this personal witness.
And that set me on the journey that caused
me to begin looking at Scripture and realizing, “OK. I identify as a lesbian,
and I’m a woman.” Clearly in Scripture, that isn’t represented. We can go a lot
of places in gay theology looking at men, but there aren’t too many places you
can go with gay theology looking at women. And I began questioning what
lesbianism was to me. And I recognized that it gave meaning and purpose to my
life. It gave personal power and authority to my life. It really gave me my
voice.
And that caused a bit of an existential
crisis for me in the context of my faith. And so, before the Lord, I began
analyzing what that meant and why it was so challenging for me, such a letdown
to be just a woman.
And analyzing that and prayerfully walking
through that with the Lord, learning the Lord’s language for my life,
revisiting Scripture, understanding the character of God and where I fit in
that.
And the Lord was able to displace my sense
of belonging as a lesbian with my sense of belonging as a daughter of God.
And it was that kind of threshold, that
crossover moment that really pulled me out of the gay community. That wasn’t a
quick journey. Once I started moving in that direction, I began questioning
what I had believed and everything that I had believed.
At first, I was in a panic, because I
thought, “I have been teaching and preaching and promoting heresy.” That was my
first thought. And so, in that panic of fearful, really, before the Lord, I did
some hard separation from the gay community and from my community where I had
been before.
Woning said that she “burned a lot
of bridges” in separating from the gay community. She began to see that “there
was much more” to her life and “so much more to the story.” She spent 15 years
analyzing her childhood in the context of her faith, and she began “to
understand how lesbianism really entered into [her] life.” She analyzed the roots
of her sexual attraction, why she came to believe in lesbianism, and why she
needed it.
Then Woning married a man, and they have
been married for almost 17 years. She is also a pastor at a large church in
Northern California and co-leader in the Changed Movement as well as Equipped
to Love. She leads a dialogue about the LGBTQ experience in the context of
faith. She also makes a “safe space for people who experienced same-sex
attraction or gender confusion to follow their faith.” She said, “that space is
getting narrower and narrower.”
There is much more to Woning’s interesting story, including a journey into politics to oppose legislation in California. You can find the entire story at this link.
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