Chapter 13: Ambassador Kosh, The Smoking Caterpillar & Six Months Saved

          One of my favorite sci-fi shows from the 1990s was - and still is - Babylon-5. It takes place on a space station in neutral territory between various warring alien and human empires in the mid twenty-third century. One of the alien characters, Ambassador Kosh, is fond of asking those around him, “Who are you?” Kosh is a Vorlon, a mysterious, cryptic species who’s true physical nature is hidden from others by an elaborate encounter suit. No one has ever been to their homeworld, and the Vorlons rarely interact with other species around them, so when one asks “Who are you?”, it’s a significant question that implies a need for an honest, significant, soul-searching answer.
            That is a question I’ve been asking myself a lot these past few months. This week is the six month anniversary of my salvation. Looking back, it feels like I’ve crossed a gulf wider and deeper than the Grand Canyon. September 17th seems like almost a lifetime ago. And yet, it also feels like it was just yesterday. So much has changed in my life, and yet so much is still the same.
            The other day I was looking back over my previous log entries from this new journey. The one from October 10th leaped out at me as I reread it:
          "I just recently realized how much we change throughout our adult lives as we get older. Those passions and desires and things that interest us and consume our time when we’re in our twenties are not necessarily the same passions, desires, and things that we care about in our forties, or our fifties, or our sixties. We as people are not just flesh and blood. We are conscious, thinking, emotional, intellectual human beings, and the parts of us that make us who we are are those passions, desires, interests, and things that we care about. It’s what makes me me.
          Some of those qualities can be defined as hobbies or interests, the things that I do in my spare time or what I’m passionate about in life. The fact that I have always been a science fiction fan, for example, or my writing. Other qualities can be emotional, or intellectual, or parts of me that aren’t necessarily physical. The fact that I’m gay, for example; or that I love to read, or that I’m an introvert, or that I once used to be an Atheist.
         In other words, those things that make up who we are as an individual human being, that define us to the world and to other people around us, are not always constant or unchanging. And that’s what I had never realized until now. I have always been happy living my life on my own, by my own terms, and I found peace in being alone. I have never felt the need to have that “special someone” in my life, but now, for reasons I cannot explain, I’m no longer content with that. I think this is why so many people at this point in their mid-lives have a crisis. They buy a new car or get divorced or change careers. Perhaps my loneliness is nothing more than a mid-life crisis?"
            At the time, I was attributing all my recent angst and internal unrest to aging, but now I recognize this for what it really was – and still is: sanctification. (Or maybe it’s a little of both.) 2 Corinthians 5:17, one of the first verses that I had memorized long, long ago in Sunday school, says, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” It’s one thing to know about a process, but quite another thing entirely to actually experience that process firsthand.
            Who am I?
            My name is Neal Timothy Jones, I was born on June 4, 1978, I currently weigh 205 lbs., stand at a glorious height of 5’5”, have blue eyes, brown hair – which I’m very slowly but surely losing (more than in the back than the front, I’d say), and a goatee that is now more silver than brown. My favorite color is blue. I’m a brother, a son and an uncle, but not a father or a husband. I was born and raised in Twin Falls, Idaho, and I’m an introvert. I’m often shy, quiet, used to have a hard time speaking up for myself and was afraid to be myself for fear of ridicule and shame. I’m a sci-fi fan (Star Trek in particular) and an avid Super Mario Brothers player. (If that was an Olympic sport I would hold a gold medal for most games conquered and exceptional fire flower skill.) I’m a writer, and I also read a lot, and, lately, I have a very hard time shutting off my brain. I’m always overthinking, overanalyzing, and overly critical of both myself and those around me.
            My favorite food is Italian, especially pizza and pasta (hence the 205 pounds), and I despise coconut. I mean, like really, really hate it. Whoever decided that shredded coconut should be a topping on desserts should be strung up by their apron strings and crucified in their kitchen. Coconut – especially shredded coconut – has absolutely no taste for one, and for two, it has all the texture of grass. It’s vile and disgusting.
          I have type 2 diabetes, and I’m a good twenty-five pounds overweight. I’ve always hated exercise. Yes, I enjoyed running around the playground and being outdoors in general when I was a kid, but I hated organized sports. I suffered one year of soccer in 7th grade because my parents insisted I needed to get out and do something besides always being alone under a tree with a book in between classes. (I think they were worried about my anti-social behavior far more than they actually let on.) That one year led to a life long revulsion of sports in general. Seriously, I don’t get it. Running up and down a field, chasing a ball or trying to make a goal – *yawn*. So overrated.
            Also, for that matter, is competition. I’m probably the least competitive person anyone knows. I really couldn’t care less whether or not my coworkers beat me in upsells and product promotions. I don’t give a damn if my friends or family make more money than I do. I have no desire to rise the corporate ladder and be king of my local branch. I don’t really care what my house looks like on the outside compared to my neighbors. Nor do I give a rat’s ass if my car is the nicest one in the neighborhood. (And, frankly, given the neighborhood I currently live in, I most definitely do not want a super nice car that would attract nearby thieves.) I really do just march to the beat of my own drum, and if you’d like join me, great! If not, oh well. You do your own thing, and you be you. I’m not going to care one way or the other.
            Who am I?
           I’m gay. Or, rather, I was. Or maybe I still am. I honestly don’t know. And that’s been my problem lately. Clear back in September, right after I was saved, I was sure of two things: one, that I was saved and new child of God, and two, that I was gay. In just six months, though, I’m not so sure of that latter one anymore.
            It’s funny how we sometimes take one thing in our lives – our marriage, our job, our sexuality, or maybe that one hobby or spare time interest – and we build our whole self-identity around that. For me, it was being gay. That was who I was, and I centered my entire self-identity around that one thing as soon as I left high school. After I left the Army, after returning home to Twin Falls and enrolling at the College of Southern Idaho, I immediately joined the Gay-Straight Alliance on campus. I spoke up for gay rights, and I even helped organize a petition for a gay float in the local Western Days parade. (I honestly can’t remember if we ever really accomplished that or not. I do remember the city council not being very happy with our little request.)
            I watched pretty much anything on TV that had gay stories and/or main characters. Shows like Will & Grace, Queer As Folk, and Six Feet Under were my favorites.  Same for the movies. Hollywood was my religion, the local cineplex my church. Celebrities like Ellen Degeneres were my idols, and I did my best to follow their wisdom and lifestyles. Throughout college and my early adult life afterwards, whenever I introduced myself to new friends and co-workers, I was quick to let them know I was gay. I was proud of that, and anyone who disagreed with that or tried to tell me I was wrong for living that way would quickly get shut down by my new, independent spirit and debating skills. I bought t-shirts with slogans like “I don’t even think straight” or which just had the symbol of the rainbow flag on the front.
          Everything else was secondary, and when my life moved online to social media, I made sure to put my sexual orientation front and center on all my bios. I connected even more to the greater national gay community by joining Facebook pages that promoted gay rights, and I followed many gay activists and celebrities on Twitter and Instagram. In recent years, especially after moving to Las Vegas, I did quiet down a little with the in-your-face attitude, due more to aging than anything else. It was no longer that important than every single new friend or co-worker know right away that I was gay. Instead of announcing it with the first handshake, I let the subject come up organically in regular conversation. I also purchased Apple watch bands made in rainbow colors or plastic bracelets of the same design to wear as a silent testimony of my proud lifestyle.
            Who am I?
           One of my favorite scenes in Disney’s Alice In Wonderland is the one where Alice is confronted by the smoking caterpillar. He repeatedly demands of the young, lost and confused heroine, “Who. Are. You?” (Each word is punctuated by a perfectly shaped ring of cartoon smoke.)
            In recent weeks and months, there have been days when I have stood in front of the mirror above my bathroom sink, looking at my reflection with puzzlement and curiosity, asking that very same question. Some days, I have felt like a true warrior of God, leaping from bed, excited to rush into the world and live the truth of Christ. Other days, I have felt small and weak, and conflicted, and wondering why I have kept giving in to the old lust of the flesh and breaking my vow of celibacy. (Yes, even just giving in to old desires and lusts in the mind’s eye are a sin in the presence of God. It doesn’t necessarily have to go as far as an actual, physical act with another man.)
            One evening, about three weeks ago, as I got ready for bed, I was reflecting on my day. It was one of those mediocre days, not too bad, but not really exciting or exceptional either. I was feeling a little down and discouraged, but I couldn’t say exactly why. I sat on the edge of my bed, lost in thought, and tracing absently with my right index finger the outline of the tattooed cross on my left bicep. Since the tattoo was barely a week old, most of it was still one large scab, and I had been fighting the recent urge to pick at it. I glanced down and saw the plastic rainbow bracelet on my right wrist, right next to the other bracelet with white stars and a blue strip on a black background.
            As if by some spiritual instinct, I reached out with my left hand and pulled that rainbow bracelet off. I held it up, examining it for a few moments, and then I opened the drawer of my nightstand. I tossed the bracelet inside and shut the drawer. I sat for a minute or two, thinking about what I had just done, and then I got up and marched across the hall into my office. I opened the bottom left drawer of my desk and rifled through the several dozen Apple watch bands that have accumulated there over the last few years. I pulled out all the ones that were rainbow striped or rainbow colored. I threw them in the trash. I also threw away the bag of rainbow bracelets (they had been 20 for $5 on Amazon). I turned out the light and shut the office door.
            I went to bed that night feeling more at peace than when I had first asked Jesus into my heart just a few months before.
          The next day, during my lunch break at Walmart, I went through all my social media accounts and removed the word ‘gay’ from my bios, as well as any emoji symbols such as the rainbow flag. That, too, felt right. I was now just ‘Christian’, not ‘gay Christian.’
            I’m still honestly not sure what this means. Part of me has felt utterly terrified, as if I’m erasing more than just part of who I’ve been for all my adult life. The one thing that was the core of my self-identity has been essentially wiped away, as if God was one of the workers in the amusement park of Westworld, another of my favorite shows. In that not-so-distant future setting, the human-like androids are often re-programmed by the park’s engineers to change their personalities or even their entire character to match whatever new story is going to be enacted for the park’s biological visitors and tourists. Ever since my salvation, I have often felt that God is reprogramming me in the same way, erasing parts of the old sinful self and rewriting new software, giving me a new core identity. Right now, that process of sanctification has only just begun, and, hence, there are days when I don’t quite know what to call myself. Yes, I’m a Christian. Yes, I am a child of God. But I feel like there should be more than just that. I feel like the loss of my old identity means that that I also have nowhere to belong; there is currently no new community in which I can plug myself in order to have the same sense of friendship and comradery that I once had with my fellow gays.
            And yes, I know what you’re already saying to your phone or computer screen as you read this: “Neal,” you say, “just being a child of God is enough. Just calling yourself a Christian is enough. That is the new community that you now belong to.”
            Yeah, I know. But, at the same time, I still feel incomplete. Don’t ask me why. I feel like those Lego sets I used to play with as a kid. My favorites were the spaceships, especially the really big ones that came with about two hundred individual pieces. I liked those the best because I had the choice of either building the ship pictured on the front of the box, or I could assemble a different ship entirely using the same pieces but fitting them together in different ways. I feel like God is doing that with me right now. He’s completely disassembled me from the inside out, and his Spirit is slowly and gradually reassembling me into something totally new.
            Part of me wishes He would just hurry the hell up and get to the finished product already! Why is He taking so long?? But the other part of me – the part that I am slowly coming to recognizing as the voice of the Holy Spirit is gently, firmly reminding me that this process can take a lifetime; that I need to learn to be patient and wait upon the Lord.
            Who am I?
          I am ALL of those things that I listed above – yes, even the homosexual. God hasn’t changed that completely. But that particular Lego piece is now on the worktable with all the others. And I no longer feel a need to advertise to anyone and everyone that I am still gay. For now, I am just ‘Christian.’ And I’m looking for a church family where I can truly belong.
            I recently finished reading a book that dealt with this exact topic. The author is Greg Coles, someone I’ve mentioned before in these posts. The book is titled No Longer Strangers: Finding Belonging in a World of Alienation. There are many, many lovely and beautiful passages in the book where Greg gives his own testimony of finding his place in his particular part of the world and his church community after coming out as a gay Christian in 2017. But there are two passages, specifically, that I found most inspirational in my own journey of trying to find the church family in which God wants to place me. I’ve already posted them on my social media, but I’m going to quote them again here.
            The first is from Chapter 5: Hide and Seek.
           "But God—the real God—has only ever been interested in loving us, in redeeming us, in transforming us. He has no interest in an army of clones, a horde of wax figures and cardboard cutouts sent to approach him in bold unanimity while his heterogeneous flesh-and-blood children crouch in the shadows.
            Those of us who love Jesus are indeed called to find our paramount identity in him. Every other identity is placed in submission to Christ, upturned and radically reordered by the logic of the kingdom of God. But our particularities are not erased in the process. We are not recycled paper, blended into a pulp and recast as a blank sheet. We are a painted canvas in the hands of a master restorer, painstakingly cleansed and healed and remade until we finally become the irreplaceable artwork we were always intended to be."
         That ‘irreplaceable artwork’ is what I cannot wait to see! That’s what I’m eagerly waiting for – that finished masterpiece. But I also know from the testimonies of my parents and Pastor Mark, as well as ones that I’ve read online from other Christian authors, is that there is a real possibility that I might never see that completely finished work; that God, in His infinite wisdom and grace, is never entirely finished with us. And that’s okay too. That’s what I need to recognize and reconcile with right now. The old saying really is sometimes true: it’s the journey that matters more than the destination. But, along the way, God does not want me to just melt into His crowd, to be one more clone in the Christian army. Instead, as Greg points out, God wants each of us to stand out, to share our unique gifts and talents with the body of Christ and with the world around us. We need to shine for Him, and we can’t do that if we just hide away, afraid to be more than just another smiling face in the crowd.
          The other passage, the one that brought me to tears, was the final paragraphs of the book:
           "I am my Beloved’s. He is mine. We belong in one another, with one another, to one another. We always will. We’re not going anywhere.
I’m not the only one making these vows with heaven, to be sure. A symphony of voices joins mine in the air. The song includes married folks as well as celibates like me, straight and gay and everything else. Our choir represents every race, every language, every nation.
           But despite the grandeur of the choir, Christ still hears and responds to each individual voice. He isn’t content to declare his affection for us in form letters and megaphone announcements. He whispers to us one by one, into your ear and mine, exchanging promises of love. As long as these promises remain true—as long as our fragile memories can hold them—home will never be further than a whisper in our ears, never further than an ink drop beneath our skin. We are loved. And because we are loved, we belong."
        I have re-read that passage so many times over the last couple weeks, savoring it like piece of gold, a treasure of beauty and real wisdom. Greg’s completely right. Not only does God want us, just as we are, no matter how broken, how lost, or how sinful, but He also wants for us to belong in Him, and Him alone. This small piece of wisdom seems at once so simple and yet so complex. I have had to remind myself almost every day, especially those days when I’m feeling lonely, or a little lost, or discouraged because the church that I had hoped was going to be my new home didn’t work out after all, that I am first and foremost a child of God. I belong only – and solely – in Him. I need to understand that that is all that matters right now. The rest will come in time. Perhaps once I have understood and fully absorbed this first and important truth, then God will begin providing unto me the rest of his desired blessings and, especially, belonging within a new church family.
            As a result of these blog posts, I have had the immense blessing and pleasure of reconnecting with old friends who had once taught and reared me when I was that stubborn, contrary, rebellious kid who gave out more sass and disrespect than a Las Vegas drag queen in a nightclub. One of those friends shared a quote by Leonard Ravenhill with me a few days ago that immediately touched my heart. I printed it off and taped it to the bottom frame of one of my computer monitors in my home office.
“Great eagles fly alone; great lions hunt alone; great souls walk alone – alone with God!”
          The friend who shared this helped me to see that same truth that Greg pointed out in that second passage that I quoted above. It’s okay for me to stand apart from the crowd – Christian or otherwise. It’s okay for me to continue marching on my own. The only difference between my old life and this new, blessed one is that God is now marching beside me. He has changed the beat of my drum, and He has “…begun a good work” in me, as Paul says Philippians 1:6, and that work will not be completed until “…the day of Jesus Christ.” But, if I’m honest, I will say that, on most days, I don’t feel like the lion or the eagle. Not just yet. I feel more like a church mouse from a Beatrix Potter tale, crouching in the shadow of my Lord and Savior, and letting Him do His thing on my behalf.
One of my other favorite quotes that has had a special significance to me these last few months is by Socrates. He once stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I think God would agree, and the best form of self examination should always start with the following question:
             Who am I?