New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, has contributed a video to the “It Gets Better” project, aimed at assuring gay teenagers who are considering suicide that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel of high school hell.

The gist:

“I know a lot of you are feeling in that dark place because religion and religious people are telling you that you are an abomination before God. Maybe you are growing up in a Roman Catholic household and you hear from your church that you are intrinsically disordered. Or maybe you are growing up in a Mormon household or a Southern Baptist household, and you’re told that that somehow your life is not acceptable to God. I want to tell you, as a religious person, that they are flat out wrong.”

“God loves you the way you are and God doesn’t want you to change. And God doesn’t want you to be cured or healed, because there’s nothing to be healed from. You’re the way you are, the way God made you, the way God loves you.”

“So, if you’re considering hurting yourself, please don’t. Please, don’t. God wants you to live in the light of God’s love, and that light will take away all of this darkness. So, hang in there, be strong, and know that despite the messages that you get from religious people, God loves you beyond your wildest imagining, and only wants the best for you. It gets better, I promise. It gets so much better.”

Faith in Public Life has more on the project, launched by columnist Dan Savage a few weeks ago, which has gotten submissions from celebrities like Project Runway‘s Tim Gunn, Glee‘s Chris Colfer (who plays Kurt) and Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Eric Stonestreet (who play Mitchell and Cameron). The hundreds of videos so far include all sorts of religious perspectives, including Muslim, Catholic, Baptist and Mormon. Two more samples:

Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

*Click here to subscribe to Belief Beat and click here to follow Belief Beat on Twitter.