|
|
I've gone through a lot of churches. I was raised nominally
Presbyterian, but didn't get much out of it. In the high school days I
called myself an "Apathist". It wasn't a question of whether or not I
believed, I just plain didn't care.
Then, back in the mid-eighties, I wound up getting saved. (By watching televangelists, of all things!) The guy on TV told me to go find a good Bible believing church. I figured that would be easy enough. Turns out they all claim to be Bible believing churches. What a terrible thing to say to a brand new believer!
The first church I joined was extreme to the point of being considered a cult by many other churches. I would never go back to them, but I did learn a lot from them. The pastor had a habit of holding up his Bible and saying, "Don't take my word it, read it for yourself!" So that's what I did. Eventually I saw that what I was reading and what I was seeing in that church were two different things.
From there I joined a Baptist church. I really liked the Baptist church, with its emphasis on evangelism. Ever since, I've tended to be more Baptist in my theology than anything, even in my Catholic Period. (Actually, Baptist and Catholic theology are very similar, once you get past the semantics and denominational prejudices.) That was when I got involved with witnessing and started hanging out with the streetpreachers and passing out tracts. That was really a lot of fun. I felt called into ministry and would have gone on to Baptist Bible College in Springfield, MO, Jerry Falwell's alma mater. Unfortunately, I decided that if I was going into ministry, I ought to tell my pastor of my "proclivities".
What I told him in confidence turned into the next week's sermon topic. He didn't mention names, of course, but I knew who meant. What was worse, I knew what I had said to him, but he made a few minor changes in telling about it to make it sound like he had saved me out of a life of perversion and hedonism. (At that time in my life, I had never even known any other gays, much less had sex with them.)
So, I never made it to BBC. I left that church and bounced around from church to church for a while. I made a few other attempts at confiding in pastors and teachers and had some more bad experiences, including one very homophobic pastor (to judge by his preaching) who made a pass at me.
I quit going to church altogether and eventually gave up on Christianity. I tried to be an atheist, but just didn't have the stomach for it.
I had some Pagan friends, so I then got into Paganism for a few years. I liked Paganism, you could make up your own rituals and stuff. Trouble is, I wanted something real.
Now, that isn't to say the faith of Pagans isn't real to them, but I was already a Christian and although I was trying to leave Him, He never left me. So, being the eclectic Pagan that I was, I started incorporating Christian elements into my Pagan practice.
I've learned something from every group I've been in. What I came to understand from Paganism is the importance and meaning of ritual, something many protestant churches have lost in their efforts to distance themselves from Roman Catholicism.
I had been taught the Catholic Church was just a Paganized Christianity, so of course, I began adding some of those Pagan Catholic rites into my practice. One of those was the Rosary, which I began praying simply as a form of daily meditation. I've been praying it ever since.
From there, I wound up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormons. Mormonism and Paganism have quite a bit in common. I know a lot of Christians consider the LDS Church a cult, but I found the same Jesus there that I had known before. I credit the LDS Church with taking me out of Paganism and directing me back toward a more traditional Christianity.
As I read through the LDS scriptures, which include the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and The Pearl of Great Price. I found myself more and more drifting away from the LDS church. It's a good church with a lot to recommend it, but frankly, I had to conclude that the LDS scriptures were all written by Joseph Smith and not translations as he claimed.
So I left the LDS Church and bounced around some more. I wound up at the Vineyard, which seemed to be the church I always wound up in when I was burned out on all the others.
That was also about the time I got into the local ex-gay ministry. I spent about three years there trying to reconcile my sexuality and my spirituality. I learned a lot from them, too. Trouble is, I never saw anyone changed. There were people there who had been going ten years and more, yet the only thing that changed was they didn't have sex with other men. They were still attracted to other men. They just kept fighting to resist that attraction.
The only people I ever saw who claimed to be completely cured were those in leadership. Maybe if God had cured me, I could've gotten a really good job with an ex-gay ministry.
I always hear people say that God can change us, that nothing is impossible for God. I agree with that. Nothing is impossible for God and He can change us.
But He doesn't.
If homosexuality is the evil so many preachers claim, and so many good sincere Christians are fervently praying to God to cure them of this evil, and God can do anything, then why doesn't He do it?
Maybe our sexuality is not quite as big an issue with God as it is for homophobic preachers.
Well, I'm off the subject and running out of time. I continued praying the Rosary and learning more about the catholic Church and eventually converted to Catholicism.
In time, I began attending the Metropolitan Community Church. I would go to the Catholic Mass, usually at St. Xavier downtown in the afternoon, then go to New Spirit MCC in the evening.
At MCC, I found a home, a church where I could drop my guard and just worship. I've heard a lot of lies preached about MCC from the pulpits of some of those other churches I've been to, but that's all they are, lies. MCC is a true Christian church that preaches the Gospel as well as any Baptist or Pentacostal church I've seen, and they're preaching it to a segment of society the other churches drive away. Regardless what you believe about homosexuality, homosexuals are coming to MCC and finding Jesus. Isn't that all that really matters anyway?