Chapter 11: New Believer, New Faith & A New Vow

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             Good morning!
          It’s hard to believe we’re already a full month into the new year. This year for me has been very rewarding thus far. For starters, I have had no trouble keeping up with resolutions 1 and 4. (For a refresher, you can scroll back through my previous posts to the one from New Year’s Eve.) I have found time each day to read my Bible and pray, and I have had little difficulty in maintaining a pleasant attitude and a smile in my daily encounters with my co-workers and customers. As expected, though, that latter one has been tested a few times by the occasional sour apples that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. But I’ve surprised myself every time by my patience and my ability to keep a calm and pleasant demeanor. (Those of you who have known me for a long time will understand how truly remarkable that is for me.) It’s simply another testament to the power of God to change our basic attitudes when we are willing to let Him.
           I’ve also made great strides in resolution #3, and that’s where I’m going to spend the bulk of my time on this post.
      Have you ever sought something – therapy, a particular medication, advice from a friend or colleague – thinking that it might help with one problem, only to be pleasantly surprised that one, the result helped in many other ways you hadn’t anticipated; and two, that the change/outcome/counseling exceeded your initial expectations by such a great magnitude that you couldn’t believe you hadn’t sought this help long ago? That feeling has been with me for over three weeks now, and it’s only getting better with each session.
            One of my first tasks in tackling resolution #3 was to consult a pastor on this issue of homosexuality and the Bible. I needed to know what God really said in His Word on this controversial topic, and since I have yet to find a home church here in Las Vegas the only pastor that I am casually acquainted with is Mark Sjostrom of the church in which I was born and raised back in Twin Falls, Idaho.
            For those of you unfamiliar with Twin Falls or this particular church, allow me to forge a brief rabbit trail here to give you a short history. Grace Baptist Church was founded in the mid-fifties, but it wasn’t until 1975 when construction was completed on the church that’s there today. It’s a one-story, oblong, red-bricked building, its main auditorium forming a bubble at one end, at the intersection of Eastland Drive and Falls Avenue on the eastern edge of town. Behind the church there’s a massive, two-story gymnasium/classroom on the other side of the parking lot, and a third, smaller, two-room annex that sits behind the gym. The first of those latter two structures was needed in the early eighties when the church launched its own private school, Twin Falls Christian Academy. I was in kindergarten when the gymnasium was under construction. I have many memories of watching my dad and some of the other men in church up on the scaffolds, putting together the walls, while I waited for my mom to pick me up after school, which was held in the various Sunday school classrooms in the church. A few years later, I would be attending high school in the classrooms above that gym.
          In the years since I have grown and left Twin Falls, I have come back to that church on the occasional Sunday morning worship service when I’m home for a vacation visit. I’ve always had mixed feelings every time I set foot beyond the threshold of its main doors (see my previous posts about my struggles during my teen years.) It’s the same feeling you get when you come back to something that is at once familiar and strangely comforting, but also brings with it unpleasant memories and the pain of old wounds that have never quite healed.
          GBC's pastor since 2005 has been Mark Sjostrom (pronounced ‘shos-trum’), and I didn’t know him that well when I decided to consult him on this issue. Our only interaction thus far had been a brief handshake and a greeting after those sporadic Sunday morning worship services, and I wasn’t sure he would even remember me when I nervously texted him a brief ‘Hello’ a month ago. He responded within a few minutes, and I re-introduced myself and then gave a short explanation of what I needed. We agreed on a time and date for a phone call, and I emailed him the next day with a longer explanation of what I needed to talk about with him.
            That letter was a  somewhat detailed account of what most of you are already familiar with: my struggle in high school with keeping my secret of being gay while trying to fit in socially and eventually declaring myself an Atheist after being expelled from school my senior year a month before graduation. It was probably about 2 pages, and I was now very nervous after clicking the ‘Send’ button. I suppose now is a good time to tell you something else about me.
            I have been one of ‘those people’ for all of my adult life. You know who I’m talking about: the people who silently judge the other customers in the book store who pause to browse the Self Help section; or the people who quietly scoff when anyone talks about their latest therapy session with their friends or coworkers at lunch in the break room. I’m glad I don’t need self-help or therapy, I’ve always thought. But, then again, good for them, I guess. I’m glad I have all my issues worked out, and I’m a stable, normal adult. I’ve never had any issues that were so bad I needed to get help from an armchair counselor’s latest best seller or a psychiatrist’s couch.
             Hhmmm. My life, lately, has been chock full of irony.
           When the time came to dial Pastor Sjostrom’s number my level of nervousness was up to a ten out of ten on the anxiety scale. I hadn’t felt like this since high school when it was opening night of our Agatha Christie play, and I was one of the main cast. I had prepared a detailed outline of what I wanted to discuss, and, after a few initial pleasantries, Mark quickly put me at ease. I was pleasantly caught off guard by his relaxed, casual personality. I found immediately that he was very easy to talk to, and my anxiety level dropped to a ‘three’ in the first five minutes. Pastor Sjostrom is definitely one of those people who has found the right calling. His warm, personable demeanor made me feel like I was talking to an old friend over coffee at Starbucks, and after about ten minutes of getting to know one another, he brought the conversation back around to my letter.
            Here’s where my second surprise occurred. Mark was bluntly honest. I had told him that I believed I was saved in 1985, when I was seven, after the evening service of one of our church’s mid-summer week long revival meetings. “Neal,” Mark said rather pointedly, “after reading your description of your life after high school, I gotta say that it doesn’t sound like you were saved. Your behavior and your atheism doesn’t reflect the change that is described in the Bible.” He went on to explain that salvation is a change brought about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the new believer. There is a desire to learn more about God and His Word. There is a desire to serve him and to live one’s life in surrender to Him.
          I had to pause and think about that. And, doggone it, you know what? He was right. And the reason I knew that was because I had only to look at the last four months of my life, even more so since I had returned from Christmas vacation. That desire – that hunger – to know God had never been present in my life until September 17, 2020. That was the night I surrendered to Christ in an awkward, fumbling prayer on the way home from work. Ever since, I have had nothing but a desire to read my Bible and change my life. I told pastor this, and he agreed. It was evident now that I was truly saved. That evidence was lacking in my youth and my adult life up to this point.
          My third major surprise of that initial counseling session – yes, that was what is was – was when pastor told me he was assigning me homework for our next weekly conversation. He wanted me to read the book of 1 John. He explained that we would eventually get to the issue of homosexuality, but that we needed to cover this ground first. I agreed  to the assignment, and we hung up. I glanced at the clock in the upper corner of my computer screen. We had talked for almost an hour. I immediately reached for my Bible and opened it to 1 John. I read the whole book in about ten minutes.
            1 John is a primer for the new believer. John states clearly and succinctly what makes a Christian a Christian. Chapter 1:9 was immediately familiar to me from my Sunday School days: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So was chapter 2:9: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness, even until now.” John goes to say in chapter 5:2: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments.” And, finally, verse 20 of that same chapter: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”
            Yep. All of that book made perfect sense. Part of that was because I had absorbed so much of God’s Word in my youth that it had sat in the deep recesses of my brain for all of my life, and much of it had begun floating to the surface in the last several months – like debris from an ancient wartime submarine that has been recently dislodged from its ocean grave. Except that these artifacts – Bible verses, fragments of sermons, some of Mr. Walker’s proverbs from Bible class – were not dirty, soggy, disgusting relics. They were bits of priceless treasure, and I’ve been rediscovering them in dribs and drabs ever since.
            I have had three sessions with Pastor Sjostrom, and they are each the highlight of my week. I very nearly broke down after hanging up from our first talk. I felt a combination of immense relief, peace and calm. Not to be overly melodramatic, but it was if something had dislodged in my very soul, like a sliver of wood just beneath the skin that has never quite come all the way out. I realized with immediate clarity that I was getting far more than just a pastor’s opinion on a particular issue for my book. I had stumbled on to something else, something I needed far more: spiritual counseling and guidance for my new life as a child of God.
            I am a new believer.
         That seems so strange to say out loud. I was raised in the church. I had at least a third of the Bible memorized by the time I was twelve. I knew all the major stories from the Old Testament – the creation of the world; God’s covenant with Abraham; Jacob, Esau and Isaac; Joseph sold into slavery into Egypt and God’s eventual deliverance of the Israelites from their captivity there; the introduction of the ten commandments and the Mosaic Law; Esther, Ruth, King Saul, David, the Book of Psalms, the prophet Isaiah – I knew all of it by heart by the end of my days in elementary school. Same for the New Testament – the birth of Christ; all of His teachings and parables; His death on the cross; His resurrection after three days; the founding of His church after His ascension back to Heaven – it was all as familiar to me by the time I walked away from high school as the mathematical precepts of basic addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.
           I had assumed all this time that I was still saved. I thought I had really, genuinely believed in Jesus as my savior that long ago night in 1985 when I was seven years old. And maybe I did. But, for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit had not come into me back then. I was not truly saved. (This is perhaps worthy of a more detailed discussion and analysis later on down the road.) Whatever the case, I am most definitely a new believer now. The Holy Spirit is alive and well within me, and I have only a single desire and purpose: to know the God that created me, and to serve him with all my heart, soul and mind.
          Pastor and I did discuss my homosexuality issue in our second talk, and that, along with the extracurricular reading I’ve been doing on this topic, has enabled me to finally reconcile what I couldn’t in my teen years when I first fought with this problem.
 
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       If I am gay, and God – through His written word – has condemned what I am as a sin, how can I be His child and serve Him as he commanded me to do? That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with anew for the last few months. I began this new journey in last September with the premise that I was born gay. I’ve believed that my whole adult life. I proceeded from that assumption through all of my reading and research these last few weeks. But if God made me this way, why would He then condemn as an abomination the very thing that I am? Is He not contradicting Himself? How can this be?
            Pastor Sjostrom asked that very question in our second talk. He then went on to answer it by explaining that my unnatural desire for the same sex was a cause of the Fall, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is what led their descendants to the sins of idolatry, fornication, sexual perversion, and many, many others. Yes, I was born gay. But that’s not how God made me. There’s a very distinct difference.
            His explanation corroborated what I have come to discover in the last couple weeks as I’ve read Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church from the Counterpoints series. Author and editor Preston Sprinkle gathered four prominent Christian authors, scholars, and theologians to discuss this issue – two for and two against. I will not go into great detail of what these authors debate and discuss, mainly for the sake of page and time, but also because this issue is not anywhere near as complicated as it seems.
           All four of the contributing authors to the Two Views book have used the following Bible verses/passages as the foundation of their arguments:
1. ) The creation story in Genesis 1 and 2.
2.) Genesis 19:4-11 (Sodom & Gomorrah)
3.) Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13
4.) 1 Corinthians 6:9-11
5.) 2 Corinthians 5:17
6.) Romans 1:18-32, emphasis on verses 26-28
7.) 1 Timothy 1:9-10
       Those authors have also drawn from extra-Biblical material such as the writings of Philo, a Jewish historian who was a contemporary of the apostle Paul; the Apocrypha; the writings of Saint Augustine; and various other books – most written in the last 50 years – on sociology, sexuality and anthropology in the ancient world.
      Here’s an example of one of one of the arguments for the church’s endorsement of homosexuality. One of Two Views’ contributors, Megan Defranza argues that there were many people in Biblical times that were born with no distinct male or female genitalia or other defining sexual characteristics. These “intersex individuals” were often referred to as eunuchs by the people of that time, and many of them were used as sex slaves. Megan claims that Genesis 1 is “…a theological account describing creation in broad categories, not an exact scientific inventory of all of God’s good creatures.” She goes on to say that Adam and Eve were not the exclusive, ideal models for all of man and womankind. They were, rather, just the broad categories; that the birth of eunuchs and other such of types of intersex people prove that God would welcome the church’s acceptance of gays, lesbians and transgenders since they have been born that way, and their sexual desires are natural to them. She claims that God was not condemning the eunuchs and other similar people in those verses/passages I listed above. Those condemnations were for the ones who had turned deliberately turned away from God to worship idols and indulge their sinful lusts.
      There’s a lot more detail to Megan’s argument, especially regarding the eunuchs and their forced sexual slavery to their male masters, but it’s not worth going into here. The other three contributing authors give similar arguments, citing external sources in addition to scripture, to support their particular view. Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes, the two that are opposed to the church’s condoning of homosexuality and gay marriage, give the stronger of the four arguments. Two Views opens with Megan’s and William Loader’s essays (the other author who falls on the affirming and open acceptance side of this debate), but by the time I reached the end of their arguments, I already knew which side of this issue I was going to fall on.
           Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes – as well as Pastor Sjostrom – present a much stronger, sounder case for why the Christian church, no matter the denomination, should be condemning ALL forms of homosexuality as clearly as God does. My own Bible reading and prayer showed me this after only a few weeks. I don’t really need to read all the other books on this topic to know the truth. To be completely honest, I had a pretty good idea of what the end of this journey would look like before I even started it. All the verses from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and 1st Timothy that deal with this specific issue are quite clear. It is stated over and over: homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God. Paul stated it best in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 - “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”
        That word “effeminate” in the KJV is translated from the original Greek word that Paul used: arsenokoitai. This is a compound word: arsen – male; koite – bed. “Male bedders”, in other words; those men who sleep with other men. In the NIV translation, the word “effeminate” is replaced with the phrase “men who sleep with other men”. The only other passage that Paul uses that word is in 1 Timothy 1:8-10 (KJV): “But we know that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully; knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind, for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine;" (emphasis mine)
          The meaning of these two passages is quite clear: those that practice any or all of those sins listed will not inherit the kingdom of God. They are not true believers and followers of Christ. And thus, any church that not only allows its homosexual members to remain in their sin, but also performs gay marriage, is not a true church of God.
             And such were some of you.
         God has commanded those that follow Him and declare His name to turn from their wickedness and be transformed. Those that believe on His name and repent of their sins will no longer practice those sins listed in the passages I quoted above. That’s the meaning of the phrase, “…and such were some of you.” Well, I have definitely been transformed. I can feel the Holy Spirit working in me. And, because of that, I have no other choice. If I am to be faithful to my Lord and Creator, if I surrender myself completely to His will, I must take a vow to turn away from my sin nature. I cannot indulge in the “lusts of the flesh”, as Paul says in Romans, if I am to call myself a true Christian. I am now a child of God, and His will alone must govern all I say and do.
          But, even more important than those passages I listed and quoted above, is the book of Genesis, chapter two. God created Adam first and then He decided it wasn’t good for man to be alone. So God made the woman out of Adam’s rib, and he called her ‘Eve”. Then, in verse twenty-four, God said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” This chapter, more than any other passage in the Bible, clearly and explicitly demonstrates what God had intended from the very beginning. The only natural desire of the flesh was for the opposite sex: man for woman and woman for man. That was God’s original plan.
         Unfortunately for us, Adam and Eve did not resist the serpent’s temptation to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the Fall, their perfect, pure natures were corrupted by sin, and that corruption was passed unto their children, and their children’s children. Part of that corruption was the perversion of the natural, normal sexual desire. Men lusted after men and women for women. (Romans 1:26-27) Even though the subsequent passages in Genesis which describe mankind’s deplorable state before the Great Flood never state it specifically, it is not unreasonable to assume that more than just homosexuality was a problem. Bestiality, pedophilia, rape and incest were very likely abundant among the first few generations of man, as well as the worship of false idols and complete rejection of God. Why else would God have felt the need to punish his creation by wiping them from the face of the Earth, save for Noah and his family?
         As the old saying goes, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". I’ve always hated that pithy, snarky retort whenever I had to defend my sexuality to anyone who tried to tell me I was living in sin. But it’s true. God created only Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve; not Melissa and Eve; not Adam, Eve, and some other non-gender, non-binary person.
          Just Adam and Eve.
         Man and woman were joined in holy matrimony and, until the Fall, they lived in perfect peace and union with their Lord and Creator. Anything that deviates from that original, holy standard that God still demands of His children today, is a sin. That includes homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, incest, idolatry and devil worship, to name a few. Anyone that willfully practices or engages in any of those things and does not repent cannot call himself a true believer in Christ. Nor can any church that not only openly endorses homosexuality but also performs gay marriage can call themselves a true church of Christ.
          So then, what now? If I accept that my sexuality is a byproduct of my sin nature, and that God, in fact, did not make me this way, how can I best serve Him? I’m still gay. That hasn’t changed. (And, yes, I’m sure. I’m watching last week’s episode of The Resident as I write this. Matt Czuchry and Manish Dayal are among the best male eye candy on TV right now.) I still desire a physical relationship with another man. (Either of the aforementioned actors would be especially nice.) But that desire – as well as the act – is a sin. God has made that clear in his Word. After some more talk with Pastor Sjostrom, I finally came to an answer – or, at least, part of one.
 
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          I mistakenly assumed that after I asked Christ into my heart, after I surrendered myself to God, that my sin nature would be transformed. I thought what many torn, conflicted gay Christians and their family have thought: with enough prayer, genuine repentance, and strong faith I would no longer be a homosexual. God would change my unnatural desire, and I would be sexually attracted to women instead of men. I would throw out all the symbols of my gay pride that I had collected over the years – t-shirts, bracelets, baseball caps, the rainbow colored Apple watch bands – and I would begin my new life as a heterosexual man. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Yes, it would be hard at first, but God and I would make this work, glory hallelujah amen!
       But that’s not how salvation works. Yes, there was a transformation, but not quite the kind that I was expecting. It’s hard to put into words exactly what I felt in the weeks and months following that quiet prayer on that car ride home from work late the night of September 17, 2020. I knew for sure that something was different. To begin with, there was an almost instant peace and calm that settled over my entire being. All the anxiety, the fear, and the worry about the state of the world around me that had been plaguing me for many weeks melted away. In its place was a quiet, firm assurance that, no matter what happened from then on, I was in the hands of God. He would take care of me.
           And then, in the days and weeks that followed that moment of salvation, I began to feel more than just spiritual peace and tranquility. The first was a hunger – an insatiable, ravenous desire to read my Bible. I had only the app on my iPad, and I started with Genesis 1. Every night, before bed, I would read two or three chapters. And then I would pray. It was awkward and nothing like the prayers that I heard time and again from my dad or my teachers in high school or my pastor back then. I stumbled over my words, I repeated myself, I kept forgetting what I wanted to say. And I still felt weird doing it. It was like I was talking to myself. But I kept praying nonetheless.
         Gradually, as Christmas loomed closer and closer, and the more I read my Bible and talked to God, I felt something stronger inside of me. But it wasn’t anything physical, like an emotion. It was…something else, something in my soul. I imagined this new feeling as a few drops of red ink falling into a bowl of clear water. At first, the drops fall straight down, coloring only a little bit of the water. But then the ink begins to slowly spread, crimson tendrils that stretch outwards, eventually turning the whole water into the color of blood. That’s what it felt like was happening inside of me. My soul – the very thing that made me me was being changed from the inside out. And it felt damn good!
           It was after my Christmas vacation, after ten days of rest and relaxation with my family in Idaho, that I noticed an even bigger change. When I returned to the daily grind of my two jobs, I realized that my whole attitude – and, by extension, my whole outlook on life – had been transformed. I was no longer the angry, anxious, frustrated, fearful man that was always pissed about something – usually the people who were my customers. Before, I was short tempered, impatient, always inwardly complaining whenever those around me were being difficult or annoying me in some way. Now, however, I was at peace. The difference in my new attitude from the old was as glaring as night from day. I greeted my customers with a smile. It was no longer an effort for me to be patient with the difficult ones. Nor did I feel the need to rant and rage on social media about the problems of the world, as I had been doing practically non-stop before I became saved.
            It was like being wrapped inside joy, as if joy was something tangible – like a big, soft, warm blanket fresh from the dryer. I had to constantly check my reflection because I was sure I had a giant, stupid grin on my face all day long. And that feeling only got stronger the more I continued to read my Bible – now an actual book that I had bought from Amazon – and pray. That, too, was getting better. I no longer stumbled over my words or forgot what I wanted to say. The hunger to know God, to build a new relationship with my Creator, overshadowed everything else in my life. I lost interest in many of the things that had once taken up all my time, like watching TV or playing video games. All I wanted to do every night when I got home from a busy day was to open God’s Word and keep reading.
           But there was one thing that didn’t change during all of that wonderful transformation. I’m still gay. The desire for that sin is still there, as strong and lustful as ever. Everything else about me seems different. I am, indeed, a new creature in Christ. So why am I still gay? Why is this particular thorn still lodged firmly deep in my flesh?
        I still don’t have an answer. But I do have a theory. The transformation of the new believer in Christ is not like wiping the old operating system of your ten year old iMac. With a computer you can install a whole new operating system that’s free of the bugs, viruses and malware that plagued the old system. The hardware is still the same old hardware, but the software is brand new. Your computer has been transformed. It performs and operates like a new machine.
          But we humans are not machines. We are creatures born of the Fall. Being saved in Christ has made us like new, but the old self – the old, corrupt nature – is still there. The old operating system hasn’t been wiped away. Rather, the new OS is now installed, and the two systems are at war with one another. Why is that, I wonder? Why doesn’t God simply transform our sin nature by wiping it way when He fills us with the Holy Spirit? Wouldn’t that be easier – and more complete – than  forcing us to constantly battle our old selves in order to remain faithful and obedient to Him?
The honest answer is, I don’t know.
           What I do know is that God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen not to remove this particular thorn in my flesh. I am still gay.
            The thorn in my flesh. Yeah, that phrase sounds familiar. In fact, it’s been rolling around in the back of my brain for several weeks now. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul writes of the “...thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan sent to buffet me.” Those four verses, more than any other Bible passages that I’ve read and also read about, have continued to echo within me ever since the beginning of this journey. Many pastors and scholars agree that that the thorn Paul speaks of was of a spiritual nature, not a physical. Paul says that he “…besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.”
             The thorn in my flesh.
            What if I am in the same seat as Paul? What if my sexuality is the ‘thorn’ in my own flesh?
            I think that part of the reason that God doesn’t just snap his fingers and wipe away our old self is because, without those old, sinful desires and temptations, we wouldn’t continually come back to Him for mercy, grace and forgiveness. It might have taken a little longer for me to surrender if the outside world hadn’t melted down last year, but I have no doubt now that God has always been working in my life, and He wants my love, worship and obedience. My homosexuality is a reminder from Him that I have a choice: I can give in to my sin nature and indulge my own desires, or I can turn from the flesh, take up my cross daily, and follow Him.
          God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our sin nature, and He knows that when times are good, when everything is going our way, we often forget Him – just as the Israelites did over and over in the Old Testament. We get wrapped up in our daily lives, turn away from Him, and give our worship to false idols instead; or we just pay Him our weekly rituals and sacrifice on Sunday, and then put aside our Bibles until the following week. But it’s during the times of adversity, when God allows the trials and tribulations of life to afflict us, that we come to Him. We seek Him because He is our only source of comfort and peace. The storms in our lives remind us that God alone can save us, can heal us. Our afflictions draw us closer to Him. And, if we remain faithful to Him, there is much reward for our devotion and service. When the storm has passed, we often find a rainbow.
      The rainbow was God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants that God would never again destroy the world with a flood. In our modern world the homosexual revolution of fifty years ago took the rainbow as a symbol of pride and diversity. When I entered my adult life as an out and proud gay man, I, too, adopted the rainbow as a symbol of pride in myself. I vowed to live my life on my terms, and I wouldn’t be cowered or ashamed into silence about who I was, of what I had been born as. But, of course, I have renounced all of that since becoming a new child of God. It is NOT my life, but His as a gift to me. I live now in complete service to Him, and Him alone.
          But I’m not quite ready to throw away my rainbow bracelet that I wear on my right wrist every day. It is still a symbol to me – and to everyone I meet in daily life – but not the one that it used to be. I have found a new place beneath the rainbow created by God in the aftermath of that flood in Genesis. The peace and reconciliation I have long sought has been found at last, and the rainbow is a symbol of both my old life and my new one in God’s service. I don’t find that conflicting at all, just as I have no problem calling myself a gay Christian. Until such time as God, in his perfect timing and wisdom, decides to change my unnatural desire completely, I will always be a gay Christian, and the rainbow will be a sign of my personal covenant with Him.
          The process of reconciling this issue, the spiritual traveling and soul searching that I have done over the last few months, has shown me clearly that God is my Lord and Savior. He has allowed this affliction so that I would do the work that I needed to reconcile what appeared to be a crisis of faith. I wouldn’t have experienced personal growth in my life – and my faith – without this conflict and pain. Yes, it has been painful. Peeling back the faded scars of old wounds wasn’t not all pleasant. I had to go back to that fifteen-year-old kid and have a long talk with him. (See section 5 of this post.) I wrote letters to my parents and my three brothers, apologizing for the way I treated them all those years ago. I have recognized how selfishly I have been living my adult life, and the pride of my old nature has screamed fiercely whenever I bow my knee and my heart every morning in prayer. There is now a fight within me – the old nature vs. the new self – that will never let up until I die. And, sometimes, that fight will be painful. And yes, I already know that there are times when I will fail, when I will give in to the temptation to break my new vow with God. But that failure is not as important to God as whether or not I stay in the fight. And I will stay. I’m in this for the long haul, and I know without a shred of doubt that God is on my side. He wants me to succeed.
           Hallelujah, amen!
 
                                                          - 4 -
            Most of you have seen my post on Facebook from three days ago. My only answer from God to this twenty-four-year-old conflict has been a call to celibacy. Until such time as he chooses to change my sin nature, to change my unnatural desire into a natural one, I have made the following vow to Him:
            I take a vow of celibacy before God; that I have surrendered my life and my will unto Him; that I will not give in to the temptations of my sinful flesh; that I recognize my homosexual desire as a sin in His eyes, an abomination caused by the Fall; that He has saved my soul from eternal damnation, and I owe him nothing less than my whole heart, soul and mind.
            I take this vow on the 3rd of February, 2021.
            Amen.
 
                                                           - 5 -
            I read a long time ago – probably in a textbook somewhere in college – that one of the tools therapists and psychiatrists use in their counseling of patients is to have their patients write a letter to their past selves. As I mentioned earlier in this post, I wrote letters to my family to apologize for how I had wronged them in the past. After some more thought and deliberation I decided to write one more letter, this time to that fifteen year old kid that used to be me.
            At first, I thought this a stupid idea. I mean, how much more clichéd can one get? Plus, I’ve already treaded into dangerously melodramatic waters in this post. Is yet one more emotional, sappy passage needed?
            Ehhhh…yes and no. Turns out, I had a lot more to say to myself than I thought at first, and, son-of-a-gun, I did feel remarkably better afterwards. Guess there was some genuine, therapeutic value to this little exercise after all.
            So…here it is.
 
             Hello.
             It's been a long time.
         Yes, I see you. You've been there all along, but only recently have I begun to really see you. You've been with me my whole adult life, affecting me, shaping me in ways I never realized until now. I thought I left you behind when I left high school. At various times in my life since, I've judged you, shunned you, tried to erase you, or just simply ignored you. I could never understand why you never had the courage to speak up, to ask for help. There were a few adults – or even your friends – who would have very likely sympathized and tried to help you. All you had to do was say something! But you didn't. You kept your secret, protecting it, guarding it like Gollum with his precious ring. I was the one who eventually had to reveal the secret to those around me when I was old enough and no longer ashamed of what I was.
            But now I realize that instead of judging you and blaming you, there's one thing that I should have done long ago. I never said, “Thank you.” Thank you for giving me the strength and courage to step into the world as a confident, independent adult. It was because of you, what you went through silently as a teenager, that I developed the strength and resolve to live my truth as an adult. It was because of you that I knew what I wanted in life. It was never my desire to just go with the flow, to blend into the crowd and do whatever everyone else was doing. I did my own thing. And yes, it would have been better if I had been living that truth within God's will, but God, in His infinite wisdom, decided not to work His will just yet. He chose to wait while I forged my own path.
            Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and be the adult that you needed. I would have embraced you, told you that you weren't a mistake; that God loves you just the way you are, including being gay. And, deep down inside, you knew that you were loved. Your parents told you that every day. But you always had that sliver of doubt in the back of your mind.
“Would you still love me if you knew my secret? Would you still accept me if I was gay?”
I, the adult looking back at you across the gulf of years between us, know the answer to that is a resounding “Yes! They have always loved you, no matter what!”
            Part of me also wonders how our life would have been different if you had reached out to the one person that understood what you were going through; the one that knew your pain – and your secret. It was He that made you, after all. What I can see so clearly now is that it never occurred to you to reach out to God. You only knew Him through the church, through your teachers, through your parents, through all the endless rules, and restrictions, and demands that they all placed on you. That's what you rebelled against. God, to you, was just a system, an institution that governed every corner of your life. That institution would never understand your secret, would never accept you for the real you.
            But He was there all along. He was there on those nights when you cried yourself to sleep. You were struggling to understand your pain, to understand the turmoil inside you, but you didn't have the words or the wisdom or the experience to fully realize it all. All that you knew was anger, frustration and fear. But God understood you, and He was there in the darkness, crying with you.
            I want so badly to be there now, to wrap you in my arms and wipe away your tears and tell you that everything will be okay. Because it will be. You can’t see it now, but things will get better. You will find a way through this, and you will emerge on the other side with a strength and resolve that you never knew you had within you. The rest of your life is an as-yet-unwritten map of joys and blessings, failures and setbacks, triumphs and successes that will make all of this suffering worthwhile. You will know happiness that you couldn’t dream of – most of it found within the family that you don’t understand or get along with now. (There are 10 nieces and nephews that think you’re the greatest uncle ever, for example.) God has a plan for you, and, like the father of the prodigal son, He will be there with open arms when you finally come back home. He will accept you, just as you are.
            But all of that is for later. For now, just know this: the storm will pass, and there will be peace.
            You will find your rainbow.