THINKING ABOUT GOD, THOSE WHO WORSHIP HIM AND THE OTHERS

For the longest time, even when I was a growing child, I never really understood why people felt so negatively toward gay people. I always wondered why people had so much time, so much energy, for who other people love or choose to be with. It’s not like they’re hurting anyone. It’s not like they’re harming themselves. I’d always felt that it wasn’t right the way people focus so much on what gay people do, and have so much hate.

But then, it wasn’t something that was in my everyday life or something that impacted me. Being gay wasn’t my reality. When I was a kid growing up in Nigeria, I remember I always loved effeminate men. I always had a thing for boys who were a little girlish. I remember my first boyfriend, a boy I met in church. he was slightly effeminate. And I loved that about him.

So when I moved to the United States, and there were all these conversations about gay people, again I never understood the negative energy. But obviously, as a heterosexual woman, it wasn’t a conversation that I delved deep into because it wasn’t my reality. I didn’t even know any gay person personally.

But I always loved gay men. In my early twenties, I remember watching movies and seeing gay men, loving how they dressed and carried themselves. Seeming to be a lot more confident than their heterosexual counterparts. I really liked that.

Then I met this one guy. His name is X. He was this 20-year-old gay man, originally from Cameroun. We clicked and connected. His sexuality was something we didn’t really talk about. I just knew that he was gay, but we didn’t have any conversations about it.

However, everything changed when I fell in love with a woman. What being with a woman did for me was that it opened my mind, expanded it to the point where I’ve had to think about what God means to me. Who God is to me. I’ve had to think about so many things surrounding my world and my reality as I’ve known it this entire time.

And I think that seeing the reactions of some of the people in my life to me coming out and saying, “Well, I’m in love with a woman,” has pushed me to challenge my status quo. To challenge how I see the world.

So then, I’m thinking: This is crazy. I’m talking to some of my girlfriends, like, I didn’t know you were this homophobic. I didn’t know you had this much negativity in you.

Granted, we’d never talked about it. Because we’d all dated men, and the challenges of being in relationships with guys were our realities. And so, I’d never been in a situation where we had to discuss homosexuality and queerness.

So then, I find myself in this position and it has opened my mind. And I’m like: Okay, being gay is of the Devil. You know, gay people are all going to hell. Okay, fine. That’s fine that you say that and believe that. But have you actually thought about it? If gay people are going to hell and people are having premarital sex, and the Bible tells us that that’s a sin too, and nobody is chaining you guys up as candidates for hell – if this is something that’s so mainstream and accepted even in church circles, like we recognise it’s not the end of the world if you’re sleeping with someone that you’re not married to, but that’s okay? As long as all this sex is happening between members of the opposite sex?

If the church manages to look the other way with all these scriptural evils clearly condemned by the Bible, and gay people are of the Devil, then how come they are the only “spawns of the Devil” that everyone has chosen to fight?

If gay people are of the Devil, how come the Devil is prosecuting them too?

I mean, how is the Devil so successful in taking children of 6 and 7 years old, to say to them, “You know what? I’m going to turn you gay so you can go to hell.” And God is just sitting around, letting that happen to His creations. What kind of god is that?

Religious people are so intent on their prejudices that they do not have a pause to interrogate the biases they exhibit toward other people. They want to feed into their ignorance, because somehow, that is much easier than challenging the brainwash, the institutions of dehumanization erected in their minds.

Being homophobic is actually doing the work of the Devil, because He wants you to think that you’re doing the right thing by the god that you believe in, when all you’re trying to accomplish is strip someone else of his humanity. And this is fine by the Devil, because then He can propagate His agenda. Which is to give you hate in your heart. Feed you with things that will distort you from how God actually wants you to be. Which is to love one another.

When Jesus gave the charge to love your neighbour as yourself, I’m sure He knew that your neighbours were not going to be from your church. I’m sure He knew these neighbours were going to be people from all over the world with different ideas, different beliefs, different lives. The true nobility of that charge is that you can love all these people as you love yourself. The true test of your faith is that you can love the person who is not like you as yourself.

Christians fail at this all the time. Every single time.

And it is such a shame.

Written by Chidinma