There was a time I considered myself a very staunch Christian who refused to be open to anything but the Bible and the Trinity. I lived in a box and anything that approached my box, but wasn’t already in it, I dismissed as blasphemy. Over time though, I came to learn that for as long as I stay in any type of box, my spirituality couldn’t grow beyond the walls of it.
The first time I started looking outside my initial Christian box in life was completely due to my sexuality. Up until the age of 23, I was basically asexual. While I had many thoughts about same-sex relations since puberty, I never acted upon any of them and instead drank and drugged those feelings away. That all began to change when I fell in love with one of my best male friends during my senior year of college. The difficulty that I faced with that was knowing the seven passages that existed between the Old and New Testament which spoke against homosexuality. Eventually I quit drinking and drugging because I honestly thought they were causing me to have those same sex feelings. Early on in sobriety, I spent quite a bit of time focusing on my sexuality because I was under such duress over it. After much deliberation, I came to the acceptance that I was born gay. The problem I still faced with that though, was knowing where Christianity stood on this subject.
Initially, I had one foot in a box and one foot out of it as I lived a double life. I went to a very right wing Christian church that was extremely family oriented. At the same time I fell for a man during my first year of sobriety who became my first long term monogamous relationship. I became very conflicted because of this. On the one hand, most gay people I was meeting had rejected God because of what Christians were constantly saying about them. But on the other hand, I loved reading and studying the Bible and felt that God loved me just as I was. When I finally decided to step fully outside of that first box I had created around me, I outed myself to that church I was going to. Sadly, they didn’t accept me so I put myself into another box, one that rejected God, like so many other gay people have done for the same reason.
I spent awhile in that second box until I discovered the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) of Washington, D.C. There I saw many gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and transgendered people following the Christian religion. Everyone always seemed so happy at those services I went to there. I began to get to know many of the attendees quite well, each who had good hearts and souls, and formed several close friendships because of it. I started having trouble understanding how God could send any of them to hell, as that is what many Christians had told me where I would go if I continued “practicing” being gay. I began to stop buying into the idea that God put millions of people on this earth to have these feelings only to want them to be celibate for their entire life or to force themselves to be with the opposite sex and be miserable. I also started to accept that while the Bible might have been inspired by God, it was also written by men (who were human and flawed like we all are) thousands of years ago in a time where things were very different. Some Christians would say that statement alone is blasphemy. I realize today that when I used to say that, it was only because I was in fear that maybe my truths weren’t the only truths, so that became my defense mechanism. In a short time after all this, I left that second box completely and began to question everything.
I started meeting wonderful Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and many other people who practiced religions other than Christianity. Sadly, most of the Christians I knew at the time told me that God would never allow any of those people into Heaven because they weren’t accepting Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I couldn’t buy into the idea that God would deny admission into Heaven all those millions and millions of people that were created by God just because they weren’t practicing one specific religion.
Today, through much research, meditation, prayer, and life lessons, I’ve come to a place where I can’t live in a box anymore that accepts any of those crazy notions. I’ve learned too much and have seen that there is a little bit of truth to everything out there but just as much misconceptions and lies surrounding it all as well. I still love the Christian religion, the Bible, and the Trinity. But I also love just as much studying Gautama Buddha and the Buddhism religion, Muhammad and the Muslim religion, anything to do with Hinduism, Wicca, or any other religion for that matter. I come to fully accept not only my homosexuality as God given, but also things such as karma, reincarnation, psychics, mediums, tarot cards, astrology, and numerology, solely because I’m no longer living in any box. All of these things can have inherent good in them if they are practiced that way. And I don’t believe that anyone who practices any of these things with unconditional love in their hearts is going to be denied admission into Heaven or sent to some type of hell.
Regardless, I once lived in several boxes that I didn’t want to see out of and I stayed in them with others who believed exactly as I believed. My spirituality and my understanding of life weren’t able to grow beyond the walls of those boxes as a result. By permanently stepping out of all of those boxes, I was able to start accepting everyone from all walks of life and have been able to see how we all are connected. While remaining in a box might have once felt safe to me, especially when so many others were there with me, staying in them prevented me from ever coming to believe in one very important truth.
God is love and loves everyone equally. Regardless of what one’s sexual preference is (whether they are practicing it or not), or what one’s religion is, or what one’s belief systems are, I believe that all that matters to God is to make sure we practice them with love and light, not just towards ourselves, but also towards each other, just like I’m sure God does with all of us…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson