By Derek Collard
For so many years of my life I have loved the Bible. In the church I grew up in, we had a kids program called AWANA where I learned to memorize the scriptures and got to know the layout of the biblical text. We would do these silly things called “Sword drills,” where they would have us hold our Bibles above our heads and they would call out a passage and the first person to find it would get a piece of candy.
In my teens and twenties, as I secretly started to know my own queer identity, I turned to the Bible to become something more though. I sought answers for how I might fix this broken piece of me… looking at it almost like it might be a spell book that could magically fix me. I also felt the sharp sting of other people using the text as a sword to cut down others who they believed lived outside of “God’s will”. While I know they believed they were attempting to do surgery on the hearts and souls of the people they encountered, their interpretations were blunt blades that did more harm than good.
After I came out and left the Evangelical faith that had raised me, I actually began taking seminary classes, hoping that I may be able to train my love for these texts into a new weapon that would fight for the liberation of all. Desiring so desperately to be able to answer anyone who may seek to question what I believe God had led me towards that put me outside their realm of comfortability. I found this to also be an exercise in futility as it left me deeply bitter towards the world that raised me and the unwillingness of so many people from the communities I had left behind to even begin to question things that I was questioning.
But I think I am ready to re-engage with the word of God once more… to fall back in love with the Bible. To allow this book to develop in me a deeper wisdom, a wider love, and an unshakeable peace. To ask questions faithfully in community and wrestle with the text to find the pearls of great price it may hold for me and for those who I share my life of faith with. And, at last, to allow, as the Prophets Isaiah and Micah said, for what was once a sword to be beaten into a plowshare, that what had been a tool of destruction might bring abundant life.
We are so lucky to have some amazing groups facilitating these conversations and deepening the life of faith for our community. One such opportunity is the Galatians Bible Study that will begin October 1st and run through November 12, 2026! If you are interested in signing up and joining us, you can find the link here: ccc-info.org/GalatiansStudy
Thank you. Very wise and well-written.