In my first semester of college I had a profound religious experience. Having grown up in a family that practiced a perfunctory Christianity, I found myself surrounded by friends who took their faith quite seriously. I was intrigued. This was in the early 1970’s when the “Jesus Movement” was well under way. I was persuaded and became fully involved. It was a culture where God was found more emotionally than intellectually, and more in experience than in clear thinking. I still have friends I made in those days and I learned some perspectives I continue to value, but I also picked up something theologically problematic; a belief that God would rearrange reality on my behalf. This is not an uncommon belief.
Of course, I never stated it that way; that would smack of undo pride and arrogance. What I said was that God would hear my prayers, meaning God would protect me, heal me, arrange the world to make sure favorable things happened for me. It was a belief that made me feel protected and valued, and in an emotional sense, what is love except feeling secure and valued by someone else? It was comforting and powerful. But there was this one problem. I was a homosexual, and everyone assuring me that God had my back, also told me this was a very bad thing indeed. It would make God rethink loving me.
In the mistaken belief that I needed to undo my gay reality, I set out to provide all the conditions in which God could – and therefore of course, would – fix it. Heterosexual marriage and sex (in that order), seminary, ministry and service to others, Bible study, faithful prayer sometimes in tears, counseling both secular and spiritual, journaling, exorcism, ex-gay – for twenty-five years I did it all. Many things changed. Many great people crossed my life in meaningful ways. Many wonderful events and spiritual moments happened. A change in my sexual orientation was not one of them.
After 25 years of great difficulty and anguish, I finally realized there was a basic reality at work in my life and no amount of spirituality was going to change it. This was a valuable life lesson. When you try to live against reality, you can hurt yourself… and others. This became important for me – “Don’t try to live against reality.” Nature doesn’t care what you want or believe. So a mantra in my life is this “Nature don’t care.” I became more of an empiricist – show me the science. It is no accident that my 2nd career was grounded in reading, understanding, summarizing, and teaching others research-based ways of dealing with life issues.
Imagine an ideology determining gravity is “just a theory.” (And by the way, that is exactly what gravity is – a theoretical understanding of how spacetime works.) Imagine then being taught that with sufficient spirituality you can “transcend gravity.” I’m not talking about flying which has scientific principles behind it. I mean the belief that, with sufficient faith, you can levitate off the ground. Some who engage in transcendental meditation have asserted exactly that. I’ll only say the evidence for this being true is lacking and as we in the research world are fond of saying: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” No such evidence has emerged. For the rest of us mere mortals, acting upon this dismissal of gravity will lead to serious physical injury or even death. Imagine breaking an arm, leg, or your neck because you jumped off a ledge, and then having someone tell you the cause of your injury was not the fall, not the gravity, but your lack of faith and you should really repent of your disbelief and try it again. That is the idea of “faith” too frequently promoted.
This may seem an obvious life lesson, but today, especially in this era of pandemic, there are literally thousands of people who fail to apply this basic understanding in the real world. Claiming to be “covered in the blood of Jesus” or some other such religious-based, magical thinking they will swear they are immune to the SARS-Cov-2 virus. They will refuse to wear a mask, practice social distancing, or take other simple measures to protect themselves and others. God, they assert, will alter reality for them. Some have become ill. Some of have died. Some have infected and killed others. I don’t mention these folks to demean or mock them. I’m sorry for them. I’m sorry for those I misled with that same bad theology. I use my story, and sadly theirs as well, to illustrate the danger of these beliefs, how widespread they are, and how they threaten everyone.
Here’s the bottom line: God is not going to alter the physical world to suit your doctrines or even your health. Neither the world nor God work that way. Viruses are not moral agents; they are natural phenomenon and will follow the laws of nature. Whatever your religion, politics, intellectual rationalizations or other barriers against reality, nature don’t care. Learn to say this with me as a basic fact of life – Nature don’t care.
Shalom. AB
I love you. And admire you for sharing.
Thank you, Judy. I appreciate your thoughts.
Another very thoughtful post. I’m enjoying getting to know you through your writing and can relate. Internalized homophobia was alive and well as I came out, “you are an abomination” was the church’s message. There were the “country” hell fire and damnation churches and the more sedate “city” churches. I remember Clyde David saying @ my mom’s funeral that she “quietly went about her faith”. She believed that if you really had faith there was no need to “carry on like that, praying out loud, testifying, showing off”. But, as a kid, I got my fill of the more demonstrative, fundamentalists going to Bible school and revivals with friends. I swear this is a true story: I learned @ a revival that you should never do anything you wouldn’t want to be doing “when Jesus comes”. You guessed it, I got really bad constipation. I wasn’t going to be on the pot for the Rapture!
I fell in love with a “Northerner”, moved to Mass. and remember saying out loud “I can’t do this under their nose” meaning family, that I would shame them. The cover story was “I’m going to grad school, the best schools are in the Northeast”. The early days of “de-dyking” when family visited is funny now but felt necessary then. Eventually, I felt safe and thankfully found the family supportive. “No we are not like Kate and Allie”. I lost my religion @ Berea when I found out the books of The Bible were chosen by mere men with a political agenda. Who knew? I had been lied to! Unable to totally shed that religious upbringing, I now consider myself agnostic. I stayed “up North” for 20 years and did earn a masters @ Boston University (this little country girl very proud and of you and your Ivy League education). We very likely were in Boston @ the same time. Settling in Northampton, “the 5 college area” was like heaven. The mayor was lesbian, the city council mostly gay, only a couple hrs from Provincetown. Tired of the snow and NE winters, I moved back to Berea with partner #2, Sylvia, originally from New Hampshire. The culture shock moving to NE was nothing compared to the experience coming back. Had they gotten more conservative? Was it always this bad? For example Sylvia was on the Christmas party planning committee @ her work and was flabbergasted when it was boycotted for being called “a holiday party”. We had come from a culture of inclusion, what the hell was this?
Now, almost 20 yrs back, I’ve settled down some. I’ve learned to better accept life’s contradictions and that there are often no real answers. But every now and then, often unexpectedly those early messages come front and center. Like when IQ45 stood in front of the church holding up the Bible. My first thought was, “God’s gonna strike you dead for such blasphemy”! Wow, where’d that come from? But he seems a perfect example of such a belief that God would rearrange reality on his behalf. Yep, “magical thinking” (jargon from my professional training) for sure.
Indeed it’s been an amazing process and journey, not sure it’s over but a lot less painful accepting, “nature don’t care”. Thanks for sharing and listening!