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I don’t have a quote at the beginning of this post.

I don’t have the energy to find one to be honest.

I am just angry.

Angry that we have yet another shooting, more dead kids.

God. More dead kids. And yet another cycle begins of outcry, of finger pointing, of a demand for change and thoughts and prayers. And I am here contributing to the noise again.

Thoughts and prayers.

Fuck that.

I am angry. Of course I’m mad at the man that shot up the school killing at this posting 21 people, 19 of them elementary school children. But, and I feel ashamed to admit it, I’m angrier at some random internet dude that posted on a Relevant article that we simply do not have the political will to change anything, that new gun laws wouldn’t work and it would only leave more children dead. He argues from a place of caution and he sounds reasonable. He hides behinds facts and figures, data he claims. But I know in my heart that he is just another guy who wants to keep his guns.

And so I hate him. And because I hate him, in that moment I hate myself.

And then I spiral. “How dare I make this about myself?”

“I am doing nothing.”

“This is pointless.”

I’m stuck in between a place where I do nothing, say nothing in order to somehow protect the sanctity of what happened. Perhaps by not being part of the outrage machine I actually AM doing something?

“But,” I think, “I could write a blog about it?”

Obviously you see which I chose. Perhaps this is just my own catharsis at work, selfishly trying to center this horror only on myself. I will say that it was really bad fucking timing to be a couple weeks off my antidepressant medication.

So I come back to hate. The shooter, the random internet troll and myself. But yet, the hate almost drives back the despair you know? Like a fire driving back the cold, I may be burning, but right now its the only thing I have to stay warm.

We have to stay alive. We have to stay warm. We need something.

While many are preaching “love” and “hope” to deal with this crisis, I cannot reach those right now. Each “thoughts and prayers” post I pass on my social media feeds just stokes the anger. Religion is a cheap answer for those who persist, and who knows if it helps the dead.

And yet I know that those people too are hurting. They are, like me, trying to figure out how to deal with this yet again, to figure out their part, to deal with the helplessness. While I hate them, they are no worse than me. Their “thoughts and prayers” are my “gun control laws.” I can’t blame them for wanting to frame these lost lives as part of a narrative in which we can make some sense of the senseless.

So what can I do? What can we do?

Anger is often the result of sadness that we either are not able to or cannot express well. In that way hate is similar when it comes to extreme grief and trauma. Quite simply our bodies know of no other way to express the level of grief in any other way.

Our bodies know that something has been damaged, broken, when our minds are still reeling and trying to determine how and what to do.

So I say, embrace the hatred right now. Embrace the extreme grief and the helplessness.

Somewhat ironically I have turned to Psalm 88. It is full of grief and lament and my favorite part is that it ends with this:

Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me.

You have taken from me friend and neighbor – darkness is my closest friend.

There is no happy ending, no resolution. It ends with despair and when children are dying, despair is the best thing we have.

“So I think a very good case can be made out on the basis of generally accepted moral principles that homosexual behavior is wrong. It is horribly self-destructive and injurious to another person. Thus, wholly apart from the Bible’s prohibition, there are sound, sensible reasons to regard homosexual activity as wrong.” – William Lane Craig

“And while so many of us in the church have been focused on the “threat” to our culture posed by homosexuality, we’ve missed the realization that the church in our culture is under attack—not by gays, but by Christians. We Christians are the sleeper agents. The bomb is in our car. We have become the unwitting assassins of people’s faith. The Christians are killing Christianity.” – Justin Lee

I watched a video recently from a large, Evangelical church from Texas that was part of a video series they publish called “Real Truth, Real Quick” in which they answer tough questions such as “Why Did Jesus Despise Christmas and All That Led To It” and, I cannot stress how seriously this is an actual video, “Is It Okay to Have Breast Augmentation Surgery?” which is over eight minutes long. Obviously among such important questions that all Christians must answer was a video titled “Can you be a Gay Christian”. In it, the pastor and another person who has same sex attractions tackled this issue in less time than it took to answer if it was ok for Christians to get those double D’s. The question was answered in two parts, which basically stated that if you had same sex attractions, well we all are broken sexually so this is no big deal, but if your identity was found in being gay, then you had a problem because our identity should only be found in Christ.

I’m not going to pull apart this specific video, but I bring it up as this church has over 50 thousand followers on Facebook and over 3 thousand people had watched this specific video. Also, “Gay Christian” is probably a term that we came up with. They’d probably just want to be known as, you know, Christian.

So to answer the question quickly, yes, you can be a ‘Gay Christian’. This isn’t because God is gracious to all us sinners, including the gay ones, but rather that being gay (or lesbian or bi or trans) isn’t a sin. It isn’t wrong. Full stop.

I’m not trying to debate anything and this isn’t really to try to convince you if you disagree. There isn’t any real debate any more than there is a debate on whether the Bible affirms slavery or if it says that interracial marriage is wrong. What this is really about is the death of a type of Christianity and (hopefully) the resurrection of something that looks more like eternity. If you feel that God forbids same sex whatever then you’ve already lost. This type of belief, while still harmful to those who are LGBT+, is in its death throes and the last place to look for it is within the Church.

What is left is for those of us who profess to love like Christ is to put to death our fear of ‘other’ and move towards resurrection. Because fear truly is the motivator of all of this. We may pick out some verses in the Bible that forbid homosexuality, but our willingness to disregard parts of the Bible that we disagree with or simply don’t think about reveals our true intent on why we think homosexuality is wrong. It is just fear.

So we can choose to make our videos on if you can be a Gay Christian or not, or we can simply accept the fact that this is a non-issue. At least to us. For those within the church who have same sex attraction, are gender non-conforming or otherwise are included within the LGBT+ community, this is a huge issue. If they only hear that they are broken, need to change, or need to be someone they aren’t then the Church only continues to harm. Let us choose love, or we will assign ourselves to irrelevancy, and worse, we lose out on a chance to show love to those within our walls that need it most.

The voice is back again…

It is a relentless, merciless, and cruel companion. 

It whispers from the shadows,

 “You are not enough. You are not enough for him. You are not enough for them. You are not enough for anyone. You have never been enough. It’s all too much for you. You will never be enough of anything to be truly useful in this world. What do you have to offer anyone? Nothing. You are useless.” 

The voice is like poison to my soul. Its words are paralyzing. What if it’s true? What if I truly have nothing of value to offer anyone? No real use in this life? Do I just take up space? Am I simply not good enough, strong enough, not capable enough to make it in this life? Perhaps it is true. Perhaps I’m not of any real value. Perhaps…perhaps my life is a waste. 

Continue reading “The Shadow of Doubt“