Struggles – Page 2 – A Work in Progress

Crooked Face Dad

I hate that at my advanced and decrepit age, I both need and crave reassurance of things, but lately I’ve certainly felt that way. More so than in a long time.

The Bell’s Palsy has really sort of made things difficult. The left side of my face is stone paralyzed, including my eye, which I have to tape shut much of the time. The resulting dryness has made it more susceptible to injury, which has already happened once and was incredibly painful.

Can’t drive, so I haven’t been able to work. All of that is bad, and a real pain in the butt. The house is decorated for Christmas and I haven’t felt like enjoying it. The worst part for me has been the inability to kiss my wife and kids.

So I have been getting really good at feeling sorry for myself.

Then a couple things happened yesterday. My younger son and I were sitting around and he said “will you play with me?”

I was about to say I didn’t feel well, and then I thought of a movie line from somewhere (of course). You’ve only got one life to live. You can make it chicken salad, or chicken shit.

Yesterday I made chicken salad. We played cars, and scooters, and ate peanut butter sandwiches. We got mom a Christmas present (I made all right turns going to the store), and when we were done, my little guy kissed me smack on my twisted lips and said “I yuv you crooked face, dad.”

Jen came home and did the same thing. I guess sometimes a kiss is a kiss. It’s the heart behind it, not the lips in front of it.

It’s going to be a good day.

Black People, White People, and Deuteronomy

I saw a YouTube video today from a man—a black man—regarding the “situation” in Missouri following the grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. He made the video back in August, but I think it applies even more now, following the madness of the past two nights. Here’s the video, if you’d like to see it.

I think he’s got some really great points, and though his video is made with African-American people in mind, I think we can all (yes, white people, too) glean some wisdom from it. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean.

You say you want change? Then change!

Deuteronomy 2:3 is mentioned, and I don’t think I’d ever heard that applied to this kind of strife before. It’s perfect. It doesn’t allow for apportioning blame. It just speaks the truth.

Haven’t we gone ‘round this mountain long enough? Turn north!

If you want things to change, change yourself! You need to. I need to. I want to be able to raise my kids and know I’ve done all I can to show them that people should be judged by the “content of their character,” not pigment.

That goes “both,” actually “all” ways.

We are all very different in the way we feel things.

Different in the way we react to things.

Different in our opinions.

Different in our hopes and dreams for ourselves and our families.

But we are also all the same.

We can’t do it on our own. We are not made to be alone, or go through things alone. We were created to be in community with one another.

It isn’t impossible.

But we have to change to make it happen.

Haven’t we gone ‘round this mountain long enough?

Let’s turn North.

Better Questions

I read online today that Tim Cook—CEO of Apple since Steve Jobs passed away—came out as being gay recently. He said something to effect of he was “proud to be gay.”

Good for him. Even with today’s much more relaxed morality and tolerance for most things and lifestyles, that’s still a pretty ballsy move. Privately, people already knew, but being publicly anything is always a big step.

It made me think, though, and some questions came to mind:

Why does it seem the arbiters of political correctness in this day and age only allow people belonging to one minority group or another to be proud of it?

Proud to be gay, or African-American, or Green Party, or Latino, or whatever it happens to be rather than the majority.

So if a person can be proud to be in the minority—any minority—is the converse also true? Must someone else be ashamed to be a majority?

In other words, should I feel as if I cannot be proud to be who I am if that someone happens to be caucasian, middle-class, straight, and Christian?

I don’t know.

It seems like whenever someone comes out as any of those things, or espouses any of the views that seem to go along with membership in any of those groups, there are some who will automatically assume that means they’re hiding a noose under the white bedsheet they’re wearing.

The words “hate speech” have become so ubiquitous they’ve lost all their power.

For my own part, I am caucasian. I am male. I am straight. I am a Christian. Does that mean I am particularly proud of myself for being any of those things? I don’t know that it does, because to my way of thinking, that is just part of who I am, and whether or not I admit it is secondary to the truth I already know, which is that with God came awareness of my identity.

Pride doesn’t really fit with that.

While humility is something any human being probably struggles with, I guess I would say the parts of myself I am proud of are the things I worked at, rather than the things I can’t help being.

I am proud to be a college graduate, even if it took me until middle age. It was hard, and expensive, and I struggled at it. It doesn’t mean I have animosity toward anyone without a degree. It just means I worked my ass off to get mine.

I am proud to be the husband of my wife, and the father of my children. Marriage and parenthood are a grand freaking struggle sometimes, but I have never given up and I never will. It doesn’t mean I hate single people. It just means I love my family—who would not be in my life without God.

I am proud to be an American, because even with the struggles our country goes through on a daily basis—and we all know what they are—the fact that our country remains in the face of all the assaults crashing on her, the freedoms our citizens are allowed are pretty extraordinary. You can fly your flag upside-down, or even burn it. The constitution protects you.

Am I proud of my faith? That’s actually hard to answer. Not because I don’t have it, or because I question it, but because my faith is grounded in humility, and service. Not being served. I guess what I am proud of regarding faith is that he chose me. Who would choose me? I wouldn’t. I would pick my frail and self-serving ass dead freaking last, if at all. While there is some pride there, I am also daily humbled by my savior.

Yet.

I am proud to be chosen, and to have my name written in the book of life. I’m proud I was chosen to share that with people. These are my convictions, and I am certainly not saying I expect yours to be the same. Please do me the same courtesy. In Much Ado About Nothing, the character John the Bastard says something to the effect of “Let me be as I am, and seek not to alter me.”

It doesn’t matter that I’m white, or straight, or any of those other things. While membership in those categories doesn’t necessarily mean I should be proud of them, I also don’t need to be ashamed. Yet political correctness seems to demand I hang my head because of something I had no part in determining. So if you don’t want me to try and alter you, let me be as I am. We need to respect each other more than we do. And it goes “both” ways. All ways.

Yet.

If I cannot or should not be proud of being things I can’t help but be, then why is it different to be proud of different skin tone, or language, or which gender I feel called to be with sexually?

It may not be intentional, but it is without question a double standard. And it confuses me.

Oddly, just now I thought of this:

Earlier in the movie, Eminem loses a battle when he chokes out after being mocked and ridiculed by his opponent for a handful or inarguable truths his opponent throws up in his face to embarrass and humiliate him. It works. In the above scene, he does a couple of different things. One, he grows a thicker skin. Two, he realizes if he admits that which he knows to be true about himself, he takes away the power of that truth to hurt him. Also, he finds out some truth about his opponent which causes him to choke.

My point?

Maybe, if we all were just able to be truthful and open about who we are, opposing words would lose the power to hurt us?

I don’t know. I’m just a white, straight, bald, semi-conservative male who likes show tunes AND heavy metal. I’m a big ball of confusion.

And I have better questions than I have answers. So maybe we can figure this out together.

It’s the Great Comforter, Charlie Brown

Quite a few years ago, my friend Ken’s brother Ryan and his fiancé were driving to see Ryan and Ken’s dad at his Walter’s Camp cabin. The plans were to stay for the weekend, I believe. In the back of Ryan’s pickup was a 12 pack of Corona and their gear. On the way to the river, the pickup sideswiped another vehicle—a tractor/trailer—and Ryan was killed, almost instantly. His fiancé had quite a few cuts and bruises, but ended up mostly OK.

Ryan wasn’t drunk or on any drugs. Best guess is that he fell asleep at the wheel. In any case, he didn’t make it.

I remember there was a public funeral at some Unitarian Universalist church in El Cajon, and it was about what you would expect. Non-religious, lots of people crying, and a nice picture at the front of the church. Afterward was a reception, with even more tears and a few speeches.

Shortly after that, there was a much smaller gathering at the Walter’s Camp cabin, and I was a part of that. I remember we all had one of the Coronas which had remained completely intact in the back of Ryan’s truck, and toasted his memory. The next day Ryan’s dad attached a small, brown paper-wrapped package filled with Ryan’s ashes to a few very large balloons, with Ryan and his fiance’s wedding rings tied to the balloon strings. The object was for the balloons to be launched from a bridge over the river, and gradually drift down toward the water. The package would dissolve, and the balloons would rise to the heavens, carrying the couple’s rings.

It worked exactly as planned.

I remember standing on that bridge, and everyone was a wreck—though I was mostly able to keep it together. I placed my hand on the back of Ryan’s best friend’s neck as he knelt on the bridge crying and said anything I could think of to comfort him, praying silently for peace to come to these people.

We headed back to San Diego a little later that afternoon, and I never saw any of those people again. I don’t know if peace came to them, but I know those couple of days at Walter’s Camp made me heavily consider my own mortality. At the time, I also carried a lot of unresolved grief within my heart, and sometimes it was as bitter as bile, other times I was simply…stuck. In my grief, in my life. Stuck.

I would sit at home sometimes, or at work, and it would occur to me that for some, peace doesn’t come. At least not when you want it to, or the way you want it to. Sometimes, God doesn’t lift the burden right away. You get through things, and afterward you can’t remember how you did it, but you survive.

That was me. I realized it was mostly my own doing, but that didn’t change the way I felt.

I would think about my own experience—my many experiences—with death and grieving, and I would wonder why it had to happen that way? Hadn’t I tried to be the best person I could? I loved my parents, and they were gone. I loved my friend, and he was gone. He gave his life to a bullet, within shouting distance of my bedroom window on the day before the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.

I didn’t really understand then—nor do I now—why endurance of those deaths was required of me. I trust God today that one day I will understand why those things happened. I don’t know how long that will take.

Maybe for me it’s like the refining process for gold. Heat is applied to the gold, and it melts. Impurities rise to the top and are skimmed off. The gold is cooled. More heat, more impurities, more skimming. Eventually, the gold is pure and valuable.

Perhaps I needed to be refined somehow. Perhaps we all do.

I just wish I hadn’t held onto my grief for so long. That was a mistake I didn’t really know how to correct at the time. I can tell you when things finally got to the point where I let go of them, though.

March, 2007. Canyon View Christian Fellowship.

Many years after everything went down, including those four deaths—five, if you include Tim Wakefield, which I completely should have. He died in 2000.

That day in March, my friend Ron came up to where I was sitting just before the service started, and said he was going to sit with me if that was ok. It was.

I had been a believer for about seven years at that point, but I never had given my grief to God, and that day it was heavy on my heart. Pastor Mike had given a bit of testimony just before Easter, regarding the death of his own mother. It hit me so hard I was nearly shaking. I made it through the sermon, but at the end I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t get out fast when church was over.

Without saying goodbye to Ron, I made tracks for the door. I stopped at the door like I’d hit a brick wall. I knew—somehow I knew—that today was supposed to be the day. I didn’t want it to be. I didn’t want to grieve. I didn’t want to think about things, or remember.

Yet I knew that my grief had been a slow poison to my life over the years and miles and so many tears since those deaths happened. It was a weight around my neck. It was so damn heavy.

I went back to where Ron was still sitting, and I asked him to pray for me. I don’t remember what he said, but I remember he prayed for me with his arms around my neck, and his face right next to my ear.

That morning, in the third row of the CVCF sanctuary following the 9am service, I finally handed 20 years of accumulated grief to my God. I grieved my mom, and dad, and my friend. I grieved for Tim, and even Ryan. I think I was still puffy eyed when the next service began, and I sat through that one, too. I was surrounded by members of my small group, and I leaned on them. It was good.

If I learned one thing over the years since, it’s that holding onto things really doesn’t help. It may delay your pain, but it doesn’t heal it. Acknowledging your pain does, when it is done before God.

Sometimes the comfort doesn’t come right away. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it comes when you least expect it, through the comfort of a good friend and whispered prayers. It can be a long and intricate process—it’s like that for me.

Grief can also sometimes be like a broken windshield. It starts with a speck–a chip in the glass. If it isn’t repaired, it begins to gradually creep out over the rest of the windshield, like a spider web of pain—with offshoots in many directions. Sometimes I see or feel things I haven’t thought of in years, and it triggers those old feelings. It’s easier, now. I have God to remind me he will carry them for me. I have my wife, who knows how to love. I have my kids, who lift my spirits when they get heavy.

The hands of God can feel like a strong grip, and also a gossamer touch. Often, you feel them through proxy. It’s always been that way for me. Yet comfort is comfort, and pain can be assuaged in so many different ways. Remember, one of His many names is Comforter.

Surrender. Give him your grief. Drop that burden at His feet. Be refined. It can be a lifelong process, but it’s worth it.

Don’t Be a Tool, Fool

Social media logos

I learned a while back that besides the obvious value of finding and keeping in touch with friends and family on sites like Facebook and Twitter(as well as mass-marketing events and other promotional-type activities), there is also quite a bit of potential for problems with those same people you were just sharing photos with.

No matter what your platform of choice is (and there are many), it can get you in a lot of trouble, even if you had the noblest of intentions. This is for many different reasons, and in the interest of not crashing the WordPress server with examples, I will only enumerate a few within the confines of this particular post.

1. Subtleties:

Like text messaging, you can’t grasp the intended tone as well as the other nuances of a conversation when you’re reading a status update, tweet, or whatever other services call it.

Also, because even though the people reading the things a person says are supposedly “friends,” they often don’t really know each other, or at least not well. You may think their cat memes are hilarious, but they may privately not hold your fondness for sharing Taylor Swift videos in similarly high regard. In short, they aren’t really your friends in many cases.

2. Don’t Be a Jerk

So while whatever point you’re trying to get across may be true and valid, you never know who you’re going to offend by making it. And there are clearly also some people who sometimes use social networking to say things they would never say in person.

Because of this, there are times when something that starts with a perfectly innocuous question often ends in ugliness, hurt feelings, and possibly even far reaching consequences.

Mainly, this is because you never know what’s going on (or has gone on) in a person’s life when they read your stuff.

Consequently, you also never know when they’re going to flip out on you and start puking ugliness or saying things they won’t be able to get back.

3. Know your audience

The other thing to consider is a person needs to weigh the material they’re going to share and decide if a huge and impersonal platform is appropriate. Remember, anyone and everyone has the ability to read your stuff.

If you don’t want your mom seeing your vacation shenanigans, don’t post them.

If you don’t want your boss to read your whiny little missives about how mean he is, don’t post them.

If you don’t want people from church to see you doing body shots, that might be one to send your frat buddies via email or private message.

Speaking of church, if you don’t want to look like a bad example, or hypocrite, or charlatan of some sort, keep that stuff to yourself online! Gosh! There is absolutely no need to post screen caps, memes, or movie clips that require a valid ID to view.

4. Solving Problems before they happen:

I would also offer this: if one has a problem with something said, a simple email or private message can go a long way toward clearing things up. It can also avoid dozens of people feeling the need to attack or defend a person or point.

It’s possible to confront someone in an appropriate manner and resolve a situation without hurting feelings or having a person blow a gasket, which is what happened to me a while back. Yes, I often have to learn things the hard way.

I’d also say that if you’re a person with thin skin and a hair trigger, then social networking is probably not for you. But if you do choose to use it, stay away from contentious topics.

5. It’s Only a Joke:

Maybe that’s how you mean it, but don’t expect everyone to get your sense of humor. Don’t expect everyone to react like you do, or share that same level of verbal sophistication you think you have. Here’s a tip: if you think you’re hilarious and clever and full of wisdom, and just have to share your cleverness with the world, try to contain yourself.

Not everyone thinks cats barfing to techno is funny, or likes watching frat boys light gas or drink tequila from a morbidly obese navel.

Use your brain, man.

6. Like It Or Not, You ARE An Example

Look, I know everyone is different. Everyone likes different things, and may laugh hysterically at something that makes you see red. You may think that blog is chock full of profound truth, or that that live clip of dudes eating cockroaches or women giving birth in wading pools is really cool and interesting. Just don’t expect me to. The thing is, you never know who will see your posts.

You never know how they will react to them.

Don’t cause harm to a friendship, or relationship, or cause someone to stumble or turn away from God by being an idiot online.

It’s not worth it.

For my part, because I have a problem with not saying what I really feel, or not calling BS BS, I will probably hereafter restrict my comments to things like “lol,” and only share things like

The How and the Why

I was sitting here today with a little time to kill on my lunch break, and it occurred to me there may be a few people out there reading this who have no idea how I came to faith. The following jumble of words is how it finally happened for me—how I came to faith, and why, after most of my life. It’s a long story, but it’s true, and it’s mine. I don’t expect to convert anyone with my words—because I am just a person with a story, like everyone else. It’s God who convicts, not me.

So here we go. It would be remiss of me not to acknowledge that it would make more sense for me not to believe than to have faith, considering how my life went prior to my “conversion” to faith. And indeed, I did spend most of life not believing, though with a healthy dose of curiosity.

My childhood was fairly normal, as far as the things I did. I played, I read comics, I spent time with friends. I did well in school, and I did badly in school. There were a few incidents when I was younger where my older brother took out a great deal of his frustration on me, whether or not that frustration had anything to do with me was immaterial. I was there when he felt it, and I suppose working out his issues on his little brother may have offered him relief in some way. I don’t know, I wasn’t privy to his thoughts. The result of his behavior toward me, though, was a tremendously negative self-image, and quite a few scars (on the inside and the out). I learned how to feel and act like a victim, and that was mostly what I did through my childhood and adolescence.

Additionally, my mother began to struggle with cancer when I was around ten, I think, and she had a lot of both victory and defeat in her battle with the disease. Which culminated, of course, with her losing the final battle. Cancer treatment was not in the 1980’s what it is now.

One other thing about my adolescence. That was where I first heard about Jesus, while attending the youth group of a Foursquare church two of my friends attended. The word fell on rocky soil in my case, but I did hear it. And I remembered it.

My dad died from a heart attack when I was 16, and it was shortly after that I left the youth group and never went back. I remember the youth leader wanted me to give a testimony to the church about how Christ had gotten me through the experience. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t feel that he had. After I left the group, I didn’t think about God for a very long time.

When I was 17 and a senior in high school, a very close friend shot himself in the head less than half a mile from my house, and bled to death on a flat spot of dirt, under a pepper tree I could see from my front yard. That was probably one of the worst things I had ever experienced, because one day he was here and the next he was gone. We had no time to prepare for his loss, and had no idea how to deal with it once he was gone. To make matters worse, two of my friends and I saw the immediate aftermath of his death. Not knowing it had been him, we were walking past where it had happened, and no one had thought to clean up the mess. And it was quite a mess.

The next day the space shuttle Challenger exploded on takeoff, and we found out the kid who’d died on the hillside under the pepper tree was our friend, and for me at least, the wheels came off after that. I didn’t want to hear about God, or anything to do with God. I just wanted to listen to my metal, and hole up in a dark place, both literally and figuratively.

I was young, though, and eventually got most of my life back in time for the remainder of my senior year. I had a girlfriend and I was doing passably at pulling myself up by the bootstraps. I graduated by the skin of my teeth, and proceeded to not think at all what to do with my life.

My mom also finally took her final turn for the worse. I remember the day of my graduation she was lying on a hospital bed in our living room and could not attend the ceremony, which was all I really wanted. Didn’t happen. She was pretty messed up at the time, and in lots of pain. It was only going to get worse.

We had to move from the house I grew up in to an apartment, because treatment and everything else was so expensive. Also, by that time I had stopped getting money from my dad’s social security because I was over 18. We were pretty much broke, and didn’t get that much for the house because of the condition it was in. Mostly, thanks to my brother and his penchant for destruction.

I drove my mom to the hospital for her final visit in February of 1987. She died on the 27th of February, two months shy of my 19th birthday.

I remember her funeral being weird and uncomfortable. The pastor doing the service knew nothing about my mother, and instead talked about Jesus and the path to salvation during the eulogy. I REALLY didn’t want to hear that. It sounded like bull crap to me.

Following that, I went into what was pretty much a tailspin that lasted until the early 1990’s. I tried to fill this yawning void down the center of me with so many things. I became a binge drinker, and a very bad one. I ate like a Roman at a banquet. I looked at pornography. I indulged in several completely empty relationships. I lied, I cheated, and I even stole from a couple of employers. I was a walking disaster. Finally, FINALLY, it began to change for me when I met someone that was a Christian, and a legitimate one. She represented a different Jesus to me than I had ever heard about. My curiosity was piqued, and I once began to try and figure things out. Who was God? Was he real? Was Jesus? What did any of that mean to me?

I had job at a window covering factory at one point, and one time I was working next to a guy when he broke his hand on one of the machines. He came back to work a day or two later, and I remember having this philosophical conversation with him one day (he could still run the machine with one hand in a cast). I told him I didn’t feel God had ever done anything for me except take things and people away. He told me God had done more for me than I knew.

How could these people I knew believe in a God that seemed so…arbitrary? Even cruel sometimes.

I had no idea, so I read things, lots of things. I read apologetic books from people like CS Lewis. I began to read the bible. My curiosity and desire for answers continued to grow, but my faith did not.

In 1996, I met a guy at a Junior College I was attending who was the same age as me, and had gone through many of the same things I had. He even knew one of my good childhood friends (he used to buy drugs from him). This guy I’d met was the first person to ever tell me his testimony, one-on-one, and it was quite a story. He’d been about to lose his family to his drug habit. He’d been in the Army for a while, which was where he met his wife.

He started attending his wife’s church to save his marriage, and it worked. His marriage was saved, and soon after he was as well. He began playing guitar and leading worship, which is what he was doing when I met him. Now he’s pastor of a church in Pittsburgh, PA, in a community called McKees Rocks.

My friendship with this gentleman—and his pastor—was what finally began to work on my heart. The pastor was a man named Tim Wakefield, and he was awesome. I began attending the Sunday evening service, and Tim and my friend always took the time to talk to me after service. They answered the questions I asked, and they prayed for me, which felt a little strange, but somehow also good.

But I still wasn’t ready.

In the Spring of 2000, Tim was riding his motorcycle to Arizona to visit family, when he was killed in a crash. It was a freak thing, and it was horrible, and everyone mourned. There were bikers at his funeral. There were a lot of Navy people. There were people from other churches—all the lives Tim had touched. The small sanctuary was filled and the doors were open. The love for this man oozed out into the parking lot.

A few days after that, I went on a vacation with my friends—my drinking buddies. We each had a thirty pack, and we meant to destroy them. I remember standing on a dock looking over the river at Arizona and thinking about Tim. Thinking about my life. Thinking about my sin. And then awareness of my sin hit me all at once. The consequence of potentially and suddenly dying with that sin still around me took my breath away. I realized, finally, that I needed God.

I needed him desperately. And I could have him through Jesus.

So I literally fell to my knees and I prayed sincerely for the first time in my life. I confessed, for the first time in my life. I asked for the forgiveness only Jesus could give, for the first time in my life.

Nothing physically happened. I was still kneeling on the dock. I still had holes in the knees of my Levis. I was still a sinner, in need of grace.

I realized the difference was that I now had it. It was like peace about my life poured over me like a big jug of cool water. And so it began.

That’s the how of my transition from non-belief to belief in Jesus. There’s a great deal more to the story, but it has to start somewhere, and that’s the beginning of my story.

The “why” is a little bit more complicated, in a sense.

Why do I believe?

I believe because of the life and witness of two really good friends, who were not insane, not hypocrites, and could sincerely and truthfully attest to the presence of Christ in their lives. They were people transformed and I believed them.

I believe because of a dozen or so quiet conversations with an ex-Navy chaplain named Tim.

I believe because God touched my life and gave me hope in my otherwise worthless life. No one could convince me differently.

I believe because shortly after praying at the river, God showed me what I meant to him. He showed me that he saw me, and loved me, and wanted me.

He showed me through a vision, of sorts. I didn’t appear in it, and he didn’t appear in it. Not all of him, anyway.
Imagine a hand in a cone of light, as if from a spotlight. The light is warm and yellow. The hand is extended, palm up. In the palm lies a fresh oyster, still covered in slime and muck. Water pours over the mollusk, cleaning off much of the sediment and grossness.

Another hand enters the picture and it is clearly a hand that has seen many years of hard work. It is covered with calluses and scars from the fingers to the wrist, including two ovular pads of scar tissue at the heel of the palm, matching the one holding the oyster.

The hand holds a small, curved knife, and moves toward the shell. The mollusk is pried open, and the inner parts quickly searched through, revealing a small round object covered in slime. The hand drops the knife and gently wipes away the offending goop, revealing what has been there all along: a pearl of great price.

The pearl shines softly in the scarred hand.

I really believe that was the day my life began. At least, the part that involves Jesus. The part that counts. The part that began to reveal the path set for me, toward a beautiful and strong-willed woman in the Arizona desert.

It wasn’t all easy after that, and I don’t expect it to be in the future. The future I have thanks to the carpenter who had me in mind from the beginning.

I believe because God healed the worst and most broken parts of me, and revealed a strength I never knew I had.

I believe.

Geek

This is an excerpt from a longer piece. I was thinking about old friends today, and how they can shape your life in good ways and in bad. Also, how much the experiences we have when younger stay with us…

I’m sure junior high was (and is) meant to prepare kids for the mind-sucking black hole that is high school. Our classes get harder, and we have more homework. We start working on group projects, and have the opportunity to participate in more organized activities–things like athletics or student government. We start to notice the opposite sex. We experiment with cuss words, and our bodies start doing all kinds of crazy things. For me, it was a little different. Puberty ran a little late, and I was quick to discover how cruel and sometimes merciless early teenage boys can be. Though both years of my junior high experience were powerfully difficult, they were also where a learned the most about myself, and who I was to people. Eighth grade was even worse than seventh, if such a thing was possible.

My friends and I mostly kept to ourselves, and did the same things probably most boys did during the early 1980’s: we played outside. We walked along the culvert that ran parallel to Fanita Drive and pretended we were on a long journey. It would only go so far, though. We figured out pretty early on that when you got to the point where the ditch turned into a tunnel and went, I think, under Grossmont College, that it became darker than a politician’s heart in no time at all. We learned this the day my friend Robbie’s little brother earned the immortal nickname “Shit Stains.”

We had thrown some granola bars and 16-ounce bottles of Coke into my friend’s backpack, and simply started walking down the ditch, as we called it. After about a half mile or so, we came across a dead and bloated white cat—it was puffed up like an over-inflated balloon. Ronnie’s brother (prior to his christening) got the idea that it would be fun to poke it with a stick. He jabbed at the side of the cat, and as the stick pierced it, a vile cloud of decayed stink hissed out and all three of us nearly hurled immediately. Little brother dropped the stick and we all started running along the top of the culvert toward the street—Prospect Avenue, I think.

After a few more minutes, we got to where the cement sides of the ditch ended and the tunnel under Harvard on the Hill began. Little brother took point and we began walking into the darkness. I suddenly wished someone had remembered a flashlight. It was freaking dark! Water trickled from somewhere, and though we could barely see, we heard our feet splashing through the shallow water as we walked.

Suddenly, there was a noise in the darkness, like something falling over. That was all it took, and we turned around and started running as if the devil himself were behind us. Little brother was in the rear this time, and just as we were passing from the darkened reaches of the tunnel into the bright daylight, his feet slipped out from under him and he went down on his ass. He skidded for a short distance, and when he stood up to dust himself off, we noticed the small amount of water in the ditch combined with the dirt had left a green smear along with a shit brown mark down the length of his backside.

Shit Stains was born.

We decided to cut the adventure short after that, and after a brief intermission for a clothing change, we adjourned to the field next to Ronnie’s house for a safer pursuit—no rules tackle football. It wasn’t much of a game, really. Sometimes we just tossed the ball into the air and tackled the hell out of whoever caught it—which was really just the timeless and very politically incorrect game of “smear the queer,” though we didn’t call it that at first. Mainly, this was because none of us had much of a clue what a “queer” was, other than something you didn’t want to be.

For all we knew, queers were some nameless thing that parents came up with to scare kids into behaving, akin to the Boogey Man, or Bloody Mary, or the chupacabra. We had only the most rudimentary ideas about what homosexuality was, and certainly didn’t have any clue they were people in the same way we were people. Also, people during the early 1980’s (especially my parents) didn’t really talk about gay people or gay things when I was a kid—at least not to me.

Of course, my parents really never talked about hetero sex, either. I didn’t know much besides you laid on top of someone and things happened—what “things” I had yet to figure out. It wasn’t until I was 11 or 12 that I found my dad’s stash of skin magazines. There was a stash under the sink in our camper, another in my dad’s boat, and still another under the bathroom sink. A few stolen glimpses through those were my initial exposure to “how things worked.” I never had “the talk” with either of my parents, and I remember my dad saying something to me once that I “had to learn somewhere.”

It never really occurred to me that it should have been from him. That was something I would not learn until many years later, when I had two boys of my own.

So, we played “Smear the Queer,” and we shot BB guns, and we threw mudballs and read comic books. Every once in a while, we would be able to summon up enough guys and enough enthusiasm to play an actual game of football—those days were the best. The kids who swung by the field would not always want to join the game (we played pretty rough). Often kids would just hang out for a few minutes and move on, while those willing to risk getting piled on by a group of geeks would leap into the fray, and join us for a game. It was a day like that when David came by. We knew him from school, but he was never really part of our little enclave, because we thought he was a little weird. He and his family were Jehova’s Witnesses, and to us that just didn’t make any sense at all.

We didn’t know anything about the minutiae of his religion, only that they didn’t do anything cool; like celebrate holidays or birthdays. He had a little brother, and a pretty cute sister a year younger than us, so we were friendly enough when we did interact with him.

This one particular day, he came by and we had just finished an especially bloody game of Smear the Queer. Skinned knees and elbows abounded, along with a split lip on Shit Stains. We decided to adjourn into his backyard and begin work on a fort we wanted to build from scrap plywood and stolen nails—it ended up taking most of the weekend. The highlight was waiting until dark one night and destroying one of those newspaper recycling boxes for the six pieces of blue painted plywood it would yield. Then I jacked a couple handfuls of nails from my dad’s toolbox. After that, the work went relatively quickly, and soon enough we had a single story plywood fort with a single blue door you had to crawl through and a rudimentary fireplace made from some red bricks and mud we’d scraped up with our hands.

We also hoped to boost a few Playboys from the liquor store next to Ronnie’s house so we could paper the walls of our fort. It was really pretty easy—someone had found out the year before that the store owner kept a stash of stroke books next to the toilet in the little bathroom to the back of the store. One guy would ask to use the toilet while the other talked to him and distracted him enough we could sneak by with the magazines down our pants or stuffed into a backpack.

The day we hung out with David, we decided to use him as the decoy. I would stand out front and Ronnie would be the bathroom user. Everything worked out according to plan, and a few minutes later, we had two Playboy Magazines (one featuring the actress Suzanne Somers’ famous pictorial) and another called Hot Cherries, or something to that effect. We immediately adjourned to the backyard to start decorating.

Suzanne got the place of honor next to the door, and we decided that the following evening would be a good night for a sleepover.

There were four of us in the fort that night. We’d managed to procure several dozen carpet samples—I can’t remember where—and had covered the hard dirt with them so we didn’t have to unroll sleeping bags on the ground. Robbie brought in a cassette player and we listened to the soundtrack from the movie Heavy Metal. I hadn’t yet seen the movie—it was rated R and I hadn’t had the chance. The soundtrack was good, though. It featured artists like Sammy Hagar, and Don Felder from The Eagles.

So the four of us—me, Robbie, Shit Stains and David—listened to music and talked about movies, and at first the fort was filled with the sounds of laughter and excited conversation. Then a time came when it got quiet for a minute or so and David decided he was going to tell us something.

He muttered a few words that sounded a lot like “kite thighs,” and Robbie said “Say that again?”

“I like guys,” he whispered.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

He said it again, followed by “I’m a ‘faggot.’”

We were silent for a minute, and then the three of us burst into laughter. He was having us on.

“No, really,” he said. “It’s OK.”

“Seriously?” asked Shit Stains.

David swore it was true, and then offered to prove it by performing a certain act upon the three of us.
We were all silent and then one of the brothers looked at him and slowly said “Get the fuck out of here.”
“Come on, guys…” David said, and looked at each of us in turn. “It’s no big deal. Lots of people are.”

“Get. The. Fuck. Out of here.”

Robbie literally kicked David in the ass and then shoved him toward the door. We then laid into him with a chorus of “go home, fag,” and things of that nature. He dropped to his knees and crawled out the door. I could hear a short bark of either tears or laughter as he ran across the lawn. It never occurred to me that what I had just been part of was just as bad as what the little punk asses had done who had made such sport of me in the shower.

The following Monday when we got to school, we somehow got the idea it would be great fun to tell everyone we possibly could what David had told us, and had offered to do. It eventually got back to the Vice Principal, and we were made to apologize. David just stood there and listened, but didn’t say much of anything. It didn’t really matter, anyway. The damage was done. That kid was a pariah for the rest of the 8th grade. No one wanted to spend any time with him, and to my knowledge, he was pretty much a loner for the rest of the year. On the 8th grade trip to Disneyland, he walked around by himself with one of the chaperones because no one wanted to hang out with him. It wasn’t until then I started to really feel shitty about what we had done to him. I never really thought about his motives in telling us what he had. Maybe he’d just wanted to get it off his chest and thought he could trust us—he didn’t really have any friends after all. None of us knew him the way we knew each other.

A couple days after the Disneyland trip, I decided I was going to go over to his house and try to talk to him. He lived a mile or so from the brothers, and they lived less than that from me, so I just walked over. I knew where his house was, but had not actually been there. His family lived in a large, old-fashioned looking white house with a large front yard. Parked kitty-corner to the house was a silver Airstream trailer with a couple lawn chairs in front of it.

When I knocked on the door, David came out and stood on the front porch.

“Hey, man…” I said, and then my voice just trailed off. I didn’t really know what to say. “Nice house. It’s big—looks like something out of a movie.”

He pointed over at the Airstream. “My parents stay in there. My sister and brother and me live in the house. They come in to eat, though.”

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever heard, and I had no idea how to respond. So I got to the point.

“I just wanted to tell you…about Saturday night—“

“Forget it,” he interrupted. We stood there awkwardly for a minute, and I realized he’d let me off the hook. I didn’t want to be. I felt like a dick.

“I’m sorry, man.” I said. “Not because Mr Caldwell told me to say it. I just am.”

“Yeah, well…” he said. “I’m studying.”

“OK, well, I’ll let you get back to it.”

I walked away without saying goodbye, and that was the last time I can remember talking to him. He was a ghost the last month or so of school. I don’t know if anyone else talked to him, either. I think I’ll regret that weekend for the rest of my life.

That Saturday night would be a weight for years to come, and the cool kids at my school never really did stop giving me shit at every opportunity. It didn’t bother me as much now—maybe because it seemed like a deserved some ridicule after what had happened with David. Yet even with that, I was still able to survive junior high, and looked forward to high school because I figured there I would be able to start over again, in a place where only a few people would know me. I would be an even littler fish than I had been in junior high, and I was OK with that. It would be a lot easier, I figured.

Time After Time

I remember when women (it was always women) started losing their…stuff over 50 Shades of Gray. Women were inundating social media platforms with comments and consuming the “novels” at alarming rates. Probably similar to how some teenage boys process broadband pornography–as if it were potato chips. And judging by how the ladies are responding to the movie being released, we are likely in for more of the same. It will sell tickets, but it wouldn’t surprise me if people walked away from the theaters hiding their faces with newspapers.

From what I understand, the author first published it as Twilight fan fiction—and an ebook—and was somewhat surprised when it took off the way it did.

Me, too.

First of all, from what I understand of fan fiction, if often tends to lean toward erotica. These books are no different. Typically, that sort of thing is not written very well (by that I mean both fan fiction and erotica. If you don’t believe me, check out one of those older Anne Rice versions of popular “fairy tales.” Not written by a fan, but certainly more badly written than her very popular vampire series—which I have read). In any case, the excerpts I have read from 50 Shades read more like a Penthouse letter than art.

Secondly, most people don’t admit to reading or viewing pornography—even of the soft-core variety, but make no mistake, these books fall under that umbrella. I suppose the women I know do not read these things because of the quality of the literature. They read it because “everyone” is reading it, and because it is supposedly titillating (I know, but it was a slow pitch and I swung at it). Mommy porn, I have heard it called, and that is very apt indeed.

It is porn—perhaps not the flagrantly hardcore stuff, but porn nonetheless.

Many might think it harmless, but I submit to you it is not. Not in book form, and even more so not on film. Porn is a stumbling block for many—yes, usually more for men than women—but women are not excepted from this particular…vice. Clearly. Look at the popularity of these books.

I think human beings are not naturally bent toward sado-masochism. I suppose those that are all have their reasons for reading or viewing it, but I think those attempting to normalize it or legitimize it in some way are simply fooling themselves. It is not just a little adventure in the bedroom, even if it does start that way. I believe that God created sexuality as a means of not just pro-creating, but expressing our love and devotion for our spouses—yes, spouses.

Like all things God made, he designed it to be good, and it is. I am not sure where whips fit into that equation.

It’s a thing designed to be beautiful, and as I said before, enjoyed within the context of marriage. Have I indulged otherwise? Yes, but for a time it absolutely did harm to my outlook and how I view both women and sex. It was the same with porn (and yes, there was a time when I struggled with that as well).

I am fairly certain most wives are not OK with their husbands looking at porn, but can somehow rationalize reading these books (and now, watching the movies) because they are “just books,” or “just movies.”

They aren’t. I believe that if we can look at someone and sin, and if the entertainment we are taking in causes us to look away from our spouses or significant others and indulge in any sort of fantasy, then this is exactly the same as porn.

I think it would be fair to say most folks would agree pornography is harmful to both viewer and performer, and those that don’t agree would typically make the argument that it is a victimless crime. Allow me to express why I do not agree with that statement.

A year or so ago, a story kept popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—who was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As a former student who just recently completed his BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

What got my head to spinning a little bit about this young woman was not her work (no, I did not try to find any, though I am certain it would have been easy), but a comment she made in an interview. There was a very short blurb on CNN where she said words to the effect that she found performing in porn “freeing.”

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving. Whether you are talking about the really vile stuff, or 50 Shades of Gray, once that ball starts rolling, it is difficult to stop and easy to rationalize.

But that does not mean it isn’t harmful.

It’s my belief that the attitude of this young woman is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do. Because that’s hot. Or not.

Porn is freeing? It is not. I only wish I were not speaking from experience. If you want statistics, I am sure there are plenty of articles out there that will give them to you. That isn’t what I wanted to talk about today.

Porn is dangerous and harmful in so many ways. It is not, as the industry and those partaking in it would have you think, harmless or victimless–in my opinion, not to the consumers or the performers. Whether you’re talking about 50 Shades or something with a few more X’s behind the title.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it. Especially with something like 50 Shades. Hey, liven up your sex life—that’s cool. But watching or reading pornography is not the way (no, I am not going to give you a manual with this post). It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of sickening, at least to me.

Perhaps those without “religious” values or some kind of moral center would think of porn like the performers and partakers do, but it is so difficult for me to get my mind around that way of thinking, now that I realize the truth of it, and think about my own kids potentially getting involved in it or with it.

This young woman at Duke is not freeing herself, no matter what she might say or think. Kudos go out, I suppose, for her entrepreneurial spirit. She found a way to pay her tuition without going into debt. Yay.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

Meanwhile, young men (and possibly women—I don’t know anything from that perspective) are partaking in her work and developing an image in their little heads about what women are like, and what they want from a sexual encounter (which, I believe, is meant to be—as designed by God—within the framework of a marriage). Often, as with 50 Shades, that involves pain and often a sort of enslavement. Certainly , these forms of entertainment are also subject to escalation—it starts with a little titillation, which ends up going further and further into very dark places. In my opinion (and in my experience), that is much more complicated than just a little “slap and tickle.”

As someone who was single for most of my adult life, there was a time when I held that image of women that porn wanted me to. I am thankful that God showed me the truth of it. I was chained up by that nasty garbage for a number of years, and I know plenty of other men who were, too, at one point or another. I know men who have had their relationships and their marriages threatened by it, and lost to it.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

What I can say is that if left unchecked, it can be an addiction like any other addiction. It can affect and even ruin lives. It can prevent or harm otherwise healthy relationships and marriages by giving men and women unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex and love—as with the domination and bondage featured as normal expressions of sexuality depicted in 50 Shades of Gray.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, or an expression of carnal adrenaline, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom? Would you want her handcuffed in a dungeon somewhere being flogged? Would you want to be?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online? Would you give your wife a copy of 50 Shades?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

All I know is when I was slave to that crap I was lost in almost every way a person can be lost. I found my way out, by the grace of God and the accountability of people I trusted. You can, too, if you’re stuck in that particular rut.

I think about that stuff sometimes. I remember how it felt, and how much it took to get out of it. Hard as it was, it was also the right decision. I know this is a big part of my testimony, and I often have to ask God what I should say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

Recently, I was driving down I-95 on the way to work and a snatch of lyric from a 1980’s song occurred to me. It occurred to me when I was slave to so many different things than God as well.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

On Porn, and how Cyndi Lauper Can Help You Find Yourself

Over the past week or so, there’s been a story that keeps popping up on various online news sites (I saw something about it on CNN.com, Foxnews.com, Yahoo, and Drudge Report), regarding a young woman—a freshman at Duke University—was “outed” by a classmate as being a porn star. Ostensibly, she chose this particular career path because college is really expensive and she needed help with her tuition.

As an adult student nearing completion of my BA, finally, I can personally attest to the truth of this. College is freaking expensive. I chose the student loan path, however, rather than trying to break into the adult film industry as an overweight guy in his mid-40’s with more hair on his back than his head.

Who is freed?

As I can only speak from a male perspective, I would submit to anyone who cares to listen that porn isn’t freeing at all—quite the contrary. It’s enslaving.

It’s my belief that her attitude is something symptomatic of this current generation, which has somehow found itself steeped in moral relativism rather than any sort of values, traditional or otherwise. Hey, go ahead and do it if no one gets hurt. And sometimes even if they do.

This line of reasoning, however, is what makes it so easy to fall back into the habit of looking at that shit and rationalizing it as simply entertainment.

Why is it harmful?

Again, from a male perspective, it gives young people–young men–a highly skewed (and highly incorrect) perception of what sex should be like, and how women (or men, I suppose) view it.

It objectifies both women and men and makes the act itself often a carnal buffet of grossness, supposedly meant to be titillating but often more along the lines of nauseating, at least to me.

Numerous meaningless sexual encounters with people who likely view her as little more than a…means to an end.

It’s not harmless, people. It’s not victimless, either.

I can’t say how performing in porn damages the female psyches of young women.

I can’t say how it damages the psyches of the male performers, either.

My personal belief is that if you reduce sex to a simply biological act, then you are detracting from what it was designed to be. The formula that porn tries to sell people is false. It’s smoke and mirrors. It’s bull, completely.

If you had a daughter, would you want her to be a porn star? How about your sister? Your mom?

Would you instruct your son on how to find the “best” porn online?

Rhetorical questions, certainly, and I hope the answers would be “no” if given.

I was thinking about that stuff all the way to work today, and I remember asking God what to say about it? How can my words mean anything to anyone?

I was driving down 95 when the words of an old 1980’s song occurred to me, from the unlikely Cyndi Lauper.

If you’re lost you can look and you will find me

Time after Time

If you fall I will catch you, I’ll be waiting

Time after Time

I don’t know if that will mean anything to anyone else, but it did to me.

Clearly, she wasn’t writing about God. But that’s what the chorus made me think of today. Funny how that works.

Of Definitions and Covenants

One of the things I intended when I started writing this blog a few years ago was to always speak my mind, even if it was an unpopular view. That is, after all, what the point is of doing something like this—keeping an online journal of my thoughts, my beliefs, and assorted other random thoughts.

For the most part, that’s what I’ve done.

There is one story—one post—that I’ve held onto for a long time because I know what a volatile issue it is. I’m talking about the vast divide between people who profess a “Christian” faith and the gay community. There are many deep-seated beliefs held by Christians about gay people that are patently wrong. Likewise for gays about Christians. Unfortunately, it does not stop there from a Christian standpoint.

Many of the people who share my faith also share a view that (and I am not speaking of the loathsome Westboro Baptist “Church” here) homosexuality is chief among sins, and will be what will ultimately bring down the country, the world, and bring about the return of Christ to wreak vengeance on a gay-loving world. Or something like that.

Often, the approach of my fellow believers toward gays—both at gay events and in other forums, such as online, in newspapers, magazines, etc.—is to let those men and women know in no uncertain terms what fate awaits them should they choose not to change their evil ways and repent. Seldom–if ever–mentioned is the true message of Christ.

The problem that I have now—and have for many years—is that approach sounds nothing like Jesus to me.

Let me backtrack a bit—all the way back to the very early 1980s.

My first encounter with a gay person was in the 8th grade, shortly before I moved up to high school. I wrote about that day a while back here. For those of you younger folks, homosexuality wasn’t something much talked about then. It was a different time, in almost every way. For my part, and also for many of the kids I hung out with, the word “fag” was tossed around almost haphazardly, without any concern for what it meant (many of us didn’t have anything but a rudimentary understanding of what homosexuality was, or how it was practiced. I include myself in that number).

We just said it, and it was almost a…good natured insult. Never considered was the fact that it could have been hurtful to anyone. It was just something we said. A lot.

I still regret what happened that night in my friend’s backyard, and I probably always will, to an extent. I’ve asked God’s forgiveness for my part in it, and I wish I could find the young man we hurt and ask for his, but that is not to be.

So what has happened since then is that I have come into contact with a great many gay men and women at various jobs, and at the junior college I attended back in the 1990’s. With each encounter—and with each friendship developed—I began to notice something.

Each one of these men and women were people just like I was. They ate, and slept, and got dressed, and showered, and pooped. The only difference I saw was that they were drawn to people of the same sex and I was not.

They loved the people they were with, and in many cases had been committed to them alone for long periods of time. I worked with one lesbian couple that had been together for decades—almost as long as my parents were before they died.

What had changed in my heart over the years (and this is way before I became a believer) was that I no longer cared about whether or not these people wanted to do the same things I did with the people they were involved with. It occurred to me it was none of my business.

I dealt with and related to them on a personal level, based on how they treated me and others and not who they slept with (or didn’t). It worked out pretty well, and I made a couple of good friends over the years.

When I came to belief in 2000, I was in a place in life where I didn’t work with or know anyone who was gay (that I knew of, anyway). I began to grow and deepen my faith, and it was so interesting to see that the Jesus I came to know through scripture and discipling was not the same one I’d heard about over the course of my life before knowing him.

In the course of time, I became somewhat involved with a young woman I worked with, and we began to spend time together with a group of friends of hers—many of whom were gay men.

I did not make a secret of my faith, and they respected it. I treated them just like I did everyone else, and I began to notice something the more time I spent with them. The gay community—at least to the extent of my involvement and casual friendships with these men—was way more of a community than the straight people I’d hung out with prior to that. They supported each other unconditionally, and seemed less interested in judging themselves and others than they did in simply living their lives.

I didn’t preach to them, and they didn’t try to convert me. They were a lot of fun to hang out with.

One time in particular, one of them told me, “It means a lot that you’re here. I don’t think anybody’s used to that with people like you.” I assumed he meant straight people at first, but then I realized he meant Christians.

I told him that I just loved God, and that scripture says I’m supposed to love people, too. He smiled and gave me a hug.

Eventually, though, things began to change a little bit, and I started to struggle with some of the things I saw. It culminated in an evening where the young woman I was involved with and I were at a party where we were the only straight people, and things started happening around us. It started making me feel really uncomfortable, and I told the girl that I wanted to leave. She didn’t. That was the night we decided to “take a break,” which we never recovered from.

After the party that night, I didn’t spend much more time with the group of guys, as I didn’t spend much more time with the girl.

It was five years later before I was involved with anyone else, and that was with the woman who would become my wife. As we grew into our relationship, and our marriage, it was around the time all the gay marriage propositions were going through the process of becoming law. I hadn’t thought about the fact that gay people couldn’t (or could) be married over the course of my life prior to that, so it was interesting to see all of the various things on the news, including the Chik-Fil-A controversy of a year or two ago.

It occurred to me that while so many of my fellow Christians were up in arms about the potential legalization of gay marriage, I just…wasn’t. It didn’t matter to me what these folks wanted to do in the privacy of their own homes, and it seemed fair enough that they should be able to get married, if it made it easier regarding insurance and benefits, etc. I never felt that if they were able to marry it would threaten the sanctity of my own marriage. How could it? How could two men or two women marrying each other make my own union any less holy in the sight of God?

What did occur to me, though, was to wonder if all these people who complained, and protested, and cried out about how gay marriage was a danger to the family felt the same about divorce. Why is it we never see news stories about millions of people marching to protest how common arbitrarily ending a marriage has become? God is also very clear how he feels about divorce–perhaps even more clear than about gay marriage. And while all these people were spouting off about how a word is defined, it occurred to me to wonder about how a marriage is defined? What does it mean to these people?

Certainly, I am not trying to say that divorce is never the right course of action, because sometimes it is the only course of action. It’s just that people are often so…arbitrary about it. The statistic you hear all the time about 50% of marriages ending in divorce? I believe it. Why wouldn’t it be true? It seems that few people understand what a covenant is these days. To me it suggests a sacred promise, and the rings my wife and I exchanged are a symbol of that promise. In short, I got married to her because I wanted to, because I knew I didn’t want anyone else, ever.

And last week, I think I realized what marriage really was. It’s spending the night before Valentine’s day in the ER with your husband, while he practically yells and pounds chairs and walls in his pain. It’s spending the day itself in a chair next to his bed, and praying for him. It’s holding his hand and making him think of other things. It’s sleeping (sort of) sitting up rather than going home, even for a little while. It’s devotion to the person with whom you made the covenant, and that is what my wife showed me last week, and it made me love her all the more, if such a thing is even possible.

So while I understand the biblical reasoning behind the stance so many take on whether or not homosexuals should be able to marry (based on the “biblical” definition of what marriage means), the conflict I feel comes from feeling like if people are devoted to one another, and are willing to make a covenant saying they are going to mean it for the rest of their lives, it’s hard for me not to want to just let them.

And also last week, my adopted state of Arizona has passed (and sent to the governor–who vetoed the legislation) SB1062, a law that in essence allows people who refuse service to someone a defense (‘deeply held’ religious beliefs) in the event they are sued for descrimination or something of that nature. Of course, while legal recourse may ostensibly be what the law is about, the unspoken subtext is that it would also give others what they feel is license to treat gay people and their potential business in an unfair and descriminatory manner. I believe that is it in a nutshell, and is also what has millions of gays and pro-gays in such an uproar once again. They’re crying foul, and likening the legislation to the old Jim Crow laws from decades ago. While that may be a much lengthier discussion for another time, it does seem to me that while the “Jim Crow” battle cry is closer to pro-gay hyperbole than anything else, there is also a great deal of potential for descriminatory ugliness with this law, because people are people, and prone to do bad things with ambiguously worded legislation such as this.

With all that in mind, I think perhaps it is not just what some Christian folks are saying, but how they’re saying it. The arguments are the same, and probably always will be. Scripture decrying homosexuality is referenced, and gays along with supporters throw up scripture they feel counters their Christian counterparts efforts in the same regard. It gets uglier all the time, and nowhere on either side of the discussion is the real message of Jesus referenced.

It seems like this to me: if the bible is true, and it tells us that God is love and that all people will know we are the disciples of Christ if we love one another, then how are we showing the people who do not know his love the face of Jesus by so often treating them with open hostility? How does feeding gay people fettucini alfredo or whatever it is make you a participant in whatever sin you feel they’re committing? I mean, I get it, but I don’t agree. This legislation is like…giving people already inclined to do so the right to treat others shabbily. There may be a place for some similar type of legislation, but this particular law is not going to go over well, not with the social climate surrounding this issue what it has become.

For my part, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t treat people that way, and I never really could. Maybe some of it is my California-ness regarding gay people carrying over into my life in Arizona, but it’s really more about not wanting to feel like I’m any better than anyone else because my sin is different. I am not better than anyone else. I am the same. In my dotage, I’ve found it so much easier to treat people kindly. I would rather make them their food or a cake or floral arrangements, and then tell them God loves them and died for them. I want people to know the Jesus I do. Whether they’re gay or straight or…whatever. I do not now–nor have I ever–felt my marriage (or any marriage) could be threatened in any way by who else can get married.

I wonder, though, how many gay men or women are known by the folks protesting gay marriage?

I also wonder how many Christians are known by gay people?

If we don’t know each other, how can we expect anything to change in either direction? Jesus talked to people. Walked with people. Ate with them. Probably fished with them, and laughed and drank and danced. I believe that in the end, the Eternal Kingdom will not be filled courtesy of those who spoke out against the things God hates the loudest. I think souls will quietly slip in thanks to the people who have shown them the most love.

To that end, because I am loved, I will try to be loving. I will choose to show people the Jesus I know by telling them about what he’s done in my life. I will tell them about how I am incomplete, and wounded, and broken, and still sin, but am loved in spite of the things that queue up to keep me from Jesus. I will explain what scripture means to me as I understand it, and I will tell people what I think if they ask me. If I love Jesus like I say, I owe them the truth.

I just have no intention of shouting it at them, or telling them God hates them because of their sin. Brand me a heretic if you must, but I feel that if God hated people because of their sin, he would not have redeemed them from it. You don’t die for people you hate.

And to see so many people caught up in the definition of a word and how it threatens them rather than simply getting to know people and telling them about Jesus just doesn’t make any sense to me. I can’t understand how telling people they’re damned for what they do in their bedrooms is going to show them the Jesus I know that has changed my life and could also change theirs.

To be clear, I am aware of the mentions in the bible of homosexuality, and that it is addressed as sin. While it is true that God hates sin, it would be errant–once again–to imply that he hates homosexuality more than any other type of sin. And that he hates homosexuals more than anyone else. Sin is sin. If God hated homosexuals, he would also hate every other type of sinner, and probably all Christians. The bible doesn’t say any of that. Homosexuality is not something I indulge in, and whether or not I “approve” of it does not really even matter. I think the bible makes it clear what God thinks of homosexuality and what it entails, and I acknowledge the punishment for it is the same as any other sin–all other sin. Omission of mention by Jesus is not the same as approval. While Jesus himself may not mention homosexuality specifically, he did come in fulfillment of Old Testament Law, and prophecy, not to nullify it. I think where we go awry is when we start classifying sins, and justify ours as less terrible than homosexuality.

It isn’t. No one is righteous, no not one. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jer 17:9) Certainly not me.

We’re all different, but we are also all the same. We need God. We need Jesus if we are to be freed from our chains and our sins. God knows it, and Christians do, too. Yet if we can condemn someone else for what they’re doing, then we don’t have to think as much about what we’re doing. All of which means that we can take comfort in our own perceived righteousness, while we decry the unrighteousness of gay men and women as if it were anything different than sins that we have committed, now, and throughout history.

Take a look at Matthew 5: 27-28. Go ahead. Read it and come back. Still here? Good. Let me repeat what I said before. Sin is sin. No one is righteous, no not one. How can I justify condemning a gay person with my own words, while justifying my own actions as a lesser sin. To God, they are the same. The punishment is the same.

Let’s talk about those Old Testament laws for a few minutes. You know the ones. Many people will talk about how scripture also mentions other things as being sinful that people don’t seem to care about anymore, like eating shrimp and other sea creatures for one example (take your pick, there are many others). They will tell you that those old laws–like the ones that condemn homosexuality as well as other sexual sins–do not matter or apply anymore, because the world is a different place. That’s partly true, and I’ll get back to that in a bit.

Those laws again, from the Old Testament. Taken specifically, there are three different types.

Laws pertaining just to the (ancient) state of Israel. They are pretty specific.

Also ceremonial laws (many pertaining to sacrifice, and diet, and things of that nature), which were superseded by the New Covenant, fulfilled in the person of Christ.

Lastly, moral laws. It is only the moral laws of the Old Testament which remain and are held as truths by most Christians based on the validity of the Ten Commandments. I won’t go into every piece of scripture here, but at least to address the dietary laws and some of the other laws that seem to apply mainly to those of the Jewish faith rather than Christians: take a look at Mark 7:19, Acts 15: 5-29, etc.

Of course, if one does not hold the Bible as truth, then this would make little sense. And there’s the rub.

Then Jesus enters the picture, and everything changes.

As believers, we are called to share him and his truth with people. So while the biblical principles of the Old Testament make it clear how God feels about all different types of sin, there is hope, and in a world that seems to have so little, that is indeed something.

I posted a picture on Facebook not long ago I’d seen online of a group of Christians (mostly men) at a Gay Pride event, and they were holding signs and wearing shirts that said “I’m sorry.” They were apologizing to gay people for the treatment they’d received at the hands of standard bearers for Jesus. In the picture I posted, a gay man in great physical condition wearing tighty-whiteys gripped one of the shirt-wearers in what looked to be a very emotional bear-hug.

Bear Hug

I thought it was a great picture and that it was a great way to actually show Jesus to people who needed to know him instead of just telling them they were on the Amtrack to hell.

I got a bit of an ass-chewing from a couple of people to the effect that treating gay people as if their lifestyle was OK was the same as personally condoning and supporting it, and that wasn’t right–as if because I was a Christian, I should tell them they were going to hell.

I can’t convict someone of any sin, and I wouldn’t want to if I could. Jesus does that. And it isn’t my function, as a believer, to punish people for sin. Let him without sin cast the first stone?

That ain’t me, man. I’m a mess.

I’d rather tell someone I’m sorry, then hug them and tell them Jesus loves them.

I will leave the condemning up to God.