Pleasing, Hiding and Betrayal

The subject I'm about to address is something I've dreamed about discussing openly for decades. I am truly grateful for the courage to finally be opening up fully to all my friends and family about the issue of sexual orientation. Now, I know that merely mentioning those last words may set many in my former church on edge, but I will be tactful and discreet in my handling of this topic here.

I have been aware of an attraction to guys since my earliest adolescent days. I don't believe I was ever molested or sexually assaulted, and I do not attribute same-sex attraction to my environment growing up. It just seems that it was part of my makeup from the beginning. An early episode of exposure to an adult magazine brought to my attention the fact that it was the guys who held my interest, not the ladies. As a kid, I had no idea what this was, or was called. I just knew that no one in my world was quite like me.

As the title of this essay indicates, I am a pleaser by nature. It was always important to me to stay in a position of favor with everyone I could. In all of life's spheres, I paid attention to the rules, and did my best to follow them. At home, at school, at church. I never wanted to disappoint.

Hand in hand with being a pleaser, I was also a hider. I knew that, in order to keep everyone happy with me, I would have to hide anything that would offend or diminish their favor. Thus, when it came to my sexual orientation, I hid it, as many do. Through nearly five decades of living, I can count on one hand the number of people I had revealed my secret to. I now realize that hiding such an important part of one's life necessarily limits how close you can get to people.

Growing up in a conservative church, I never seriously considered coming out as a gay man. In our culture, it just wasn't an option if you wanted to serve God. So I chose to live as a straight man and "keep my secret sin under subjection." Those who have lived this torment can attest that this internal war can be maddening at times. My early years in college proved extremely difficult for me as I struggled against my inherent inclinations. I withdrew from my family and became depressed and even suicidal for a number of months. I ended up dropping out of my first school in failure, still hiding as much as possible from those around me.

At 20, I was quite relieved to find a godly girl who was interested in me, and for whom I felt love and physical attraction! Before we married, I disclosed my "issue" to her, and she was very gracious and reassuring about it. Though our relationship eventually failed, I shall forever be indebted to her for her love, forgiveness and faithfulness to me during our good years together.

Though I never cheated on my wife, I struggled with the gay issue throughout our marriage of 27 years. It seemed to ebb and flow in cycles, repeatedly causing me great distraction and pain. I did my best to cope, but mine was not what I would consider to be a healthy lifestyle. Internalized shame was my enemy, always lurking around every corner.

As articulated in my earlier essays, my divorce woke me to the realities of my life and set me on a path of re-examining my beliefs and their consequences. As I began to doubt the doctrine I had clung to all my life, a thought emerged that gave me hope. "If the Bible is not actually what I always believed it to be, then what it says about homosexuality may be questionable, as well." Suddenly, I was faced with a choice: I could continue hiding in a religious culture that I was finding increasingly difficult to support, or I could muster the courage to realign my spiritual beliefs and begin living authentically as a gay man. I eventually chose the latter, which leads me to the third topic in my title: betrayal.

I recognize that my recent exodus from the faith and my coming out as a gay man may cause strong feelings of betrayal in many (if not most) of my family and friends. I hope they can understand that I hid my crisis of faith over the past year out of a sense of duty to the church I served. I sincerely wanted to retire from music ministry during the summer of 2008, but decided it would be unfair to the church to leave so abruptly. Trying to hold on another 9 months proved much more difficult than I anticipated. During that time, I am sure many people detected changes in me as I began to pull away.

I also know that my sudden transparency through these essays may be shocking to many. However, it is through these writings that I am breaking free from my tendency to hide and am learning to speak candidly about my life, old and new. Now that I have chosen to live openly, I must say the fresh air is exhilarating!

Many reading this essay have perhaps already made a number of judgments about me, based on conservative religious dogma. And that is understandable. But though I am still a pleaser, my priority now is to live honestly and fully, accepting what I am without shame or hiding. I do not expect everyone to approve of my life or my choices. I do hope to show over time that I am still the same man who seeks to honor God and others. The values that have shaped my life up until now -- kindness, love, integrity, honesty, service, etc. -- will continue to guide me. It will take time, but I will find a new spiritual path, and ultimately lead a much healthier life!

Essay #4 will be a Question and Answer format where I offer my perspectives on some common topics surrounding gay life and culture and their intersection with religion. These issues have been front and center for me over the last month, and I hope to share what I've learned so far.

Issues Over Which I Choose To Reject Fundamentalism

As I discussed at length in my first essay, over the past year or so, I have gone through an internal process of self-examination. Part of this process involved taking a new look at what I believed about God, the church and religion. I eventually came to reject what I consider to be the primary tenant of fundamentalism. That would be belief in the Bible as the inerrant, inspired Word of God.

My purpose in this essay is not to debate these issues with anyone, but to explain my perspective and ongoing evolution of faith. I am describing some of the key issues I have been grappling with, in an attempt to help my friends and family better understand some of the major changes I have made in my life. Please understand that I am not judgmental toward anyone who CAN hold onto their Evangelical beliefs. It's just that, under my particular set of circumstances, I have chosen to change my outlook on the Bible and religion. My next essay (#3) will explain precisely what I'm referring to in that last sentence.

After my divorce in the spring of 2008, I decided to return to college and complete a bachelor's degree, retire from music ministry and relocate to another church. Since I knew that my current church would need advanced notice to allow time to figure out who would replace me as Music Minister, I decided to give one more year to music ministry and retire at the end of May, 2009. During this time, I began to re-examine my beliefs in earnest. As my faith in traditional Evangelical doctrine continued to erode, I found myself in the dilemma of having to lead a music team while in a state of growing spiritual uncertainty. Through this difficult time, I struggled to hold onto my traditional beliefs long enough to see my commitment through to its end. However, as I gradually disengaged from the music ministry those last months before I left, much of my former belief system collapsed.

To limit this essay to a reasonable length, I will only offer a few examples of the irreconcilable issues I have with my former doctrine.

In Essay #1 I explained my inability to reconcile the angry, warring God of the Old Testament with the loving, peaceful God of the New Testament. The Bible clearly establishes that God is "the same yesterday, today and forever." But how could God command Israel to commit genocide against entire nations, and then through Jesus and Paul, teach us to "turn the other cheek" and "live at peace with all men"? I think it is easy for people to unconsciously ignore such inconsistencies in order to maintain a conviction that the Bible does not contradict itself.

Incidentally, I also take issue with the notion of God commanding genocide in the first place. Most of us certainly are appalled by it in Rwanda and Darfur! Why would it be OK for God to do it? It seems more plausible to me that Israel could have fabricated such a command from God in order to justify their conquest of land in the Middle East.

And then there is the idea of hell as a place of eternal torment for those who sin or reject God. The Bible teaches that God is just. A quick look at the law given by God to Moses reveals a principle of justice that has been passed down to modern jurisprudence: the punishment should fit the crime. This is a key principle of civil government. Yet, I think it is easy for people to miss the significance of ETERNAL damnation! When there is NO END to the punishment, it becomes impossible for it to "fit the crime." Regardless of how bad one's offenses are during one's life on earth, there is no human sin bad enough to warrant UNENDING torture by fire! Any human who is unwilling or unable to stop severely assaulting an offender would be considered mentally unstable or insane. The notion that God does this seems irrational and unacceptable to me. To the idea that hell is simply eternal separation from God and not physical torment, I respond that, regardless of what my child has done or how badly they have hurt me, I would NEVER banish them from my presence FOREVER. That is neither just, nor civil, nor loving. Nor godly!

At this point, I am usually asked, "So what DO you believe about hell?" Frankly, I don't yet know how to respond. The topic will certainly be part of my ongoing search for a reasonable spirituality, but I have no answers for now. The only thing I'm certain about regarding religion and faith is that I'm no longer certain!

Regarding divine healing, I do not deny miraculous recoveries from sicknesses and diseases within the church. However, I would point out that according to medical science, a certain percentage of ALL illnesses report spontaneous recoveries WITHOUT prayer or spiritual intervention. My real issue with this topic resides in the notion of divine cause and effect. The Bible relates a great number of promises from God. "If you will _____, I will _____." For example, (paraphrasing) "If you ask anything in my name, according to my will, without doubting, while abiding in my favor, I will do what you ask." When we do ask and get a favorable result, we immediately attribute the success to God. Yet, when we ask but get an unfavorable result, we fall back to a number of excuse mechanisms. "Perhaps it wasn't God's will. Who are we to know what's best?" Or "It has to be in HIS timing. Just continue knocking!" Or my favorite, "God is a sovereign God. He'll do what He wishes." So my beef comes with claiming absolute cause and effect relationships, while providing a flurry of smoke and mirrors to cover the fact that they often don't seem to work. When I see friends and faithful members of my former church still suffering in pain and disease, despite YEARS of weekly prayer by the entire congregation, it brings great pause to my faith. Were NONE of these folks abiding in Christ? Were NONE of them believing without doubting? Not likely.

These are but a few of the many irreconcilable issues I have with my former doctrinal beliefs. My decision to leave my lifelong faith was not an easy one, nor a sudden one. It came as a result of asking this single question: "Is it worth it to me to ignore all of these inconsistencies, in order to continue believing this doctrine?" My answer was "no." There are more reasonable ways to believe in and serve God, and I plan to pursue them. Essay #3 will shed light on a heretofore hidden aspect of my life that provided the context I needed to make this life changing decision.

Dumping My Mystery Bag

I was raised in a very conservative Evangelical Christian church. When it came to religion and morality, my world was black and white. There were no shades of gray. There was right and wrong and no in between. What we (my church) believed was "right" and what others (the rest of the world outside our faith) believed was "wrong." We clung firmly and unwaveringly to the 'Truth' that had been revealed to us by God through the Bible. Our very identity was invested in the strong belief that we were the bearers of the Truth. The light in a dark and sinful world. The "city set on a hill."

However, despite my desire to remain faithful to the idea of an iron-clad, inerrant Truth found in the Bible, I always had questions. Questions for which I felt I'd never heard adequate answers. Oh, there were always answers offered, but not always to my satisfaction. So what is one to do with unanswered questions that could potentially undermine one's faith? Well, I was taught from the time I was a child to keep an imaginary "Mystery Bag" on my belt, into which I would put all the unanswered questions and unsolved mysteries about God, the Bible, and doctrine. This unseen container would hold onto these questions for me and when I got to heaven someday, God would answer them all to my satisfaction.

One example of an unanswered question in my Mystery Bag was my inability to reconcile actions of the God of the Old Testament with Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Specifically, how could God command the Israelis to commit genocide (systematic extermination of a race or cultural group), so they could inhabit the Promised Land? I always pictured an innocent little three-year-old Ammonite girl being slaughtered by an Israeli soldier just before he set the house on fire and moved on to the next home. Yet this is the same God who came to earth in flesh as Jesus and taught us the pacifist ideology to, "turn the other cheek." I could never quite put those two together, but this inconsistency fit into my Mystery Bag along with many others and soon faded from thought. Out of sight, out of mind.

Then one day, my world was shaken by divorce. Suddenly, my identity, my future and my faith were all in crisis. It's interesting how persistent pain can sharpen one's awareness! I realized that, to a large extent, I had been going through the motions without really living! I began to allow myself to question. Who am I? Where am I headed? What have I accomplished? What do I really believe?

Out came my imaginary Mystery Bag, and I dumped the contents onto the table for reconsideration. For the first time, I was taking a step back and objectively examining my beliefs as a whole. In effect, my Mystery Bag had become a switch to disengage reason. The definition of "faith" is believing that which cannot be proven. However, one should have some sort of reasonable basis for accepting doctrine by faith. If, taken as a whole, one's beliefs are incongruent and contradictory, it's time for change. (Note: Essay #2 will explain more of the questions and issues I had carried in my Mystery Bag.)

I started reading other materials and perspectives on faith and the Bible and occasionally found other world views to be refreshing and more reasonable than those that I had held. Eventually, I came to reject the tenants of fundamentalism that I had believed all my life. Now I see how unreasonable it was of me to always be so certain about matters of faith which, by definition, cannot be proven one way or the other! I no longer view the Bible as the inerrant Word of God to be taken literally, but as a great work of men that contains many valuable lessons of character and civility.

After all, to believe in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God, we always had to take men's word on it. Someone said, "Trust me. God spoke to a man long, long ago, and told him what I'm writing down now." Then later someone else said, "Trust us. These particular manuscripts are the Word of God and belong in the Bible, and all of those over there are not." And today others are saying, "Trust us. This is what the words in the Bible mean and what you need to do to please God." All of that is no longer good enough for me in light of the contents of my Mystery Bag.

I had already been planning to retire from music ministry and leave my church, but I began to realize that my religious life after that was now far less certain. I decided that, rather than immediately begin searching for a new doctrinal framework and church home, I would take a break from religion altogether. This is where I am, as of this writing. I must develop a new foundation before I can begin rebuilding my new faith. It will come in time. But this time, I'll have my intellect engaged, and I'll be leaving my empty Mystery Bag behind.

My focus these days is to try to live honestly, courageously, and with kindness toward others. I realize that many of those who have known me all my life may be surprised by the remarkable changes in my world view. My hope is that, by living true to my values, my life can be a blessing to those who are touched by it.