Category: Words To Live By

Recently, a local priest in my vicinity after preparing the elements for communion in front of their congregation said, and I’m not joking here either, that those who voted for President Biden shouldn’t receive the sacrament that day. A female parishioner there got so upset she left right then and there.

Hearing this directly from another priest friend of mine and confirming the story’s validity was incredibly disheartening. I wanted to believe it was just “fake news”, but sadly it wasn’t, as that woman had come to my friend in anguish over the whole matter. What’s truly sad is that Christ welcomed all to his table. ALL! To suggest anything otherwise, especially over who voted for who in the last presidential election is truly sad and despicable on so many levels.

I personally have experienced this very thing in many different churches throughout my life, where my sexuality, or my gender, or my not being a member there, or my not being of that specific denomination or faith, etc., excluded me from being fully a part of that church in some way.

Wasn’t it Jesus who associated himself and even broke bread throughout his life with social outcasts, beggars, prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, Pharisees, Sadducees, Priests, roman soldiers, and many other foreigners. Wasn’t it Jesus who never turned any of them away? 2,021 years after Christ lived and people are still being turned away from his table!

The more times I hear stories like this, the more I have no desire to ever step foot back into a church again for worship. I’d rather worship from home where I can be me and don’t have to conform to someone else’s judgments of what they think is acceptable in the eyes of Christ and God.

Stories like this painfully remind me of the numerous times I faced rejection at places of worship by pastors, the worship team, or even members, due to my being a “practicing homosexual” and suggesting that was detestable in the eyes of God due to their interpretation of their religious books of reference.

Do you know what I really think is the most detestable in the eyes of God? Turning anyone away for ANY reason at any place of worship of Him. Doing so, or even telling anyone they aren’t accepted for any reason in God’s eyes, is one of the lowest things I think you can do to someone on their spiritual journey in life. Because it often drives a hungry seeker of God completely away, leaving them in shame, feeling like they aren’t good enough, even in God’s eyes.

All of this reminded me of another story I heard not too long ago of a lead drummer at an evangelical church being asked to step down from his position on the worship team because he was living with his girlfriend and having intimacy with her, someone he deeply loved, but out of wedlock. The result of which was him leaving the church altogether for awhile, even relapsing back into his drug addiction to cope with the rejection. This is much of the same reason why I chose alcohol and drugs for a good period of my life because I thought God had made a mistake with me. I believed the lie that many religious people told me that I would never be accepted in God’s eyes so long as I was in a same-sex relationship. I even tried to date the opposite sex because of this. I tried to force myself to be with women and couldn’t even get an erection no matter how many times I tried. Yet, I continued to live the lie all to be accepted by God and the churches I attended. Thankfully, God eventually helped me to see otherwise by letting me know He made me this way and showed me it was ok to be with one man, so long as I remained monogamous and devoted to them.

Nevertheless, God is nothing but unconditional love, which Christ demonstrated here over two millennia ago. But religion continues to say otherwise through examples like this priest and his views on communion, or the rejection the LGBTQ community continues to face in so many churches, and plenty of others who aren’t really fully welcomed until they conform to “A, B, or C”, all of which gets interpreted from someone’s ego’s interpretation of what the religious book they follow says.

Regardless, I pray I never turn anyone away from God. Sinners or saints, who am I to judge? All are welcomed to Christ’s and God’s table, for communion, for worship, for membership, for leadership, for anything. Telling anyone otherwise is in my book attempting to play God and that for sure is something I’m not and never will be.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

I love my best friend immensely. We’ve been the closest of friends for 24 years now and I pray we will remain the closest of friends for another 24 and then some. But, I often struggle with his approach to Christianity, as I have with many others as well who tend to proselytize their love for Christ in many of their conversations with me.

Look, I love Christ and personally declare Christ as my own teacher and savior and I seek to love as Christ did, but I don’t shout it from the rooftops or talk about it in the majority of my sentences. I do my best instead to show the love of Christ through my actions. Actions like hugging someone, listening to them without giving advice, crying with them, holding their hand, praying for strength, love, and support for them, etc.

Having felt so broken over the past few years from all my pains and anguish, I’ve really felt like I’ve been in hell, but suggesting that I need to deepen my relationship with Jesus Christ and quoting me Biblical passages doesn’t help, it only overwhelms me, as it tends to feel quite judgmental, appearing as if I haven’t done enough spiritually or dedicated myself enough to Christ/God to be free of what I’ve been going through.

It’s why I love the story of Job so much. His three closest friends’ behavior drastically change from unconditional love to conditional love as Job’s pain and suffering carries on long past seven days. As Job anguishes and just wants to know why God allows him to keep hurting so bad, his friends start claiming he must have done something wrong with God. They suggest he’s crossed God somehow and insinuate it’s either some level of sin he’s doing or some level of dedication he needs to have with God that he hasn’t reached yet. Essentially, they all judge Job’s suffering must be Job’s fault somehow, that he’s either not doing enough or not doing it right. They’re all grossly wrong, which God makes sure to let them know in the end by stating that Job had done the best he could and then fully restoring Job’s life.

Whether the story of Job is true or not doesn’t matter, as it simply inspires me because I see much of my own long-lasting pain and suffering in Job’s and have been on the receiving end of people acting just like Job’s friends did. The fact is, I am and have been doing the absolute best I can to seek God in all my circumstances. And I do not believe I am in pain and suffering for as long as I have been because I have wronged God somehow, or because I haven’t sought a deeper relationship with Jesus, or because I haven’t studied enough Biblical passages, or because of some sin I’m still doing, or because of anything on my part really. I learned long ago that God’s grace and love is FREELY given to all of us, which is why I stand firm in my belief that I will heal independent of any works or actions on my part. But, when people proselytize to me, it makes me feel exactly the opposite, like I’m inadequate in the eyes of God, that I haven’t done enough to deserve God’s love, that I’m less than in some way, or that some sin of mine is somehow the cause of my long suffering. When in reality, as Job’s story showed, I don’t think it’s because of any of that.

Nevertheless, people didn’t come to Christ back in his time because of proselytizing. They came to him because of his unconditional acts of love and kindness. That’s why proselytizing tends to remind me today of the Pharisees in Jesus’s time who preached more than live out the scripture and talked more about the laws than in demonstrating the unconditional love and kindness of Jesus.

When my close friend Scott’s brother regularly proselytized him, it eventually caused them to have a major division leading Scott to resent both his brother and Christianity. When my sponsee Jeremiah had a best friend once proselytize heavily to him, it eventually ended their close friendship. And after a recovery friend of mine, Brian, spent the majority of our conversations hammering Jesus Christ and the Bible down my throat, it became so uncomfortable I had to completely pull away from him. Constantly preaching about Jesus and quoting Biblical scriptures, intimidates the non-religious and the non-church attender, often feeling judgmental to them who simply just want the unconditionally loving hand of Christ.

While I know my best friend means well and truly cares about me, as have all the others who have tried the proselytizing approach with me, what none of them seem to understand is that the fastest way for me and many others to run from a Christian is to have them constantly proselytizing their love of Christ, using one Biblical reference after another. Ironically, the fastest way for us to connect with them though is to simply love us unconditionally, arms outstretched, no words needed, letting us know like Christ would, that we are loved no matter what. I just pray one day all the evangelicals will come to understand this…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

When I saw that a number of notable political figures in our country had worn purple during inauguration week and discovered why that was, I thought it was a pretty great statement of showing how red plus blue together is united by the color purple.

Interestingly enough, purple also is one of the main colors that represents the highest energy center of our body, known as the crown chakra, and is at the top of each of our heads. Essentially, the crown chakra is said to be an umbilical cord of sorts to the divine, or Source/God if you may.

Nevertheless, our country has remained strongly divided quite a bit over the past four years. It truly seemed as if the majority of the country locked themselves in opposite corners right up until the Capitol Riots occurred. So many people fiercely supporting either the Democratic Party (Blue) or the Republican Party (Red) and having much to say in their social media or in person about the ills of the other party. I personally remained independent through it all, which oddly enough I learned is often represented by the color white, and is also considered to be a color of the crown charka as well.

Anyway, I find it very appalling that our country has become so divided into two main political parties. I saw far too much hatred come about in the last year or so over what party a person was associated with. Now many saying they won’t claim Biden as their president, when four years ago plenty on the other side saying they weren’t going to do the same with Trump. So much division, so little unity. So much finger pointing. What good does any of this do for our society?

Although I am very unpolitical, I still prayed for peace and love to permeate Donald Trump and his administration many times over during the last four years, and I will do the same with Joe Biden and his administration as well. I could have spent the last four years critiquing and judging all the negative things that the news showed Donald Trump doing. And I could do the same over the next four years with Biden as well, as I’m sure there will be plenty to be said negatively towards him too. Because that’s what happens when you take a side. Choosing either Red or Blue and then remaining judgmental and angry over what the opposite party is doing accomplishes nothing if any of us ever want to see greater peace.

Frankly, I’m very thankful the 2021 Presidential inauguration went on without a hitch and is finally over. I’m also thankful that none of those crazy rumors came true of things happening like martial law or civil war. If I’m going to be completely honest, I sometimes wondered if people really wanted things like that to happen so as to create further division and chaos, because deep down their inner world is already totally representative of that. Plenty of individuals in this world are filled with a lot of chaos and division within themselves already, so to have the outer world become like that, it somehow helps them to feel better with their inner imbalance, keeping their focus always outside of themselves, rather than looking to fix that imbalance within.

Look, if peace is ever to exist in this world, it has to exist within us first. It can never happen the other way around. So long as the focus in us remains on things like who’s Red or Blue, or on any of those other divisions that presently exist in our society, as there any many of them now, we will always remain unsettled, allowing our egos to believe the world will only be better if everyone was just “this way” or “that way”.

I am thankful to at least be able to say that I have peace surrounding politics because I’m not Red and I’m not Blue and I don’t take political sides. I don’t care who is in power and never have. I merely send whomever is, daily love and light hoping they will manifest that, and if they don’t, I keep praying, and if they do, I still keep praying. Because ultimately, I feel it’s my purpose to love everyone, whether they’re Red or Blue, or any other color under the sun.

So, I applaud all those who wore Purple during Inauguration week, as they truly set the stance moving forward in 2021 to create unity rather than division, connection rather than separation, and peace rather than discord. Maybe it’s time we all do the same and stop looking at what’s wrong in the political party we aren’t, and instead start working on fixing what’s broken within us that keeps us seeing the world in such a divided way in the first place.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson