“I know they’ll bury me/ Before they hear the whole story”
-Jennifer Knapp, “Inside”

It was bound to happen: Girl finds God. Girl lifts guitar. Writes songs. Finds fame. Plays the nascent Lilith Fair. Garners awards, sells a million. Raises a million eyebrows, incites a riot of expectations. And catalyzes a litany of rumors about her subsequent hiatus from performing and recording.

Well, the former Christian folk-rock singer Jennifer Knapp has emerged from her self-imposed hermitage Down Under. She’s making music after nearly a decade away, has a new album called Letting Go, is playing Lilith again after more than 10 years, and a day after her 36th birthday, came out as a gay woman.

Then the deluge.

CNN came calling. So did Christianity Today and The Advocate. (The former’s a Christian mag, and the latter’s the foremost ‘zine covering gay culture.) Knapp’s been something short of crucified on Christian sites and radio stations since April 13 when she fessed up. They’ve done everything from damning her to hell to trying to marginalize and belittle her previous status in the Christian industry. “A minor Christian celebrity,” scoffed one Christian publication, as if a lot of music acts actually sell a million in that market.

Meanwhile her Facebook fan page has seen a considerable spike in members and attention, but, predictably, about 1 in every 6 comments posted there since her admission has been a variation on themes of “Read this Bible verse” or “Praying for your repentance” or, bizarrely, “You’ve really hurt me by this.”

Here’s the thing: No one knows her life. Maybe not blood, but certainly sweat and tears have been shed in Knapp’s road to reconciling her sexuality and her spirituality. And you can’t confuse her journey with your journey.

It’s groundbreaking, what she’s doing. She is opening doors. After posting just a couple comments on her Facebook page, I found myself greeted with a dozen “friend” requests on that social media behemoth. And as another singer, Matthew David, a self-described gay Christian active on Knapp’s Facebook page, put it to me via personal message, “Now that I’m in the music business I am meeting a lot of other artists, including closeted Christian musicians, quite a few of them! They’ve told me that the Christian music industry is teeming with gay people. Had I known that so many of these people I was listening to were actually gay, I may not have been so depressed and suicidal as a teen. Now I’m doing my part to encourage these guys to come out.”

Herein lies the heart of the matter: For a group of people who sing of their God’s love being deep and wide, a heap of scorn and judgment has been piled on Knapp’s shoulders since the news broke. Much of it is thinly veiled or passive-aggressive or opportunistic, couched in verses posted to her, ahem, fan page, verses that would condemn her. Sad but true. Well-intentioned poison is still poison.

As a music lover, one who listened to Knapp’s stuff more than a decade ago, and as the one-time son of a pastor and (gasp) a gay man, I say this: Jennifer Knapp’s anti-fans can go to heaven.

And may they find themselves utterly surprised by who they find beside them there.

Christian believers are told in their own religious text to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling. People would do well to let Knapp be Knapp, and to tend to their own. It’s not between them and her. At the end it’s between her and this God. No human has a stranglehold on the truth. Putting on that one does is pride, and pride comes before a fall. One is to remove the beam from his own eye first, before tending to the speck in another’s.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

All philosophical and theological ruminations aside, those who oppose gayness or Knapp’s life and music because of her very being, her person are faced with the burden of proof here: Homosexuality appears to be the sole “sin” in which no one is hurt.

Knapp has reconciled these facets of her life, and for that anyone with a heart and a soul should be thankful. She apparently doesn’t harbor self-hate or bitterness. She is becoming “wholly human,” in her own words. We should all aspire to that. She is in a committed relationship of eight years now with her girlfriend, and she’s happy. She says she’s joyful. And yet some would dispel that readily because it doesn’t fit into their worldview. Doesn’t jibe with their rigid holdings about what is right and pure and true. What is love.

“I’m quite comfortable to live with parts of myself that don’t make sense to you,” she has told those skeptics who, incredibly, do not know her but wish to pound the celestial gavel on their god’s behalf. Well, that’s no god worth believing in or praying to, let alone worshipping. May some kind of maddening mercy find its way to even their heads. That would be so God.

Jennifer Knapp deserves respect for her honesty and her realness. She’s been noble as a musician and a public figure to announce her news ahead of her album’s release so that, as she told a couple publications, people in the Christian market don’t snag her record and then find themselves disillusioned. Yea, let them be disillusioned without paying a dime.

The best thing Knapp and her defenders can do moving forward is to forgive those slinging verbal darts at her, for they know not what they do. And if they do know? Even worse. And they will get theirs. But ignoring the critics – yea, even showing them kindness – will, as the Good Book says, “heap burning coals on their heads.”

In the words of another, we’ll all float on all right.