"Queer as Faith"
by Nathan Gunter

Queer as Faith is a weekly column by Nathan Gunter.  Unconventional and thought-provoking, Nathan writes as a gay Christian struggling to live authentically in the real world.

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Week 17:
Hearts Like Bomb Shelters

I’ve been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately, and I think it has something to do with God needing to teach me something about regret, and loss, and dealing with life in a world where the choices are so difficult that sometimes just breathing seems impossible.

I made the huge mistake of going to an ex-gay conference recently. My friend Gabe and I have both been through ex-gay therapy, and while mine was a resounding failure, Gabe has the extreme fortune (or misfortune) of being an out and proud ex-ex-gay. So when Focus on the Family decided to bring their “Love Won Out” conference to Oklahoma City, we decided to take a miss on the huge protest rally going on across the street from the conference and enter the lions’ den itself.

That was where I realized for the first time that I am capable of murder.

A lot of my readers have experience with the ex-gay movement, but for those who don’t, let me just say that it is at best an exercise in circular thinking, and at worst a horrible political machine disguised as a tool of compassion. Most of the conference was appalling propaganda – at one point gays were compared to Nazis in a war to silence Christians, who were the “Jews” in the scenario (take a moment to love the irony).

We saw people we knew there, and we heard some appalling stories. One young man whom Gabe knew was a 19-year-old whose parents had not only made him attend the conference as a condition of his continued college education, but who were also forcing him to take hormonal suppressants in order to lessen or destroy his sexual desires. Who was it that said that whatever is bad psychology must also be bad theology? This went a step further; this was bad medicine.

That’s what the ex-gay movement is, in my perspective. It’s bad juju. I speak as one who so desperately wanted at one time to be a “success story;” I tried so hard and in vain to change – or at least to understand – my own sexual orientation, and it ended up not only hurting me psychologically, but very nearly destroying my relationship with both of my parents. It was, after all, my parents’ fault in large part that I was gay, at least according to my counselor. It could easily be said that I had a weak or distant father figure and a strong, domineering mother when I was growing up, and the fact that I learned way too much about sex far too early couldn’t have helped. My counselor walked me through the experiences I shared with him and tried to convince me that my parents’ divorce had made me crave a bit of male security which I, in my puberty, had sexualized.

Puberty is like insanity or PMS. I shouldn’t be held responsible for anything I did back then.

It took me learning a lesson about forgiveness to let those arguments go. It took me understanding that my family, while f-ed up six ways from Sunday, aren’t perfect, that they did the best they could with what they had. It’s never enough – it never could be – but at some point I had to let all of that go or live with the fact that my continued resentment and blame for these people would destroy our relationship and all I’d have to show for it would be my own selfish, shining little “success story.” My parents would believe until their dying days that my complete inability to love, to open up, or to accept myself, was all because of them. And that sounds exactly like what the Bible talks about when it tells us to get right with God, right?

You’d think I’d take the hint. I’m not built for hint-taking, I suppose, because sitting at this ex-gay conference, I managed to resent the entire Christian community and every single ex-gay person or proponent I’d never met or heard of. As the day wore on, I found myself shaking uncontrollably with anger, my chest tightening up and my vision clouding.

Then God decided it was time to humble me. I just hate when he does that. The worst part was that he did it with the single most awful and humiliating thing he could muster: an altar call.

The last speaker reached his emotional, manipulative climax, which I was seeing right through because I am so so intelligent. I forgot that God uses the foolish things to humble the wise, because when the speaker said that there were people down front to pray with anyone who needed prayer, I felt the Holy Spirit tapping me on the shoulder. It felt like there were snakes in the chair next to me ready to chase me down front. I gave God a flat “No.”

So the snakes started biting, and my heart cramped in response. This weak, human muscle began to lock up and stamp its foot like a spoiled child, which is pretty much what I am. But I’ve learned that God generally gets what she wants and isn’t too interested in what my pride thinks is best. And I found that my feet were all of a sudden one before the other, and I was staggering down to the front of the church, arriving teary-eyed in front of a young man about my age. I stared into his eyes with intensity. He looked so pleased to see me, so genuinely concerned, that I could’ve smashed his skull in with a hammer.

“I’ve been here all day,” I said, “and heard some of the most horrible, awful things said, and I basically disagree with everything this whole conference is about. And I’m so angry that it’s making me mentally ill. So I guess I need to pray that God will teach me how to forgive, because I don’t think anything positive will happen until I do.”

He looked panicked for a moment, then put his hand on my shoulder and began to pray that God would open my heart to feel his healing (or his heeling – either would’ve been appropriate really). He prayed that everyone would try to understand and that we would not live in a spirit of war as believers, but in a spirit of forgiveness and humility.

I felt the Holy Spirit rattling around in my big stone heart and felt those tightly-closed spaces opening up. It was light and fresh air again, and I walked back to my seat feeling confused and foolish and renewed. I mean geez, did I just pray in a church?

Well. Call it a miracle, because you just can’t get there from here. I’ve learned in living that from the place I am, there’s no road to the place where I’m supposed to be, to where I’m most at peace and happy. It takes a miracle. It takes the Holy Spirit’s Mercy Airlift to get me where God wants me, even if it’s for a moment.

Which is about how long it lasted, because it’s always the same thing: I come and am changed by God, then I step out into the real world and get in trouble again.

You see, I have some tiny little relationship issues. My friend Todd told me the other day that I don’t have a boyfriend because A) I’m too nice, and B) I’m too honest. “Guys want a man,” he said, “who will treat them like crap and keep them guessing enough to keep them interested.” I told him that we were no longer friends.

His hypothesis was proven, however, when one guy about whom I’d been having – what’s the word – biblical thoughts began dating his ex-boyfriend again, a guy of whom I’m very very less than fond. When he called to tell me this my only response was, “What, did you lose a bet?” Another guy who’d shown interest decided to date a friend who’d been known to make him feel like, shall we say, a worthless pile of dog crap. I called Todd. “See? If you hadn’t told them that you liked them, if you’d been a little meaner, you could’ve had either one of them.”

No one should ever give me advice, ever, because it makes me have murderous thoughts. Todd told me that I’d feel better in the morning, to get some sleep and call him tomorrow. I promised to do so, mainly because I wasn’t actually planning on being alive by then. But I went to bed and lay there in the dark, thinking about boys and ex-gays, wondering if becoming straight really would be such a bad thing. I fell asleep.

When I woke up, I felt this sense of calm hysteria. On one hand, I wanted to wake up and hyperventilate, to set the bedspread on fire. But another part of me just felt kind of okay. I went to work and managed not to think about boys all day – call it another miracle. Driving home, I felt the need to call Boy #1, even though I couldn’t think of a single reason why. But I called anyway, and he came over and we hung out for several hours talking, and in the end I said simply – and meant it – “I want you to be happy. That’s the biggest thing I want when it comes to you.”

You just can’t get there from here. The part of my brain I’m planning on lobotomizing wants to hold grudges, to feel righteous and holy anger. My heart wants to cling to its hurt, to its scar tissue, to show it off to the world like I proudly show the big scar on my head. It wants the world to look at me and feel pity and sorrow so that the world will then take me in its big cuddly arms and take care of me.

Too bad the world doesn’t give a damn. Good thing that God does.

God isn’t interested in the scars I wear like badges. God is interested in my healing, in my being able to look outside of my own little self and see my golden-plated problems for what they are. God is even interested in doing something about my tiny little all-consuming boy issues.

“You’ve got problems?” says God. “Well good, because I’ve got a couple of lesbians at your church who could use a friend, and whose kids could use an hour’s worth of piggy back rides tonight. So you go take care of that, and I’ll work on getting the kinks out of your craggly little heart.”

My grudges are safe and comfortable. My anger is like my weapon as I walk through the dark alleys of life. But nowhere does it say, “I will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, and good thing I’ve got my big-ass machete and some quality rage.” It says I’ll walk through the valley because God is with me. My whole life is a big, embarrassing altar call wherein my hypocrisies and humiliations are laid bare, quite often for the whole world to see, and wherein I must go down in front of everyone to beg forgiveness of the very people I’m hoping my anger will hurt.

There’s just no loophole in that part of the Bible where Jesus says, “Forgive one another as God has forgiven you.” It doesn’t say, “Forgive, unless he starts dating that jerk who makes him want to cry.” It doesn’t say, “Forgive, unless they’re attacking the minority group with which you identify.” It says, Forgive. Plain, simple, and like walking on hot coals.

It’s by faith. It’s by believing that we are forgiven and loved unconditionally that we are given the grace to weather embarrassment, rejection, and church-splitting disagreements. It’s by grace that we find we are dancing in a life that’s often trying very hard to cut us down and wear us out. It’s by grace that we’re given the strength and the power to let go of the one thing that feels like power to us, but is actually great weakness. God tells us that our strength lies in our ability to be vulnerable and frail, that our battle is waged by turning to our enemy the other cheek.

Our pride is all about fear, and in the end, our fear is of God. Will God be good enough to provide for me, or should I keep a stash of righteous indignation and stubborn pride just in case he decides not to? We’re all Cold War soldiers, with our hearts like bomb shelters, stashed up for the day when all of our greatest fears come down on us at once because God really wasn’t looking out for our best interests. At least on that day all our hunkering in the dark and cold won’t be for nothing. We’ll be vindicated.

But we won’t be. We’ll be humbled. The Bible is murky on some stuff, but not on that. We’re being pushed along towards humility and forgiveness, and I’m slowly realizing that the biggest part of that is learning the biggest lesson of all: love and forgiveness, letting yourself off the hook and taking care of others. That by the Spirit’s lead I’m learning to forgive James Dobson, and my parents, and every single person who’s ever said he liked me, and, for God’s sake, even me.

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