The Religious Anti-Gay Text Message I Didn’t Want Or Need

Have you ever received a truly disturbing text message that you wished you could unsee or never had received it in the first place? Unfortunately, I have and it came just recently from a casual acquaintance in my recovery from addiction circles when I awoke early one morning several Saturday’s ago. This is exactly how it read, word for word.

“I can’t betray my sense of right and wrong. Forgive me if you are offended. Being gay is a demonic perversion. It is an abomination to the Almighty. I beg you to ask Jesus to free you from this bondage before it is too late. Your friend in Jesus. I do care.”

At first, upon reading this, I was shocked. Shocked that anyone would send me such a thing, especially from a person I barely knew. But alas they did, yet I didn’t feel any resentment, anger or negativity towards them. Instead what I felt was sadness. Sadness that this is precisely why so many gays and lesbians in this world often avoid developing any type of relationship with God and Christ. The fact is, I’ve known far too many on my own spiritual journey thus far in life who have refused to ever connect with either because the first thing that comes to mind is a Christian who once told them something quite similar at some point along the way.

As far as I’m concerned, Christ never wanted fear, guilt or shame to be a motivating factor to seek Him or God. Rather, it was Christ’s unconditional love that always drew so many to His teachings and ultimately to God. But countless Christians and many people from other religions around the world continue to explicitly and quite outwardly denounce on behalf of Christ, God, or Whomever their Higher Power is, that being gay is a sin and one that will send an individual to some dark place such as hell. If that indeed was true, why would anyone ever want to follow what that person believed in and was selling?

If I never had been exposed to Christianity in my entire life and was still searching for something to follow, and if this text message was my first exposure to the teachings of Christ and God, I would have run as fast as I could away from it and not towards. I don’t respond well to fear, guilt, and shame, as that only makes me feel worthless and less then in life. Hence the reason why I believe this type of approach was never intended to be the one that Christ wanted any of His future followers to take with spreading the messages He taught.

That’s why I find it so sad the number of gays and lesbians who have had to experience this negative type of approach to Christianity or any other religion for that matter in their life.  Personally, I’ve been refused membership at churches, denied friendships, and received plenty of hateful messages throughout my life from Christians, Muslims, Jews, to name a few, over a part of me I was born with.

I may never have wanted to be born gay, but it’s something I’ve come to accept is the way God created me. Because if God created me in His unconditionally loving image, then I trust that God didn’t make a mistake when it came to my sexuality. Thus being told by anyone I’m a demonic perversion and an abomination because of my sexuality is going against that unconditional love of God and doing nothing more than spreading greater fear and darkness in this world.

So as I conclude today’s entry feeling great sorrow over this religious anti-gay text message I didn’t want or need, I’m going to end it with an uplifting reminder for all those in this world who are gay or lesbian, or bi-sexual, or transgender, or questioning, or anything else for that matter. Know that you aren’t and never have been a demonic perversion, an abomination, or a mistake. And know that the only thing God and Christ ever intended for you to receive from them is unconditional love.

Hopefully one day, the rest of the world will see this…

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Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

How Do You Remain Grateful To God When Things Keep Going Astray?

How do you remain grateful to God when things keep going astray? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself a lot over the past six months as one negative thing after another seems to keep on happening in my life.

I feel like much of this began when my spiritual teacher asked me to work on myself without her assistance anymore back in late May. That was followed by a noticeable increase in physical health issues throughout the summer. Next came the discovery that part of the foundation to my house had eroded, which ended in approximately an $8000 repair. Then came the refrigerator breaking and having to throw away a bunch of food, which was quickly followed by my partner (who’s currently supporting me) abruptly losing his job that he loved and remained faithfully at for the past 11 years, and finally watching a relatively brand new audio receiver in my home go kaput in a blink of an eye.

What’s even more difficult than this though has been a feeling inside that God has abandoned me. People always say that if you feel that way you’re probably the one who’s done the abandoning, not God. Yet I have done everything I know to do to keep moving closer, through prayer, meditation, and a ton of other spiritual routines, which I diligently do every day. Yet the signs I have always felt of God’s presence coming through my dreams, or through various things in nature visiting me, or through other mysterious ways, have all seemingly evaporated. This hasn’t stopped me though from helping others and giving back, but even there a part of me feels completely lifeless. Thus, with my world feeling totally upside down, it’s made it quite difficult to feel grateful for anything.

Even worse, all of this had made me think that if a Devil or Satan or some strong form of Darkness really exists out there, that it’s making a huge push to get me to denounce my faith in God and give up things like my daily gratitude to Him. The fact is, these past two years have been so exceptionally difficult, frustrating, overwhelming, and mostly unhappy for me, no matter what I’ve done to stay spiritually connected, yet I’ve kept on seeking the Lord day in and day out, expressing my gratitude at the end of each day in a digital journal.

There, I write down at least 10 things from the day I’m thankful to God for, even on days like today when my face has been more of a frown than a smile, when my body has felt like it was beaten to a pulp, when my brain has tried to convince me nothing has gone my way, and when it really has felt like I can’t see the forest for the trees.

I’m not going to lie though in saying I feel a noticeable improvement by keeping this grateful journal up, because most times I don’t. But I don’t maintain this gratitude journal in the hopes it will make me feel better somehow. I do it because even when things are feeling so out of sorts for me, I always know it could be much, much worse. The reality is that God has never stopped providing me food, water, and shelter, which for billions of others on this planet would be considered luxuries. He’s also helped me to deal with some of my loneliness by providing me a loving partner, a loving cat, and a few loving friends and that’s more than what many have in life as well.

So that’s how I keep on, keeping on with my daily gratitude to God, because even in my worst of moments, when I wish I could be home with God right now, I know that there are countless people out there in the world who would love to walk a day in my shoes, who don’t have even a fraction of what God has kept on providing me thus far in life. And that alone is exactly how I continue to remain grateful, even when everything seems to keep going astray…

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Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson