I Don’t Believe You. WTF?
“I don’t believe you,” really, “I don’t believe you,” was the thick and disconnected response to my confession “I’m gay.” Yet, that is what Pastor Carl said as I sat on his back porch and bore my heart. It had been years since we worked together in a shared ministry. But as my mentor for over a decade before that, and in theory my pastor for the last five years, I felt compelled to come talk to him about my journey since we parted ways as co-workers. I realize now I was going for approval I would never get from him.
Part of me regrets that I gave him the opportunity to speak into my life at this point. And another part is deeply grateful because in those thirty minutes I finally saw him for what he was. A mostly decent man afraid of things outside his experience and control in his little outpost of the kingdom. In search of a surrogate father in the faith I sought him out in college. I had hoped that he’d help me sort out my unspoken spiritual conflict. “How can I be a follower of Jesus with this affection for other men.” Instead, I sat with him for years, wrestling with “how can we still forgiven if we continue to sin after having been saved?”
His answer was poetic and mystical: “grace will consume you.” I clung to that for years. Until I realized that grace for him, and many others, meant the will to hate myself enough to kill off the part that was moved to cleave to a man and not a woman, even that is actually what I was meant to do.
“I don’t believe you….”
“I don’t believe you. Because being gay is an illusion and a lie. It’s a vapor you cannot cling to and results in a life of pain and loneliness.” He had such clarity for someone who had no real, reciprocal relationships with gay persons living in their joy. Only closeted conversations with those who agreed with them that their sexuality was a problem to be solved.
Hahahahaha! Inside myself grace rose up in the face of those words. In uncharacteristic confidence I stood up for myself against his worldview for the first time.
“You’re wrong, Carl, I have met gay people who have life and love and joy.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “Carl, I have met gay people who have life and love and joy. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And you’re wrong.”
In response he painted a picture of a life where I could publicly admit my same sex attraction and make a show of my celibacy as a sort of beacon of self restraint to help others along the way. What a sad masochistic way of life if one is not called to and gifted for it.
“I have people with whom I will be talking about these things from now on, and it won’t be with you. Goodbye, Carl.”
I walked away from him and his porch with new life in me. I had found that I was okay without him. Better, even. Grace did in fact consume me, grace from God to believe that I am a beloved son already known and loved as I am. And I found that for the first time, I believed me, even if Carl did not.
I weep when I think of how many other people have sat in his cozy study over the years being told that they are not to be believed. Dear God save them from his unbelief.
I believe you. And I believe you are known and loved as you are. And your work is not to kill yourself but to grow in love and grace and relationship within the life you have been given.
I believe you.
If you want to walk with someone who wants to help you put the pieces of your life and heart and sex and soul back together please reach out to me or for the love of God, someone else who will believe you.