Hello everyone,<\/p>\n
Thank you so much for being a part of this podcast journey. I know I just posted episode 4 (verbal) and 5 yesterday, so if you haven\u2019t given them a listen, please go give it a listen on Spotify<\/a>, or iTunes<\/a>!<\/p>\n Episode 4 on systematic racism is something that I\u2019ve done a couple posts on, and I don\u2019t want to simply reiterate what I\u2019ve already said. Let us continue to educate ourselves, and pray on behalf of those who need comfort and seek justice.<\/p>\n Episode 5, I was honestly afraid to post. It is regarding the LGBTQiA+ community and the relationship between the Church. As someone who attends a more conservative church, I know that not everyone in my circles may agree or approve of what I said. However, I stand firm that in my relationship with Christ, He has shown me grace upon grace, mercy upon mercy, and love above all. He has never told me to treat anyone else with anything but what He has filled me with, and I refuse to believe He would require of us as Christians to do anything but love. As I mentioned in the podcast, I believe that trying to argue the \u201cun-Biblical-ness\u201d of the LGBTQiA+ community is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, because it won\u2019t change the fact that they are our neighbours whom we are called to love and share the Gospel message to. How God speaks to them regarding their identity and relationships is between them and God; it is not for us to judge. The fact of the matter is that their legal rights are being impeded on, and there are statistics to show that there has historically and currently been a lot of persecution that is occurring against the LGBTQiA+ community. Are we willing to give up our legal benefits and sacrifice these things and show love? As fellow human beings and ambassadors of Christ, we are called to love on and protect them and be a voice for justice. Whether or not we believe the LGBTQiA+ community is engaging in sexual immorality is irrelevant – when they are a brother or sister in Christ, we may speak to them on our concerns, but we must also see their identity as a child of God above their sexual orientation or gender identity. How do we even begin to have conversations revolving Christ, spirituality, and sin if we have first turned our backs in apathy, or used our fists and cutting words to turn them away?<\/p>\n I think it\u2019s also important to mention that it\u2019s not just the Christian or religious community that treats the LGBTQiA+ community poorly. Prejudice against the community happens even in the Asian and Asian-X communities. My mother is not a believer, but she is someone who also discriminates against my friends who identify as LGBTQiA+. She isn\u2019t very empathetic towards news of someone who is identified as LGBT being attacked or murdered for their sexual preferences. She would always say that it\u2019s because of their \u201cweird lifestyle\u201d. I think it\u2019s scary how easy it is sometimes to dehumanize someone who is different from us. It\u2019s even rooted in our language – \u201ctransexual\u201d is translated to \u201chuman demon\u201d in Chinese! And as previously mentioned, the idea of shame and guilt is a very prominent theme in Asian culture – \u201ccoming out\u201d is scary – the fear of being a disappointment is very real. And this is especially true for single child boys in conservative families where they are expected to pass on the family line as a sign of pride. <\/p>\n However, I want us to also think on our history. What a great honour it used to be to work alongside the king as a eunuch. Only the most wise and scholarly could take on such a job, but all of them were essentially transsexual (usually younger brothers took on this role so the older brothers can pass on the family line)! To work alongside the king meant you had to be castrated, to ensure you didn\u2019t fall in love and\/or have sexual relations with a woman who could become the object of affection of the king. There was no shame in that, and despite the fact that they are essentially \u201chuman demons\u201d, they are never addressed as such. Identity, shame, and how we view people is influenced by society and the perspectives that we are being fed. We can change that perspective by feeding into a positive identification of those around us.<\/p>\n All are children of God. We are all human, flesh and bones, molded by God\u2019s hands Himself. We cannot celebrate our own identity as a human being without recognizing what a blessing it is to be human – to be God\u2019s most beloved Creation that He would call us His children, give His Son in exchange for our lives, and live within us. There is no human being that is less than that. Straight, cis-gender, or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello everyone, Thank you so much for being a part of this podcast journey. I know I just posted episode 4 (verbal) and 5 yesterday, so if you haven\u2019t given them a listen, please go give it a listen on Spotify, or iTunes! Episode 4 on systematic racism is something that I\u2019ve done a couple […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/unashamed.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}