September 26, 2013

A church definitely has a right to its beliefs, just like anyone else does. They have the right to believe that others’ beliefs are wrong. They have a right to interpret certain actions as sinful and others as duties to God.

My own beliefs have transformed a lot over the nearly three decades of my existence on this planet. I grew up in the Wesleyan Church, a church that believes in a large set of very black-and-white rules. With an interpretation of the Bible as its basis, the church has a book called The Wesleyan Discipline which outlines what every member of the church is expected to believe and how they’re supposed to act.

For example, there was a section in The Discipline that said that Wesleyans would not go to the movies and another that said they don’t dance. I don’t have a copy of the book, so I can’t quote it, but I do know that they backed up these “rules” with ideologies they believed had a basis in Scripture.

So, growing up, I conformed to the beliefs of the Wesleyan Church. There were certain actions that I knew would send me to hell. Others were necessary to getting into heaven. And ultimately that’s what all Christians want, right? They want to spend eternity in a mansion in the sky, as opposed to being damned to eternal burning in the depths of hell.

That was all well and good for the first decade and a half or so of my life. I went to church every Sunday morning, and most Sunday evenings too. I attended youth groups, taught Sunday School at a young age, worked as a camp counsellor and even as an assistant camp director at a Bible camp. My evenings, weekends and summers were centred around the church. I was even vice-president of the in-school Christian Fellowship group at my school.

But then something happened. I guess I hit puberty. And suddenly I was supposed to be attracted to girls. But… I wasn’t. I was attracted to other guys. Something was wrong. And I thought I knew what it was. It was the devil! It must have been. Only the devil himself could put such impure thoughts in my mind.

So I tried to pray the thoughts away. I begged the Lord to help me stop thinking about guys. I tried to sever a close friendship I had with a gay guy because I thought he was a bad influence on me.

A little side story… the first time I ever “acted on my feelings,” we got interrupted when a black bear decided to visit just outside our tent. I promised God then and there that if He just spared me from the bear I’d never commit such a sinful act again. Eventually my friend called his dad, who drove out to rescue us. I’m not sure if I was really more afraid of getting eaten by a bear, or of getting caught naked in a tent with the guy’s son.

Anyway, I didn’t keep the promise I made to God that night. It was about three years later that I came out of the closet to my parents. My father was away. My mother went to take a bath. I packed my bags and left a note saying that I was gay, and that was that. I pitched my tent and lived in a campground until a friend’s parents insisted I come stay with them.

I’ve come a long way since that incredibly hard year. In some ways it was the best year of my life. I was finally able to be honest about who I was. I started dating guys and spending time “in the gay community.” But in order to do that, I had to let go of something else… the church.

The day I came out to my parents was the day I stopped considering myself a Wesleyan. It was incredibly hard. I had to replace my friends. I had to replace my hangout spots, my summer activities, my weekends, my evenings—everything.

The church never kicked me out. Basically, I didn’t give them the opportunity to. That being said, I don’t think they would ever have told me I couldn’t come to church. But I feared exactly what this young man had happen to him would happen to me. I wouldn’t be able to fill a position of leadership in the church. I wouldn’t be able to lead worship, or work with the youth. I figured I’d be banned from mission trips. Would I even be allowed to sing in the choir? I doubt it.

I knew, from the years I’d spent in the church, the sermons I’d listened to and the lessons at camp and youth programs, that being gay wasn’t OK in the Wesleyan Church. Being gay was considered sinful. It was a lifestyle chosen by those influenced by the devil.

I’ll never forget the time a man from the church addressed the topic of homosexuality to a group of boys on a weekend trip. He said something like, “Just think about what it is that gay people do. Think about it—how disgusting it is.”

Hmmm… I guess the “thinking about it” tactic of generating disgust kind of backfired on me.

Anyway… leaving the church was incredibly hard for me. It didn’t help that my father is an ordained minister in the Wesleyan Church. His occupation actually required him to see homosexuality as an evil, sinful thing. To stand behind the pulpit and preach along different lines would likely have caused him to lose his ordination. And of course my mother was right there alongside him. They’d both spent so many years in the Wesleyan Church. How could they just abandon those beliefs, even if they wanted to, in order to be supportive of their son?

So I came to terms right away with the idea that if I don’t want them to force me to believe what they believe, I have absolutely no right to expect them to change their own beliefs to match mine.

And yet, it still wasn’t that black and white for me. Because although I’d come out of the closet, I still didn’t want to be gay. The church’s message was so ingrained in me that I wished I could change. I was really quite certain, after years of denying it myself and being unable to overcome it, that there just was no changing who I was. But I still wanted to.

It was a couple of years before I’d step foot in a church again. A couple of summers later I made a rather strange agreement with my mother. I was planning on spending several weeks at home, but her rule was that I must attend church with her every Sunday. I felt that was unfair and suggested that maybe I just wouldn’t go home. She tried to compromise by saying I had to attend two Sundays. I made a counter-offer. She provided me with her car so I could go out every Saturday as long as I was at church on Sunday.

For two months I drove nearly an hour and a half to Fredericton every Saturday night to go to boom! Nightclub, the nearest gay bar, but I always made it back home in time to get changed and go to church. (It helped that I don’t drink.) That summer I frequently had a bar stamp on my hand during the Sunday morning service.

I have since connected with a much more accepting Christian denomination, the United Church of Canada. The church not only accepts me, but approves of my lifestyle. I’m welcome to become as involved in the church as I’d like.

But I’m still conflicted every day. A part of me thinks, maybe I’m going to end up in hell? I could just try to squash those thoughts. But if they’re true, I should be jumping ship from my current life!

It’s nine years since I came out of the closet. I’ve had a handful of short relationships along the way. I’ve been to over 60 gay bars in eight different countries. (I’m kind of proud of that.) And I’m currently renovating the second home that I’ve purchased with my partner of nearly four years.

My parents still believe that homosexuality is a sin, but they’ve resolved to leave judgment to God and to continue to love their son, and even to welcome my partner into their lives.

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All this to respond to a request on Facebook from an old friend to respond to a dialogue about a story concerning a young man banned from leading in the Wesleyan Church because of his sexual orientation.

I am not angry at the pastor who made that call. I’m not angry at Crosspoint Wesleyan Church. I’m not even angry at the Wesleyan Church as a denomination.

I’m saddened and disappointed that the church continues to be so narrow-minded in its approach to spreading God’s love. But there’s absolutely no point in being angry, because these people genuinely believe that what they’re doing is best for everyone.

They genuinely believe that by telling this young man he shouldn’t be gay, they’re saving him from spending eternity in hell. They believe that it is their duty as Christians to expose sin in order to save lives. How can we be angry at people for trying to save lives?

I certainly won’t get into the biblical, theological arguments for and against the acceptance of gay people. Instead, I’ll simply outline my beliefs as they’ve transformed because of my upbringing and my years of struggle as the gay son of a Wesleyan preacher.

I still believe in God. I even believe in Heaven and Hell. I believe that God is a God of love. Period. Does He pass judgment? Yes. But that’s His job, not ours. And I can’t for one second believe that when God looks down on my partner and me, He can do anything but smile as He looks at two men so deeply in love with one another.

I do hope that someday the Wesleyan Church will start to accept people for who they are, allowing them even to lead within the church, leaving judgment to God. But I have a feeling that day’s far away.

Perhaps in the meantime, I’ll go back to a Wesleyan Church and simply become a member of the congregation in a non-leading role, so that maybe, just maybe, some of the people there will start to realize that I’m not scary, I’m not evil. I’m a sinner like every one of them, but it’s between God and me to define that sin and to determine how I should live my life.

Maybe I’ll do that.

Then again, maybe I won’t.

I also want to say, just as one last side note, that as someone who has worked in the news industry, I know that sometimes the media doesn’t get the whole story. Sometimes, despite their best efforts, they’re unable to tell the full story. If you think the church shouldn’t pass judgment, don’t be too quick to pass judgment on the church.