For anyone who actually has read anything posted on this blog, some of this may be repetitious, but I need some background to get to the main part of my post.
I grew up around girls. Two sisters and I. I remember getting picked on by my male cousins at a very young age - just setting the stage for my pre-teens and teen years.
The older I got, the worse the bullying and picking on got. Not only was I the last kid picked in sports, there were comments made about each team not wanting me. I hated gym class, being forced to play sports I disliked, had no interest in, and in some cases, didn't know how to play. My grades in gym class were steady C's.
My parents had been away from God for some years, and got back to God when I was going on 12 years old. I had been in Sunday School sporadically up to that time, and attended a Christian school, so I wasn't completely unknowledgable about Christianity, but I was close to being so. Their getting back to God totally changed our lives. We went to church all the time after that. I went to the altar and prayed and asked God to save me also. Looking back, I can't really remember why I went..... whether it was a desire to be like my parents, or a genuine desire to know God. But that trip to the altar began a lifetime of a up and down Christian experience.
The bullying got worse at school the older I got. In addition to sports being part of the equation, I was the only kid, other than my sister, in the junior high-high school grades serving God - in a Christian school.
In 7th grade, I discovered sex. I came back from summer vacation and it seemed all the other kids in my grade discovered it over the summer. It gave them something else to tease me and make fun of me about. Around the age of 13 or 14, some stuff went on that helped set the tone for my having same-sex attractions - stuff I won't go into detail here, but some other male students took advantage of the fact that I was so easily manipulated and bullied into doing things.
I also discovered the act of "sexual self gratification" all on my own. No one had ever talked to me about sex - other than classmates. I felt it was very wrong, but became addicted to it. Every time I did it, I felt I had fallen away from God and would give up on being a Christian until I was in a church service where there was an altar call, and up to the altar I would go. Looking back, that one issue is pretty much the reason for my up and down experience in my teen and even early 20's.
My church is right on some things, and other things........ not so much. I grew up hearing so many "hell and brimstone messages", and can't remember many messages about God's love. I would say most of the times I went to the altar I was scared into going. The minister would tell some scary story about someone being in a altar service, and they didn't go to the altar, and stepped out of the church into the path of a semi and was mowed down - ok, not quite like that, but you get the point. Sometimes I went to the altar even though I thought I was in the right place, but they said the right words that made me go for fear of what would happen if I didn't.
I was not raised on the doctrine of "once saved, always saved." I see a lot of problems with it. For instance, people who believe that way seem to believe God can stop us from some sins - i.e. murder, drugs, but other "smaller" sins can't be stopped - anyway...... I see that doctrine as dangerous, but so is what I grew up under. The message I got - not necessarily in these words - was that God was just waiting for me to mess up so He could wipe my name out of the Book of Life. I grew up to see God with a whip just waiting for me to mess up. I often find myself thinking there has got to be something in between - not sinning every day, but also not feeling like God is just waiting for me to mess up.
Sometimes I wonder if I have tried to serve God for the wrong reasons. I grew up thinking no one liked me, that I was worthless, couldn't do anything right (my how things haven't changed). I felt my dad never loved me or approved of me because I wasn't interested in sports and hunting. I could never fully believe God loves me. I never felt love for Him, yet I felt this need to serve Him. But why?
First off, my parents. They just couldn't handle a child not serving God. I somehow got the idea as a young pre-teen that they wouldn't love me if I wasn't a Christian, so I'd lie when they would ask me how I was doing spiritually. I still do that.
The gun to my head. We really don't have a choice - get real. Serve God or burn forver in hell. Its like me pointing a gun to your head and telling you that you have to do exactly as I say the rest of your life, or I will pull the trigger. Is that a choice? Is that love? No - and yet we say God loves us...... but if we don't do as exactly as He says for the rest of our lives, He will drop us in a fiery hell and torture us forever - we have a label for people who torture people not as bad as that - and it isn't love. Someone that does that is a sadist and evil - so how can God really be that loving and give us a choice, when He is going to do that to all who don't choose Him?
I have to admit for most of my life, I have tried to serve God to make my family happy, to escape hell, and one more - guilt. At times when I was away from God - backslid, whatever term you want to use, the guilt would get so great that I would come back to God, and ask forgiveness - but it never lasted. A few months, weeks, or even days, and I would again be having sex with some anonymous guy.
I quit going to the altar at some point. I heard too many preachers talk about "hanging over the altar like a sack of wheat" (or something similar) and praying into your arm. You need to pray out loud, confess your sins. Really?! With the gossips in my church, I should confess MY sins for everyone to hear? No way - I will do my praying at home - and that is what I started doing. If I felt I needed to go to the altar, I would promise God I'd pray at home - and I don't think I ever broke that promise. The altar became something to avoid. Another altar issue..... they would hold the altar call off so long that often I had prayed and was done when the people gathered around to pray, so I'd just kneel there and let them pray for me wishing they'd finish so I could go back to my seat.
Yeah - realizing I was gay didn't help. I was sure I was doomed once I realized what was going on with me. No one who has not dealt with same-sex attractions gets it - and can't. You have to be there. Just imagine that it was morally wrong to be attracted to whatever sex you are married to and/or attracted to. Everywhere you go, you have to fight it. Add loneliness. It can be pure hell. And at this point in my life, were it not for my family and the fear of going too far into it, I would throw myself 100% into the gay lifestyle - oh, I have been in and out of it for 20+ years now, but not 100%.
I actually wonder if I can have an actual relationship with God at this point. Should I even try, if my reasons are wrong? And its always been this way - me not loving God, feeling He doesn't love me. Sure, it has gotten worse, but I didn't choose to have this struggle/issue. Should someone like me just walk away from God and the church and give up the idea totally of being a Christian?
I asked this question on a Christian site once - how does a person who doesn't believe God loves them, and does not love God, overcome that and be able to serve God? And the reply I got - why do you even want to be a Christian in that case? Good question. I don't want to go to hell, so is it fair to tell someone like me to not even try to be a Christian?
Most days, I don't want to be a Christian. My experience with being one hasn't been that great. People say there are no disappointments with God - well He has disappointed me many times. Sometimes I wonder if I ever had any Christian experience and just got something like a band-aid when I would go to an altar to pray.
I'm sure a lot of the problem lies in my image of God - but how do I change that? How do I believe that I matter to Him and that He loves me? The idea is a foreign concept to me. I have lived for so long believing no one likes me, not even God, and that I have to do more to be accepted and loved by Him, the people around me - my family - I feel they couldn't love me as much if I wasn't a Christian - or in this case, letting them think that I am.
Very few people know the real me. The me that hides a scared little boy that is still inside. I am afraid to even add people as friends on facebook, for I fear rejection so much. I don't make friends easily for the same reason.
It hasn't helped that things changed so much for me with my church while living elsewhere for two years. I moved back and it seems people don't care about me anymore that used to. Friends that I had just aren't there anymore. My own pastor is going on a year now (next month) that he has asked me how I was doing - the last time we met I told him stuff I would think would have him concerned...... but where is he?
The depression hasn't helped. It clouds the already cloudy spiritual issues and makes it hard to differentiate between the emotional and spiritual.
I feel like I have lost hope and faith. I'm not going to kill myself - fear of hell mostly - and wouldn't do that to my family - but I see no reason to live, and can't imagine God would make that much difference. At my highest spiritual times, I was still lonely, often driven to seek out anonymous sexual encounters to fill that loneliness, if even briefly.
I look at what I have become, and loathe myself. I want to change so much about me, but it all seems so hopeless and impossible. I keep going to church to keep the family happy, but most of the time I would rather just stay home. Church just seems so useless and worthless to me. I go and sit in my pew and find myself thinking the same things I do when not there - that I wish I could just die and go to Heaven - lovely stuff to be thinking in church.
I was happier when I was living in another state - it wasn't perfect, but I had a friend to hang out with - but thats another story and there are reasons why I can't go back.
There has just got to be more to life than this. Loneliness, anger at God and the church, feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness - being a Christian doesn't do away with all that. I know - I've been there.
At my worst moments, I find myself wondering if God really exists. The idea of a God who has just always been...... maybe I am turning into an agnostic, or borderline.
Yet, the Christian music and books still draw me. I have never had much interest in secular music or books - even now, feeling a million miles from God, but I still enjoy Christian books and music about this same God who I secretly believe doesn't necessarily hate me, but I am just of no importance to. I wonder sometimes if the reason He has let me live is because I'm not even worth the effort it would take to kill me - yeah, I actually think stuff like that.
Is there hope for me? I don't know. To ever truly have a relationship with Jesus Christ, my image of Him needs to change - but it seems that is something I have to do - and how do I do that? Why is God not willing to do anything to change that image? Why has He ignored so many prayers over the years - times I begged Him to show me or help me believe that He loved me, only to be disappointed and let down again? What if He isn't the only God?
Some say my church has too many rules - and they do. I have come to not believe and practice some of them, yet there are priniciples of modesty and separation of the sexes that too many churches just throw out - so I am divided on some of that stuff, but I do know this...... I have kept the rules for years and it did nothing for me. The sex rules - no, didn't keep them, but that wasn't something I heard much about as a teenager and young person - but keeping the Sabbath, etc - heard a lot about that. Sadly, it bothers me more to break the Sabbath then to engage in a sexual act with another man.
Well, this has been jumbled, but I felt like blogging, so here it is.
