Book Club Questions for Gay Girl, Good God

1.Jackie opens by saying she is not writing primarily for people who used to be gay, but for anyone who has ever loved something more than they loved God. Does that framing expand or narrow your sense of who this book is for? How does it change the way you approach your own reading of it?

2.She is direct from the first pages that this is not a "how I stopped being gay" story, but a "how I met God" story. Why does that distinction matter? What would be lost — or distorted — if the book were framed the other way?

3.Jackie writes with the assumption that God is genuinely good — not just powerful, not just morally demanding, but good. Before reading further, where does that assumption feel easy for you to accept, and where does it feel like something you have to convince yourself of?

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?

2.She writes honestly about feeling more comfortable with masculinity than with femininity from a very young age — not as a moral failure but as a felt reality. How does understanding that felt reality change the way you engage someone whose experience is similar?

3.Jackie does not treat her childhood experiences as excuses, but she does treat them as context. What is the difference between excusing behavior through backstory and understanding it through backstory? Why does that distinction matter pastorally?

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?

2.She describes coming face-to-face with her sin not as a list of rule-violations but as an offense against a holy and personal God. What is the difference between feeling guilty because you broke a rule and feeling grieved because you have wronged someone who loves you? Which one leads to lasting change, and why?

3.Jackie did not immediately feel her attractions change at conversion. She became a new creature in Christ while still feeling the pull of same-sex desire. How does this challenge both the "pray away the gay" narrative and the "nothing can change" narrative? What does 2 Corinthians 5:17 actually promise and what does it not promise?

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?

2.She draws a crucial distinction between temptation and sin — being tempted is not the same as sinning, and Jesus Himself was tempted in every way yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). How does that distinction change the way we pastor ourselves and others through persistent temptation?

3.Romans 6 tells us we are "dead to sin" — and yet Paul immediately asks, "Shall we go on sinning?" implying that the temptation to do so remains real. How do you hold together the definitive reality of who you are in Christ with the ongoing struggle of what you still feel?

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?

2.1 Corinthians 6:11 says of the formerly sexually immoral, "such were some of you" — past tense. How does Paul's use of tense shape a biblical theology of identity? What has changed about the person in Christ, and what has not yet fully changed?

3.Jackie is clear that having same-sex attraction does not make someone less of a Christian or less of a new creation. But she is equally clear that building one's identity around that attraction is spiritually dangerous. How do you hold those two convictions together without sliding into either shame or permissiveness?

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?

2.She presents celibacy not as a consolation prize for those who don't end up married, but as a legitimate and holy vocation — one that Jesus and Paul both model and commend. How has the church you have known treated celibacy? Has it been presented as a gift or a burden?

3.Romans 12:1-2 calls us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices. Jackie reads this as applying literally to how we inhabit and steward our physical selves — our desires, our habits, our embodied choices. What does it mean for your body, specifically, to be an act of worship?

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?

2.She writes that she could not obey a God she did not trust — and that trust was not automatic but earned through encounter with who He actually is. How do you cultivate trust in God's goodness when your circumstances feel like evidence against it?

3.Psalm 34:8 says, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." The language is experiential, not merely propositional. How does Jackie's conversion and early Christian life illustrate this verse? What would it look like to move from knowing God is good as a doctrine to tasting it as a reality?

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?

2.She distinguishes between welcoming someone into a community and truly knowing them — bearing their burdens as Galatians 6 commands. What would it cost a local church to move from the former to the latter? What would have to change?

3.Romans 15:7 commands us to "welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you." How did Christ welcome you — at what cost, and without what conditions? What would it look like to extend that same quality of welcome to someone whose sin or struggle is most different from your own?

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?

2.She is honest that the road is long and that there are no shortcuts — but she is equally insistent that the road leads somewhere, and that God is present on it. How do you communicate both the difficulty and the hope of sanctification without giving false promises or discouraging realism?

3.Hebrews 12:1-3 calls us to "run with endurance" by looking to Jesus — not to our progress, not to our feelings, not to the finish line, but to Him. How has this practice of looking to Jesus specifically helped you in seasons of struggle? What happens when we look somewhere else?

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?

2.How has your understanding of same-sex attraction — either your own or someone else's — changed or deepened through reading this book? Be specific: what did you think before, and what do you think now?

3.Jackie's central argument is that God's goodness is the foundation of obedience — that we cannot truly follow a God we do not genuinely trust to be good. How has your confidence in God's goodness been strengthened, challenged, or complicated by this study?