GOD

God is just. God is good. God is all-knowing. God is perfection. God is forgiving. God is all we need. Is He? Really? Jesus loves you. Jesus loves me. Does He? Who says? Oh, that’s right it says so in that one book. The one with the gold letters on the side. The one I got my undergrad degree in. What was the name of that damned book? Oh, yes, I remember now. . . the Holy Bible. Well, then, that settles it. God really is all those things, and Jesus really does love us. Thank goodness, everything is all cleared up now. How silly of me to forget.
America may be completely obsessed with sex, but we are equally obsessed with God. Hell, often we combine the two. The act of love-making between husband and wife is the ultimate expression of God’s love for us. Sex was commanded by God to populate the world. (Thank goodness he decreed that people partake of sex—otherwise no one would ever have thought to do it!) Sex outside of marriage is a sin. What if you are not allowed to get married, like all us gay boys? We have to have sex outside of marriage, it is not our fault. Oh right, there is that other little thing: Gay sex buys you a ticket straight for hell. I wish purchasing tickets for everything was that much fun! Sex and God. God and sex. Inseparable. You can not have one without the other. Well, except for you priests and nuns. Well, you nuns, anyway. We all know you priests don’t really try to experience God without sex—don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone.
Our entire existence on this planet has been consumed by two things: achieving mind-blowing sex and understanding who God is. How many books, philosophers, and scholars have explored His identity (or Her—for all you heathenistic ultra-feminists). Wars have been fought, people slaughtered, countries divided for the quest of His name. It has all been so completely pointless. People did not need to obsess over these questions and quandaries. All they needed to do was ask me. I knew exactly who and what God was. I knew what He required and how to please him. To top it all off, I knew all this by the time I was fifteen. How sad that thousands of years have passed in this pursuit and all they needed to do was find me. When will people learn to do things the simple way?

We transformed our youth group. Actually, we transformed the entire church. We started a revival with our fellow teens and it caught on with the adults. Our church exploded with souls saved and membership increased. We did it single handedly. There were about five of us that really did it all. Ashton and I were a huge factor in it, as well as our beautiful friends Kaye and Willow. Oh, and God too. We were convicted by the goodness of God and terrified for the souls of our unsaved friends in high school. We could not let them miss the love of God and suffer eternal fire because of it!
We made a commitment to each other and to God to reach out to our friends, love, love, love them, and invite them to come to church with us—invite them until they would simply come just to shut us up. We had two adults, a young married couple, who helped lead us. They did it on a volunteer basis. They never pushed, guilted, or pressured us in anyway. They simply loved us and let us know they believe in us. When we went to them and told them how we wanted to transform our school and church for God, they did not smile indulgently and pat our back in that beautiful adult condescending way that so many would have. They took us seriously and gave us whatever support we asked for. Mostly we just wanted them to listen and be there for us. They did it beautifully.
Amazingly, we accomplished what we set out to do. Our friends came. People got saved. Kids who had made fun of God and religion, kids that were cool and popular, kids that were jocks, kids that were on the social outcast lists, all kinds of kids where coming to our youth group and church and beginning to accept Jesus as their own personal savior. The spiritual fire caught on with the adults into a revival that would last for years. Who says teenagers don’t have power and know what they are doing? Although, with all humility, I have to say, everything we did, we truly did out of love for God and for our friends. None of it was done in a better-than-thou way. It was done out of love. Of course people respond to that. Very little is done for love and love’s sake alone. When it is, It is powerful.

At fifteen, I knew God in a way I knew no-one else. I trusted in Him completely. I knew He loved me. I knew He would heal my affliction of homosexuality so that I would not have to go to Hell. I knew He could heal the sick, raise up the shamed, and use me to change the entire world for His glory. I did not have to question Him or His motives. I did not have to question His existence. There was no doubt about his goodness. People sick, dying, beaten, killed? Well, they either didn’t have the faith, did something wrong, or were being used to show God’s glory in some fashion. Duh! Everything was black and white. There was right and wrong. There was nothing in the middle, no compromises. If there was a discussion about the evil agenda of the homosexual community, I was the first one to raise my voice and tell about the lack of faith they displayed and how they needed to turn to God. If they did not, they were deserving of Hell. After all, gay people were out to convert more people to being gay and lead others into Hell with them. God would alter my attraction to other guys, and I would be able to tell others how good He is and, in turn, help others with this affliction to overcome and learn to love, worship, and fondle breasts. Within the holy confines of marriage that is.
After my Grandmother’s death, Garrett’s death, hell—a whole bunch of deaths—five years in therapy to be straight, countless hours praying and crying and believing for healing; after six years of working in residential treatment and seeing innocent children who had been beaten, sold as prostitutes, raped, abandoned and then punished and seen as bad kids when they made unsafe and illegal choices; things stopped being black and white. Things stopped being clear.
God doesn’t lie. Period. So, what about Grandma? Why was she dead? It wasn’t the fact that she did not get to live, I mean, she wasn’t that old, but she had a full and grand life—it was that I had heard God promise to heal her—Promise! I must have misunderstood Him. Maybe he meant healing as in taking her to Heaven. No, I know what I heard and that was not it. Well, even if I did mishear, still, God’s fault! ‘Come on, God, speak up! You are almighty! Is it too hard for you to not stutter and enunciate clearly?’
My kids? God loves them even more than I do, right? Yeah, people say that they go through these things to draw them to God, and it is because God has given humanity free will and we have to make our own decisions. Well, fuck that shit. I love my kids and while I will let them make their own mistakes, I do everything in my power to protect them, even if it hurts me. How much more can God do for them, how much more should he protect them? God is love, so He sits there and watches them get raped so that their mom can get her drug fix? Fuck that love!
I have spent years trying to alter myself so that I will not be an abomination to His sight, so that I will please Him. Why was I never getting straighter? They say I did not have enough faith (oh, yeah, they said that when Grandma died, too), that I wasn’t trying hard enough, that I was not being patient (right, how many of you have waited twenty-five years in misery and still retained your patience?). Well, fuck you!
I finally came to a conclusion. A scary conclusion. I had not an inkling of who God is. None. Maybe God was how I always thought Him to be, what people told me He was. That everything put forth in the Bible is 100% true. Well, if that was Him, no thanks! I would rather be in Hell than spend eternity with someone so callous that He does nothing to save His hurting children and would send me to Hell for not ‘fixing’ what He promised He would heal. Well, this view of God is too much. I can’t deal with it. I choose to believe that God is not the being I was taught to believe He is. I do believe He loves us, really loves us. I don’t believe he is able to fix everything, I don’t believe He can save my kids from all they have gone through. I believe it torments Him and that He weeps for the ones who hurt because He is not able to rescue them. If God is not completely all powerful, then I can forgive Him and accept His love. If He truly has power overall, He is a horrific tyrant. Listen to my audacity. Me, judging God. I really must be full of myself. I believe people have put their own agenda and prejudices onto God. I believe He loves me and desires for me to find happiness and love with a man. I have no fucking clue who God really is. He is less defined for me than ever before in my life, but I am more at peace with Him and more confident in our relationship that I have been ever before in my life. Many would say that I have shut up my conscience, and that I have chosen to believe things that enable me to live a sinful life and not have to deal with the guilt. Maybe, maybe not. . .

The clouds above were the perfect texture of cotton candy and floated lazily through the baby blue sky, forming and un-forming in the shapes of mermaids, unicorns, dragons, and fairies. The sun was clear and bright, but not sweltering. The grass was a vibrant green and still wet with dew, and it glittered in the embrace of the sun. It smelled like rain—damp, clean, new. The chickens clucked and the robins chirped. The breeze gently flowed over my skin and tickled my hair. The huge walnut trees shaded my eyes and protected my translucent skin from the sun.
I was in the middle of our yard, by the trampoline, surrounded by a huge patch of sparkling grass. That particular day, the patch of grass was overcome by the growth of my favorite flower. Dandelions. Yellow was my favorite color at the time—Mom and Dad had even let me pick out the color we painted our house. Our house now matched the hue found in dandelions. I loved the rich shade of yellow these flowers boasted. I loved that you could pick a dandelion and rub it on the sidewalk or your arm and draw a picture in yellow from its juices. I loved that it grew from the seeds that fell when you blew those cottony, billowing, fluffy seeds and made wishes. Mom tried to explain to me that dandelions were not actually flowers, but weeds, but I emphatically showed her the glorious yellow blossom to educate her on what a flower appears like. When people asked her four year old son what his favorite flower was, she would just smile as I would declare the dandelion the most beautiful treasure known to mankind.
On this particular day, I was overcome by love for God. How beautiful the world was, how perfect. How much He must love me to have given such a spectacular world to me. (I know you don’t think that four-year-olds think about God and His goodness, but I assure you, sometime they do.) I wanted to do something for Him. Give something back to Him. I wanted Him to know that I had received his message of love and that I returned that gift, that I loved Him too. How to do that? How could I show God how much I loved him? The answer was simple. I should love Him in the same way He loves me. I should give Him beauty.
I bent down, picked the fullest, most vibrant yellow dandelion that I could find. I plucked it low to the ground so that it would have a full stem. I held the flower at the very end of its stem and held it above my head. I stretched my arm as far as it could go. I got on my tiptoes and stretched more, getting ever closer to Heaven. Keeping my eyes open and Heavenward, I offered my gift to God. “Here, I love you.” I reached until I could stretch my body no more, waiting for His hand to come and take the beautiful dandelion from my chubby fingers. I never saw His hand, but I felt a tingle run down my fingers, into my hand, over my arm, and into my chest. He took it! He took my dandelion! I twirled in delight, clutching my dandelion to my chest.
There was a time in my life where I would be filled with anger when I thought back to this moment. How cruel God must be. Here was a little boy who loved him desperately. No one else was there to oversee; there was no harm in it. How much effort would it have been for him to reach down for one second and physically take the flower from this little boy?
I don’t feel that way any longer. I believe my four-year-old self knew more than I did when I was twenty-five. God did reach down and take my flower. He smiled brightly and tears ran down His cheek as He reveled in the complete love and adoration of a four-year old little boy. As His hand touched mine to receive His gift, He showered His love over that homely, innocent child. He is the God that would travel through this life, with all the changes, hurts, and joys of this red-head who still has nothing more beautiful to offer than a perfect dandelion.

I know not who God is and what is and isn’t capable of. I do know this: He loves us. He loves me and His love is not compromised by the love I have for a man that He placed within me. This God, the Real God, I desire to know more of and experience more of his love and offer Him as many Dandelions as I possibly can.