I am sure there was a point in Makela's life when this could have been avoided, It would have been a road not taken.  A moment when he could have been told that as scary as self acceptance is,  it does get better.   A moment that a faith community which  truly followed the teachings of Christ, could have made real.   Instead, from the earliest age,   Matthew Makela,  along with  so many others like him,   was bombarded with messages  from the LCMS of how he needed to hate ... himself.
 
Messages from the both the pulpits and classrooms of the LCMS of how Gays are "attacking" the church and family. Near constant rants against welcoming and affirming churches and how God will (at some point) destroy those churches for daring to say that God loves everyone. 
 
Sadly the story of Matthew Makela is not new.  He is just the latest chapter in  the LCMS's long story of  damaged self hating closet cases. 
 
 
I am not saying that any of this can  excuse  Matthew Makela for his actions and choices, and let's be clear they were his own conscious choices. Decisions that have destroyed not only his life, but that of his wife and children as well. As easy as it is to dismiss that destruction, as just another hypocrite getting what he deserves, there is more here to be pitied than scorned. The fact is,  the road to those choices was paved in no small way, long ago with the messages of self-hatred and fear that were pummelled into him from childhood on,  by the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
 
The great Stephen Fry has often remarked how the obsession with sex, all too common among many of the publicly self-righteous, is similar to those with unhealthy relationships with food. The only people who are truly obsessed with food are the anorexic and the morbidly obese. This in sexual terms describes the LCMS, to its core. 
 
The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod suffers from a institutional obsession with homosexuality that, trumps all else, even the message of the Gospels.   
 
It is an obsession that continues to claim victims. Be it with the deaths of gay kids driven to suicide, or adults like Matthew Makela, driven to try live double lives of desperate hypocrisy.

This whole sad and sordid outcome is in no small part, the. LCMS reaping what it has so enthusiastically sown.