Why am I a Believer?
I have a lifelong pattern of creating mental, emotional and physical walls. My mind itself feels designed to be a trap and the pain of life adapted to that inclination. Awareness will not necessarily make it go away (though with awareness has come deep healing and a release of some of the pain). I exist within layers of walls, a sort of maze, searching for meaning, for truth, for understanding, and yet, despite all of the searching, I’m lost within the maze. It’s like we (human beings) are not supposed to understand. To some degree, my subconscious had bled into the conscious, which has amplified awareness while meaning remains elusive. The comingling of the subconscious and conscious minds is not something where I have the words to articulate but it feels like too much of what has been hidden is being exposed and I’m inundated with repressed emotions and understandings, and much of this is simply “knowings” that lack associated data. This bleeding effect has reached a point where it feels ever-present, and part of me has divided on whether I have opened a Pandora’s Box that should be sealed or whether I’m engaged in a deeply human experience that I should celebrate however challenging it might be.
How does this relate to faith? Faith has been a counterpunch to the endless search for meaning and purpose that so often does not lead to clarity. Being gay, the Baptist church that I grew up was a place where I was told I would burn in hellfire for eternity; church was a place of terror. As an introverted intuitive, I would visualize being in a lake of fire, experiencing the agony in a way that shattered and consumed me in a few seconds. The emotional shock of those visualizations lives inside of me to this day. I carry the terror of hell in my heart. That is not all that I took away—I still remember my baptism as an explosive, electric moment where I descended into the well of water, and the preacher put his hand over my face, the other behind my head, and submerged me—the experience was visceral and powerful and I’m grateful for the experience—it felt impactful and meaningful.
Sometimes I get the question, given that my church imparted into me the terror of hell (something many in the queer community have experienced), how do I retain any faith? How can I be a believer? Should I not be angry at the Baptist church? Add to that Catholics and other Christians, Muslims, Hindus and in general those of organized religions who overwhelmingly have propagated cultures that persecute gay humans, and the question persists, how can you be a believer?
Even today, with greater tolerance and even support and love, most of organized religion is a place hostile to gay humans. For a long time, I was angry and resentful, and there may be places in my inner world where that persists, but the greater part of me realized that it served no purpose. Even if I chose to be angry at organized religion, they are not the arbiters of God. No human has the right to be in judgment over my relationship with God (that they do so is a different issue, but their judgments belong to them, not to God).
Yet how can I trust in God when those who speak in God’s name often do so with condemning voices? And I’ve always said to myself, how can I not? I do not understand people who are able to exist in places separate from meaning and purpose. I have met many who do, but my mind will not accept that perspective—there is often a lack of meaning and purpose that I experience in the world, at least, to what I’m able to perceive and then, feeling blocked and unsure, faith becomes the resolution—to simply accept what is even when I don’t understand. Faith is infused with the idea of a higher meaning. Where my mind, driven to find meaning in all things, cannot or does not understand, faith then becomes the source of elusive meaning. Without faith, I would drive myself insane. In a way, my mind is wired to need God. God is where the chaos of my inner world finds acceptance at what is, in the pain of life, and in the lack of understanding. Faith is what allows me to exist. I am grateful for my faith and for the presence of God in my inner world.
