Resurrect

Originally Posted
April 8th, 2018

Updated
April 9th, 2023

“Well today I found myself

After searching all these years

And the man that I saw

He wasn’t at all who I thought he’d be

I was lost when You found me here

I was broken beyond repair

Then You came along

And You sang Your song over me”

(Born Again, Third Day 2008)

            I have always felt that God hates me. Early on, I recognized my place in the greater scheme of things. I paid attention to what my elders said about God. I paid attention during each church sermon and had great interest in what the Bible had to say about many things. Long before puberty, I believed I was hell bound, and with good reason. I lied, I shoplifted, I took the Lord’s name in vain. God never once answered my sincerity. Never once was a prayer served or a need met. There was a pain within me even back then, a pain I believed only God could end. I remember sitting alone crying because I could not find a way to make God love me. You could argue that I was sensitive to religious ideas so I naturally battled against Christian brainwashing tactics. I had a loyalty to Jesus, nonetheless. One might argue I still do. The way I viewed divinity then is so much more innocent than my view now. I believed in a personal God who cared specifically about me. I have always sensed something calling for me but my ideas on what that might be have changed over time. I have grown up carrying Jesus with me and the weight has often been quite heavy. It is hard to move past something when it constantly reappears to remind you that it is missing. No matter what I do, how I evolve, what I believe, I am flooded by ideas that have been conditioned for me. I feel guilty and rather dammed to hell for no longer believing in the Christian account of God’s interaction with us mortals. Somehow in all the fables, all the high myth, I still believe there is something far greater than myself, even if it lies out in the ether. It’s like an other land that one can access. The truth be told, I still hold on to the hope that there is more to this world than we know.

“For the sake of never making waves

I kept my secrets to myself

And no one ever really knew the

Darker shadows of my heart

But I will be a witness

That there’s nothing in me dark enough

The power of forgiveness

Cannot rescue from the deep”

(Out in the Open, Amy Grant 2003)

            I do not believe yet somehow I still do. No matter how far away from my religious upbringing I wander, I always come back to the state I once had as a child. The idea of God, in particular Jesus, always moved me. Whether in a church service or standing in front of the Christmas Tree, for me, God was more a feeling than an ideology. You grow up, you move past childish ways and God becomes a moral and intellectual challenge rather than the movement of something deep within us. I am often drawn and quartered. My experience has pulled me one way and my conditioning and training pull me in another. I suppose it really is true that you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. According to the Christian scriptures, either way I am screwed. For years, I fought my sexuality. I didn’t want to be gay, not that I knew what that label even meant at the time. I was in denial and quite often hid behind more heterosexual rites of passage. It wasn’t social shame that held my tongue in its place. I was terrified what the Christian God would do to me. I was brainwashed into thinking that my proclivity guaranteed me a spot in hell. If I was gay, I would not be welcome in the Kingdom. Unfortunately, several attempts to purge myself of the sin did nothing but convince me that I was unusable, unforgivable and shit out of luck. There came a point where enough was enough. How often could I face the threat of eternal damnation should I practice my sin? Therein lies the rub. No matter how I tried to rid myself of the abomination, I remained homosexual. It never went away in all those years and all those attempts. Many argue homosexuals choose to engage in such acts but I know it goes much deeper than just some choice. Regardless of whether The Lord would rather I was dead, I cannot be something I am not nor should I have to be. If I was born this way, then I was cast aside by God from my beginning. I am, have always been and will continue to be a gay man, a practicing gay man. It’s who I am and I’m just sorry that’s not good enough for Jesus.

“Help me to move

Help me to see

Help me to do whatever You would ask of me

Help me to go

God help me to stay

I’m feeling so alone here

And I know that You're faithful

But I can barely breathe

God help me”

(God Help Me, Plumb 2018)

            My Father and I were extremely close. Since the death of my mother our relationship evolved.. We talked almost every day. There was an openness between us, without boundaries and little in the way of editing. We became much more than mere Dad and son. We became friends,  in spite of the enormous gulf between our religious views. He was a proud conservative Christian and I am the professed heathen of the family. He read the Bible, I question it from cover to cover. Our ideas on the universe, Jesus and the existence of heaven and hell stood radically different. You would be surprised how well we got along. We discussed, we did not presume. We respected each other’s opinion even if we thought it was wrong. We could tell each other almost anything without judgment or bias. For me, my Father was the epidemy of a good Christian. He did not view me as separate because of sin, rather I was just like the rest, drenched in it. We are all equal in our failure. My Father tried hard not to judge so it was easy to be myself without fear of condemnation. He even apologized for views he once held. My Father was a very stoic man long before the death of his wife. His actions and attitude made it clear over the years that family was the most important thing to him. Before Mom's passing, he was at a distance of sorts. My Mother ruled the roost. Her death changed my father. He maintained his belief system, reading the Bible every day to commune with what he considered Holy. Yes, he viewed the world through Christian eyes. It never managed to get in the way. In the end, he put away those books and tried to forget about all those words. He stopped talking about Jesus. He rarely mentioned God at all. When I inquired regarding his new approach all he had to say was, "let it go." Never once did my father cast me to hell. The flaws of his fellow man were no longer his concern. Never once, in his last few years, did he put God above his family. You gotta know your priorities.

“This is what we’re here for
To show the world how You love it
This is what we’re made for
To lay it all down like You did
When we feel useless, You still use us
Help us not forget
This is what we're here for”

(What We’re Here For, The Afters 2003)

            My relationship with Jesus is not just broken. I could never go back to the kind of interaction I once had with Him. I see Jesus in an alternative manner to how I viewed him in my past. I was brought up to believe in the full gamut of Christianity but I have ended up abandoning it altogether. It’s the only way I could actually believe I have a chance to get where I am supposed to be going. I am constantly questioning, what if I am wrong? I have to remind myself that I am not welcome. My very existence means death, both figuratively and literally, depending on the country of choice. My entire life is expendable because of my sin. I am forced to remember that the Abrahamic God hates me, no matter what lovely words someone else may have to say about Him. You can spout great claims and preach on the love of the Lord but you cannot get past the truth of the matter. I am unwelcome, unwanted and unusable, at least that is how scripture makes me feel. It’s not a hard thing to discard a God who considers you an abomination. All you really need is the basic ability to read.