Chapter 17: "Boy Erased", My Review

          “And God. I will not call on God at any point during this decade-long struggle. Not because I want to keep God out of my life, but because His voice is no longer there. What happened to me has made it impossible to speak with God, to believe in a version of Him that isn’t charged with self-loathing. My ex-gay therapists took Him away from me, and no matter how many different churches I attend, I will feel the same dead weight in my chest. I will feel the pang of a deep love now absent from my life. I will continue to experiment with different denominations, different religions. I will continue to search. And even if I no longer believe in Hell, I will continue to struggle with the fear of it. Perhaps one day I will hear His voice again. Perhaps not. It’s a sadness I deal with on a daily basis.”
            --- Garrard Conley, “Boy Erased”
 
            As I write this, I am sitting in the living room of my aunt and uncle’s house in Iowa City. I’ve been on vacation with my parents for the past ten days, chauffeuring them on a grand tour of the Midwest. It’s been many years since the Jones family embarked on a good, old fashioned road trip, and the four of us – my parents plus my ninety year old grandfather – have had a marvelous time foraging for local, one-of-a-kind restaurants just off the interstate in between blessed reunions with old friends and family and overnight slumbers in (mostly) good hotels. (Don’t go near the Roadway Inn in Rawlins, Wyoming.) We all sampled a Runza (Google it) for the first time in our lives in Council Bluffs, Iowa; dad and I argued several times about which was more correct: his memory or the GPS app on my iPhone (for the record, GPS app: 9. Dad: 1.); we all decided that calories consumed on vacation aren’t real calories and, thus, we absolutely did NOT violate any of our respective diets with the numerous patty melts, cheeseburgers, southern fried chicken, omelets, pancakes, French fries, and homemade strawberry rhubarb pie a la mode that we savored on this grand summer sojourn. (There might have been one or two grilled chicken salads thrown in just for variety’s sake.)
        I, personally, have spent a small fortune in a plethora of souvenirs and books.  Not that I hadn’t already brought along half a suitcase of paperbacks already. For some reason that I can now no longer fathom, I thought I would have loads of free time to read and journal. It never occurred to me when I volunteered to be the bus driver that I would be so exhausted from seven to ten hours on the road every day that I would have no energy left in the evening to do anything except collapse onto a hotel mattress, hoping that the ocean waves pouring from my Bluetooth speaker on the other side of the room would drown out the noise of the large family in the room next door long enough for me to drift off. Turns out I had barely enough time to finish reading Boy Erased, which I had already started two days before my vacation, much less plow through the other five literary treasures that I hauled from one hotel to the next, like a bank robber guarding his stash of cash from one hideout to another on his getaway route.
        For the last few months, as I’ve trekked down the road of the life of a newly saved Christian, I’ve been ruminating on several things, turning them over and over in the back of my mind as I’ve kept up with my daily Bible reading, weekly church services, and just living life in general day to day. One of the more important things that’s been bothering me for quite awhile now is just exactly where I – in my new life as a gay Christian – fit into the larger picture of this issue that is currently dividing most of the major traditional evangelical and Anglican denominations in our nation at this present time. More specifically, how do I relate to other gay Christians who are on this road with me but who haven’t necessarily come to the same conclusions I have regarding this issue? And, more importantly, how do I minister to gay friends and acquaintances from my old life that I now hope to bring to a saving knowledge of Christ Jesus without alienating them or coming across as a – to put it kindly -  judgmental, holier-than-thou dick?
          In the last several months, I have come to know through social media a few gay Christians that are – in one form or another – tackling this very issue. Spencer Klavan, the creator of the podcast “Young Heretics” is one of them. Pieter Valk, the creator and founder of Equip.org is another. Becket Cook (A Change Of Affection: One Gay Man’s Incredible Story Of Redemption) and Gregory Coles (Single, Gay, Christian and No Longer Strangers, both of which I’ve discussed and quoted from in previous posts on here) are gay Christians who wrestled with their sexuality and their faith, eventually reconciling the two and then writing memoirs that detailed their struggles and triumphs. Pieter and Gregory both arrived at the same resolution that I did: God clearly and explicitly condemns homosexuality in the Bible, and, thus, those of us who are born gay but wish to follow and obey Him must necessarily take a vow of celibacy in order to do so. Spencer Klavan, on the other hand, arrived at a different destination. He professes to be a Christian (Presbyterian) and currently lives with his boyfriend of three years, believing that his sexuality is not at all in conflict with his faith in God or the doctrine of His holy word. (I cannot say anything about Becket Cook as I have not read his recently published memoir. From what little I have gleaned, however, from his brief biography on his website, he, too, believes in the traditional view of God’s clear condemnation of homosexuality in the Bible. And only just two weeks ago was I introduced to gay Christian author/speaker Christopher Yuan by one of my Facebook friends. Yuan’s book Out Of A Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey To God, A Broken Mother’s Search For Hope is on my Amazon wish list for future purchase and reading.)
         This is just a sampling of the men that I’ve become acquainted with via social media and with whom I have engaged in various forms of electronic correspondence in the last several months. I have also engaged in dialogue with other friends of these men who have commented on their posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – sometimes debating, sometimes arguing, sometimes just agreeing and sympathizing, as I have struggled myself to find my place in this new – and sometimes frustrating – world. And, in the meantime, I have continued diving deeper into God’s word, strengthening my own relationship with Him while also deepening and solidifying the friendships I’ve made amongst the members of my new family at Bible Baptist Church.
        About three weeks ago, as my long awaited vacation was drawing near, and when I was still under the illusion that I was going to have oodles of time to read, journal, and engage in deeper reflection on this spiritual issue, I ordered $85 worth of paperbacks on Amazon, one of them being Boy Erased by Garrard Conley. I had not heard of this book until earlier this year, when a trailer for the film adaptation of the same name had popped up in my Facebook feed. I hadn’t paid much attention to it, but then Pieter discussed the movie in one of his Instagram posts a couple months ago. I then looked up the book on Amazon and read the synopsis in more detail. Thoroughly intrigued, I added it to my wish list.
          Two days before starting my vacation, I started reading Boy Erased. I couldn’t put it down.
            The synopsis on the back cover sums it up better than I can:
          As a young man, Garrard Conley was terrified and conflicted about his sexuality, growing up the son of a Baptist pastor and deeply embedded in church life in small-town Arkansas. When Garrard was a nineteen year old college student, he was outed to his parents, and was forced to make a life-changing decision: either agree to attend a church-supported conversion therapy program that promised to “cure” him of homosexuality; or risk losing family, friends, and the God he had prayed to every day of his life. He was supposed to emerge heterosexual, ex-gay, cleansed of impure urges and, because of his brush with sin, stronger in his faith in God. Instead, when faced with a harrowing and brutal journey, Garrard found the strength and understanding to survive and step out from a life lived in shadow and to search for his true self, empathy, and forgiveness.
         At times heartbreaking, at times triumphant, this memoir is a testament to love – of family, faith, and community – that survives despite all odds.
         The conversion program in which Garrard was enrolled was called Love In Action. For two weeks in June of 2004, he endured a series of individual counseling sessions, group therapy, and Bible study/prayer that, as the synopsis states, was supposed to cure him of his sin. More than once, he silently begged of God, “Lord, make me pure.” And yes, his story was both heartbreaking and inspiring. Garrard almost made it to the end of his two week session, but, in the midst of one of the final group sessions, as he was called onto the stage by the program’s director to confront an empty chair in which Garrard was supposed to imagine his father sitting, Garrard instead walked out. He left the center and never returned. He published his story twelve years later.
          Garrard did his best to play along, to say all the right words, recite all the right prayers, complete the assigned projects, and, at one point early on, he genuinely did want to be changed. But then, at the end of his first week, after feeling no different than when he first arrived, feeling as if his prayers were being ignored, struggling with the fear of losing his parents’ love if he wasn’t somehow, some way, miraculously cured, it all just became too much for Garrard. That Sunday night, facing another exhausting, frustrating, potentially futile week of counseling, group therapy and pointless Bible study, Garrard slipped out of his hotel room in the middle of the night and went for a run through the nearby neighborhood.
           In his own words,
          “F--- God,” I said to the moon, once again half expecting to be struck by inexplicable lightning. When nothing happened, I repeated the curse, louder each time, the words echoing through the empty neighborhoods. “F--- God, f--- God, f--- God.”
         I returned to the hotel room and doubled over near my cot, nearly vomiting from exhaustion and fear. Who was I? Who was this man who cursed God? Better yet, who was God? Had He abandoned me or had He never existed in the first place?
           It’s at this point that Garrard decided to fake his way through the rest of the week. But then, when summoned to the stage to confront an imaginary version of his father (because that, according to Mr. Smid, LIA’s founder and director, was the supposed source of the conflict from which Garrard’s sin of homosexuality originated), Garrard simply couldn’t take it anymore.
           The quote that I used in the opening paragraph of this post is from the epilogue of Boy Erased. That passage is the one that has stuck with me for over a week now, echoing in the back of my brain like a haunting melody from a familiar, bittersweet dirge. There were many echoes of my own struggle from my teen years in Garrard’s story. There was even a time when I did curse God in the same way that Garrard did. It was one afternoon after school, in either my junior or senior year, during one of my particularly low points. Like Garrard, I had been fighting silently for at least three years, struggling desperately to reconcile my sexuality with – what I perceived – as the constant, Bible thumping, fire-and-brimstone Baptist preaching that I was subjected to three times a week. That day, during his lesson, Mr. Walker had pointed out that no truly born again, saved Christian could commit the sin of blasphemy. I remember thinking, “Hhhhmmmm. Maybe I should test his hypothesis. Am I really saved? Maybe that’s why I’m still gay.”
        So that afternoon, after I got home from school, and after locking myself in my room as usual, I clenched my fists, stared at a spot on the nearby wall, and silently thought the two-word phrase that Garrard shouted aloud four times.
           And, like Garrard, I waited for the lightning to strike.
           But nothing happened.
          I honestly don’t remember much after that. Life went on as it always had, I buried my sinful desire, put my mask back on, and continued pretending to be the good Christian boy that everyone assumed I was.
          A few years later, living on my own, I publicly declared myself an Atheist and, this time, I proudly cursed God aloud in the living room of my first apartment. I didn’t care if I was saved or not. I didn’t care if God struck me dead then and there. And, of course, He didn’t. I turned my back on Him for – what I thought – would be the rest of my life.
     That quote from the epilogue, Garrard’s heartbreaking, anguished words about his ongoing search for a God that is different than the one he was raised to believe in and pray to, utterly broke me. He has only just arrived at the way station where I spent the last twenty-four years. I feel for him deeply, for his struggle, and I am saddened for him.
          You see, I finally found God – the real God – at the end of my struggle. Until last year, I hadn’t even realized I was still in that struggle. I had put it on hold for twenty-four years. I had buried the conflict, pretended that it didn’t exist, and lived only for myself. But then I reached a point last year, as the outside world seemed to suddenly fall apart at the seams, where I was forced to face some serious, life-altering questions. And when I couldn’t find the answers to those questions within myself, I finally had to admit the truth: I needed God.
          Garrard states that he has been searching for God in various churches and religious denominations. That’s his first – and biggest – error. God doesn’t live in any church. Garrard needs to do what I did: face God one on one. I had to strip away all of the baggage and burdens of my youth; all the preconceived notions and ideas and beliefs about what I thought God was. I remember distinctly, one evening in late August of last year, when I downloaded a Bible app on my iPad and I started reading in Genesis. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” For every night for the next three weeks, I just kept reading. I worked my way through Genesis and Exodus. I flipped ahead to Psalms and Proverbs, and even to the books of Acts and Romans. It was that one-on-one, just me and God’s word, that finally gave me the answers that I was seeking.
           Earlier this month, I wrote the following journal entry:
 
July 6, 2021
It has been almost 10 months since I was saved. After all that time here’s what I still know for certain:
          1. I am saved. I am a child of God, and I know He loves me. He loves me so much, in fact, that He sent His only son to die on the cross that I might have a way of salvation.
         2. I am still gay. That is still part of who I am. I was born that way, and yes, it is a sin. But my heavenly Father still loves me in spite of my broken and sinful nature. In His infinite wisdom, He has not chosen to change that part of me. At least, not yet. So, because I love Him, and because I want to serve and obey Him, I have taken a vow of celibacy.
          I am not proud of my homosexuality. I will not celebrate it or advertise it to the world by wearing the rainbow paraphernalia. But neither will I ignore that part of me or pretend it doesn’t exist. It’s still a part of who I am, for better or worse, and I will accept that. I will also ask God to change it, but until He does – if He does – I will use it as a tool for serving Him. I’m not sure exactly how just yet, but He will show me in His own time.
         I have also come to understand that I am complete in Christ Jesus. He answered when I cried out that night last September. I poured my anxious, fearful, broken and angry heart out to God that night, and His answer was immediate. As soon as I uttered the words, “Lord, I surrender. I need you!”, He responded. I felt His spirit within me, and His peace, the “peace that passeth all understanding”, filled my heart and soul. That peace and eternal joy has never left. That is how I know God is real. No one will ever convince me otherwise. My Father loves me, and I love Him. He will never leave me, nor forsake me, and no power on this earth, or in heaven, or in hell, nor any act that I commit out of my own sin nature, can pluck me from His hands.
          I have surrendered ALL of me – my entire broken, messy, sinful self – to Him. I don’t yet know what He has planned for me, or how He will use me, but He will show me in His own time. For now, day by day, I will walk by His side, holding His hand.
 
        I’m nowhere close to finding the answers to the questions I posed earlier. Like Garrard – and, very likely, thousands of other gay Christians out there right now – I am still searching for the answers. My vow of celibacy was just the starting point. Now, my mission is to minister as Jesus did: to show my love for the sinners but not celebrate or condone their sin. Finding that balance has been the hardest part of this struggle to date. But there is a real need – especially in the Baptist churches – of an open and active ministry to the gay community. Not one that seeks to judge and erase the sinful desire at all costs, but, rather, to show true, Christ-like love and compassion while helping the sinner come to a saving knowledge of Jesus. And then, after that, having a dedicated group within the church that continues to minister to the gay Christians, helping them to strengthen and deepen their walk with God – that is the Christian way. I love my new church family, and I am truly thankful for my pastor, but I also wish that I had at least one other Christian – or a group within this church – like me, to talk to about this. Someone who’s also gay who’s going through this struggle same as me. Yes, it’s nice to connect online to others who are going through this as well, but it’s not the same as meeting face to face, edifying and supporting one another in person.
          But then I have to remind myself of what I wrote in that journal entry: I am complete in Jesus. He is all I really need, and He understands my burdens, my temptations, and my struggles. I also have to keep reminding myself of that old mantra, “The journey is more important than the destination.” God has only just begun His work in me, and that work will very likely continue for the rest of my life. In the meantime, the best that I can do is to always stay immersed in His word and take everything else one day at a time.