Most of us keep people with HIV, and people carrying diagnoses they have never mentioned, at a distance for reasons we would not say out loud. We fear what we do not understand. We worry about what being seen with someone might suggest about us. And often we simply do not know what to say, so we say nothing and call it respect. Staying close starts with naming those reasons honestly before God. Then comes doing small, deliberate things: learning, following up, and keeping what we are told.
This is a lament study. It asks you to grieve the distance before you try to fix it, because distance we have not admitted tends to come back. It draws on a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and her friend of many years, Deon White, who describes himself as a banker, HIV activist and worship leader. You can work through it alone in one or two sittings, or with a small group over a single long session. Nothing here requires anyone to share anything about their own health, history or body. If you are leading a group, say that plainly before you read a single verse.
Begin with the person who was avoided
Before you look at your own habits, listen to what the distance feels like from the other side. Psalm 31 is a prayer from someone in trouble, and part of the trouble is how people react to him:
“I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine acquaintance: they that did see me without fled from me. I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.” (Psalm 31:11-12)
Read it slowly. Notice who hurts the psalmist most. It is not his enemies. It is the neighbors and the acquaintances, the people who know his name. “A fear to mine acquaintance” means he has become someone people are afraid of. Those who see him in the street leave. Then comes the quieter wound: he is forgotten, like someone already dead.
The psalm does not explain why people fled, and it does not tell us to read every illness into it. What it gives us is honest speech about social abandonment, offered to God in prayer and kept in Scripture. Lament is a faithful way to talk about this. The psalmist does not pretend he is fine. Later he turns: “But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God” (Psalm 31:14). The trust does not cancel the complaint. Both stay in the prayer.
Deon White’s account of his diagnosis follows a similar path, with one painful difference. He describes receiving the news in 2012, and he says that before anybody else knew his status, “I already gave up on myself.” He pulled back from church. In his words, “I’m just gonna be quiet and just sit back.” Nobody had fled from him yet. He fled first, because he expected to be avoided.
That is worth sitting with. Stigma does not wait for a disclosure. A congregation teaches people what a diagnosis will cost them long before anyone says it aloud, and some of them leave quietly so they will not have to find out.
Pause and observe. Read Psalm 31:9-13 once more. Write down every phrase that describes how other people respond to the one praying. Then ask yourself, privately: which of those responses have I ever given?
The touch that came before the cure
Mark’s Gospel tells of a man with leprosy who comes to Jesus:
“And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean.” (Mark 1:40-41)
Some context matters here. Under the law in Leviticus 13:45-46, a person with this kind of skin disease lived apart from the community, outside the camp, and warned others away. That law concerned ritual purity in Israel’s worship. It was not a verdict on the man’s character. Still, it meant years of people keeping their distance from him.
Read the order of events in Mark. Jesus is moved with compassion. He reaches out his hand. He touches the man. Only then does he speak the word of cleansing. The touch is not what heals him, and Jesus did not need it to heal. The touch is what ends the distance.
Two cautions keep this passage honest. First, HIV is not leprosy, and a person living with HIV is not unclean in any sense. The parallel is the social distance, not the condition. Second, this story does not promise that anyone’s illness will go away. Jesus healed this man. We are not Jesus, and we cannot offer what he offered. What we can copy is the movement toward the person, the willingness to be near before anything is resolved. Deon White points to that same movement when he says some believers loved him in a way that felt like “you’re loving me to life.” He is describing people who stayed, not people who cured him.
What keeps us away
The conversation between Fields and White names several reasons for distance. Read them as a mirror, not as accusations aimed at someone else.
Fear of association. Lisa Fields observes that in some churches, people make assumptions about a man’s sexuality from how he carries himself, especially in music ministry, and “they assume it, but then they don’t say anything.” She adds that some Black men avoid being seen with men who seem more feminine, for fear of what others will conclude. Deon White puts the same worry in plain terms: people are stuck on “what people may think of them.” This kind of distance is not really about the other person. It protects our own reputation.
Valuing what someone does over who they are. White says, “The church is more concerned about the gift than they are the soul.” He told his pastor about his diagnosis, and the pastor never followed up. Lisa Fields names the gap in that silence: a person, “while they are gifted, they’re still a human being and a soul.” We can be warm toward someone on Sunday and keep them at arm’s length the rest of the week. The warmth is real, but it is attached to their usefulness.
Silence that protects everyone’s secrets. Fields describes congregations where leaders and musicians know things about each other and nobody speaks, and she concludes that “sin grows in the dark.” Some of our distance is a way of not knowing. If I never get close, I am never responsible for what I learn.
Plain discomfort. Many people stay away because they are afraid of saying the wrong thing. White’s answer to that is an exercise in memory: “think about how you were in your situation and your circumstance when it comes to you dealing with anybody who’s dealing with that.” Remember what it was like when you needed someone. That memory will guide you better than a perfect script.
An objection worth taking seriously
Some believers hesitate here. If I draw close, especially to someone whose story includes sexual sin or struggle, will it look as though I have stopped caring about holiness?
Start with a fact. A diagnosis is not a confession. You do not know how anyone came to carry what they carry, and you have no right to ask. A group that speculates about it has already done harm.
Then the theological point. Jude 3 holds the historic Christian sexual ethic, and holds it together with genuine welcome and the love of God first. Conviction does not require distance. Lisa Fields says it directly: “We can’t have dialogue that starts with condemnation. We have to have dialogue that starts with compassion.” She also passes along a line she heard from another pastor: “Jesus wasn’t afraid to be guilty by association.” The people who complained about the company Jesus kept were not more holy than he was. They were more worried about appearances.
A practice: the distance inventory
This exercise is private. Do it on paper you can keep or throw away. No one, including a group leader, should ask to see it.
- Name the moments. Write down two or three times you kept someone at a distance because of a diagnosis, a rumor, or something you assumed about them. Use initials if writing names feels too exposed.
- Name what you were protecting. Next to each one, write what the distance protected: your health fears, your reputation, your comfort, your schedule, your not knowing what to say. Be specific. “I was busy” is usually not the full answer.
- Lament it. Read Psalm 31:11-12 again, this time from the other side. Then pray, in your own words or silently, about what you wrote. You do not need to resolve anything. Saying it to God is the work for today.
- Learn one thing. Deon White urges anyone who wants to help to read up first. Spend thirty minutes with a local clinic, your doctor or a reputable public health source learning how HIV is and is not transmitted and what treatment looks like today. Then fear is not doing your thinking for you.
- Choose one act of nearness. Pick one person from your inventory, or one person in your life who carries something heavy. Do one ordinary thing: a meal, a text that asks a real question, a second visit. White describes the kind of friend he hopes churches will equip, someone who says, “I don’t mind hanging out with you on a Friday night just to get some lunch or dinner so we can talk out a few things.” Ordinary is the point.
Before step five, check your motives. White warns against helpers who mainly want to be seen helping, and his counsel is to “go pray first before you come to me.” If someone tells you something, it belongs to them. Do not pass it on, not even as a prayer request.
Questions for honest conversation
If you are leading a group, assume someone in the room is living with a diagnosis they have told no one about. Ask people to answer from their own habits, not from stories about other people. Let silence happen. No one has to answer any question.
- Psalm 31 says the worst wound came from neighbors and acquaintances. Why might rejection from people who know you hurt more than rejection from strangers?
- Deon White pulled away before anyone knew his status. What has your church communicated, through silence or offhand comments, about what a diagnosis would cost someone here?
- In Mark 1, Jesus touches the man before he heals him. What does nearness look like when you cannot fix the problem?
- White says “one look from somebody can turn them completely away from the church, not from God, but from the church.” What would it take for the people around you to trust that they could tell the truth without that look?
- Which reason for distance in this study did you recognize most quickly in yourself? Which one did you want to skip?
- What is the difference between respecting someone’s privacy and simply never checking on them?
A word for anyone leading: if a person discloses something during or after the group, thank them, keep it confidential, and follow up privately later. That follow-up is the practice this study teaches. If someone shares thoughts of ending their life, stay with them and help them call or text 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US. White speaks openly about this: “Depression is real. It is a real thing.” He has lost friends who gave up after their diagnosis. If anyone discloses abuse, including abuse that happened to them as a child in a church setting, take it seriously, do not press for reconciliation, and help them find safe help. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233, and abuse of a child should be reported to the authorities.
If you are the one carrying it
Some of you are not reading this as a helper. You may be living with HIV or another diagnosis, and you may have already stepped back from the people who might have stayed. You do not owe anyone your story. You also do not have to carry it entirely alone.
Deon White’s phrase is “closed mouth don’t get healed.” He does not mean that telling people will make an illness disappear. He means the relief of being known by a few trustworthy people. He found some early on, people who “knew all about me, and there was no judgment.” If you have not been tested or are afraid of results, his advice is practical: “if you’re scared, I trust that you should go with somebody so you won’t feel alone.” Keep a clinician involved in your care, for your body and your mental health. Prayer and medical care work together.
Coming back to the inventory
Put your distance inventory somewhere you will find it again. In a month, take it out. Look at the names or initials. Has anything moved? Did you learn the one thing? Did you make the second visit?
Some lines will not have changed, and that is worth lamenting honestly too. Lisa Fields, speaking of her own friendship with White, says he has given her “grace to fail and space to learn.” Staying close is learned slowly, by people who get it wrong and come back anyway. The point of the inventory is not a perfect record. It is a shorter list of people you have kept at a distance.