My church in my hometown was founded by my great grandfather along with a few cousins and other black folks that lived close by. The church was about a tenth of a mile from my family’s land. My elementary school sits on land donated by my church. The grocery store we frequented was across the street from the school and church. My life as a child consisted of moving through a very sheltered and small triangle.
I grew up going to Sunday school, devotional, and then the regular church service. We spent a minimum of 6 hours in the tiny air condition free church sitting on hardwood benches. The sermons never seemed happy to me as a kid. I feel like I always heard about what bad things awaited me if I didn’t live my life according to the Bible.
When my mom was pregnant with me, she had to stand before the congregation and ask for their forgiveness. I can’t imagine having to apologize to people for doing something that was none of their business and had no impact on their lives. This was life going to a
When I left home for Atlanta and leaned into my sexuality, my visits back made me uncomfortable. When my grandfather passed, one of my second cousins preached his homegoing service. He spoke about being a responsible role model and what could happen to kids without one. Somehow that lead
That whole experience shook me to the point where I tried dating men again for 3 months. It was the most miserable I have ever been in life. I found myself trying to force connections until one day, I just said fuck it. I could no longer live my life like this. I was so unhappy. I decided
Finding peace with God and my sexuality did not send me running into the nearest church. In my adult life, I’ve only ever attended 4 churches.
Church #1 – My hometown church.
Church #2 – In college, I visited a classmate’s church. It was in the middle of
Church #3 – I went to church with a girlfriend. It was one of those really big churches. It was something I wasn’t used to and it felt impersonal. Something about it didn’t feel right to me, but I couldn’t explain it. Then it happened, the pastor
Church #4 -A friend suggested I try this church he’d heard about. He’d dated the drummer in the church band. I didn’t really want to attend a “gay” church, but I needed a spiritual connection I wasn’t getting on my own. My sister and I visited randomly one Sunday and as soon as we stepped through the doors, it was like being wrapped in a familiar hug. The pastor was so relatable. There were visible gay people in attendance, but it wasn’t a gay church. I kept going, and kept going. I was eventually rewarded with a whole series of sermons about sexuality, specifically homosexuality, and I knew this was my church home.
I realize now that the problem isn’t really “the church.” It’s always about your relationship with God.
Thanks for this , i have gone through this for years and its only lately that I got that its just me n God who care about what goes down in my life. Other peoples opinions really dont matter. Hence I have been more happy about my sexuality these past months than I have been in years.
I’m glad you got there. Makes for a much more peaceful existence.
It’s always been about our relationship with God and not so much the fire and brimstone hurled at congregations every Sunday – and even during the week for some. I found that I couldn’t sit there, Sunday after Sunday, and listen to hypocrisy; I wasn’t the only bisexual in the congregation (not really gonna mention that one associate pastor we had and the secret he had that I knew) and we had “more than our fair share” of gay members and I knew it bothered them to hear preachers pretty much telling them that they were going to hell… for being who they needed to be.
At some point, those of us who aren’t heterosexual have that crisis of faith – and then, we don’t because we understand this is between us and God… and not between us and the church’s congregation.
There are a lot of us that live in that crisis state for so long and deny ourselves happiness unnecessarily. We should talk about this more.
I write about it as much as I can and just wrote about this the other day. The key to overcoming the crisis is a contradiction – you have to stop believing in something you’ve always believed in while allowing yourself to see the truths that are there to be seen. Religion, in and of itself, is idealism while sexuality is a very real-life thing.
As I told a fellow blogger just yesterday – and one who stresses over this very thing – we are conditioned to believe that what religion says about this is the truth and we take it on faith that it is… when it really isn’t. Even when we make our peace with God in this, we are still subject to be taken to the woodshed by those who believe something we don’t so much and that just adds to the crisis: Perception versus truth… and truth tends to lose a lot.
So the “trick” is being able to retain your faith in God – but not religion itself – while accepting the truth, that being, not everyone is heterosexual and that’s so obvious that that fact alone makes you question religion’s position in these things. This is easy to accept intellectually but the crisis isn’t an intellectual one – it’s an emotional one as well as a powerful one in the form of fear and not so easily mitigated, quelled, or squashed.
If I’m going to hell for being bisexual, then so be it – and there’s an odd comfort in knowing I won’t be there by myself. We have the God-given right to self-determination and we will defend that right by any means necessary… except for this aspect it the best way to defend this is to ignore the fallacies inherent in religion and deal only with the truth. I’m bi, you’re gay, and we clearly aren’t the only ones who’s like this, past, present or future. There is no real crisis except the one we create for ourselves and based upon flawed information and an agenda that doesn’t – and never has – matched up with the reality of life as we know it.
It’s not blasphemy so much as it is about the truth of things and truths that are provable. Our faith in God is what matters because as we’ve all said, “If God didn’t want us to be this way, we wouldn’t be this way… and no one would.”
Crisis over. Religion as a social construct is exposed for all of its flaws and inconsistencies and we live our lives in the way we want and need to love them and if we gotta do some explaining when it’s our time, well, we can live and accept that… if it’s really a real thing and not just the scare tactic it appears to be.
A life lived in fear is not worth living so the question is does it make any sense to be afraid? It doesn’t. We know it doesn’t. But the social conditioning is hard to break but you – we – gotta wonder that if we can break that conditioning – and we have – then that conditioning is flawed and invalid. Truth, not fiction, not blasphemy.
My belief and faith in God is very much intact… but religion has proven to me that it’s something created by man to control and hold dominance over us… and I ain’t feeling that and none of us should allow it. If we are in crisis over this, it’s a crisis of our own creation and based upon a lie we all believe – so stop believing the lie and accept the truth that’s been with us since the lie was created.