ON GOD'S "GIFT" TO MR. TIM COOK

Mr. Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, Inc., acknowledged this week in an essay published in the Bloomberg Business that he is a homosexual.  In making this announcement he writes that he has succumbed to the need to “benefit others,” including “kids,” by self-sacrificing his privacy, on which heretofore he’s placed a high premium.  Mr. Cook’s homosexuality has been an open secret for many years and it causes one to wonder if he jumped, or was pushed, into making his public announcement, especially at this particular time.

Announcements by high-profile people are hardly news anymore – I mean real news.  On reading the headlines and the first paragraph of the story I metaphorically yawned.  But my yawn was abruptly checked and was cause for pause when I read Mr. Cook assert that being gay is among the greatest gifts God has given him.

I don’t purport to know with any degree of certainty what is or isn’t a gift from God any more than I know for certain what God’s will is or isn’t, was or wasn’t, or should or shouldn’t be.  For me this has always been a part of my spirituality that I’ve accepted on faith not fully comprehending why, where, or how divine intervention happens, but only that it indeed happens. 

Like others, I’ve always associated in general that good things seem to be from God, and bad things from the devil, or from the ‘not-God’.  But most of us have come to understand much of what God does as something of a mystery.  For example, why do children suffer with cancer?  Why do good people die in their prime?  And other similar things, including perhaps the possibility and mystery that God might bestow upon Mr. Cook the rather unique gift, according to him, of him preferring to unite sexually with another man.

In claiming his sexual preference for men, Mr. Cook unambiguously and in one fell swoop discounts the gift of ‘free will’ that God, out of love, has also gifted him.  The discounting of Mr. Cook’s free will in is actions as a homosexual does not comport with even a rudimentary understanding of Scriptures and perhaps in his zeal to “help others” he may also help us believers understand how this can be reconciled.  But Mr. Cook has informed the public now that he has chosen to exercise that free will in directing his very large corporation in advancing the notion that homosexuality is normal, desired, and should be promoted, even as he states in his essay, “helping others” who also happen to have homosexual inclinations.

Notwithstanding God’s gift to Mr. Cook of ‘free will’, Mr. Cook claims that his homosexuality, the sexual expression of it, is the gift from God that’s allowed him to have “a deeper understanding,” and to be “more empathetic.”  That it has “led to a richer life,” and has given him “confidence to be myself.”  It is integral he says to helping him to “follow my own path,” to “rise above adversity and bigotry”, and has given him the “skin of a rhinoceros” which, he says, has helped him become a better CEO for Apple.

Mr. Cook’s claim caused me to wonder if or how my sexuality, or anyone’s sexuality for that matter, be it pedophilia, polyamory, or otherwise, might too be a gift from God, or not, and in what capacity.  I wondered how my heterosexuality, my inherent attraction to the opposite sex, married as I am, might be responsible for my skill set as a medical professional, or any number of cognitive abilities: my intelligence, my compassion and empathy, or my healing skills, my ability to work out problems, allowing me the confidence in my work, as well as being responsible for my choosing medicine as a career.  While it may not be true for others, I cannot begin to fathom how my heterosexuality would be responsible for any of that.  Then again, that’s just me.  

With respect to leading a richer life, I must readily admit however that my heterosexuality indeed is first and foremost responsible for that, for without being a heterosexual I would not have been able to father four children all of whom have been and are blessings to me.  In this regard it’s easy to see how the particular sexuality of being heterosexual can be directly responsible for leading to a richer life in permitting me to participate in bringing forth new life and a family.  

We assume the God of Mr. Cook is the same God of the Bible (what other God could it be?).  In this light, the Scriptures are rife with examples of Mr. Cook’s God using sinners of all stripes, prostitutes, adulterers, and fornicators as channels, not gifts in themselves, but rather conduits through which Divine Providence has moved forward.  But in no instance that I know of was a homosexual used in this way, at least not in Scriptures.  But that’s not to say that it’s not beyond God’s doings that he indeed could use a homosexual, heterosexual, pedophile, or polygamist, as an instrument by which he confers his grace on others.  I defer to any one, a cleric or other, on this and would of course stand as corrected.  

I don’t mean to put words in Mr. Cook’s mouth but perhaps a fairer assessment of what he’s trying to convey would be that the conflict his homosexuality presents in a culture that, before 2002, understood heterosexuality to be the norm and homosexuality to be the perversion, that this same culture understood heterosexuality disciplined by monogamous marriage, to be responsible for growing populations and stabilizing governments and civilized societies (especially where monogamy prevails), that this conflict, this incongruity throughout the history of man, itself has made him more aware and conscience of those things he’s wrongly attributing as a gift from God, but instead is really propelled by his desire to rationalize his aberrant orientation to himself, as well as to have us think God has changed his mind and now has deemed fit to bless and gift anal intercourse between men, and that it is God’s ordained wish for the people of the world to accept, embrace, and promote homosexuality as normal, wholesome, and healthy, throughout his Kingdom.  

Finally, Mr. Cook has also declared that his company, Apple, will now provide the corporate base from which the homosexual lobby will launch a fresh strategy in promoting the societal acceptance of homosexuality and homosexual acts as normal.  In this vein we should not be surprised to hear in the coming months and year other high-profile CEOs, of which I understand 90% are still in the closet according to National Public Radio, to come forth announcing their gayness as well as, you can be sure, declaring in some form or fashion that their homosexuality too is a gift from God and the cause for their wonderful success.  

It is interesting that Mr. Cook’s strange and singular claim of homosexuality being a gift from God comes in the same month, within one week actually, of the recent Synod on the Family, a called meeting of Catholic bishops in Rome where ambiguity and controversy briefly prevailed surrounding the Church’s planned approach to homosexuals and homosexuality and its reference to gifts.  In my next blog I will share my thoughts, my opinion, on how and why Mr. Cook chose this particular formula to validate his aberrant sexual orientation.