God is Silent.

There is no still small voice . . .

Photo by David Clarke on Unsplash

Faith Like a Child

I enjoyed my faith as a child. It was simple and pure. I was told that God listens to me and I believed that. I felt it. Saturday mornings for me as a child involved watching cartoons, but occasionally I would get up too early before the cartoons were on. The only thing on was normally the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. I was 5 years old at the time when I watched Tammy Faye singing. Below there was a telephone number (not a toll free one!) with a prayer line. I wrote the number down and called that number. I remember talking to this very nice woman, who must have been very understanding. She asked if I wanted to pray with her. I replied in the affirmative and she prayed with me. I don’t remember to this day what she prayed with me, but I felt very good. I gave the phone to my younger brother, who was only 2 at the time and whose vocabulary wasn’t the best and ran to my parents’ bedroom to tell them what I just did. Barely awake, they knew something happened, but weren’t quite sure.

Later on I told them in my own simple terms what had happened and told them, “I feel good in my heart.” To this day, somewhere in her storage, my mother has kept that scrap of paper where I had written down the telephone number.

This was one of the first moments where I felt the presence of God.

I’d like to say that this type of contact was frequent and consistent, but that wouldn’t be telling the truth.

Faith Disturbed

Several things along my life slowly began to disturb my faith. It started innocently enough with university. I learned more about other faiths, even among my fellow students, who had a variety of beliefs. There were nuances between how people baptized, who was allowed to distribute Communion, if women were allowed to preach, etc. These nuances often led to hefty debates.

My faith was also disturbed when I learned (at my very conservative Christian college) that there is no evidence for a Flood, an Exodus, the destruction of Jericho, etc. There were some correlations that would substantiate Scripture, but not enough to verify that historical events actually happened.

Is my faith based on a lie? That’s the question. Isn’t it? To even voice such a question leads to being ostracized, shunned, and rejected.

Nothing is more exemplary of this when I finally admitted to myself and others about my sexual orientation. If ever there were a topic to show the true nature of one’s faith, it is sexual orientation. How one reacts to someone coming out is a true marker about someone having a faith of love or a faith of rules.

Coming out is never a once and done issue with me. Every time I meet someone new, start a new job, go to a new city, eventually I come out or am outed. People’s reaction to me normally tells me how their faith informs their life. I would love to say that their reactions are lovely, but in all honesty they aren’t. Most LGBTQ people I know are closeted and afraid of coming out.

Is Meditation the Answer?

I have taken to doing contemplative meditation. This has helped me out in so many ways I cannot describe accurately. It has been one of the few times where I actually can feel connected to God, if that’s what I can describe as happening. It has been actually a very beautiful time for me and often difficult to replicate. For example, several years back I was doing a guided meditation, involving body scanning. This is a process where you pay attention to your various parts of your body, in this case starting from the feet and going upwards, and releasing any tension in your body, concentrating on your breathing the whole time.

At the end of this process, I opened my eyes, trying to maintain that feeling of being one with nature and with God. I cannot describe what that felt like. It was so beautiful. I have since tried to replicate that feeling, with various degrees of success, but never quite like it was doing it the first time.

Was this experience an encounter with God? It felt like it. I am also cognizant that my feelings aren’t always an accurate judge of what is happening to me.

Is God Actually There?

I wish I had a definitive answer for this. I am ok with not being certain. Otherwise, what use is faith? I see God in nothing. I wish I did. I have been searching for God all my life. Sometimes my faith is enough to sustain me and my faith in God. Other times, when my reasoning takes over, I get frustrated with the lack of ANY concrete evidence that God exists.

When I talk about my questions with other people, I get two reactions normally: Sympathy/empathy or arguments. The arguments normally come online, hidden behind anonymous avatars, seeking to assuage their own doubts.

Searching for God, I turn to the only things I can turn to: other people. How do they treat me as a bisexual man? How do they treat someone who is worse off than they are? Do they return their shopping cart to the cart corral? (That last one is just a joke, but I still believe holds a kernel of truth.)

In the end, I normally feel very lonely and alone.

And God is silent.