I remember once, after church, standing around with the youth group guys.
Gossip was, a church girl in Canada had left her husband--
Left him for another woman.
The disgust was palpable, performative, pulpy, shock, horror, and awe.
I stayed silent. By this point I had admitted my own sexuality--to myself, to a friend, to a pastor...this youth didn't know he was wrinkling his face in disgust at something that he stood very near to. I squirmed inside. But didn't move.
"There had to be something wrong with her from the start," he says. The others agree. Readily and without pause. I don't remember if I joined in automatically, so used to condemning others like me to avoid any suspicion that there is also something wrong with me.
But it strikes me--in the derisive, dismissive tones of these youths--if they truly believe there is something fundamentally wrong with this lesbian, where is the compassion? Don't they profess to be Christians?And isn't that the core tenant of their religion? Our religion, at the time. I was still trying to hang on to it.
The core tenant of our religion was that something is fundamentally wrong with all of us. Yet this was different. There was none of the compassion we were supposed to have for mankind. Just skin-crawling disgust.
I follow the youth guys out of the church building into the sun.
I feel more lonely than ever before. Each Sunday, after hearing about how Jesus will deliver me from my sins, I stand in the circle of the youth group in the parking lot. They laugh and chatter. I used to linger until the last one had gone home, or off to lunch plans, hoping that I would find a place in the conversation, hoping I could open up and actually make friends.
But each Sunday the emptiness increases. The sermons don't make me feel better. My homosexuality isn't going away. I can't get rid of it. And God isn't going to remove it, either.
And I can't linger as long, hoping as the group gets smaller, I won't be so shy, hoping maybe someone will invite me over for Sunday dinner.
I have nothing in common with these people. And they are disgusted by people like me.
And I can't keep pretending to be disgusted by people like me. I can't sit here on my high horse of righteousness, claiming that I am resisting sin and so therefore I am not the same as those malfunctioning individuals that apparently deserve no compassion from Christians.
I leave early.
My heart hurts. A heavy burden is crushing me. And Jesus isn't taking it.
But this is the final stretch. Soon I'll realize that I was asking for the wrong thing--I wanted him to change me, because I thought I was broken.
What I really needed was someone to take the shame away.
Shame that I carried for how others looked at people like me.
Shortly thereafter, I stopped attending church. There was a 2nd covid hiatus and I didn't go back when services re-started.
I stopped getting that weekly dose of guilt.
Slowly, I accepted that I am who I am. And that's ok. Its good.
I already knew that the unnamed Canadian lesbian didn't deserve the blatant loathing from Christians. I know now that the Canadian lesbian and I don't need their compassion, either.
They need ours because they are blinded.
I hope that wherever she is, she is happy and has let go of all the shame that she should never have had to bear. I hope she is free, like me, and I hope she flourishes.
Amen
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