My Spirit's Comfort

What was it about faith that made it painful? If I love God, must I hate myself? If I leave God, will I learn to love who I am? Did my desire warrant my exile as my ambience contradicts a doctrine built on conservatism? And for this, I should cut into my skin and bleed sacrificially?

For God's supposed glory, I reviled the very sensation I longed for, as if a man's touch might condemn me forever. For years, I prayed for God to rid me of my affections and fix my thoughts on what is "true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable." If only to be accepted by the masses. 

"The Christian faith" is but an idealistic worldview placing human individuality at the substratum of sin. Written within my spiritual redemption was a compendium of contradiction. Such as a God that loves me for who I am, with a love that may presumably change who I am? And to be affirmed by Christian ethics, I must first admonish the most authentic parts of myself? 

The condition of His unconditional love is that I chastise my flesh, for my flesh is the enemy of my spirit. Is this not the same flesh that God created? Am I not a product of Him, imperfect and all? If I am saved by grace, am I still a sinner? And if I am still a sinner, was I ever saved? 

If God defeated sin, why are we born into it still? How can I be judged for the free will that God gave me? If it was not right that man be alone, why is it right that I be (celibate)? How can a child "stir divisions" among a congregation of credentialed preachers? 

Furthermore, how can a 16-year-old virgin be a "homosexual?" My cavernous love for one man is "unnatural" while my inauthentic tolerance for women is celebrated? If I seem performative in my values, am I more righteous than if I remain forthright? If God knows my heart, then he knows I never really loved her like I loved her brother. 

This and my daringness to speak out inspired my uprooting. No prayer saved me. No witless teaching prepared by the husband of a pastor's daughter brought forth my conversion. I, a child, became a topic of heretical conversation. "A diseased sheep-" that's what they called me. I was regarded as the contamination that God called to be put down. Lest I infect the flock with my insubordination. Lest I be relevant. Lest I be understood.

Maybe my sin was feeling safe enough to confide in my leaders. Thinking I could be loved instead of categorized while my devotion, service, and faith in community was taken for granted. By no account did I create fractures within that community. It was community that created fractures within me. My vulnerability, to admit to my same-gender attractions, is why the Board of Elders issued a statement, saying that I am not of God for I serve the Adversary. Me. A child. 

I was then outed in a defamatory letter that encouraged parents to protect their children from me. Where they saw different, they also saw a threat. My life, for what I knew it to be, was over. I lost what I considered to be my home along with the only friends I ever had. 

So I deserted my faith in God the same way the church deserted their faith in me. 

I now acknowledge the depth of my spiritual abuse in the depths of my scars, forever shown upon my flesh. Flesh -the once enemy of my spirit until it became my spirit's comfort. 

"By the grace of God, I am what I am" - said a sinner no greater than I.