Coming out to my parents update

Nope. Hasn’t happened yet. Sigh.

I came really, really close two weeks ago. I was having dinner at my parents place and almost blurted it out. But then I realized that my dad was going away for a week and my mom would be left alone to process the news. And given my mom’s current state of health, I didn’t think that was a good idea. So I waited.

And then, I decided when my dad got home from his conference, I’d ask him for a time when we could talk. But as I was chatting with him on the phone, he shared how one of the workshops at this conference was given by a woman who works for Desert Stream Ministries and who taught on ‘wholeness’. That was his word and it triggered my memory for what this ministry does.

Yep. You guessed it. It’s all about helping people overcome homosexuality. The website couches its ministry in broader terms saying that its “particularly relevant to those struggling with homosexuality, sexual promiscuity, the effects of sexual abuse, codependency, self-hatred, or the inability to love others well.” But in essence, it believes these are all linked together. Brokenness in one of these other areas is what leads a person to succumb to the temptation of homosexuality and choose a gay lifestyle.

There are several things I’ve always found incongruous about these types of ministries. First, they claim that homosexuality arises because of woundedness. People are attracted to their same sex because of something that was missing or messed up in their relationship with one of their parents. The problem is that if that’s the case, far more than a steady 10% of the population should be gay. There’s a heck of a lot of people with mommy and daddy issues out there.

Second, a lot of their testimonies highlight people who were miserable being gay and who were leading very messed up lives of promiscuity and substance abuse. The implication is that the gay lifestyle is a very unhappy one that people want to escape from. But it’s not about being gay. There are heterosexuals who are miserable in the same ways. I also think the lack of acceptance and the guilt associated with being gay are a major impetus for people to hide their pain in these unhealthy ways. But if they believed they were okay as who they were, then they wouldn’t be in such a miserable spot in the first place. There are numerous very healthy, very happy gay men and woman who do not feel the need to be rescued or healed.

Third, if you read the stories of so-called recovered homosexuals, they are not in fact recovered. They have just become very good and living in denial and have set up amazingly intricate safeguards to prevent them from giving into what they think of as temptation. For example, the main article author on the Desert Stream site talks about how whenever he travels away from home, he has at least two or three people he has to call daily and strict rules about who he can room with. This is not normal. This is not healthy nor is it the way a person who has truly been transformed into a heterosexual would need to behave.

And so, I think this whole ‘healing the gay’ thing is bunch of hooey. I’m sure there are others who have articulated it better than me, complete with scientific evidence for the differences between gays and straights and the influence of biology, etc…but this is just a tiny rant for the purpose of showing why I have not yet come out to my parents. They (or at least my dad) believe this stuff. He believes that being gay is due to some sort of sexual and relational brokenness. So my telling him I am gay would not only mean for him that his daughter is deeply hurting in some way, but would also imply that he and my mom did something wrong in raising me that allowed me to be broken in such a way. And that means he’ll grieve for me and for his own sense of responsibility. Nothing could be further from the truth - Aargh. I’m still planning on coming out. It’s just this latest news about him attending this workshop derailed me for a bit. Gotta build up my reserves again. I’m thankful for the many people who have been encouraging me and supporting me as I prepare for this event and who will be there for me no matter what the outcome is.

Envious of childlike excitement

This doesn't have a whole lot to do with the theme of this blog, but I wanted to write about it anyways. And since its my blog, I have that perogative : )

I have to admit to envy. Isn't that one of the seven deadly sins? But what about envy that inspires you and makes you a better person? Anyways, as the title of this post reveals, I'm envious of the pure, unaffected joy and excitement that children feel. The simplest things can make their faces light up with uncomplicated happiness. Us adults rarely experience that. We have so many 'buts' and 'ifs' and other rationalizations about things...or we are just too busy to slow down and enjoy a single moment in time.

The incident that triggered this post happened this weekend. I went to a pumpkin farm with my family. Basically that involved five adults traipsing around after my two year old nephew as he explored the tractors, animals, hay bales, tunnels, etc. He was having a lot of fun. But there was this one particular moment when he turned around and saw the sandbox. This was a pretty awesome sandbox. It was probably the size of my apartment and was full of every kind of Tonka truck imaginable - bulldozers, dumptrucks, diggers, and more. My nephew loves trucks. In that instant when he caught sight of this kids wonderland, his eyes grew big, his jaw dropped, and his little arms started flapping. I'm not even sure he managed to emit his typical 'wow' - the amazement had stolen his speech. He was literally shaking with excitement.

Note: This picture isn't of the day we went. I got it from Google Images. 

But it does give a bit of a sense of what the sandbox was like.

My description doesn't do the moment justice. It was really special and us adults all agreed that that single moment made our admission price worth it. But on the way home I began to think about when the last time I got that excited was. I honestly can't remember. I try to embrace my childlike side on occasion - I like to swing in the park or make something with lego or simply stop to look at shapes in the clouds. But I tend to guard myself against excitement. Excitement and hope go hand in hand. Excitement is an expectation of something's awesomeness. And I have too much experience with disappointment. I think all adults do and it tends to make us cautious. Which is sad...because we miss out on the pleasure of anticipation. I sometimes wish I could let all that fall away for a day and just experience the world through the trusting, everything-is-new, delight of a child.

The value of religion as tradition

Despite my questioning of faith, I am not dogmatically opposed to religion of any kind. Because of my background, religion and its potential for abuse make me nervous, but I don’t believe that it, by definition, absolutely has to be that way.

I have some friends who are very devoted believers but who remain open and accepting and have actually been a great support to me. I have other friends who believe in some sort of spirituality that makes them feel more connected to the world but does not involve a specific religious tradition. I have one friend who has embraced ancient Egyptology because somehow she finds meaning in it, not necessarily because she believes it’s true. And yet another friend appreciates the mythology of Christianity and Judaism without necessarily holding to all the tenets of those faiths. Thus, not everyone I know takes religion to the extreme in which it becomes an us versus them battle with eternal consequences that leads to significant hurt both psychologically and emotionally even here in the present (okay…wow, that was quite a sentence that clearly reveals that I’ve had some bad experiences with faith…phew).

Right now for me, participating in faith based activities is dangerous because it evokes the rigid, guilt-based mentalities that I’ve grown up with. But, recent discussions have caused me to think about what values there may be in the traditions of the church.

For example, one of the things that drew me to Judaism, even while I was a Christian was the rich traditions that make proponents feel connected to a long history. I felt that by rejecting the so-called pomp and circumstance of denominations such as the Anglicans and Catholics, my particular church had lost something. In fact, there is a movement among the youth in evangelical churches to return to what they call the ancient paths, a movement which embraces monastic traditions and new styles of liturgy, specifically because they too feel that lack.

I have felt in the past that even the Western world in general is missing a deeper connection with history. Our culture is very much about the now. We don’t emphasize traditional celebrations or recounting of the past in the same way that many other cultures around the world do. Sometimes I feel like our culture is, in fact, a lack of culture.

So is it possible that religion could be embraced solely for its ability to bring that kind of meaning? There is much to be learned from history. There is much to be learned from stories, even if they are fictional. As my one friend says, there is something to the mythology of the church that has value. Can religion help shape values and community and culture without taking a defensive position that it, and it alone, has access to truth?

I don’t know. I believe there are people who participate in religion who most definitely can. They gain what they need or want and live their lives with openness and integrity. But can religion as an organized phenomenon take such a position? Religion by its very nature has great potential to be used to control others. But it also has the potential to be used for great good. Unfortunately, I’ve seen more evidence for the former than the latter.

With all of this on my mind, I really enjoyed this article asking the question “Can religion tell us more than science?” What I found most interesting was the perspective that in the past, religion was about how to live, not about beliefs. The article actually directly references myths, saying,

“Myths aren't relics of childish thinking that humanity leaves behind as it marches towards a more grown-up view of things. They're stories that tell us something about ourselves that can't be captured in scientific theories.”

And then later,

“Human beings don't live by argumentation, and it's only religious fundamentalists and ignorant rationalists who think the myths we live by are literal truths.”

Of course, Christians will argue that we can’t know how we should live without some sort of objective standard like the Bible (ignoring of course all the difficulties with viewing that book as objective). But I don’t think it’s so much about how we SHOULD live as simply how we want to live, what values we as a community share, what resonates with our experiences as humans in this world. Its why even in this modern age, social media is returning us to an emphasis on story and our participation in the story. We just aren’t persuaded by bullet point benefits (or bullet points beliefs).

I think the thing I miss most about being part of the Christian community is those odd glimpses I’d catch of a connection to something bigger than myself. The moments that felt the most profound were when a song or a skit or a play or a story captured my attention, drew me into the story, and gave me a sense of wonder and amazement. In those moments, I would feel inspired to do my part, to be a better person, to have hope. And then, the moment would die as whatever was portrayed was picked apart in an attempt to decide what was true or what was distorted and thus might deceive.

I’m not entirely sure how to end this post except to say that I’d be more open to a religion that could provide that sense of continuity, of connection, without requiring the gymnastics needed to avoid the cognitive dissonance that arises from contradictory, unsubstantiated beliefs. Can any religious studies majors chime in with whether such a religion would actually be defined as a religion in that case?

The difference between being loved, wanted and needed

I have pondered this question for a very long time. I’ve heard people talk about how its not healthy to be too attached to being needed. That can lead you to being used. But is being loved enough either? Christianity often touts love as being ultimate. However, given that I believe love is more of a choice than an emotion, I believe you can be loved but not liked, which doesn’t feel great. In my own thinking, I’ve often stated that my greatest desire was to be wanted. To me, being wanted is a step beyond being liked. Someone can theoretically like me but not really miss me when I’m not around. But to be wanted, to be sought out and desired…that is a very special feeling.

I know that I am needed. I’m too good at too many things to not be needed. I’m needed to fix my parents technical problems, to babysit for my brother and sister-in-law, to counsel and advise my friends and labmates, to design graphics for the group I volunteer with, etc. I know these people view me as indispensible in some ways, but these are just skills. They aren’t me. I am technically replaceable.

I know that I am loved. I know my parents love me. They support me. They help me out of jams. They put up with my annoying traits. I know my brother loves me and would be there for me if I ever needed him (although he’ll probably never say the words out loud). I know that there are lots of other people who care for me. Again, the definition of this kind of love seems to be that if you call on them, they will help. Even if its inconvenient, even if you’ve had an argument – there’s something about love that bypasses all that and chooses to be there for the other person. Love and sacrifice seem to go together.

But I’m sometimes not sure if I’m wanted. If I show up at a party, people are happy to see me, but if I don’t, I never get the sense that I am missed. I’ve had numerous occasions when I’ve been present when different events are being organized but then never been invited. I have friends who may be happy enough to go to lunch with me if I do the inviting, but never seem to think of me and initiate such activities on their own. This is puzzling to me.

Any thoughts? Is there a particular element in the triad that is more or less important to you? I’m guessing it depends on each person’s own experiences and what may have been lacking growing up. Again, as I've expressed, I’ve had love and been needed, but sometimes that love was expressed as an obligation (the whole ‘choice’ thing can be turned into a negative). And I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an element of self-fulfilling prophecy happening in that when I don’t feel wanted, I act like someone people wouldn’t want to be around.

But I have hope, because the journey that I’ve been documenting in this blog has brought me to a place where I like myself more than I ever have before. I like how I look. I like how I feel. I like who I am. I've had numerous people comment on how I appear far more comfortable with myself. And generally speaking, those who are comfortable with themselves make others around them more comfortable as well. It wouldn’t surprise me if this liking turns into better connections with other people that help balance out my perceived imbalance between being loved, wanted and needed.

Note: For those who know me in real life, I am not thinking of any specific person or incident as I write this. I can trace this theme through journal entries as far back as high school. Its just something that has been on my mind lately. Being involved in a new community and making new friends has given me many opportunities to observe my own behavior and others' reactions to it - and as is typical, I over analyze everything, including myself.

Grieving the loss of critical thinking

When I saw this short article asking the question “Does social media make us lazy?” I felt affirmed. One of the topics I can get really heated up about is the educational system. As a teaching assistant at a university, I get to answer students’ questions and mark their assignments. This gives me a front line look at what skills (or rather the lack thereof) that four years of high school have instilled in these kids. Supposedly, the students that come to university are the cream of the crop (lowered admission standards are another whole topic). And yet, they can’t think…and they certainly can’t express what they are thinking in any coherent form of writing.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve marked papers that have been lifted from Wikipedia or have basically been pieced together bits of other people’s thoughts without any traceable theme running through them. And when students come to office hours and I try to help them reason through a question to find their own solution, they look at me blankly, baffled as to why I’m not simply telling them what the correct answer is.

As the article I linked to above states, it seems like information is viewed as enough. There definitely seems to be the perspective that if you can just get the right piece of information, you’ll be good to go. Add to that the growing trend towards evaluating information based on ‘likes’ and the responsibility of the individual to critically assess the information, compare differing views, and come to their own conclusion becomes viewed as a quaint hobby from a bygone era.

One of the biggest issues I have with the education system is that they are still teaching content. The model still seems to emphasize providing kids with facts about history, science, literature, etc. (Granted, I haven’t actually been in a high school in over a decade, but that is my impression and was my experience.) While its possible one could argue that the information imparted in schools is more reliable than information imparted via other sources, it is still just information, and we are drowning in information.

What schools don’t seem to be providing is training on how to evaluate that information. Don’t ask kids to memorize a list of facts about an historical event – instead, teach them about the process of reconstructing what actually happened in history and how to determine the reliability of sources. Instead of having them memorize a bunch of chemistry formulas, let them use a cheat sheet and instead give them more time to grapple with the scientific method. The information is never farther away from us then the nearest cell phone (why store it in our heads), but the ability to critically think about that information seems to be an elusive art.

I think it used to be that going to school and having access to the information imparted there was a privilege. There was no easy way to get access to expertise other than to sit under the tutelage of a teacher. Today, that is no longer the case. Today, I think the model of passively consuming the information of a supposed expert is actually detrimental. While teachers may in fact be more reliable imparters of knowledge than other sources out there, this pattern establishes an uncritical acceptance of information.

When was the last time you heard of a student challenging a teacher’s opinion? On the rare occasions that it happens, it seems to cause an uproar and the student is punished for being rebellious. Oh, I think there are some teachers who try to implement carefully controlled projects where a certain level of challenge is okay, but outside of those, I believe challenges are still viewed negatively.

Instead, I think school should be very much about challenges. I think students should be encouraged to question everything. But, you say…if they did that, nothing would ever be accomplished in the classroom. Every discussion would take forever. So? As I said at the beginning, they can get the information on your teaching checklist anywhere (in fact, its probably in that cell phone in their backpack that has been banned from the classroom). In my opinion, the critical thinking skills that would come out of such discussions would be so much more valuable and would serve them far better in the future. Note: I am not criticizing teachers. I think they are doing their best and probably share many of these same opinions. I am critical of a system that is way too slow to change with the time. Also, I am not saying to get rid of classes such as math and English – in my opinion, those are about skills, not just information.

What is attraction?

Attraction is a funny phenomenon. It’s so difficult to pin down. Over the years I’ve heard bits and pieces of psychological explanations for why we find certain people more attractive than others. There’s the evolutionary explanation that certain features signal greater reproductive potential. There are theories about pheromones and a woman’s monthly cycle. There are social explanations such as mere exposure. And so on. But none of these seem to take away from the mystery.

And then add homosexuality to the mix, and the question becomes even more complex. The whole evolutionary explanation goes out the window in some respects. I don’t know much about the men’s side of things, but in terms of ladies being attracted to ladies, there’s such a huge spectrum – there’s femme on femme, butch and femme, butch on butch…and a bunch inbetween…and a bunch that don’t fit these labels at all.

Sometimes I look at couples walking down the street and have the knee jerk reaction of how did he end up with her, or how did she end up with him (or various other pronoun combinations). There’s always the joke that after years together, couples start to look alike, but there’s also a whole passel of combinations that are surprising.

And then of course there are the stories of people who weren’t attracted to each other at all until they got to know one another better and then all of a sudden, sparks flew. There is definitely something that personality and identity add to the combination. Someone you know and really like is more attractive to you than they may be to a stranger who doesn’t know them as well.

I don’t actually have any answers. It’s just a topic that I find really interesting. Part of realizing I’m gay has opened up a new world for me in terms of viewing people as attractive or not. I’ve gone through the majority of my life not really reacting to those around me – I didn’t find guys attractive and didn’t give myself permission to look at girls that way. So now I’m finally looking around for the first time and collecting my own data.

I seem to have certain expectations and stereotypes that affect what I think I might be attracted to but reality has a way of confounding that. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been asked what my ‘type’ is. Sometimes I’ve said I don’t know and sometimes I’ve listed certain characteristics. But I’m discovering that an itemized list kind of goes out the window when it comes to actually encountering someone who makes you stand up and go “wow”. During such an encounter, you aren’t consulting your list. It’s not even on your radar. There’s just some undefinable ‘something’ about the person you are looking at or interacting with that is attractive. And sometimes, after the fact, you go back to your list to compare notes and shake your head and realize just how useless the attempt to define attraction really is.

Can you believe what you don't believe?

I’ve been wanting to write on this topic for awhile now but haven’t found the words. Then a few weeks ago I saw this article which stated ideas very similar to what I’ve been thinking and motivated me to give it a try.

When I think about how the churches I grew up in talked about evangelism and about being saved, it seems to me that belief is viewed as a choice. You can choose to believe in Jesus or you can choose not to and face the consequences.

But since I’ve walked away from faith, I’m not sure any more that that is actually the case. Given that the main reason I walked away was that the various doctrines and edicts and so forth of the church just no longer made sense and no longer seemed to fit with historical and scientific evidence, I don’t think I could re-believe if I tried.

Can you as an adult truly believe in Santa Claus anymore? Can you believe that the world is flat? Or that unicorns exist?

So then, what is happening during conversion? I know Christians talk about the spirit of God moving in a person’s heart and bringing conviction, but they also talk about people choosing to believe. I was pondering the conversion experience awhile back and mentally cataloguing the reasons people choose to believe in Jesus (this type of conversion and my discussion about belief here apply more to strongly evangelical approaches to faith than perhaps to those in more mainstream churches who are there for the tradition and mythical meaning inherent in the Christian religion – discussed in another post here).

In my experience (which given my 30 years in the church is considerable), people convert during times of emotional crisis. It could be an internal crisis of conscience or an external event that has led to pain or need. I think in many cases, the draw is more the community of the church – they are lonely, they need support – than about the actual tenets of the faith. There are exceptions such as the journalist Lee Strobel who wrote the book, The Case for Christ. He apparently set out to investigate the claims about Jesus and became convinced that Christianity was true. But if you examine his writings closely, he too had emotional reasons for converting. Even altar calls are emotional appeals – sometimes hope based, sometimes fear based. Oh, evangelists sometimes try to address more rational concerns with apologetic arguments, but if the person isn’t convinced, the explanation isn’t that the argument wasn’t convincing, instead, it’s that the person is choosing not to believe. Or they are choosing to live in sin because they don’t want to give up their pleasures.

For me personally, as I walked away from faith, there was this cry in my heart for many months that I wanted to believe. Oh how I wanted to believe. I didn’t want to break with my past, with my family, with all I’d ever known. I wanted God to be real and the promises preached from the pulpit to be true. And when I tried to express my questions, my doubts, my uncertainties…I was accused of choosing not to believe. Apparently, if my questions were leading me away from Christianity, I was supposed to stop asking them.

Part of what makes us human seems to be this need to find explanations, to understand why, to be able to fit our experiences into a big picture that makes sense. For me, growing up in the faith, my beliefs made sense out of my experience – until they didn’t. And if one’s beliefs don’t make sense, I think human cognition is set up to justify them…but one can only do so much justification before the worldview shatters and one can no longer believe.

In developmental psychology, we find that children learn either by assimilation or accommodation. In assimilation, children adjust their views of the outside world to fit what they already know. For example, a child who has experience with horses and meets a dog for the first time might try to ride it, assimilating the dog into his/her concept of a horse. But in accommodation, children change their internal view to match what’s in the outside world. For example, when the dog reacts badly to being ridden, the child may have to adjust their concept and create a separate category.

In essence, I’ve been trying very hard to assimilate all the things I’ve been learning about psychology, about history, about how the Bible was written, about the different beliefs of various denominations, about the variety of people who don’t fit the stereotypical ‘sinner’ category, etc. and failing. I can no longer assimilate the knowledge and thus I must accommodate it by adjusting my worldview. I’m not choosing not to believe. It’s just that the lack of fit between the real world and my internal views have become disparate enough that my natural, psychological need for equilibrium has caused a recalibration. It’s how we humans learn.