I remember the first time I entered a church, I was six
years old and it wasn’t even the church of my family’s denomination. My parents
placed me at a catholic school as a kid because I got jealous that my autistic
brother got to go to school before I did, mind you I was only four at that
time. I believe it was Ash Wednesday when I first went; I didn’t know what it
meant or what it stood for. So as the curious kid as I was, and still am, I
asked my first grade teacher what we were doing. Of course she didn’t give me a
clear answer and I still don’t really know what it is to this day, in which I
do plead ignorance in the sense that I don’t really know much about
Catholicism. It also didn’t help that I grew up in a family of mixed
denominations. My dad was raised Episcopal and my mom was raised Southern
Baptist. I don’t really know what my
parents wanted for me as far as religious beliefs went, so it really made
things confusing growing up. When I was nine, my mom took me to church with my
adopted grandfather. This church was a Protestant church if memory serves
correctly, and I was put into a Sunday school class with children my age. In
this class that one Sunday they were talking about Jesus and how he did good
deeds for others he didn’t even know. Because I was the “new kid” in class, I
was called on a lot more than the other children. One thing out of my curiosity
I asked, “How do we know Jesus really did those things?” I was told by the
teacher that the Bible says so. I was nine and didn’t want to accept that
answer. I left the room to look for my mom and when I did, I asked her if we
could leave and to not take me back to that church again. Then the move to
Idaho happened and I was exposed to another type of religion, Mormonism, which
I still don’t have a lot of knowledge of and most of what I know is lies my
parents told me about it. My first exposure to it was when I asked a girl to
come to my house for dinner because she was a good friend, she asked her
parents and they told her that she could go because it sounded like a date
rather than having a friend over for dinner. I asked her why and it was because
she couldn’t date until she was sixteen, in which this made no sense to me at
all because I didn’t ask her out on a date. The next time I went to church I
was twelve, and it was for a youth group and the local church college Northwest
Nazarene University. I went with some good friends I had at the time and had a
great time there. Although stirring inside of me were feelings that didn’t make
sense. It was like the thinking was being done for me and not my own. After my
best friend at the time moved away, I stopped going for years. And through
those years I was trying to come to terms with what I been taught in religion
with my sexuality, which was very difficult to do for someone aged thirteen
through eighteen. I started going to church again when I entered college with
some friends I had made in the dormitories. This church was an interesting one,
something I had never experienced before. Songs about God and Jesus by
religious singers and groups like Casting Crowns, then a sermon, and finally an
encore performance. I’m not friends with some of these people anymore because
of either my sexuality or because I question religion in its entirety. I
stopped going to church at nineteen and haven’t been back since because my
views don’t mesh well with some of their views, especially when it came down to
my sexuality and who I am as a person.
This isn’t about Catholics, Baptists, Protestants, Mormons,
or what it is about them I do and don’t like. This is about what Spirituality
means to me and also what Agnostic means to me as well because I belong in both
camps, but they are both situational in my views and I’m not going to claim
that I’m right or wrong, this is just purely explanatory for my belief system
that works for myself.
Spirituality is different for everyone. It is high
meaningful to say that it is a broad spectrum of beliefs rather than a static view. Of course my idea of
Spirituality is going on a long run and thinking about life decisions that must
be made or even just meditating on my own or in yoga class. My belief in Heaven
is that there is one and we all go there regardless of what we did on Earth and
my belief is that Hell doesn’t exist because we are currently experiencing it in
our waking life. Hell is said to be a place of fire and brimstone, a place
where those who sinned go to experience unimaginable pain and discomfort.
Earth, I believe is our Hell, there is no Satan or demons; there is experience
of pain and discomfort at unimaginable levels. If Jesus did die for our sins
than why is it that we cannot sin freely without being told we are going to
Hell? The answer I have arrived at for myself is that humans are going to be
sinners; no matter how hard we try we are never going to be perfect, therefore
we always sin and we’d all be going to Hell anyway. I can’t honestly say that,
and this one is overused, that I’m going to Hell just because I’m gay. This is
where my belief in God comes into the picture. I believe that God can possibly
be a man or a woman, we don’t really know for sure and since watching “Joan of
Arcadia” I hold this belief that if you believe God is a man then that is your
view, and same goes for if you believe God is a woman. He/She has set a path
for us to follow and gives us a choice on such a path. He/She also creates us
in the beginning of our life here on Earth. Suffice to say I was born gay and
is not a choice because I have something to learn as a gay man that someone
didn’t learn at all for whatever reason it may be. My soul is of God’s essence,
just like everybody else’s. When we do die we become a part of He/She, with no
judgment aside from whether we return to Earth or not, which this idea is
called reincarnation, only I don’t believe we become a plant or animal when we
learned our lesson. But this is what I personally believe. Another reason I’m
not completely agnostic is that there are many things that can’t be explained
objectively. An example is my friendship with my best friend. I was dating an
incredibly abusive person at the start of this year and I actually met her in
an undergraduate Practicum class and she saw that I was in constant sadness.
She started hanging around me and eventually things blew up between this guy
and I. I had a good talk with her about what to do, as well as another good
friend of mine, and decided to break-up with him. She also noticed that I
wasn’t eating that well and becoming anorexic and helped me get out of that
hole I was in. If she didn’t come into my life I would’ve just starved myself
into malnutrition. She has helped me in more ways than one. It is unsuspected
friendships like hers that keep me believing in God.
Agnostism to me is when I am in the lab or when I’m making a
decision for my life, which is in tie with my spirituality. When I am in the
psychology labs I have to be objective and not let personal ideas get in my
way. I think of it as my scientist-self. There is protocol to be followed and
decisions have to be made in a non-personal manner. This idea is still fairly
new to me, but when I do think about it a lot of questions do come to my mind.
My main question is what kind of God puts someone on Earth that is homosexual
and allows others to be ridiculed for who they are? That was something I asked
myself during high school when I was being bullied for being different. It just
didn’t seem fair at all. A great friend of mine and I were talking about this
last night, is that the good gay men constantly get hurt, not just by patterns
of hurt we all go through, but because people make the decision to hurt others
for no reason other than that they are different and don’t fit into a mold.
Sure it gets confusing since I have a foot in one world and
the other one in another. When it comes down to it, this works for me as a
person and helps me work out what is going on in the world. This helps me
create a world that is easier to understand and still be able to be a skeptic
in a dangerous world such as ours. Even with being a gay male, I still have
faith in what I believe to be true and no one can take that away from me.
Because everyone’s ideas of religion, spirituality, and skepticism are
different. Some are more different than night and day, and instead of causing
an argument over who is right and who is wrong, we should try to understand our
differences and learn from each other.
