Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I Was, and Who God Has Always Been

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Because I knew I liked girls, the conviction I experienced in my room was not only unexpected but also unwelcome. I’d heard more times than I cared to count that what seemed to me a natural enough expression of love was, in fact, unnatural and flat-out abominable. The same Bible that condemned me held in it the promises that could save me. I just had to believe it. “It” being what it said about Him: God. Jesus had the guilty in mind when He was hung high and stretched out wide. On it, He died in my place, for my sin. He bare-bodied and face set on joy, became as slaughtered lamb underneath the wrath of God. You would think His Father would have a better memory than that. Didn’t he know that that wrath was mine? It even had my name on it. But He knew. His justice wouldn’t allow Him to forget. His love is what He wanted me to know and remember, and I did. (p75-76) Unbelief will always contrast sin with God. Making it and not him glorious. Making it and not him worth living for. Making it and not him worth dying for. (152) The author of ‘Gay Girl, Good God’ wishes she was taught the beauty of God with as much intensity as she was taught the horridness of hell. If this were the case, she possibly would l have accepted Christ earlier. She says she was able to want God because the Holy Spirit was after her love and obedience.

Eve looked. The tree still stood. Before, it might've only been a part of the garden that caught her eye on rare occasions. Only to be overshadowed by all the glory God turned loose around it. It had always been forbidden to eat from, but never to touch. But, there were always better things to do, and eat, and touch, and sit on, and delight in, and live with. One tree being off limits was the least of their worries when they could see God every day. Until doubt came. C. S. Lewis wrote: A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness—they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means—the only complete realist.”

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There’s also something unique and attractive about Perry’s poetic language. There were a few places I found it hard to follow, but this was the exception. Her writing is warm, inviting, and striking all at once: her life was full of power in ways that I never knew possible. How when unbelief came near, she faithfully turned Scripture loose to capture and strangle it into submission to a higher will than her own. A gifted woman she was but ungodly she was not. I had known many a person with glorious gifts and satanic lives, but this woman showed me that knowing God was more than knowing about Him and doing things for Him but knowing Him.” I WAS ATTRACTED TO women before I knew how to spell my name. My mama had given it to me. She thought it sounded dignified. Like a spine unwilling to bend. She'd heard it often in her younger days every time John F. Kennedy's wife was mentioned in the news. As for me, in second grade, I didn't know who the 35th president had been or what wife he'd let stand beside him as he waved to the world. All I knew was that our name had too many letters in it, and that my teeth had a small gap in it, reasons for which my ancestors were to blame, and that — according to my teacher — I asked too many questions. The thought of death was so matter-of-fact that it made an immediate mess of my mind. Like God had thrown himself inside of my world, in one immediate gesture, while I watched everything shred, fly up, and rain down all at once” (70). I just . . . gotta live for God now,” I said with a tear-broken voice. A new identity was to come after I hung up.

Sin, when in the body, cannot not stay put. It’s not a guest that stays in one room, making sure not to disturb the others. It is a tenant that lives in everything and goes everywhere. It can bleed into every part, choking out anything holy.”

Whether you struggle with SSA or not, and are a Christian or not, Perry’s writing will resonate. She captures the essence of the human heart by sharing her own, welcoming our questions and unveiling our deepest desires. Her tone, storytelling, and message make this a great book to hand to an unbelieving friend or someone from your church who has questions about or a personal struggle with SSA. Full of Truth We stood in the middle of the room. I could tell she was growing impatient. I hadn't answered her question yet or even let my body tell her what my mouth wanted to say. All I could think about was Monday, and what it would have in store for me if I said "yes" to her invitation. The news wouldn't walk but run toward every ear and fly out of every mouth that heard it — until the school no longer saw me as the girl that had a smart mouth and a timid frame but as, "The gay girl." Did God actually say, 'You shall not eat of any tree in the garden'?" And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. (Genesis 3:1–7) Perhaps Perry’s most helpful theological point is this: “God isn’t calling gay people to be straight” (177). This isn’t the true gospel, but the “heterosexual gospel,” a misleading message that’s hurt many people and kept them from the truth and from knowing Jesus. While being clear that homosexuality behavior is sinful, Perry helpfully points out that God’s ultimate call on gay people is not straightness. Perry clarifies that God is calling all people—whether SSA or not—to a life of faith in and obedience to Christ. Her clarification was helpful for me as a believer who desires to build up the church and minister to those outside of Christ. I want to love people well—all people—by pointing them to the only true gospel of salvation.

I don’t believe it is wise or truthful to the power of the gospel to identify oneself by the sins of one’s past or the temptations of one’s present but rather to only be defined by the Christ who’s overcome both for those he calls his own. All men and women, including myself, that are well acquainted with sexual temptation are ultimately not what our temptation says of us. We are what Christ had done for us; therefore, our ultimate identity is very simple: We are Christians. (148) Perry’s post referenced her similar position of finding herself alongside leaders she disagrees with and emphasized the importance of not being “tribalistic” in ministry:In this book, the internal struggles of the author against unrighteousness are depicted. ‘Gay Girl, Good God’provides quotes that support its unique themes and motivate the reader to aim for godliness. Yet she was haunted. She was haunted by the knowledge that God is. Haunted by the knowledge that he had a claim on her. Haunted by the knowledge that her life was not pleasing to him. Haunted by the knowledge that God was trying to get her attention. “[S]omeone had obviously been talking to God about me and it was the reason why God wouldn’t leave me alone. Obviously, whatever was being asked of Him, regarding me, was making my little sinful world spin. It was dizzying to live on now-a-days. Trying to stand up straight (or should I say, queer), made everything I loved, mainly myself and my girlfriend, blurry. Nothing was clear except God’s loud voice saying, ‘Come.’” To leave her, us, our love, made no sense apart from the divine doing of God. She was both my woman and my idol. She was the eye Jesus said to gouge out and the right hand he commanded me to cut off (Matt. 5:29–30). Though it was as painful as the extreme act of removing a part of the body, it was better for me to lose her than to lose my soul. She had some close-knit friendships with students. The parents are great,” Alford said. “I just hate that this happened. Whitefield was not all bad. I really liked it. I wanted her to graduate from there.” I imagine the tree looked different then. The fruit hung beneath their own branch, loose enough for the wind to move through each one. She noticed them and thought of her next meal. How they'd taste good on her plate, even if it meant she might not live to see the next chew. One blink later, her eyes saw how gorgeous the tree was. How it looked like God, only better, she thought. She remembered what the serpent had said about God, and how the tree would make her like Him. She figured fruit and not faith, sin and not obedience, would give her the wisdom she needed to be more perfect than she already was. Interestingly enough, some of what she saw was true. The tree was indeed good for food and pleasant to the sight; God had made it that way (Genesis 2:9). The deception was in believing that the tree was more satisfying to the body and more pleasurable to the sight than God. All of the wisdom she thought the tree could provide left her body the moment she did something foolish: Believe the devil.