Gay Girl, Good God

1.Jackie describes growing up without her father and how that absence left a wound that shaped the way she understood herself as a girl and as a person. How does she connect fatherlessness to her later gender confusion — and how careful is she not to make that a simple cause-and-effect argument?

1.Jackie's conversion did not happen in a church, through a program, or because of contact with Christians — it happened alone in her bedroom, confronted by the truth of the gospel. What does that tell us about how God works, and what does it free us from needing to control about evangelism and conversion?

1.Jackie is honest that after her conversion, same-sex attraction did not simply disappear. What practical decisions did she begin to make — about relationships, environments, and habits — to steward her new life faithfully? What does that kind of deliberate reshaping of life look like in practice?

1.Jackie challenges the label "gay Christian" as a self-identifier — not because same-sex attraction is to be denied or hidden, but because she argues it is a category mistake to make any desire the noun of your identity rather than an adjective describing an experience you have. Do you find that argument compelling? Why or why not?

1.Jackie is honest that her eventual marriage to Preston was not a "cure" for same-sex attraction — and she is careful not to present marriage as the goal of obedience or as evidence that the Christian life "worked." Why is that caveat so important? What false hopes could be created without it?

1.The book's title is a theological statement: "Good God." Jackie argues that the goodness of God is not a background assumption but a conviction you have to fight for and return to again and again. How does the goodness of God function differently than the power of God or the holiness of God as a motivation for obedience?

1.Jackie speaks from experience about the ways the church has both helped and harmed people navigating same-sex attraction — sometimes through overt cruelty, sometimes through silence, sometimes through oversimplified solutions. Which failure do you think is most common in the communities you have been part of?

1.Jackie writes as someone who is further down the road — not at the destination, but not where she started. What is it about a testimony like hers that is more compelling than an argument? What does a lived story offer that a theological treatise cannot?

1.Looking back across the whole book, what is the one idea, story, or sentence that you cannot get out of your head? Why do you think that particular thing landed so deeply?