Overheard in my head
Person A: What, so all I have to do is focus really hard, and I can stop being gay?
Person B: If you pray hard enough and trust in God, yes.
Person A: So if you focused really hard, could you become gay?
Person B: Why would I want to do that?
Person A: For the sake of argument let’s imagine you do.
Person B: But why would anyone want to just be gay, just like that?
Person A: imagining you do…
Person B: But I wouldn’t ever want to.
Person A: Okay, so we’ve got a lack of imagination here.
Person B: You just need to believe that your life could be completely different than it is now.
Person A: But I wouldn’t ever want to.
(Lindsey scurries to make notes to write this into a novel someday.)
Ishmael or Isaac
Most of us know the story that spans Genesis Chapters 18-21. But, for those of us that don’t, I will attempt a quick summation. Abraham is visited by an Angel of God. He is told that he will bear a son and become the father of many nations. His wife, Sarah (who is barren), laughs at this news. So Abraham, questioning how this is to happen, decides to impregnate his wife’s maidservant and raise the progeny of that union as his heir. This ends badly, as Sarah does eventually concieve and the maidservant and her son are sent away. The histories then seem to show that Abraham’s offspring through Sarah become Israel, and his offspring through Hagar become a nation at Israel’s neck.
Thus, the moral of the story is that we shouldn’t rush God’s calling. When we rush things, we create Ishmael’s. We create nations that seek to destroy God’s true work. If we wait, if we trust, we have Isaacs who give birth to Israel’s- we have God’s true work.
I have seen evidence of this in my own life. Time and time again I sense a vision being called- and time and time again I want to see it fulfilled immediately. In my own impatience I wear myself out trying to force it when the timing simply isn’t right. And time and time again, as I finally release it and stop trying, I see it fulfilled.
We need to learn to sense the current of the waters, the direction of the wind, the time that is coming. We need to stop trying to make things happen for ourselves and trust that if God’s call is true, his vision will gain fullness in it’s own time.
I think the reason we want to force God’s hand is selfishness. Like Abraham, we want to see it for our own sake. We don’t trust that God is truly taking care of us- we think we need to do it for ourselves.
We need to remember that only God can give conception to his true work. When we try to do the job ourselves, what we create will always be bent and broken, will always be a threat to God’s true glory.
Be More Vulnerable
The second meditation on overcoming obstacles has to do with vulnerability. This one isn’t based off of a Bible verse, but instead sparked from a recent conversation. Someone asked me what I thought a local GLBT&Friends group could do to spread equality on their campus. We talked about a lot of different approaches- but the biggest point, the one that haunted me for the next few days, was that one has to risk being hurt.
You don’t fight a battle, even a spiritual one, without risk of damage.
And the kinds of battles so many of us find ourselves in- battles for hearts and minds- require demonstrations of one’s own heart and faith. And you can’t lay bare your heart before someone else without risking pain. If I want to share the depth and wonder of my faith, it means letting people into my past. It means telling stories that are embarrassing, painful, sometimes nothing short of humiliating. If I want people to understand why I believe in God, I have to tell them how God has worked in my life. If I want to tell them how God has worked in my life, it means exposing a point of weakness. If I have to expose a point of weakness…
True Evangelism does not come from a place of strength, but instead from a place of vulnerability. It entices people and draws them in. It is not exhibitionism or flagrancy- it is shy and tender, it is done with love and knowledge of our own fallibility. One of the greatest impediments to overcoming obstacles is not our weakness- as God makes us sufficient- but misplaced pride.
The need for vulnerability is especially noticeable with Christian homosexuals. Explaining how they feel their sexuality doesn’t bar them from faith means exposing the wholeness of their being. This is something that can be incredibly painful to do, as many people attempt this kind of honesty only to be attacked intimately as a result of it.
But yet vulnerability is still required.
Jeremiah 23:9
Concerning the prophets:
My heart is broken within me;
all my bones tremble.
I am like a drunken man,
like a man overcome by wine,
because of the LORD
and his holy words.
Overcoming Obstacles: Think as David Thought
I’ve seen two “interpretations” of King David in the last few days. The first is the David of the new NBC primetime show, “Kings”. The second is the tiny squeaky little Dave of Veggie Tale’s “Dave and the Giant Pickle”. Both of these Davids, different from each other as they may be, have one thing in common: they see themselves as little in the face of giant obstacles. They doubt themselves and their call.
In that way they are as different from the David of the Bible as context would make them appear. Our Biblical David had a tremendous amount of faith. While the people around him saw him as small and unspectacular, he did not see himself that way. While his role was mostly as a court jester cajoling Saul out of his more vicious moods, David himself knew his true potential. So when Goliath came and no one fought him, David saw this as an insult to Israel’s position as God’s favored people. And he said, (paraphrasing) “If no one else is going to remove this offense, I will.”
People were incredulous.
So David confidently said, “I’ve been tending my father’s flocks. And when the bear and the lion came, I delivered my sheep from their mouths. The God that gave me that strength will give me strength for this as well.”
No, “they’re big, I’m little.” No, “I’m just not as brave as you think I am.” No, “I know this sounds ridiculous.”
Just, “God gave me strength enough then, and he’ll give me strength enough now.”
David’s real brilliance was not in his beauty, his grace, or his cleverness. It was in his absolute faith in who God made him to be. It was in that trust. But that trust is not the trust that other media portray it as. It wasn’t the faith of saying, “I know I’m weak but you make me strong.” Cross out the first part of that sentence, let it read as only, “I know I’m weak but you make me strong.”
So my first path to overcoming obstacles? Have absolute faith in who God made me to be. Strangle the internal editor. Black out all of the voices that remind me of my weaknesses. Search for a true vision of who I am: the Lindsey that delivered the sheep from the mouth of the lion and the bear, the Lindsey who has always been sufficient for the task in front of her. Apply that knowledge of being properly made to every obstacle before me. So that, like David, when I see an offense to the call of God’s children, I can stand up with confidence and say, “if no one else is going to remove that, I will.”
A short inspirational message
Recently events in my life have reminded me that miracles still do happen. (Those who also follow me on Facebook and Vox will know what I’m talking about, otherwise email me if you want in on the mystery.) Sometimes, life backs us into a corner. We find ourselves at the bottom of the well and the string is broken. We angrily remind God that the Bible says if we ask for bread He won’t throw stones.
And God laughs. We may mistake this for cruelty, but it’s not. See, we’ve forgotten about the magic and the mystery. We’ve turned faith into a twelve step program. We’ve tried to boil everything down to cause and effect. But life isn’t like that. Sometimes, if you’re willing to believe, we fall into the well and we wake up in Wonderland. We lock ourselves in the wardrobe, and stumble into Narnia. We think there’s no hope, but that’s just because we don’t see reality the way that the Divine does.
We’ve forgotten about the mystery. We, in our modern world, think that everything is programmable and able to be penciled in on our day planners.
But you don’t plan for Narnia.
So, my message for you today? Don’t allow yourself to believe that this is the end. Don’t allow yourself to be trapped by the thinking that each day will carry on like the last. If you’ve asked God for bread and he hasn’t given you any, then trust that it’s because there’s a time of plenty in store and you don’t want to fill up on bread.
Just believe.
What do gay people do when no one is looking?
*
Someone actually googled that question, and ended up on my blog as a result. The post in question had an offhand comment about how Christians shouldn’t be so concerned with what gay people do when no one is looking. At least, I believe, we should be no more concerned than we are with what ANYONE does when no one is looking.
That leads to a question- What, exactly, do people do when the world has it’s back turned?
To examine this further, I’ll look at what I (notably a heterosexual Christian female of 26 years of age) do when the world shuts it’s eyes.
- Yoga
- Pilates
- Showering
- Using the toilet
- Reading various books (currently Watchmen, the Bible, and Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods)
- Drawing
- Cleaning the house
- Washing dishes
- Cooking
- Stealing brownies or cookies and neglecting to add the calories to my food diary.
- Just laying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, adamantly doing nothing (which I generally later feel guilty over)
- Wondering what it would be like to actually be a superhero. Yes, some section of my mentality just refuses to grow up.
- Secretly loathing certain segments of my religion. (Oops, guess it’s not so secret now.)
- Blog
- Peruse IMDB (The internet movie database, that bastion of useless movie trivia)
- Playing “six degrees of separation” with my Thesaurus. (Look up one word, then a synonym of that word- do this six times, and compare the definition. Yes, I find this fascinating.)
- Pick at the bottom of my feet
- Drink too much Pepsi
- Stare at the contents of my fridge, wonder when I stopped buying sugary items, wonder if I would be a freak if I dipped grapes in raw sugar.
- And, finally, if all of these other items have been totally exhausted and I still have the energy, I will engage in adult activities with the human being of my choice, who also happens to be my husband. These adult activities are often as boring as debating politics. They don’t necessarily involve disrobing or anything that could lead to procreation.
And I know many gay people who have been asked this question, and answered much the same way. They bake, they clean, they read and blog and maybe watch too much TV. Sometimes they have a partner in life they are devoted to, and they may engage in the kinds of things that two adults do in a bedroom at night. (Read in bed, ask if they’ve gained weight, wear woolly socks. Maybe that other stuff, too.) You know, they are humans. They have human lives. Their lives are simultaneously dull and amazing, banal and magnificent.
Like me.
Like everyone.
*! Rare second post! Huzzah!
rabbit trail: born again
What does being born again really mean?
I found myself thinking about this last night as I lay in bed awake, unable to sleep again after my son had woken up with a messy diaper and needed to be cajoled back into his bed. I don’t know why my mind went there, but I was thinking about a gruff southern preacher proclaiming loudly that gay men needed to be willing to be “born again” and leave the “lives of their past”. And I thought, “when people say that, they really just mean that they need to be willing to not be gay anymore.”
After that thought, my mind just wouldn’t shut off. It’s generally my habit, in those times, to pray quietly or to walk around the house a few times until my mind shuts back off. But not last night. No, instead it just kept beating itself up against something it couldn’t make sense of. See, when I became a Christian and was “born again,” I didn’t become a new person over night. I didn’t really change at all. For years I was still suicidal, still self-destructive and self-loathing, and it was years and years of work and struggles and tears before I found myself coming out of my chrysalis and becoming something new. I would have to say it’s just been the past seven years or so I’ve felt like I’m growing into my own, and only the past six months or so that the shape of who I’ll become has been any more clear. And I may keep saying the same thing for the rest of my life- that I’m not done yet, that I’m only just beginning to make sense of things. This whole “being born again” thing isn’t like emerging from the womb fully grown. You go right back to being a baby and have to grow up all over again.
And even making sense of what I feel of that, what I feel about being born again, I still can’t make sense of what those words are generally intended to mean.
A church tells a gay man he needs to become a new creation. They really mean he needs to stop being gay. They say the same to a homeless man, but don’t they really want him to take a shower, get a job, become not a different spiritual man but also a different physical one? And isn’t the same thing true of the blue haired tattooed beauty? They want her to stop being herself, to be something other.
It’s as if they think that God got it wrong the first time around, he made us the wrong person, so he’s got to give it a second shot.
And I wonder, why do so many people get “born again” only to keep being exactly as they are? The overworked father gets born again, so he starts going to church and gets preachier and uptight- but he still ignores his children, does paperwork during the family meal, belittles his wife and makes her feel lost and insufficient. He’s got some new habits now, but he’s still the same essential guy.
So what is it? Do we have to become someone else, or just… I don’t know.
I think, like so many pet phrases, it means what people want it to mean. The reality of fundamental truth has been brushed under the carpet of convenience. Sometimes I feel that way about the entirety of my religion.
My faith I like.
My religion I tolerate.
Like the boy at the end of SLC Punk, I have discovered that it’s easier to dismantle the machine from the inside.
Atheism: God’s gift to Christianity
Every once in a while I peruse atheist sites just to bone up on what’s going on around me. If people are going to explain to me why I’m an idiot for believing in God, I want to take advantage of that. (And read that last sentence without an ounce of sarcasm. I really want to understand- especially when it’s a former Christian making the explanation.)
I am always horrified at the amount of time meant making the philosophical explanation as compared to the amount of time devoted to explaining what major narcissistic assholes Christians are. There will be long articles about simple concepts such as “if the Bible is true and it’s words are true and as 1 John 4 explains “God is love”, then does it make sense for his worshippers to be such unholy JERKS?” Often these articles display a fair amount of bitterness, and are generally accompanied by numerous personal stories of being treated like crap by Christians.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that I read such diatribes with a fair amount of pain and embarrassment. Years of listening closely have taught me that many Atheist’s principle argument against Christianity is, well, Christians. I wish more Christians would look past themselves long enough to read what’s written between the lines.
Atheists aren’t our enemies.
They, and their harsh critique of our religion, are a gift. While the philosophical critique of our faith is (hopefully) one we’ve all examined and overcome, their sometimes-slightly-venomous critique of our behavior as a people is a necessary one. They ask questions such as; “If Jesus’ clearest commandment was to love our neighbor, how can Christians justify their political beliefs/offensive evangelism/lack of donations to neighborhood associations”; or “If Jesus forgave the woman caught in adultery despite the law than how can Christians justify condemning homosexuals under the law”; or “how can anyone be so self involved as to think that God really cares that they lost their keys or spilled coffee on their shirt?”
I think that all Christians should both hear and prepare themselves to respond to such questions. And when those questions bring a pill of conviction, we ought to take it. I think we OUGHT to be ashamed that more Christian groups don’t donate to neighborhood associations. (Or refuse to donate if said association doesn’t stock Christian evangelism materials. Or to demand that associations block young womens access to pro-choice groups as a contingency to donation.) I think there IS a great deal of confusion about how much time in the New Testament is devoted to our freedom from under the law and the fact that we so desperately seek to keep a set of laws to govern our behavior. I think that there is a GREAT deal of narcissism in Christianity and not enough focus spent on, well, loving our neighbors.
But, most of all, I think that a Christian who is assured of their salvation need not fear hearing the voices from across the aisle.
Atheists aren’t our enemies.
And the more we treat them like it, the more we fill their forums.
