31 year old gay guy from Perth, formerly heavily involved in the charismatic movement until age 17 and now Christian but non-religious, identified as gay from 18, having gone some way but not all the way to find healing and a way forward.
Hi, I stumbled on this group a few weeks ago, thanks very much for providing an excellent resource. 🙂 It was the first time I’d ever come across gay evangelical Christians and I have watched Ben’s piece on “Hack” and various other things which really made me think. I admire the honesty and trust of those here and I shall try my best to honour that in what I write. I also realise my own path may be different from others here – but in saying so, that there are as many valid paths as there are people. Apologies too for the long post – I couldn’t think of a way to split it up.
On faith
I’m 31, in Perth and I grew up “in the faith” which was real to me as a child. Today, I identify as Christian, I believe in God and in the gospel of Christ, but I don’t attend church, and beyond the basics I honestly don’t know what I believe and my faith is distant from me. I wish it could be different, but it’s not. Why not? I guess there’s an unresolved anger there about what I see as my lost years in the church. It’s dimmed over the years as I’ve grown, but there is always that knowledge that my experience damaged me as a person and I will never be whole again because of it.
I don’t blame the people involved – they thought they were doing the right thing, and were listening far too much to less inspired types from the US and South Africa who were egging them on in less scriptural practices and thinking “these churches were successful so clearly we should follow that”. I also don’t blame God. And I’m able to accept my own share of responsibility for not asking more questions about what I was learning and in particular interrogating it against the Bible and the Gospels.
Childhood
I was 5 when I was first “saved”. Shortly thereafter we moved across the world and settled here. Within 6 months we had found a church (Rhema Family Church, now known as Riverview), which eventually reached 3500-4000 people per week. I went to the children’s church, my parents went to the main church. We got heavily involved – I went to the church’s school, went to church every week without fail, everyone we knew was in the church, you name it. I experienced the “gifts of the spirit” and I saw God clearly at work.
However, my childhood was very isolated – we were taught that people from just about any other faith and even “mainline churches” would contaminate us if we mixed with them. There was some confusion between the church’s message of “faith not works” in terms of salvation, and its crazily long list of “worldly” things one had to avoid doing, seeing, listening to or even wearing, and the requirements on people to do “godly” things including going to endless seminars, retreats and whatever else.
Early adolescence
Around 11 a range of things happened. 1. Ps Brian Baker unexpectedly left the church. Secondly, I was an ‘early developer’ and I started flirting with guys my own age during sleepovers and even at school behind the shed at lunch times. One other boy and I got in trouble and some leaders from the church came in and I think they thought it was their job to ensure we didn’t follow in “that” path. I was taught from then on – quite forcefully – about the alleged evils of gay people, none of whom were normal and every last one of whom was a would-be transexual child abuser with a certain death from AIDS ahead. There was another major event too, but I’d really rather not discuss that – it didnt involve the church.
By 14-15 my self esteem had hit rock bottom, I felt numb and I was doing drugs to try and make myself just feel like a person. I felt ashamed of who I was. I didn’t have a reason for this – more just a general feeling that I was a bad person and God would see me as worse than other people around me.
Moving forward (a little)
I ultimately admitted to my friends I needed help, and three of them really helped me, especially with getting off drugs. (Others simply judged me and stopped being friends, but I was past caring.) Trouble was I fell hopelessly in love with one of them. I’m pretty sure he was bi and that it was not one-way (many things pointed to this) although I’ll never know, we never did anything and by the end of the year we had completely fallen out as friends. I think the whole experience hardened me to the gay side of my feelings and for the next two years (at a different school) I became intensely homophobic. I had an emotional, non-physical relationship with a girl (outside the church but Christian) who was my friend and confidante, and I really had it in my head that we would get married and the reason for my lack of sexual feeling for her was my moral values.
At church, I’d joined the youth group, but it span rapidly out of control, became autonomous and adopted definite cult-like elements. I only stuck with it out of fear of what my parents would think, and the desire to see my friends who also went. In the end, the reason for my severance was that I’d taken 6 weeks off to study for my TEE (read: VCE, HSC etc) exams and the youth leaders felt that this meant I was putting worldly things above godly things. They called my mother and then repeated her words off the phone call, word for word, from the stage as part of the sermon. Entire groups of people (esp the younger ones) had been conspicuously, even fearfully, avoiding me that night. I was so angry and so hurt that I stopped attending that week, and have never been back. I lost friendships as I was now “of the world” in their eyes, I wasn’t part of this chosen few who were going to lead the revival (It never happened, by the way.). I heard that some months later they fired the entire youth team (none of whom by the way were under 25), and about 12 months later the church failed over a naming dispute (with some former pastors taking the name to the Gold Coast) and that was how it, after it restarted, came to be “Riverview”.
Post-church – the healing begins?
Soon after this, my gf died in a car accident. I felt hollow inside. I spent that whole holiday trying to keep as busy as possible and avoided thinking about anything personal. I pulled off three HDs in my first semester. I also realised that I had left the church but not left its mindset behind – I was an angry, hateful, judgemental person who scorned the unfamiliar and looked for fault and “sin” in everyone I met, and I did everything in my power to turn that on its head. I used to make it my mission to talk to a new person every day on the bus – it was my way of forcing myself to understand and accept the world as it was. Nowadays my values and political ideology is probably best summed up as left-wing libertarian. It was a long path getting there, though and the many people who were patient with me and shared their life views, even when (perhaps especially when!) they radically disagreed with my own, were instrumental in that process.
The coming out thing
Although I’d had feelings for guys, I had never thought of myself as being gay. Gay, you see, to me, was all those things I was told about from a young age – it wasn’t me. I remember the moment I realised that I must be … (whatever word I’d come up with for myself). I was in a lecture theatre during a 2 hour lecture, and was in a very bad place. I remember feeling that there was a line and if I crossed it I would be forever condemned in the eyes of God – yet I knew the time was fast coming where that would happen. I nearly became a statistic and the social pressure of sitting in the middle of a lecture theatre was the only thing that saved me – by the end I was still jittery but more able to cope. I started trying to get counselling. Soon after this I discovered the then-embryonic online world and started finding guys who openly identified as gay but were just like me in many ways (my age, dedicated to studies, interested in music, not camp, etc). That was by far the best thing that happened to that point. I had a very, very rocky road over the first 2 or so years I was out, but I learned slowly to live with myself as I really was, not as I dreamed myself to be.
My parents handled the news VERY badly, for about 9 months any trust in our relationship went out the window, and I even got made to listen to Sy Rogers’ tapes and attend one of his sermons at Rhema. As with anything I was willing to listen to what he had to say but I was not convinced. Eventually my parents (who had stopped fellowshipping but still held to the views of the church in general) did accept it – they met various partners over the years and I think came to see the church might have got it wrong about gay people. However it is not discussed openly at home.
At around 20, I read the Bible from cover to cover for the first time in my life. I had never really stopped believing in God, but I remember reading parts – especially those parts the church had emphasised so strongly – and realising that in context they meant way different things to what we had learnt. I think this was a big step for me as I was able to separate “God” and “the church” in my mind – I realised that God was real and that he spoke through his word, but that the word I had received was that of men – well-meaning, faithful men, but men nonetheless.
The future
And now? Just about to embark on a new – maybe scary – part of my work life which will see me develop a lot as a person and understand the world around me a lot better. My life has felt “in limbo” for a few years as changing careers can, but I am actually hopeful for the first time in a long time.
Concluding note
Thank you for reading this far. I’d love to hear others’ input, especially if you’ve come from a similar place or know others who have. I may not be able to answer all questions, as I’ve been meticulous in protecting my privacy in my above disclosures – I don’t doubt almost anyone active in the church at that time would remember me and I think it could be a shock to them that I am where I am today. But I’ll do my best. 🙂
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