Jesus Loved You Enough to Die for You

Their is a lot of bile floating around, hurt feelings, accusations... if you listen, you can easily drown in it. Their are things about the church that are troubling, and that is as it should be. Doubts, human error, cruelty, these things also exist among us. They have even affected our history and they continue to affect our attitudes today. We are also human, and we have made a human culture around the gospel of Christ. These things are to be expected... avoided, but expected.

These problems help us to grow. However, they are not your problems, I think.

I told you why I liked you, because to me you seemed to need a reason to like yourself. I can tell you I like you because you are kind, desirable physically and mentally, but I don't think that this will help you. You will say it's not true, that I'm seeing what I want to see, or worse, that my liking you comes out of a base sensuality unbefitting a follower of Christ, and you will wonder again if their is anything worthy inside of you to be loved.

I can tell you, I have felt the same for such a long time. I have grown weary of it. It plagued me on my mission, in my dating endeavors, haunting me like a crocodile just under still water; a gargantuan creature I always tip-toed around, careful not to wake. I was certain that if I woke that awful beast, it would consume all my friends and family, but I also knew that even if I grew black-plumed wings, I would never be able to out-fly it's grasp on me. It held my soul, because the crocodile was me.

I want so much for you to know that God loves you for who you are. I want you to see you--the real you. The you that Christ knows, that I am confident you are, that you feel you will never measure up to. When you do good, I don't want you to feel it is to erase some terrible flaw. Even if you have a fatal flaw, mending that weakness is the office of Jesus. Yours is to accept what He has done with all of your might, mind and strength.

I don't want you or anyone to leave the Church. In fact, it is my sincere desire that all people, old and young, free and bound, from every nation, kindred... gay or straight, nonsexual, reprobate, the pure and the unpure... everyone, everywhere could receive the Gospel.

I see myself as a sort of missionary for those who are in danger of leaving the Church over this issue. Not because I am better than anyone, although I am certainly in danger of thinking so every once in a while. I can feel my own frailty, I know that man, all men, are as nothing. I wonder if I could really help anyone, and yet watching others struggle with those same issues I have faced, that I continue to face, I cannot help wanting to 'fix' things.

A friend of mine reminded me this morning that I can't. People have to fix their own problems, ask for their own advice. But I can write, and I can listen, and I can try to be a good example. What else can I do?

What could I do or say to help you? If I ask you to accept your own feelings--to let go--will you feel I am tempting you to give in to your basest desires? Will you see that I want you to be happy and have a fulfilling relationship with whomever you ultimately decide to spend your eternities with?

Then how else can I get you to realize that you are a worthwhile human being, a spiritual child of a Heavenly Father who loves you just as He made you? If you cannot accept yourself, how can I help you to see that Jesus loved you enough to die for you? To feel all your pain and suffering; to know you in a way that no other person can?

I really want to know. I have too many friends who hate themselves. Gay friends, straight friends, it doesn't matter. And I just wish I knew what else I could say. I love you. You are worth loving. Stop focusing on what others think about you, and go love them! Love them like Jesus loves them.

The Power of Admitting I Don't Know

I often have this terrible curse, maybe you share it with me? that I believe I know everything, sometimes. I sometimes feel I already have the answers; all I need to do is live them.

Honest doubt is a great blessing.

I knew I liked guys for a long time, long before telling anyone, but I just knew that it came from sin. I knew that nobody had ever felt what I was feeling, and I knew I could overcome it. I was absolutely certain that God would change me, or that these feelings were a phase. Fast forward to the present, when I was coming out, I knew that the only thing for me was to leave the Church, abandon a way of life and relationships to which I had dedicated a vital portion of myself. I was certain that if I was ever going to find a meaningful relationship I would have to abandon everything else I held most dear.

I thought the answer was simple, and in a way it was, but it wasn’t the answer I thought. My answer was… that I don’t know. Really, I don’t. One of the greatest comforts to me as I struggle to come out is the deep-seated realization that I did not know anything. I did not know that the LDS Church was true, I did not know if I was gay, bisexual, whatever, and I did not know what the gay community is truly like.

In the middle of this tearing, shredding sensation, when I was ripped apart inside with my family and my desire on opposite sides of the gapping chasm that was my own soul, when I was trying to figure out what to base my life on, I had to let go. I had to let go of the certainties, the polar opposites, and just take each day as it came.

Why do we cling so hard to our small truths and miss the big picture so often? Could it be pride, whispering that we already know enough to judge the world? Or, like me, could it be fear? Certainty, claims of absolute knowledge, are comforting. They build us shelters against the world, little houses that we can peek out of occasionally and retreat to when confronted by something foreign and threatening.

Stepping out of that little house that you’ve built for yourself can be frightening, but also extraordinarily exhilarating.

Now, I’m not espousing a philosophy of militant and critical unbelief. We need our beliefs, just like we need a real house to shelter us from cold and storm. What I am suggesting, what helped me, is just a willingness to let go, to understand that we don’t understand everything, a willingness to try to understand.

People are fond of unconditional statements. I use them all the time. 'God does not exist', or 'I know the Church is true', or even 'the world is round'. My favorite is, 'If it’s on the internet it must be true'. Not one of those statements can be proven without personal experience. Such absolute certainty, such denial of fallibility, just leads us to fall, confronts us with our own insecurity, and in the end leaves us blind.

No one knows everything-- another unconditional statement. But I certainly don't, and I have the feeling that you probably don't either. That's okay. And how do we know that that small little bit that we don't know won’t change everything that we do know? It happens every day.

So when you are wrestling with doubts, consider yourself lucky. A lot of people, atheists, Mormons, Hindus, Christians, communists, Democrats, Republicans, Dallas cowboy fans-- a lot of people, regardless of their personal creed, are positive that they see the world the way it is. We sustain our beliefs with self-serving biases and edited or censored memories, psychological fact. When we honestly doubt what we know is true, when we take deep breath and remove the blinders, maybe we'll catch a glimpse of a greater, more encompassing truth than anything we could have imagined.