On December 28th Leelah (Josh) Alcorn committed suicide. In the Tumblr note she scheduled to upload after her death, Leelah implies that her parents’ strict rejection of her identity was one of the factor that led her to this decision.
I’m not a parent, so I don’t want to ignorantly hand out parenting suggestions. However, I do want to start a dialogue about this story in the Christian community.
Instead of offering my own naive words of advice, I’ve pulled out three quotes from Leelah’s note to focus on. Each of these three points highlight things Leelah seemed to deeply wish that her Christian parents would understand.
1. You can’t force your child to accept your beliefs
– Leelah
I love what Jamie (the very worst missionary) once said on this topic. In her post titled “Not All Pastor’s Kids Are Christian. Sorry.” she talks about her own experience as a pastors wife, parenting a child who now identifies as an atheist. While Jamie expects their children to act respectful towards her and her husband (and their chosen profession), when it comes to their faith she only asks her children to be honest with her in their journey towards truth. She doesn’t ask them to pretend to be something they are not:
“Believing in Jesus? Receiving His redemption? These are not commands to be given by a father and obeyed by a child. They are a loving invitation from God to his people, every last one of His people, and He is patiently awaiting their reply…”
nt should anyof these people stopped and thought to themselves, “Maybe a Black person would be able to provide a perspective on this that none of the rest of us could?” “Immediately” is the answer in case you were wondering.
Culture War Reporters 
I’m Not Sad About Nelson Mandela Dying
Death, or the thought of death, has been on my mind as of late. Seriously, though, we’ve had two posts in just as many weeks on the demise of a cartoon character, and before that a CWC discussing funerals which was brought on by the passing of Gordon’s grandfather. There was also actor Paul Walker’s fatal car accident two weeks ago.
Which is why, in a way, the following status on Facebook yesterday didn’t really shock me:
There’s going to be a lot of Facebook in this post; you have been warned.
In part it’s because the fact that people do die has kind of been on my mind, but also because the last time I heard anything about Nelson Mandela he was in the hospital for lung problems. Naturally I was concerned about him and probably even prayed for the guy, but honestly no more than I put in a good word with the Lord for the homeless Chinese woman I saw begging yesterday [I had no change to give her, before you jump to the conclusion that I’m a prayer-over-action kind of person]. Continue reading →
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