Most of us think AIDS happens to other people. But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS has been diagnosed in approximately a half-million people since 1985, with no end in sight. The odds are good that someone you know–maybe even someone in your family–will be struck by the deadly virus. Ask Jimmy Allen.
As a respected pastor and a former president of the 16 million-member Southern Baptist Convention, Allen never thought twice about AIDS. But a late-night call from his son Scott, a pastor in Colorado, brought Allen’s world to a devastating halt. A tainted blood supply had infected Scott’s wife, Lydia, with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which she had passed on to their two children, Matthew and Bryan. Soon after Bryan’s death in 1986, Allen was confronted with the news that his homosexual son, Skip, had also tested positive for HIV.
Since then, Lydia and, recently, Matthew have also died from AIDS. Despite this overwhelming tragedy, Allen and his wife, Wanda, have found courage and strength through their faith. In his book “Burden of a Secret: A Story of Truth and Mercy in the Face of AIDS” (Moorings), Allen chronicles his family’s pilgrimage from loss to healing.
HOW MUCH DID YOU KNOW ABOUT AIDS WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD THE NEWS FROM SCOTT?
Back then people hardly knew what to call the virus. For a while, researchers had referred to it as grid, for Gay Related Immune Deficiency. But by 1985, the medical world was beginning to see that it was not a disease limited to homosexuals. Still, it was an absolute shock to hear the news.
WHAT KIND OF REACTIONS DID YOUR FAMILY FACE?
Rejection. And from people from whom we had come to expect the most. Many were unable to respond positively to us. For example, my son Scott was fired from his assistant pastor position in Colorado after his church was made aware of his family’s condition. And when we were looking for a church for our four-year-old grandson, Matt–Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, it made no difference–we were either turned away or met with silence.
It was hard for me to fathom: the family of a man who starts churches and who has pastored churches for 40 years being unable to find a church that would receive them. That rejection wounded us deeply. Thankfully, most of the churches that turned us down then now have AIDS ministries. Today, the facts about AIDS are more widely available, so churches have begun to face up to the reality. But our family’s situation happened at the early edge of the issue, and so we learned the hurt that I often heard about from people who were outsiders but that I’d never experienced.
Before, I’d always been on the inside. And inside you can look and see the flaws of the church family and accept them because “it’s my family and we’re just struggling with our flaws.” But I’d never been outside, feeling the pain of seeing lights on without being welcomed in.
WHY DO YOU THINK IT HAS BEEN SO DIFFICULT FOR THE CHURCH TO DEMONSTRATE CHRISTIAN COMPASSION TO VICTIMS OF THE DISEASE?
I’ve discovered the accuracy of Reinhold Niebuhr’s thesis in his book “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” He argues that we will do things in the name of an organization we would never do in our own name. My family found that there were Christians compassionately responding to us as individuals, but when the issue came to their churches, it was a different story. Within these “organizations,” it was impossible for these same people to decide to welcome a little child who might have a deadly, contagious disease.
Every pastor I talked to would have been glad to minister to my son’s family. But when they were in settings where parents and doctors were talking about changing policy, there was just enough uncertainty in those situations that these pastors were afraid to stand up. Perfect love should cast out fear, but I found when it comes to AIDS, fear often casts out perfect love.
HOW DID YOU FIND OUT THAT YOUR SON SKIP WAS ALSO HIV POSITIVE?
We knew that Skip was gay several years before. It was only after Lydia and the kids had been tested that Scott persuaded Skip also to be tested for the virus. We don’t know exactly when he developed the virus because he had gone without testing for so long. But we’ve known that Skip is HIV positive for about seven years. He now has full-blown AIDS.
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH SKIP LIKE TODAY?
Skip and I have a very warm, personal, loving relationship. We’ve learned to move beyond theology to love. We’ve had to deal with each other. He wanted approval of his behavior, and I could only offer him love and acceptance. We have vast differences of opinion, but that has not stopped our love.
HOW CAN CHRISTIANS COMPASSIONATELY RESPOND TO THOSE WHO HAVE CONTRACTED AIDS THROUGH SINFUL LIFESTYLE CHOICES?
To love the sinner but hate the sin is a lot easier to say than it is to do. We just have to deal with AIDS sufferers where they are and where their needs are. As I work with AIDS victims, I find myself remembering that Jesus never asked the blind man where he got his blindness or the crippled man why he became crippled. When somebody is dying of lung cancer, we don’t say to him, “Didn’t you know smoking cigarettes would do this?” We just don’t condemn and reject people because of the cause of their illness. Rather, we try to minister to them in the midst of it. That’s the attitude we have to take with AIDS. It’s not a matter of condoning a lifestyle that we do not believe in. It’s a matter of trying to draw people in that lifestyle into an understanding of who Jesus is and what he can do in their lives.
WHILE SOME SAY AIDS IS GOD’S JUDGMENT UPON HOMOSEXUALS AND OTHER SINNERS, YOU’VE SUGGESTED THAT AIDS MIGHT BE GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE LACK OF COMPASSION AMONG GOD’S PEOPLE.
The rediscovery of compassion is the church’s greatest challenge. God is not the author of evil; therefore, AIDS is not in his intentional will for our world. But since it’s here, it becomes the laboratory for compassion and the greatest challenge for compassion. Compassion always reaches beyond barricades and barriers to get to where need is.
We have in our country an Oklahoma City explosion every day in the AIDS epidemic. There are that many people killed by the disease daily. And there are that many families affected. If the church rediscovers the flow of compassion and concern that puts them in the middle of these human tragedies, God will move back with his power, because he is working to seek and to save that which was lost. And are there people more lost than those who are an AIDS-suffering community?
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