Progress or Regress

Three years ago, I was wrecked. My experience then launched me on a path of intentionally re-examining of my faith and intentionally moving toward gay-affirming theology. Year one of this journey was incredibly difficult. It was terrible and lonely and sad. And though the journey is not linear, I can say honestly that this my most recent year has been the best of my life. On the path toward accepting myself, I have made a conscious effort to keep my Christian faith at the forefront. It is not easy to be a gay Christian, but sometimes it's best to do things that aren't easy.

I was communicating aspects of my story to a conservative Christian coworker. I mentioned that studying Bible in college has helped me grow and progress in my faith. I would add that studying mental health, working with at-risk teens, studying abroad, living near an urban center, intentionally experiencing other faith traditions, intentionally listening to diverse voices, - these things have stretched me and grown me as well. She asked me, "How do you know it's progress? How do you know it's not reverse progress? I guess that'd be regress?"

It was an honest question, though I think she more accurately meant, "How do you know that your former positions were incorrect and that your current ones are correct? How do you know you aren't less correct? How do you know you weren't spot-on the first time?"

So there are two questions, and I'll answer them both.

How do I know that I am correct and that I was wrong five years ago? I don't. I worry constantly that my potentially incorrect beliefs will land me in a postmortem lake of eternal torture. I think that my fundamentalist upbringing has implanted a leech in my mind that I will never be able to shake off. I don't know if this will change. I can only try to suppress the impulse to be right all the time - to be the smartest person in the room. Being "right" is often beneficial - especially when playing trivia - but I'm trying not to make it the end-all goal.

The question originally asked - how do I know I am progressing? - I felt like this question deserved some words on a page. So here are my answers in no particular order.


How have I progressed in my faith?

I am less judgmental. I am more empathetic. I engage with more people who look and act differently than me.

I am working more actively toward reconciliation. Through the process of coming out to myself, I have identified relationships in my past where I was in the wrong. I have always, more or less, been good at forgiving. I've never thought much about reconciling - actually processing past events, embracing feelings that are difficult to feel. I also don't beat myself up if the process takes a long time. If I go months without making progress toward reconciliation, that's okay. I am lenient with myself, and I forgive myself more.

I am more hospitable. I have intentionally made hospitality a cornerstone of my life, and I have realized that I love it. I try to open my home to travellers as much as possible. I invite people to my home and I share life in others' homes as more often, too. I share my possessions more. I have broadened my circles of friends and acquaintances. I try to love people without conditions. Here, again, I don't get mad at myself when I fail at this. Repentance, here, is not sackcloth and ashes. Repentance is the journey of changing one's mind, heart and way of life.

Twice in the past five years, I have intentionally chosen not to pursue lawsuits. Fundamentalists me might have made a very different choice. I have chosen to be more inclusive in my business practices. I have tried to make sure that profit is not my all-time bottom line. I want to build a bigger table, not a bigger house.

That's all I've got for now. I may edit this later as more comes to me. But I feel good. I feel better. I am healthier. If my life trajectory now is wrong, then it is wrong. I want my reflex to be love not correctness.

So it goes.

The Greatest Command

My family and I visited an a cappella church of Christ, and I was about through with it.

Sunday school was a pre-packaged, cursory study of a best-selling Christian book. I think the thesis was "God is real." No real questions were asked - nothing really wrestled through. The leader attempted to describe the Trinity - something very hard to do without breaking in to some sort of heresy. A back-row congregant raised his hand to help, "It's okay if you have a problem with the term 'Trinity' because it's not biblical." As if this solved any problem or contributed to any thought.

The sermon was about the same, except without the possibility of audience contribution. "The God of the Bible is God because the Bible says so." I thought of the infinite missed opportunities to expand this idea and think about how it engages our lives beyond, "therefore save as many people from Hell as you can." I thought about how un-(almost anti-)intelligent this all was. A prezi filled with questionable bumper-sticker feel-good quotes almost certainly hijacked from Facebook. Preaching to the choir. Easy. Pacifying. Bromide.

"I am an engineer, but I'm also a father. To my wife, I am a husband. To my parents I'm a son. That's the Trinity. That's who God is."

I wondered if anyone else knew that was the heresy of Modalism. Probably no one cared.

The sermon concluded with a call for anyone who needed to get their life right with the Lord, or something like that. Then a song.

I had sat through the first set of songs due to my recent foot surgery.  They were interesting, unfamiliar, and a bit awkward, but refreshing for the genuine and unique qualities of peculiar a cappella singing.

I didn't sit for the second set. Rather, in spite of my critical state of mind, past my church-weariness, past my longing for substantive theology, I had to stand for the song that followed the sermon.

I stood, crutch under one arm, and cried.
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At lunch, we talked about the uniqueness of the a cappella churches. They knew how to sing harmony, of course. One woman intentionally made her regular church seat right in front of my aunt so that she could learn to sing alto. It's an organic, sporadic, edifying environment. The odd blend of formalism and anti-formalism ensures that almost anything can happen. When I had last visited, a praise singer passed out on stage and a few of the M.D.-filled congregation rushed to help him. Almost no one sang that Sunday, but this - this Sunday the bricked auditorium was full of sound.

My step-mom remarked, "I had never heard that song before, but I really liked how it sounded. Had you heard it before?"

"Yeah, I've heard it before."

Alto: Love one another, for love is of God. He who loves is born of God; and knows God. He who does not love, does not know God. For God is love, God is love.

Bass: Love bears all things, Believes all things. Love hopes all things, Endures all things.

Tenor: God is love, God is love, God is love. God is love, God is love, God is love. God is love, God is love, God is love, God is love, God is love, God is love.

Soprano: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, all thy strength,all thy might. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, for God is love, God is love, God is love.

Just the words of Scripture sung over and over. So typically church of Christ - and so theologically deep, so correct.

I waited until our conversation was more private to explain. I had to share the thoughts gathering up at the edge of my tongue. 

I told my step-mom how I knew this song - largely unknown outside of a cappella churches. 

I told her that I heard it sung at a funeral.

It was a funeral for a friend who took his life. He was my age - we were choir-mates. I was sitting at work in a new job when a friend texted me that it had happened. I was hit with sadness, but I was not surprised. A gut feeling - a sober, obstinate thought struck me. Did my friend's suicide have anything to do with his sexuality? I felt connected, and the usual litany of "could I have done more" ran through my mind. My friend who had sent the message was less close to the deceased than I was, but she felt the same, odd connectedness. I bet that many, many people had similar, flooding feelings when they learned the news. I'm having a hard time putting my feeling to words. Maybe it was just the deadening understanding that something was not right - off - ruptured - wrong.

I went to the funeral with friends from choir, and a few people I did not know. Our university sent a van full. I learned that my friend had begun attending a gay-affirming church after his ailing mental health caused him to leave college. His family had been thoroughly supportive - if not immediately understanding. His dad began attending a Bible study there.

His family was also actively involved in a Messianic Jewish congregation that met every Saturday. They had been going four or five years before I met any of them, I think. They weren't Messianic Jews themselves, and they weren't the kind of people you might expect to find at synagogue. Their family was full of surprises. They were modest, quiet, and sheltered, but had a more-than-healthy appreciation for the Black Eyed Peas.

Their Messianic Sabbath services did not, however, steal them away from their home church. They were life-long attendees of the a cappella churches of Christ.

-
So, in the lobby were throngs of conservative independent Christians. There were bearded men wearing Yarmulkes. There were openly gay evangelicals. There were family members, college students, blue and white collar friends and acquaintances. And many gathered there, as we shuffled from lobby to our seats in the sanctuary, were complete strangers.

We sang an a cappella song that began with the altos, "love one another for love is from God." There was no song book, no projected lyrics. It was a round, and a little slow getting started for the many of us there not from an a cappella church. It was imperfect. The song was called the Greatest Command.

I will always remember that song, even if I don't always cry when I sing it. It was a turning point. It did something to me.

-
I put down my crutch and elevated my foot when the song was over. A man addressed the congregation, "Thank you for letting me know what heaven will sound like."

a few reasons why I hate myself

When I was a conservative, I cringed at being told that all white people were racist. I hated that rhetoric. It was incorrect and racist itself, I mentally argued. Counter-arguments flooded my brain, but I was never too vocal about my "not-racism."

My mind changed in a history class at my Christian college. The professor mentioned North/South divide in the Reconstruction era. He said that pro-union, abolitionist-minded Northerners thought they were better, less racist, than their backward Southern cousins. This conception collapsed, however, as freed slaves moved north. When Yankees got black neighbors, they realized they were just as racist as former slave owners, albeit perhaps in a different way.

In-defense-of-white-conservajargon was quickly dismissed: "Of course I'm a racist. All people are, and that's because the world is broken by sin."

That statement triggered a change in me. I slowed down. I quit thinking of reasons to defend status quo. I exhaled relief. I am a sinner because I live in a world cursed by sin. I am a racist, and that's okay. It is not my fault. What's up to me is how I interact with my racism - how I interact with diverse cultures and ethnicities. Everything learned can be unlearned.

I am working on tempering my racism. I am growing. I no longer have to cling to "all lives matter."

Just like I should name and own my racism, I should name and own my homophobia.

My homophobia.

I am homophobic. I am queer. In many ways, I hate myself. But my self-hatred is not my fault. I believe I will spend most of my life battling this inner hatred, but I will, I will, fight it.
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I'm not having a great day mentally. I've been wanting to write something like this for a while, so I figured now would be a decent therapeutic time to do so. Homophobia is learned. Hatred is learned. Realizing these facts sheds immense light on otherwise-repressed memories from my childhood. They bubble up more and more frequently as I actively work toward coming out. These memories are painful, but they are part of my story, and they should be named. So here we go, in no particular order,

 reasons I hate myself:

My dad calling my gay friend in high school a slur, and sharing with me that it was okay that we were friends - he just wasn't sure if he should come in to the house.

13 year old me, greeting card shopping with my grandma. "I'd rather have buns of honey than buns of steel." - Ellen DeGeneres. "Isn't this funny?" "We shouldn't buy that. Isn't she a lesbian?"

5th grade. Nervous to tell my family that I have a (female) date to the 5th grade dance. I told my grandparents, "well I'm not gay!" (I used the word to mean "lame" or "stupid - no sexual meaning at all.) My grandparents replied loudly and laughed, "Well that's good!"

The one gay person connected to our family, my uncle's brother, being constantly belittled by my family. He's lazy. He's an alcoholic. "Don't buy that shirt. It looks like something Justin would wear."

Age 8. Al Gore was running for President. I scolded a friend on the school bus, "he shouldn't be President because he thinks gay people should be able to adopt children."

I tell my aunt a statistic I'd learned in college. "Independent Christian church leaders have the lowest salaries. A capella churches make the most. Disciples of Christ are in the middle." Response: "I'm surprised your school even counts the Disciples as a church. The one near me supports gay marriage."

My babysitter's husband, "I'm not sure I want my daughter going to pre-school with a student who has two moms."

My boss, "Can you believe they signed the legalization of gay marriage on Abraham Lincoln's desk? - something they never should've done in the first place."

My pastor, "I would eat with a gay couple, but I don't agree with their lifestyle. It's a sad lifestyle."

My friend, "I'm not sure that I would rent a house with him. I think he might be gay."

My conservative high school where homosexuality is grounds for expulsion, but the star basketball player got to return to school after he impregnated an upperclassmen. The mother was not allowed to return.

Glasses shopping. I try on blue plastic frames. "Don't those look a little sissy?"

I told my dad, "I think a lot of people are anti-gay for reasons other than religious reasons." "I know, right, isn't there just something disgusting about two men kissing each other."

A client, "In Memphis, we kill gay people."

"Maybe Rush Limbaugh isn't the best source for morality." "Right, I mean, didn't he have Elton John, the homosexual, sing at his birthday party? Didn't you tell me that."

12 year old me. Mowing my lawn. Mixing my love of Weird-Al-like parody songs with internalized homophobia. I think I wanted to record a parody album one day. I was mowing, in my head writing anti-gay lyrics to a popular song, singing them loudly above the noise of the engine. I still remember the words I wrote. I will not write them here.