For many Christians, reading the Bible is supposed to bring us closer to God. Yet for LGBTIQ Christians, opening Scripture can bring a very different feeling, fear. Instead of comfort or curiosity, there can be tension.
You may wonder what you are going to find, whether another passage will be used against you or whether asking questions about what you have been taught somehow makes you less faithful.
When fear becomes part of how we approach the Bible, it can quietly change the way we read it. We start looking for rules we might have broken, warnings that could apply to us or reasons God might withdraw His love. Before long, Scripture can feel less like an invitation into relationship and more like an examination we are frightened of failing.
But what happens if we begin somewhere else? What if we read Scripture through the love and character of Jesus rather than through fear?
Fear Changes the Way We Read
Fear has a way of narrowing our attention. When we expect condemnation, we become particularly sensitive to anything that appears to confirm it. A single verse can begin to carry enormous weight, especially when someone has repeatedly told us what that verse is supposed to mean.
For LGBTIQ Christians, this experience can be painfully familiar. Perhaps you were given a handful of passages and told they settled every possible question about your identity, relationships and place within Christianity. Maybe nobody encouraged you to ask about historical context, translation, culture or the wider biblical story. Questioning an interpretation may even have been presented as questioning God.
Eventually, it becomes difficult to approach those passages without already knowing what you are expected to find.
Yet reading without fear does not mean ignoring difficult parts of the Bible. It means giving ourselves permission to engage with them thoughtfully rather than assuming that the harshest possible interpretation must automatically be the most faithful one.
Jesus Gives Us a Place to Begin
Christians do not simply follow a collection of verses. We follow Jesus. That distinction matters. Jesus gives us a living picture of God’s character. Throughout the Gospels, we see how He treats people, responds to suffering, confronts injustice and challenges religious certainty when it becomes more concerned with rules than human lives.
Again and again, Jesus moves towards people others have pushed away. He shares meals with those considered unacceptable, notices people society overlooks and restores dignity where shame has taken hold. At the same time, He reserves some of His strongest criticism for religious leaders who place heavy burdens on others while losing sight of mercy.
Therefore, when we encounter a biblical interpretation that produces fear, exclusion or humiliation, looking towards Jesus gives us important questions to ask. Does this interpretation reflect His character? We can also consider whether it moves people towards love of God and neighbour, restores dignity, encourages truth and produces good fruit.
Those questions do not weaken Scripture. They help us read it through the person at the centre of Christian faith.
Love Is Not the Easy Option
Sometimes people treat a love-centred approach to Scripture as though it simply means choosing the interpretation that feels nicest. Biblical love, however, is much richer and more demanding than that.
Love can challenge us. It asks us to forgive, seek justice, tell the truth, care for people we would rather avoid and examine the ways our choices affect others. Loving our neighbour may require us to change our behaviour, confront prejudice or admit that something we once believed caused harm. So reading through love does not mean deciding that nothing matters.
Instead, love gives us a foundation for asking why something matters. We begin considering whether our understanding of Scripture helps us become more compassionate, truthful, patient and just. We can also ask whether it draws us towards God or creates an image of Him dominated by anger and rejection.
Love does not remove difficult questions. It changes the spirit in which we ask them.
Context Can Change the Conversation
Reading through love also gives us room to become curious.
The Bible was written across different periods, cultures and languages. Its writers spoke to real communities facing particular circumstances, and those contexts can matter enormously when we try to understand what a passage means.
Learning about them does not diminish Scripture. Quite often, context makes the Bible richer.
We may discover that a verse we were taught as a simple universal rule sits within a much larger conversation. Translation choices can also shape how English readers understand particular words, while cultural assumptions influence the conclusions we bring to the text before we have even started reading.
This becomes particularly important in conversations about LGBTIQ people. Christians have genuine disagreements about how certain biblical passages should be interpreted, and those debates involve questions of language, history, theology and context.
Acknowledging that complexity is not avoiding Scripture. It is taking Scripture seriously enough to study it carefully.
Questions Do Not Make Faith Weak
Many Christians have learned to fear questions almost as much as difficult Bible passages.
You might worry that asking whether an interpretation is correct means you are simply looking for an answer you prefer. Perhaps someone has warned you not to “lean on your own understanding” whenever you raise concerns about what you were taught.
Yet Christianity has a long tradition of people wrestling with Scripture. Christians study ancient languages, debate theology, compare translations and reconsider interpretations because understanding has always required thought and discernment.
Faith does not have to collapse simply because you say, “I don’t know.”
In fact, admitting uncertainty can sometimes create space for deeper faith. Instead of pretending to have answers we do not possess, we become willing to listen, learn and remain open to where God might lead us.
Pay Attention to What an Interpretation Produces
Jesus tells us that fruit matters, and that principle can help when we think about biblical interpretation. Consider what a particular understanding of Scripture produces over time. Does it encourage love, patience, kindness and peace?
We can also consider whether it draws people closer to God, deepens compassion towards others and leads towards greater honesty and integrity. We should also be willing to notice when the opposite happens.
If an interpretation repeatedly creates shame, fear, hostility or exclusion, Christians should be able to examine it carefully rather than immediately defending it. Harm alone does not automatically prove that an interpretation is wrong, just as comfort alone does not prove one is right. However, the outcomes deserve our attention. Jesus cared about what religious teaching did to people. We should too.
Reading Through Love Changes How We See Other People
The way we read Scripture eventually influences the way we treat the person standing in front of us.
When fear dominates our theology, other people can easily become problems to solve or threats to defend Christianity against. Conversations become debates, while someone’s actual life gets lost behind arguments about doctrine.
Love asks something different of us.
It encourages curiosity before assumption and compassion before judgement. We can still disagree, but disagreement does not require us to strip another person of dignity. Nor does theological conviction give us permission to stop listening.
For LGBTIQ Christians, this distinction can transform what faith feels like. Instead of constantly being discussed as an issue, you can be recognised as a whole person with a relationship with God, gifts to offer, questions to ask and a life that cannot be reduced to one theological debate.
Scripture Does Not Need Our Fear
Perhaps we sometimes approach the Bible fearfully because we think certainty protects our faith. If every verse has one obvious meaning and every question has an immediate answer, Christianity can feel safer.
Real faith, however, can survive curiosity. We do not need to be frightened that studying context will somehow undo Scripture. Nor do we need to assume that listening to another Christian’s experience compromises what we believe. If something is true, honest examination does not threaten it.
Instead, approaching Scripture with humility allows us to recognise that our interpretation and God’s truth are not automatically identical. Every one of us reads through experiences, traditions, assumptions and things other people have taught us. Recognising that reality can make us more careful with Scripture, not less.
What Happens When Love Becomes the Starting Point?
Taken together, these biblical themes point towards a way of reading grounded in the character of Christ rather than fear. At the centre of that approach, love becomes the measure through which we understand what we read, while mercy shapes the way we respond to difficult passages.
Of course, reading Scripture through the lens of Christ does not remove its complexity. Questions will remain, and sincere Christians will continue to disagree. However, beginning with Jesus changes how we approach those disagreements. Instead of allowing anxiety, condemnation or control to guide us, we can ask whether our understanding reflects the compassion, justice, mercy and love visible in His life.
As a result, Scripture becomes something we can engage with honestly rather than something we need to fear. We can wrestle with difficult passages, learn about their context and reconsider interpretations without assuming that questions separate us from God.
Ultimately, reading Scripture through love is not about making the Bible say whatever we want it to say. It is about allowing Jesus to shape how we understand what we read and how we live it out. Perhaps that is where fear begins to lose its hold.
We stop opening the Bible primarily to discover what might condemn us and begin reading with a desire to know God more deeply. Through that change, Scripture can become a place of encounter, growth and transformation, drawing us towards a God who restores, liberates and loves.
“By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” – John 13:35
