When is he going to stop? How much more do you have to say, you blabber mouth? Well, I don’t know. I’m just going to keep going until I feel I am done. Until I feel I have all of the stuff from my under belly weighing me down that no one listens to or knows about me out.
In part one, I talked about how I’ve lost trust in people but strength in myself, and in pt. two I talked about why I have pulled back from the gay community as a whole and how it nearly crushed me trying to find my acceptance there. This was hard because what I’m about to talk speak of. I really needed and wanted that gay community to be a whole healing thing and for me to find my peeps (though I did in part and for a time, it ultimately crushed me) because of the core foundation I lost and left behind. My religion.
I was walking today in nature and looking at the grass and see the roots of trees in the ground wondering if identify more as a earthy naturalist than a Christian now. The thought terrified me. A guy who once had the Apostle Paul as role model and felt like he saw clear into heavinly realms? How unnerving to be here. I know down deep that I have a special relationship with God and this force that is beyond me. I feel even in nature, that nature itself sings out the Christ story. I remember reading a book by missonaries who found isolated tribes that never encountered any civilizations having stories that were very similar to Christ stories. This brings me comfort. God is still moving in my life though I question where I am at with things.
I became a zealot of my faith because of burdens with being shamed for being less than and a “fag”. I lived a lonely life and spent my youth on God becoming closer and then I determined to cure myself of my personal demons by literal interpretations of the scripture in which I was promised cures by ministries for who I was and for what I was not yet. I spent a decade and I can’t say it was complete waste, but when I had to accept who I was as a gay man and reject the very foundations I knew God to be for well over decade…. well, I still get confused at times. It shattered everything I thought I knew about God. I could no longer trust myself.
Meanwhile, an unchanging Church organization across the nation has all but lost the youth. It is a strange thing because when I lived in Florida, there was no youth to be had in the churches I went to. Now, I’m no longer young, but even so the churches have lost so many that the age group is still even older as far as what it is left–grandparents and great grandparents and some couples. I’m still out of the loop.
So, I’m without a foundation or peer connection in churches. I also find such a heavily reliance on the Bible as if it came off God’s Printing Press with no errors. Yet we are to rely on it, as if God has no equally inspired words today. Quite honestly, having read so many books, I object to that idea. There are so many books today that have helped me as much or more than the Bible. There is so much I also wonder about this text as well. Some things don’t sound like “God said” but more like man saying “God said”, and quite honestly, I wouldn’t put it past a man to do that or even think that God was saying it. Heck, it’s happened to me and this is the time of earlier men. People weren’t used to get ideas or insights, or even ego centric thoughts that could be seen as God inspired but not be.
What about since then? I find so many books and even within my own heart that God speaks. Sometimes contrary to what others intrepret in the Bible–such as my own sexuality. Christians will say, “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” and take other Americanized interpretations within the Bible to throw at you. Skipping the fact that it wasn’t until 1946 that homosexuality was even put into the American Bible. There was no word for it back in ancient days because they probably just saw it as part of being human. In Ancient Greece, Greek men raised their young men through homosexual relationships first before hetrosexual relationships. I’m not saying I condone that but I am saying since Jesus never mentioned it, it’s probably not nearly the big thing we make it today. It was much more culturally acceptable back then, I’m sure. When the early churches formed, many of the artistic paintings were sexual in nature and a lot of full nudity in them right in churches and pastor/priest settings. It was until later years that those were eradicated or churches burned down as heretical as the latter church leaders became more puritanical in nature.
I’ve read so much of the Bible. Backwards and Forwards. Conferences, workshops, groups, internships that I swore changed my life with the revelation I saw in there. It did show me how close God is to me but it never changed me in the way I imagined it would because there was nothing wrong with me. I looked at myself as such a godawful nothing. I saw myself as destroyed and destroyed was a good thing because then I could fully rely on God rather than have any self worth or identity in myself. I would fully rely God with having no identity of my own.
Want to know where that got me? Complete and utter dysfunction. Yes, I was crying out to God all the time. I was going to the Bible a lot. Out of desperation. I was living in despair of myself. God says, “Love others as…” As what? “as you love yourself”. You have to know and love yourself. You can’t hate yourself. You can’t live as destroyed self and hope God will infuse some Christ identity into you. It doesn’t happen that way. Nor does memorizing a whole bunch of Christ identity verses or promises.
I think if our creator wanted little Jesus clones running around then God would do that without exacting our choice in the matter at all. He wants our will, our personality, and our own identity with faults and gifts in there. So don’t be fooled like I was led to believe. And this is why it isn’t easy for me to go to church all the time. I am reminded of all this stuff when I go. But not all Churches are this way and I have to tell myself of that. But it is in part why I fear little ones learning this stuff before they experience life now. I have to also remember while other books can be sacred too, God can still use Bible also.
I just really think we have such a narrow, inhuman view of what they experienced and who they were–the Apostles, Jesus, all of it. We make them to be super human almost from birth and encase these ideas around all this religiousity that is stale, old and driving people away, not toward it because no one can live that way unless they are a pastor, priest or monk themself. And who wants to live a life so dead to yourself, and part of the time locked in a church building. I hope it changes but I have for decades now.
In the meantime, I know my spirituality suffers from intense distraction from online activities, busyness and my phone. I allow it I think because I don’t know where to go with it. A part of me just wants to live life and is saying God, come along and do what you do. Guide me too but I’m done sitting back waiting or sitting in the pews. I just want to live. But I know too, it is not good that I’m not taking much time to listen. I will need to improve on that because I do like sparkling moments with Spirit. It may not happen right then but the Spirit replies even if it days down the road. I don’t want to keep turning that down.
But all in all if you ask me do I like where I am in spiritual life, I would say no. Most people live life and sort of settle down with their spiritual life later in life. I started my spiritual life way early on and it ulitmately almost got completely destroyed. Now my life is in reverse. I’m at an older age living life rather than doing it when I was younger. So it’s almost as if I have become less wise because I’m presently ignoring spiritual time due to distractions and wanting to do what I missed out on. I wish I was more in a spiritual place, not religious like before, but I have to go with what my body needs for now and hopefully God is on the ride with me. I think that is the case so take comfort in that for now.
Jamison's Writing Jams 