The Gift of Being Wrong

Is “accepting but not affirming” enough?

Dan Berry  •  June 23, 2026

For much of my life, I believed same-sex relationships were outside of God’s original design and therefore outside of His blessing.

I wasn’t angry about it. I wasn’t hateful. In fact, I would have described myself as accepting. As a conservative pastor with relatively moderate views, I believed God called me to love everyone. But because I believed same-sex relationships fell outside God’s design, my position was what many would call “accepting but not affirming.”

At the time, it seemed reasonable. It was what I had been taught by people I trusted. It fit the interpretation of Scripture I had inherited. And because so many around me believed the same thing, I rarely stopped to ask whether those beliefs deserved a closer look.

Then my child came out.

Suddenly, this wasn’t a theological debate. It wasn’t a topic for a Bible study or a sermon illustration. It was deeply personal. It involved someone I loved more than words can express.

I still considered myself accepting. But I soon learned that acceptance without affirmation often feels like rejection to the person receiving it.

I wasn’t trying to hurt my child. Yet my beliefs did hurt her. That realization unsettled me.

A surprising awakening

Around the same time, our racially diverse church began experiencing tension and uncertainty because of events unfolding across our country. Conversations about race that had once felt distant were now affecting relationships within our own congregation. The sense of unity we had enjoyed was beginning to crack.

As a white pastor, I was coming to an uncomfortable realization: I didn’t know as much about race as I thought I did.

Wanting to help but unsure how, I began praying for wisdom. I asked God to show me how to better understand the realities facing people whose experiences were different from my own.

What I didn’t expect was that part of the answer would come through a lesbian theologian.

When I first encountered her work, I was skeptical. If I’m honest, I assumed she couldn’t teach me much. Even now, I feel some shame when I remember the bias I carried.

But her writing focused on racial division in the church and offered practical ways for white Christians to better understand and engage in the work of reconciliation. One of her books sat on my desk for weeks. The more I ignored it, the more I sensed the gentle nudge of the Holy Spirit to pick it up and read it.

Eventually, I did.

What I found surprised me. Her insights challenged me, stretched me, and gave me concrete steps I could take to grow personally and lead more effectively. She helped me see realities I had previously overlooked.

More importantly, she taught me something larger than race. She taught me that listening to people with different experiences is not a threat to faith. It can be a path toward greater truth.

That experience awakened a deeper curiosity in me. If I had carried blind spots regarding race, what other blind spots might I be carrying?

A closer look at what the Bible says

For the first time in my life, I decided to study the biblical passages most often used to condemn homosexuality—not to defend my position, but to determine whether I had inherited it correctly.

There are only a handful of passages in Scripture that directly address same-sex behavior. I read them repeatedly. I studied their historical context, language, audience, and cultural setting. I read scholars who agreed with my views and scholars who challenged them.

I began to see how easily Scripture can be separated from its historical context and used in ways its original authors may never have intended. I recognized that throughout history, sincere Christians have sometimes used isolated passages to justify exclusion and marginalization of groups of people.

And I began to wonder if that was happening again.

The deeper I studied, the more convinced I became that the biblical case against loving, committed same-sex relationships was not nearly as clear as I had once believed.

Changing my mind was not easy.

It required admitting that I might have been wrong about something I had taught and believed for years. It required listening to voices I had previously dismissed. Most of all, it required choosing curiosity over certainty.

Today, when I look back on that journey, I realize that my greatest obstacle was not Scripture.

It was bias.

Bias has a way of disguising itself as faithfulness. We inherit ideas from our families, churches, and communities. Over time, those ideas become so familiar that we mistake them for unquestionable truth.

But growth begins when we become willing to ask difficult questions.

My journey taught me that understanding another person’s experience does not weaken faith. It deepens it. Listening does not mean abandoning convictions. It means caring enough to ensure those convictions are rooted in truth rather than assumption.

I am grateful for my child, whose courage forced me to look more closely at what I believed. I am grateful for a theologian whose writings challenged assumptions I didn’t even know I carried. And I am grateful that God is still teaching me.

If there is one lesson I hope others take from my story, it is this:

Before deciding what God thinks about a group of people, spend time listening to them.

You may discover, as I did, that understanding often begins where certainty ends.

Read more from our Brownicity contributors