Month: July 2016

High school might take me two posts to do any sort of justice to the drama and trauma of being a teenager with a changing body, a blossoming sexuality, and a rigid faith. Freshman through Junior year are very different in my mind than my senior year. Before I say more, let me point out that just as much as I hated it and hated myself in high school, I also loved my time in high school and had so much fun with friends. And it is precisely those friendships and my family’s love that kept me from harming myself beyond repair.

I struggled a lot with self-hatred in high school. I’m sure that plenty of people struggle with self-image, with self-loathing, with figuring out who they are. My struggle, however, was rooted in my inability and my surrounding culture’s inability to accept myself as God had created me to be: gay and Christian. As many young curious teenagers do, I surfed the internet attempting to find out what sex was, specifically what sex with another man would be like. It was confirmed for me that men turned me on and women did not. Pornography became an outlet for me to experience my sexuality, to give release to the building sexual tension that occurs in most young people. (I am not condoning pornography because I don’t think it’s our healthiest option most of the time, but I do think that it served a purpose during that time.)

The problem with pornography is that I was raised in a conservative non-denominational (evangelical) church. We didn’t talk much about sex in church, except that it was bad for teenagers and it was bad for anyone not married. The only and best way to experience sex was in a married relationship. So, naturally I chose to hide it all. And I punished myself for it. I had already struggled with self-image, with hating my red hair, my freckles, my chubby-ness, my lack of muscle definition. And then I began struggling emotionally and spiritually. I chose physical ways of expressing the emotional turmoil brewing in me. I chose binging and purging, eating because food numbed the pain and purging because I was convinced food was my enemy, keeping me from looking a specific way. Binging was a way of expressing the lack of control I felt and purging was my attempt to combat that lack of control. It was how I attempted to gain control of my entire life, though it rarely, if ever, actually works. It just made me feel even shittier because I felt as though I couldn’t get my life together.

Besides expressing the emotional death happening in me through food, I also chose to express it through cutting. Running a scissors across my arm allowed me to transfer my emotional pain into something physical, something tangible. I could understand physical pain. I had been taught and I learned how to deal with physical pain. I had not been taught how to deal with emotional pain, especially as a boy. I wasn’t supposed to cry about my emotional pain. I wasn’t supposed to express my emotional pain to others. To express emotions as a man in the United States, specifically the rural Midwest, is to admit weakness, to admit to being a ‘lesser man’ (which is somehow the ultimate low of a male’s life). This notion of masculinity, of what it means to be a man is toxic. It is literally toxic when it convinces a young boy that the best way to handle his emotions is to attempt to bleed them out of himself. It is toxic when it convinces a young boy that he cannot share his inner turmoil for fear of being shamed and ridiculed. It is death-dealing when it has the potential to convince a young man that his life is not worth living if he has to endure same-sex attractions one more day (because he’ll go to hell forever if he does). Our notion of what it means to be a man is skewed and warped, and it is no help to young men struggling with their sexuality. The reverse can also be said about our notion of what it means to be a woman or a young woman struggling with her sexuality.

Through those first three years of high school, I attended church and youth group on a regular basis. I prayed and prayed and then prayed some more for God to take this attraction, this lust, from me. I hated myself for the lust and the attractions I had and I was convinced that even though God loved me, I would end up in hell if I couldn’t kick it, if I couldn’t get rid of them. And I was convinced that if I tried hard enough, believed enough, prayed enough, trusted God enough that God would change my sexual attraction. (I don’t use orientation because at that point in my life I didn’t believe orientation was a thing – because I believed it could be changed.)

I went through periods of reading the Bible every morning and periods of intensive amounts of time spent in prayer. I attended Bible studies, youth group every Wednesday, church every Sunday, mission trips during the summers, and other church related events. I was considered a leader of the youth group in spiritual or faith matters. I focused on my heart, because isn’t so much of Evangelical Christianity a ‘heart problem.’ (I have some dear Evangelical friends who don’t use this language anymore and I’m thankful for that.) I focused on my body and subduing it into action, because the realm of Christianity I grew up in taught me not to trust my body. I was taught that the body had desires that were not holy. They were not given by God, but that we were too often given over to our bodily desires because we didn’t follow God properly. We weren’t given tools to help us love our bodies or ourselves because we were despicable sinners who were at the mercy of God. And when we went to heaven, we would leave these bodies and these bodily desires behind.

This is a warped Christianity. To say that something is a ‘heart problem,’ but not acknowledge the body that is involved, has strayed from Jesus. Christianity is rooted in Jesus’ body and blood. It is rooted in the physical life that Jesus lived and his living ministry. It is rooted in the way he taught us to live. It is also rooted in his death and in his resurrection. Death is a bodily action. It is not a metaphor (though we often use it as one because it must be understood both literally and metaphorically). His body died and his body rose. He died and he rose. Those two statements are the same. We cannot separate ourselves from our bodies.

And it is in this notion that I realize the damage Christianity did to me those first three years of high school. I recognize the harm I did myself in the name of Jesus. I harmed myself, my body, in order to control my body. I could not control the sexual attraction I felt for other men and so I attempted to gain control in other ways. Now I know that the only way to gain control is to learn to accept your body as yourself. To admit that you and your body are one in the same and that to love yourself means to love and accept your body. It means that young people must learn to accept their sexuality and to love themselves precisely because God created them with that particular sexuality. It means that we need to stop divorcing our bodies from our spiritual lives because it will only cause more harm. A Christianity without the loving of bodies does not seem like the Christianity I read about in Scripture, particularly from the Gospels. It is not the Christianity I have come to know and love. May we all, gay, bisexual, or straight, cis, trans, or anywhere on the spectrum of gender identity and sexual orientation learn to love ourselves, to love our bodies, for we were all created in the Image of God.

Previous posts in this series: Gay and Christian [Surviving Middle School], Gay and Christian [The Early Years]

I’m taking a break from my series about growing up gay and Christian to write a piece concerning Orlando. I’ve had a lot on my heart and mind since the attack at Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando, Florida. I know it’s been a few weeks, but that first week or two I was feeling so many strong feelings I wasn’t sure I knew what to say or how to say it. I could hardly write about anything because I felt so weighed down by grief and anger. What I wanted to say, so many other people had already been saying on Facebook, and so, I even wonder how my words right now will be much different. But, I feel the weight lifting as I write, and I believe that means this is what I should be writing about.

People had many opinions about the shooting that took 49 lives and wounded over 50 more. Many were quick to call it terrorism because the shooter affiliated himself with Daesh (more commonly known as ISIS) immediately prior to entering the club. Others were quick to call it a hate crime because it was committed against minority groups (LGBTQ+, as well as Latinx and African Americans). There were those just as quick to condemn assault rifles as those claiming “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.” While much has been said, I have a few things of my own to share.

Yes, dear 2nd amendment clingers, guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But guns sure help when a person can kill 49 people in a matter of seconds or minutes. By immediately jumping to this response, I believe that you are saying that the lives of those who were murdered are less important than your right to own a particular type of gun. You are saying that my life and my safety as an LGBTQ+ person is less valuable than your right to own any type of gun you’d like. That’s frankly unbelievable to me. And it’s utterly unChristian. If you don’t claim the Christian label, then I have nothing to say except that my life and my safety are more important than your right to own any type of gun.

If you are a Christian, then it is time to put your fear away and let go of your right to own any particular gun you wish. For life is more important than clinging to our fear, than clinging to our rights. Choosing safety for others is more important than rights to a specific type of gun, or at least your right to get one so easily. The way of Christ has never been one of violence. It has always been the way of the Cross, the way that exposes violence for its atrocities. Let us always remember that violence is not the answer, and guns are not an answer and guns are not more important than my life and my safety and my soundness of mind.

Now, to the note of terror and hate. The act is not terrorism because the shooter is Muslim and claimed affiliation with Daesh, but it is terrorism because it struck fear and terror into the hearts of LGBTQ+ people around this country. It is terror because it made us afraid, made us question going to Pride this year, made us realize that it could have been any of us. The media in our country likes to portray Muslims as terrorists, and this is slander against the mass majority of those who practice Islam. For terrorism comes from the acts of all different kinds of people committing all kinds of heinous crimes; a white man killing 9 black people in a church in Charleston, a Muslim shooting 49 LGTBQ+ people in a gay nightclub, a police officer shooting Tamir Rice, a 12 year old black boy, over a fake gun he was holding. Terror comes in many forms and we would be dishonest if we labeled Muslims as a whole terrorists and not straight, cisgender, white men and not police. We commit a dreadful sin against a people when we deem most or all of them as terrorists. Let us repent of that stereotyping, of that sin.

It is also a hate crime, because it was committed against a specific community of people, LGBTQ+ people. The shooter had also expressed vehemence towards LGBTQ+ people previously when seeing two men kissing. His homophobia was not a secret. His homophobia was not an isolated feeling and therefore, his actions were not an isolated event. Homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia is a real thing in this country. It is alive and well and breathing down our necks from every new law that bans transgender people from using the bathroom of their choice to each law that allows people to deny service to LGBTQ+ people. It is alive in every church that refuses to allow LGBTQ+ people full inclusion in the life of the church, from allowing them to marry to ordaining them. Yes, every church that participates in some form of exclusion of LGBTQ+ people is participating in homophobia and is contributing to the chain of events that led to the Orlando shooting.

Yes, dearly beloved Church, you are responsible. You are as culpable as the shooter himself in creating this atmosphere of homophobia, of perpetuating the lie that LGBTQ+ lives are less valuable that straight, cisgender lives. Yes, it is time for you (and me because even though I am a gay man, I still consider myself a Christian and part of the church) to own up to our complicity in the taking of these lives. I do not want your apologies and your condolences if you are not affirming of LGBTQ+ people and if you do not celebrate our lives. I do not want your mourning if I cannot have your celebrating. As Beth Watkins (a fellow undergraduate alum) put it, “If you didn’t show up to the wedding, don’t invite yourself to the funeral.” I could not say it any better. Christians are supposed to mourn and celebrate with people. I am sick with grief and anger over your petty beliefs about the rightness and wrongness of my life and the lives of LGBTQ+ people.

Dear Church, it is time you began to practice the love you preach. It is time for you to confront your homophobia and your xenophobia and your fear of other religions. It is time for you to confront yourselves and the harm you have caused and continue to cause to people of the LGBTQ+ community, as well as those of the Latinx and African American communities and the Muslim community. It is time for us, as a whole Church to learn that the action of love is far more important than any belief we hold, for Jesus models that in Scripture time after time. It is far past time for us to learn that love is far more the Gospel message than fear, than hate, than judging others before we understand and know them. Dear friends and dear Church, perfect love casts out all fear. I pray that we may all choose love each day over fear and hate, that love will win out. I pray that as a Church, we will take responsibility for our wrongs and for the harm we have caused LGBTQ+ people and the harm that we cause the Muslim community. And may the terror struck in our hearts by mass shooters and by hate crimes be driven out by love and joy and hope. And I pray for the victims of Orlando and all their families that they may find some semblance of peace and joy after their grief and anger and guilt have subsided, for those are heavy burdens to bear.