WHY I HATE GOD'S CALL ON MY LIFE

This is a post I've written in response to a bunch of nonsense between Christians about whether or not the Bible has errors in it.

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Who Gives a Rip if the Bible is True or False?

 “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?

 ~ Jesus of Nazareth

 

YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO DO WHAT IT SAYS ANYWAY

 

I knew as a little queer boy of 18 what God was going to call me to do.  I kept telling God, "You don't understand, I'm gay, I don't know how not to be gay, and even if I could no one would ever let a homosexual, current or former, be a leader in a church."  I'm not kidding, I actually said this to God, time and time again.  I said this, for the last time, right before I threw God out of my life and started calling myself an agnostic.   I wasn't an agnostic, not when I start calling myself one, but I did eventually become very comfortable with being an agnostic, and later calling myself an atheist.   Whatever reason I may have had for becoming an agnostic, within a couple of years I was truly an atheist.  Of course at the time I was kicking God out of my life I'd never heard of a gay church, and if I had I still had enough integrity not to make God something he wasn't.  I didn't want God forcing me into something I didn't want to do, and I sure wasn't going to do it to him.

  

My thinking about God has changed radically, needless to say.  Still, I feel the same way, about ministry, as I did when I was 18. Only now it's 30 years later.   I don't want to do the ministry work God has called me to do.  It would be fine if God would call me to hookers, crack addicts, skid row drunks, mentally imbalanced homeless people who see little men stabbing them with knives (true story, by the way).   ANYTHING ELSE, ANY OTHER MINISTRY!! other than what God has called me to do.   Hookers hate me because they hate being used by men.  They hate me especially because I'm a "preacher man" and they think all I want to do is tell them what terrible people they are, to make "brownie points" with God.  I can live with that.  I can live with the kind of honest hate hookers, crackheads, and hardcore drunks throw my way.  What I absolutely can't stand is ministering to and leading Christians.  Christians smile to your face and say "God bless you", and then malign, gossip, and plunge daggers into your back whenever it's turned.  

I was 8 or 9 years-old when the pastor, of the Methodist Church I was raised in, was destroyed by "progressive" thinkers in the congregation.  That pastor wasn't moved out of our church by the Bishop, he requested an immediate transfer out of my church.  I watched my mother cry and cry, because the most wonderful pastor she'd ever been under had been maliciously slandered by a little group of aggressive liberals (I didn't realize it then, but those progressive "christians" pretty much liberal proofed me.  I did go through a short phase as a liberal, during my gay college years, but it was doomed by the stupid progressives in my first church).  What I always found interesting is that after the theologically conservative pastor was run off this little group of liberals all left shortly after him.  We never knew what became of them.  Our former pastor went on to teach at a seminary, author some books, and pastor other congregations elsewhere.   Evidently, he never ran into the kind of problems he'd found at our Methodist Church, or maybe not as bad.  That isn't really the heart of my problem with God's call on my life, but abuse is something I've seen a lot of in my life.  I've seen Christians abuse clergy, and I've seen clergy abuse the laity.   The heart of my problem is the personal abuse I suffered in my own life.  It was a very unique sort of abuse, kind of a perfect storm of abuse. 

 

My dad wasn't a good parent, he was negligent.   But he didn't stop there, he went from negligent to criminally negligent.  I'll get to that shortly, but first a little set up before revealing the grand betrayal.   My maternal grandfather died about 7 months before I was born.  My maternal grandmother died when I was 3-years-old.   My uncle was over 20 years younger than my mom and her sisters.  Mom and all of her sisters were married and gone by the time their little brother was born.  My grandfather was a huge man. Granddad had been an all star football player, in college, (at a time when football players wore only a thin leather helmet and little to know padding when playing.  My grandfather was the definition of a "Man's Man").  When my uncle was born, the only son, my grandfather was over the moon!   He didn't discipline his cherished son, and even at a very early age, my uncle was a little monster.  After my grandmother died, my uncle, only 10 or 11 years my senior, was passed around to his older sisters.   The monster was soon hated by the husbands of his sisters, because he played cruel jokes, tortured pet kittens and puppies, bullied, his only slightly younger nieces and nephews.   My uncle's, brothers-in-law were soon reduced to incredible rages, which always led to cursing the little monster to his face.  The little monster uncle had to move, or meet his doom at the hands of an enraged brother-in-law.  For me it was a simple case of life imitating Russian Roulette.  Three sisters, and eventually my family would get the little monster hurled our way at the velocity of an 88mm Howitzer slug.   Remember I said my grandfather was a big man, well the little monster was really a big monster.  by the time he exploded my house he was 13 or 14, (I was 3-years-old).  He was already most of the way to his 6'3" height, and weighed nearly 300 pounds.   My oldest brother was 3 or 4 years younger than uncle monster.   Uncle monster made my oldest brother's life pretty rough at times, but he was popular and played sports.  My oldest brother had a way of escape most of the time.  My older brother was a little, skinny, shy thing, who'd either hide, or silently endure uncle monster's attentions.  For uncle monster my older brother wasn't any fun.  You know the story about the big bad wolf.  He huffed and puffed, but the first two little pigs escaped.  I'm little piggy #3, and unlike the story of wolf and three little pigs, this big bad wolf hit pay dirt with piggy #3.  I was the little pig which squealed all the time!  I was the fun piggy, I squealed when uncle monster merely looked my way.  I was uncle monster's favorite play thing.  I'd be sitting on the couch, or a chair in the den, quietly watching cartoons, and uncle monster would join me.   He always preferred to sit wherever I happened to be sitting.  He wouldn't throw me out of the chair, he'd simply sit on me.  I was 3 years-old and weighed, what 35 pounds, 45 at the most.  He put all of his nearly 300 pound, 6'+ dead weight down on a little 3-year-old kid.  

Uncle monster should have written scripts for horror movies.  He didn't usually hit me, hitting me was too dangerous.  One hit from him could kill me.  He preferred to throw me in closets, and block the door; use a cinder block as a step so he could reach up and set me on the roof of the house.  One of his favorite games was to take me, open the basement door, and deposit me on the third step, before quickly closing the door.  The basement was unfinished and dark.  The lights were turned on by strings that hung down.  I was too little to reach the strings.  The basement was a terrifying place as it was.  With uncle monster the basement became a room in Hell.  I still don't know how he was able to explain the violence awaiting me in that dark basement.  He spun the story of a butcher; a huge fat man covered in blood, who loved to slowly cut up little boys, with an endless rack of cleavers, butcher knives, saws, long spikes, axes, and wavy bladed knives the butcher loved to use when cutting the little boy from between his legs all the way up to his chin.  I only have vivid memories of his stories, I remember nothing of the stories my mother claims she read to me when I was young.  I remember other bits of my early childhood, but I remember vividly my uncles tortures and torments (they were, actually, quite brilliant, when I look back at them now).   For all the fear, all the horror visited upon me by uncle monster, there is not even a little anger toward him.  Forgiving my uncle was easier than forgiving my dad.  It took years to forgive my dad.  No matter what uncle monster did it was nothing to what my dad did.

  

Uncle monster wasn't a stupid monster.  At first he wouldn't bother me too much when mom or dad were around, but that would change.  I don't know when exactly it happened, but the respite from uncle monster's tortures, my parents afforded me, didn't last long.   Whenever uncle monster tormented me I would cry out.  I would howl, scream, ball my head off.  One night, for some reason, uncle monster was tormenting me, even though mom and dad were both home.  He tormented, and I cried out.  Suddenly my dad's angry voice yelling stopped both my tormentor and my cries.  He'd shouted my name...."LONNIE!" he bellowed angrily.   Then he bellowed again, "LONNIE!...WOULD YOU SHUT UP!"  

Dad knew what my uncle was doing.  Both dad's brothers-in-law had given mom and dad detailed reports of the bullying and cruelty their children had suffered at the hands of uncle monster.  Dad knew my uncle had tortured animals to death.  Dad knew his oldest son avoided our home as much as he could.  Dad knew exactly what uncle monster was doing, and despite all of his knowledge he sought only to silence the cries of his tormented youngest son.   Dad might just as well have handed me physically over to my tormentor.

   

Do you know what I feel when I see Christians having stupid, pointless, empty arguments about the Bible?  I feel like my heavenly father is handing me over to a new and worse uncle monster.   Honestly what do any of you care about the Bible?   What difference does it make if it's all truth, or if it's all lies?   You aren't going to  do what Jesus teaches anyway.  If you were doing what Jesus taught you'd have nothing to argue about!!!   Jesus tells us how to know the truth:

IF YOU BELIEVE IN ME, THEN KEEP; LIVE; DO; PUT INTO PRACTICE ALL THAT I TEACH!!   DOING WHAT I TEACH MAKES YOU MY TRUE DISCIPLE, AND AS YOU ARE MORE AND MORE MY DISCIPLE YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THAT TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

 
Don't blame the liberals, the atheists, the homosexual, the pro-choice, don't blame anyone else.  The only threat there is against the truth of God's word is the Church's disobedience.   Do you know why God has called me, an ex-queer to minister to HIS Church???   Because the screwed up, sick, gross way I behaved with other boys is exactly the same kind of screwed up, sick, and gross way you Christians act toward God!!!!  If you were doing what Christ taught you'd have no fear at all of any atheist, or Scripture twisting liberal.  God told you his word cannot fail.
 

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth;
It shall not return to Me void,
But it shall accomplish what I please,
And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

But obviously God didn't know what he was talking about, because here we are combating people who don't believe the Bible the way "WE" believe the Bible.  You really want to cure your problem with the Bible?? 

"Go!" to the naked and clothe them; "Go" to the hooker and cry out to God on her behalf; "Go!" to the homosexual and offer the love of Christ and offer the right kind of relationship; "Go!" feed a hungry person; "Go!" visit the old and alone; "Go!" and obey Christ's teaching, and you'll never worry about the liberals and atheists.   When people see you act like Christ instead of a religious "uncle monsters", then Christ will be honored and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

  You will laugh at the liberals and atheists, and they won't have anything to say about you, because you won't stop helping and blessing people to waste any time arguing with them.  They will see your good works, and be silenced.  I would know about that, because I was an atheist and a Christian showed me the forgiveness of God after I'd treated them exactly the way uncle monster treated me.  I didn't come to Christ through one of you arguing, politicking, law making, Bible thumping, self-appointed morality police, and you never could have brought me to Christ.  I came to Christ because one Christian didn't act like any of you.  The God I was introduced to, showed me, the truth of His word by showing me obedience is the way to know him, and the truth in the Bible.   When God frees you, you are free indeed, but freedom doesn't from hijacking Genesis, because the big bad evolutionists need to learn the truth.  If you knew the truth, you'd obey Jesus, and not waste pearls on pigs. 

Seriously God...wasn't one uncle monster enough?  Please God don't throw me to the Christians.  Throw me to the hookers, drunks, and crackheads, at least they're honest about their natures.  God please remember what my human dad told me when I confronted him with his parental neglect..."Honey, I didn't know what to do."  And remember what Christians have said to me over and over again, when I ask them why they don't/won't reach out to LGBT people,  "We don't know what to do."  Honestly Father, do you think these Christians are any different than the human father who made the same excuse??  My dad didn't care, and neither do they, so please don't throw me to these religious "uncle monsters".  Been there, done that, HATED IT!!