Feel Angry When I Read the Bible

I'm Christian, gay, and too angry to even read the Bible anymore Nov 7, 2013 John Shore

Got this letter in. My answer follows it:

Dear John,

I love your blog. I've been out equally a lesbian for several months now, and both before and afterwards the coming out procedure, I take establish your words comforting and challenging.

I'm having some trouble with my organized religion. I know that you must become and so many requests for communication and people simply pouring their issues out to yous, and I hope that this is not draining for yous. Merely I ofttimes find your answers make me call up of things in a new way, so I'1000 going to add my ain question.

I've been a Christian for about of my life and my religion has been an integral part of who I am since I was a teenager. It took me until the age of 29 to figure out and exist honest most the fact that I am gay. I had internalized the belief that Christians couldn't be gay, and since I was a Christian, clearly I was merely confused. I thought that whatever other people had inside of them that immune them to fall deeply, ridiculously in beloved was somehow left out of me. Until I did experience those feelings myself—for a woman. One time that happened, my denial fought hard and ugly, but its days were numbered. I couldn't even honestly effort to "pray away the gay." The words would stick in my throat; I didn't want it to go away. This was love. It was ane of the purest, virtually beautiful things I'd ever felt. It felt similar an insult to God to pretend that I thought it was annihilation other than a gift.

So now I'm out and I'm blessed with loving friends and family. I take institute a wonderful, affirming church customs. I actually should not be lament. But I'm still struggling with a lot of internalized homophobia, and with the fact that I experience that I can't love God the mode he deserves to be loved.

I don't know if the homophobia and faith issues are related to each other, but I know that I can't read my Bible. I try sometimes, simply I feel my breadbasket tighten and my heart heart charge per unit increase, and I feel like a trapped animal. I used to spend hours reading that book, and now I desire cypher to do with it. Information technology doesn't feel safe for me. I wish that it did.

I had problem praying for a while, but I'one thousand doing that over again. And I've been having dreams in which God, who is adept and loving and gentle, beckons me to return to him. This God is and then good. He deserves so much love. Just I still have so much anger over the years spent denying who I was: over the books I read in an try to dearest God which told me that the all-time of who I am is inherently broken and disordered, over the sermons and seminars I attended where speakers would talk most beingness "healed" and "delivered" from homosexuality—all of that, which I swallowed uncritically, fifty-fifty though that every instinct I had was screaming at me to run from this education.

I know that anger and love are not mutually exclusive things. But I don't know how to separate out what is God and what is my faith. And even within my religion, I don't know how to save what is good, and let go of the stuff that is harmful. I love Jesus, but some days I'd similar nothing meliorate than to plow my dorsum on Christianity.

Whatsoever advice that yous can give me on how let get of the bad and hold on to the proficient, and on how to love God like he deserves to be loved, would exist much appreciated.

Thank you.

Dear woman who wrote me this:

Remarkable. This is just … unbelievable. Yous spend twenty-nine years immersed in a organization that from the nigh impressionable years of your life onward was forever telling you that you're essentially garbage—disgusting to God, an anathema to nature, an barb to dignity and honor—and at present, despite all of that—despite the impairment washed to your psyche, the endless blows to your self-esteem, the ongoing negation of the very core of who you lot are—you are notwithstanding moved toward, and compelled past, the love of God.

You yet desire God. You still want Jesus. Y'all still believe in the divine love to which you accept always been told you accept no right.

Your heart just … kept its truth. Information technology kept its vision. It continued listening to God. You continued to believe in the force, ability, and righteousness of God, when anybody around you lot speaking for God told you that God was ashamed of yous.

The Holy Spirit inside you was stronger than the hatred outside of you. That's remarkable. What a testimony to people's … innate and inviolate knowledge or God, basically.

Anyhow, it sounds like you lot're experiencing stuff quite new to you—that you've only been out for a few months. So, in coming out, you have claimed yourself in a mode that yous haven't earlier. In a sense, and in the well-nigh positive style, coming out means objectifying yourself: it means presenting yourself to yourself, and by extension to the world, as a fully independent, fully integrated, fully whole person. It ways bringing to the fore, for the first time ever, a fully realized you.

Yay!

But and then of course information technology's also only natural—and a sign of just how powerful coming out is—that you so question everything that has ever attempted to define you for yous. You're fully on deck now: finally, you are the captain of your own transport. And as first-class as that is, it's also bound to be a bit unmooring. It's non specially piece of cake to accept your entire identity reshaped. Y'all've experienced a revolution. And in revolutions all kinds of stuff happens. Things autumn and crumble everywhere. In real revolutions, a lot of babies get thrown out with a lot of bathwater.

So I say: Expect. Feel your style into the truths of what you're going through. There's no rush. If you're angry with God, be angry with God. I recollect it's condom to say that due south/he volition empathise. If you lot are angry with God, think how angry God must exist with the people who fabricated you feel that fashion. (If you're ever around any of those people, be sure to e'er remain a few feet back from them. Why should you lot go your clothes singed when lightning strikes them?) If you don't feel rubber reading the Bible, put your Bible abroad. I imagine you've had enough of the Bible in your life to last y'all awhile. If you lot've plant a church that nurtures and affirms you, go to that church. (And please give my love to anyone at that church who is treating y'all right.) If praying is bringing you peace, pray.

I'll tell you one affair: if I were Jesus, I can't imagine anything that would bring me more pleasure than to have someone say, "I honey Jesus, only some days I'd like nothing better than to turn my back on Christianity." Because I'd know that's a person who actually gets me, who hears me, who knows what I'm about, who received the message I gave so much to send. That person I would know to exist a true friend of mine.

You asked how y'all can let get of the bad and hold on to the good. I don't think that's a business organization. Considering I recall that, as it e'er has, the good is belongings onto you. And that means the bad, all on its ain, will continue to autumn away from y'all.

Anoint you lot, girl. Write us every one time in a while as you continue down your road, and let us know how you're doing.

millersomiskill.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/unfundamentalistchristians/2013/11/im-christian-gay-and-too-angry-to-even-read-the-bible-anymore/

Share this post