Volume 5: Issue 3
November/December 2000
To Hell With God!
Overcoming Our Anger at God
Table Of Contents
Cover Story: Overcoming Our Anger at God:
I meet so many GLBT people who are angry. They say they're angry at the church, at their parents, at society. In reality, they are very angry with God. Why are we so afraid to get into a tangle with God? Why are we, as gays and lesbians, so afraid to admit that we're angry with God? Why is it so hard for us to bring that anger to God?
We get mad at God for making us gay in the first place. In my own experience, I even got mad at God for not making me straight as I had been told God would! Anger goes with the territory for us, and we must learn how to give our anger (often justifiable anger) to God rather than to throw it at God.
We feel we shouldn't get angry at God! We worry that
God's feelings will be hurt. Or worse yet, God will return our anger - and
we all know how much better at being angry God could be!
Nonsense.
I say, Go ahead, be angry at God!
We know that it is the fears conjured up by ignorance and intolerance that
often cause family members to slam the door in our faces and exclude us from
their lives. Yet so often it is easier for us to apportion blame to God,
rather than becoming involved in a process of education for heterosexuals so
that the myths about homosexuals may be debunked.
What causes us to be angry? In most cases all our anger is caused when we don't see things going the way we think they should (judgment), whether they affect us directly or they are just the opinions or actions of others that we don't feel fit our definition of right (judgment).
For a long time, it was not so much that I hated God. It was sort of like the issue of my bisexual orientation and my attraction to men as well as women. God and religion was an issue that I knew in my heart was something very real, but I chose not to think about or deal with it. As I have written before, however, I could not come to terms with my sexuality until I came to terms with God.
After learning these truths of grace and mercy that God provides to me, His child, how can I ever be angry with Him again? I cannot. All I can do now is thank Him for His Son, who saved me from condemnation, from guilt and shame, and who has brought to me the promise of an eternal glory, of ruling and reigning with Him in heavenly places.
Don't be angry with God, or with anyone else, for that matter. If you choose to listen to others, rather than to God's call
on your life, only you are to blame!
Being angry with God would be convenient. After all, if He's to blame and if He's in the wrong then it takes the heat off me. I have my new car, my digital TV subscription and my new bathroom floor but, hey, suffering and starvation are God's problems so I'm just angry -- comfortable, safe, rich and angry but angry.
Many of you have rejected and abandoned the church because of the anger
that church has created in you through rejection and abuse. You are not
angry with God. But are you? We have been so brain washed by the
"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" preaching and teaching of
evangelical churches that we have difficulty seeing God any other way.
Homospirituality
The maniacal street preacher who screams about hell to passers-by is at least more logically consistent with his own beliefs than the suburban Baptist who listens to "contemporary Christian music" every day but never warns his unsaved friends and co-workers about hell.
 Credo
--By: Kate O'Dwyer Randall
I believe that because of the depth of God's love, she has known the depth of love's opposite, and can skate on a spectrum that is linear and eternal, able to nestle in with us wherever we are on that spectrum.
After much prayer and struggling, I finally left the denomination in which I grew up. It was the most difficult decision I ever had to make in my life but I just did not feel I had a choice. I came to realize I was unwelcome and unwanted in that denomination and would never be welcome or wanted. Regardless how good a life I lived, even if I obeyed all the legalist rules about what I could and could not do, I would be unwelcome, unwanted, and unaccepted.
Dylan was only ten or so when it started. The nagging thoughts of not being normal and the pressure to fit in but being unable to do so. And, of course the
name calling. "Faggot." I cringe every time I hear it.
Features:
Some members even plan to go to homecoming this year sporting oru-shirts and gay pride pins to draw attention to their cause. They, of course, have received some negative reactions from current and former students, but overall, they've received a lot of positive feedback and have even added supportive straight alumni to their membership roll.
The response by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered (GLBT)
community to the recent John Paulk incident, in which Exodus board
chair John Paulk was discovered sipping drinks in a gay bar, has been
venom-filled, entirely un-Christian, and damaging to the cause of GLBT
rights in America. We can and must do better if our struggle for GLBT
equality is to bear fruit.
Blessed Bi Spirit is a collection of 32 articles, poems, prayers, and stories from bisexual men and women on a wide variety of spiritual paths: Buddhist, Pagan, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Native American, and others. While some of the theological articles are a little wordy, the poems and prayers are beautiful, and the personal stories are fascinating and bittersweet.
From The Pulpit:
By saying God is a Trinity, we are saying that the deepest, most abiding
reality that stands behind all and under all is God, is Relationship, is
Community, is Mutuality, is Love - the give and take experienced by two
entities that are involved with loving one another- the lover and the beloved
and the aliveness exchanged between them that takes on a life of its own!
Bible Study and Inspiration:
There are times, Mary, when the world is dark and harsh and uninviting.
But this is not news to you. You know all too well the language of anguish
your gay and lesbian children speak when crying out against the hatred, fear,
and religious discrimination leveled against us, for you have drunk deeply
from such wells.
Holy Humor!
Comments? Please fill out our Reader Survey!
|
