God, Please Save These Troubled States

See, I was under the impression that we were going to have a discussion as to whether God existed or not. I find it idiotic that your argument is simply that I'm wrong because I'm a sinner. That's why God exists.

I don't accept your argument, fallside. At all. You have made no attempts to establish that your so-called God is real, that sin is a viable and logical concept, and that I deserve hell if God does exist. You have simply stated everything in this thread as fact.

So let me break this down to you: I do not believe that sin entered this world in a fair and just manner. I have repeatedly argued that position and I'm sticking with it until it is solidly and reasonably refuted. I do not find it fair and just that we are punished for an eternity for our actions that we commit during a small, miniscule, and ultimately insignificant period of time. I can't see how you rationalize this. It honestly baffles me how you see that as fair and just.

I demand these things of God because for so long, I did everything he demanded. After so much giving and giving and giving, my natural impulse to receive kicks in. For years, I poured my entire soul into doing his work. I know that someone will come into this thread and say that, "Well, you obviously weren't a true Christian or else you'd still be one now." Also bullshit. I believed and said all that you've said in this thread. I lived my life as a continually guilty sinner, constantly and sincerely asking for forgiveness for every sin that I committed. I believed I deserved everything that occurred in my life, good or bad, because it was all part of God's plan for me to spread his word. I'm a fantastic public speaker and always have been; for years, I used my skills as an orator to spread the word of our Good Lord. And I was damn good at it. I was proud of the things I accomplished while I was a practicing and active Christian. I do not regret them.

However, my intellect and my patience was constantly tested. Fine, I used to think. It's simply a test, a temptation from the Devil. Anytime a concept of God didn't make sense to me, I would simply throw my refutations and thoughts out the window. I can't think poorly of God! I would think. I can't question his authority because His authority is supreme and I am humble and nothing without him.

Nothing? So my existence is nothing without my supreme and utter submission to God? A funny concept, I would think, but once again, in my efforts to be the best Christian I could be, I would once again ignore all these red flags, all these horrible feelings in the pit of my stomach.

I taught children the way of God. I converted friends. I sacrificed my music, movies, going out late, friends who weren't Christian, my social life, and sometimes, happiness, so that I could be the best little Christian I could possibly be. (I tend to do things to the extreme and when I get involved in something, I really get involved.)

For example, I taught myself pretty much all of the concepts I learned about Christianity in Spanish. (The family I lived with when I was Christian spoke Spanish 90% of the time, so, out of necessity, I had to teach myself the language.) Did you know that at one point I could recite Mass in three languages? (With the exception of the hominy.)

I know the "Catholicism-is-not-Christianity" rebuttal is coming, but don't attempt to make that argument here. The fact remains is that as a practicing Christian, I followed the rules set forth by The Bible, NOT the church. (I routinely did not participate in certain aspects of the church's dogma that I found to be unnecessary, such as praying to saints or the confessional booth. I didn't think my repentence needed to be shared with anyone but God and myself.)

I lived a Christian life. A very[ Christian life, I might add, one that probably was more devout than a lot of you on this board. I stopped swearing. I stopped watching R-rated movies. I changed my whole entire outlook on the world. I hope you realize how difficult of a thing that is to do. Have you ever taken a 180 degree turn in how you view this existence? I did that, and I did that with complete and utter sincerity and passion. I fucking believed in myself as a Christian and in the God of the Bible, in the sacrifice Jesus made for me, and sometimes I wept just at the thought that someone could love me so much.

At the point in my life when I was, in my opinion, the best Christian I could be, I was also the most vulnerable; it was at this point that God allowed the worst event in my life to completely destroy any respect I had for him.

I have always accepted that "evil" existed in the world (though I don't call it that anymore), but when I slowly watched all of my fellow Christian brothers and sisters turn against me, when I called out to God and asked him to give me strength through my trials and tribulations, when I watched everyone lash out at me when all I was doing was trying to be the best person I could be, I was left alone.

I know that you may say that I can't use my earthly experiences to discount the unearthly and otherworldy God, but I disagree. I think that my experiences, in this case, are completely relevant. You may tell me that "God is independent of what happens on earth, what his people do to me." If so, than that only proves my point that God cannot be an all-loving being. His impersonality is proof of that.

Here's what I fail to understand about a God who, according to Biblical "evidence," is all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. As someone who accepted the cross with all his heart AND mind, why was it that God allowed other people who did the same and believed the same as me (or atleast believed they did), to tear me down to the point where I was homeless, jobless, and, eventually, faithless? All of these occurred because of the actions of other people, not because of me. I persisted in being a Christian in the face of adversity for a long time, fighting the people who I felt were not being true Christians anymore. For months, I studied the Bible harder and harded, prayed more often and more passionately, believed in something so much that I don't think I'll ever become as passionate as that ever again, and after all this, I get the fucking shit beat out of me (figuratively speaking, of course). As a rational human being, what kind of message does that send about God? That I should continue what I'm doing because this is the right path? When every ounce of my fiber is telling me that what I believe is bogus, is this the message God is really sending me? Has Jesus taken it upon himself to speak to me, only to tell me that my efforts on earth are absurd because I will continue to be berated, destroyed, hated, disrespected, thrown to the ground, only to have God's agents of free will kick me in the ribs while I'm down?

Oh, that's right. A Christian's life will be a difficult one! I will face adversity! I will face people who despise me for believing what I believe! I will encounter peer pressure from my friends who want me to submit to sin, to give up the life I lead, who will tell me that what I'm doing is a waste of time and thought, that I'm too smart to be Christian, and that I should face reality and accept the absurdity of this world. Yet I am to persist against all of this! I am God's soldier; I wear his armor throught the love of Christ, Our Saviour, who has coated me with a protective sheild spawned from his blood, the blood he shed on the cross that day over 2000 years ago. With this shield, I am invincible; nothing can stop me, for with God, everything and anything is possible.

Then it is possible for God himself to pierce our shield of invincibility. That's what happened to me. My atheist friends couldn't stop me from doing what I needed to do for Christ. They couldn't touch me, for my belief was too strong to be affected by the petty ravages of hedonistic fury. The world's temptations couldn't drag me down, for I stood above them. Sex? Unimportant. Alcohol consumption? Unnecessary. Swearing? Lazy and stupid. My love was supreme, my faith was steadfast. When stopped me, what pulled me down to the ground, were my hermanos y hermanas en Cristo. They threw the Bible at me. You are not a true Christian, they said. You are a sinner.

So are you, but as long as I accept that Christ died for our sins and repent before him, I am well.

No, no you're not. God doesn't want faggots in heaven.

And so I lost my home, my job, my Christian friends, and I had only myself and my faith to cling to. As I read the Bible more and more those last few months, I kept thinking and asking myself if this was true. Would God accept a gay male into heaven? Sure, he's the God of acceptance and love; surely if I repent, he'll understand why I have these thoughts and impulses. Right?

But I realized that no matter how many times I repented, no matter how many times I told God I was sorry for looking at Ernie during Cross Country practice and wondering what he would look like without clothes on, no matter how many times I told God to forgive me for turning around and giving a second glance to the attractive guys in the hallway, I would still exist on Earth as a faggot. I couldn't change this fact. I felt as if I was apologizing for the color of my hair, my ethnicity, the space between my eyes, the length of my arms. Do you realize the futility of such an act? It requires a constant and supreme apology; at every waking moment, I would have to repent for my very existence. When you tell yourself not to think about something, it merely magnifies the thougth in your head, repeating itself over and over and over again.

Was I made this way? I certainly didn't wake up that day back in September of 1989 and think to myself, "You know, when I see Robert and Jessica holding hands near the twisty slide at recess today, I'm going to arbitrarily decide to feel an impulse to grab Eric's hand next to me and hold it. I'm going to look at the other boys on the playground and wonder about what they've got in their pants, and, when I get to 2nd grade and my penis starts to get hard in the morning, I'm going to start asking around if that happens to other guys too. Of course, once I start questioning my interaction with other humans, I think I'll purposely choose to have the fluttering, impulsive notions to put my lips on Kevin's and hold them there and ask him afterwards if other boys in our class do that too, only to hear him tell me that no, we're not supposed to do this because we weren't made this way. Weren't made this way? I'll ask myself. I don't remember choosing this fate for myself. Then, of course, when I get to junior high, I'm going to make sure to have 3 girlfriends, all of which will last no longer than a week and that I'll kiss them and feel a burning in my cheeks and a pit in my stomach and feel as if I'm betraying myself, as if what I'm doing is stabbing my parents while they're sleeping, but really, I'm only doing what I should do, what should feel natural, but of course, doesn't. Of course, I'm certainly going to decide to do that, and once I get to college and I feel the first penis in my hand that isn't my own, when I feel this overwhelming happiness, so much so that I actually cry, but hide it and tell Christian that I just dust in my eye, hold on a second, let me wipe it out, that too, of course, will be a conscious and deliberate decision, one that I've planned ever since I could first think for myself and make independent decisions. Yes, I'm going to do that, starting today."

I read the Bible more and more, but I couldn't reconcile this. It drove me to near madness. I asked my priest, Father Richards, what I should do. I didn't tell him in the confessional. But I told him to be confidential. He agreed. He told me that my situation was a grave problem, that what I was facing was perhaps the biggest obstacle God could put in a person's path. You must have resolve, he told me. You must persist on God's path and eliminate these thoughts.

Eliminate them? I cry. I just wanted to know if God will let me in heaven if I think this way.

Father Richards doesn't say anything for a moment and says, No, my son. Even if you repent, as long as you still think sins, they are sins. You have to eliminate the thought. A sin in the mind is a sin in actuality. We are forewarned in The Word that a sin is a sin in thought, word, and deed. All three are just as viable and just as potent.

So what do I do? I can't eliminate these thoughts. I try to elaborate and explain to Father that you can't 100% control emotions; even if you hold anger within, you still think about it, which is, now that I've learned, a sin anyway. No, no, no, you are wrong. You can control them. He hands me a pamphlet. He wants me to go to a camp of some sort that summer. To make me straight. No, no, no, I don't want to be straight. I want to be a good Christian.

You can't.

But is this right? Is this really what God wants? Will he accept me if I'm a homosexual? That night, I prayed to God so hard. Please, please, please show me the way. Show me what to do.

I got my sign the next day at Mass, when, in the middle of the hominy about sin amongst our people, about Christian sinning against Christian, I suddenly find a finger pointed at me and suddenly everyone is staring at me and everyone is moving away from me, is he telling the truth, are you really?

Stop, stop, stop, stop. God, is this your message? I scream. Father points at me and says I am an unrepetent sinner and that I am a freak homosexual amongst everyone else, everyone who is normal, I am a sinner and I will not repent. Is this your message God? Is this your message?

I don't see how it couldn't be. At a time when I most needed God, as his child, as his lamb, as his devoted follower, in his quest to provide us with free will, he allows this event to happen at a time when I am most vulnerable, when I am most scared, and when I am most alone.

Your God does not exist. Your concept, that is. Perhaps he really does exist. But he is not all-loving. Or he's not all-powerful. Or he is not all-knowing. God may not need anything, because he is perfect. But I am imperfect and if I ever needed one thing, it was for him in that moment to show that he cared. And as I ran out of that church, crying, seconds away from puking up my Sunday breakfast, I stood on the street corner and I never felt more alone in my whole life.