Understanding Faith

I would like to give a small disclaimer at the beginning of this article for those of different faiths. I am not Muslim, or Christian, or Jewish, I would more closely associate with Paganism or other forms of polytheism, but I was raised in a Christian tradition. This article is to express some of my specific experiences as a young gay man in my faith tradition, as well as some of the preconceptions I was raised on towards other religions. This has been what I have found in my own exploration of other faiths, not a "catch-all" of what others believe. If you disagree with any of my thoughts or finding, I totally accept that and accept you and you right to pursue your own path.

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I was raised in a Baptist esk tradition. I typically attended congregations that were labeled "Bible" churches, but my grandfather was the pastor of a Baptist church is California. Growing up, I had a strong sense of identity in my faith, and while not always disciplined, tried my best to characterize myself by what the Bible taught and sought to do better in the more subtle teachings of Scripture. Worried about things like talking to much, or laziness. There was a clear deviation in my mind between living a life rife with sin and what I was doing. All sin was bad, but certain acts were more indicative of a corrupt lifestyle.

Then puberty hit, and the idea of staying pure until marriage was easy peezy. After all, I wasn't attracted to women at all. The real struggle was trying to keep my mind from wandering towards guys because in how I was taught that was a sure fire one way ticket to hell. I prayed constantly, read my Bible, and kept it tight, making sure no one knew. Slip ups still happened though, and I had to explain myself over and over thinking "Maybe it's a desire to be like these men, and I'm placing greater value on them because I want to be that as a future husband."

My reasoning was total nonsense and just a way for me to try and convince myself that I wasn't gay, I was just sexual frustrated and that I would grow out of it, and needed to stay focused on being pure of mind and heart. The long story short, I eventually came out, was kicked from my family home, and am now living with my boyfriend of 6 years, planning a wedding. I am the happiest I have ever been, but the question around God has never really left me.

There are many paradox's in my mind around faith, especially from what I expect people of faith to do based off of their teaching despite what they actually do. In the six years I have been out, the small number of people who have tried to convert me back and repent has been nominal and it is a bit shocking to me given the damnation doctrine I was so heavily steeped in. For me, a lot of questions of love and relationship with others of different faiths has weighed heavily on me. As friends have passed or lost loved ones, knowing what to say as comfort when you don't pray has been a big one.

This rabbit hole led me a number of places. In the deep hurt of being ostracized from my family, I sought comfort in Buddhism first. I found it profoundly spiritual and comforting, but also very disorienting with what often felt more open ended, when for nearly 20 years of my life I had a very clear understanding on what my spiritual path should look like. Following down that same vein I walked over towards Paganism and Wicca, which felt more irreverent to me having been taught how evil they were growing up.

Finding Pagans to be the opposite and their goals in practice being much more grounded in things I believed, as well as outstandingly open to people of all walks of life, I have stayed and grown tremendously in my spiritual walk. One area of Paganism that I found especially compelling is the encouragement to seek new knowledge. Learning is a core value, and having entered into this space, I found myself still with some nagging questions of other faiths.

All of this culminated to investigating a faith that for the longest time scared me the most. The lies and misinformation I had been raised on around Islam was outstanding. Thankfully I don't believe all expressions of Christianity or even all Christian households carry these views, but there are certainly large swaths of "Christians" or misrepresent the Muslim world as overly violent, abusive to woman, and angry as a people. If I have learned anything on my short journey it is that an unchallenged belief often times sits dormant, but true in our minds as if there is no question of its correctness.

Coming out of the church and understanding a lot of the false truths being taught about me, and the lifestyle of people who identified as LGBT made me realize that much of what I had assumed about other groups was also probably false. Pagans were one of the first groups I sought up to learn more about because I had such an inaccurate picture and my curiosity took hold, but I didn't seek that as openly as I should have.

Going into Islam though for better understanding, I had a strong desire to be completely open. I recognized that I believed by default in a certain amount of violence being cultivated in their Scriptures, and I also believed that there may also be stricture rules to adhere too that made them more repressive or discriminatory of others. I also understood in the back of my mind however that I had no basis for those assumptions, and that just like there was great violence in the Old Testament, or bigotry in the Old and New Testaments towards homosexuals, that many of the faith I understood well were not violent prone, though in my own case sometimes judgmental.

So I opened up the Qur'an, I watched numerous interfaith panels, and I listened to hours of Muslim teachers speak on what the Qur'an teaches. What I found surprised me. There were powerful passages of human rights that viewed men of different color as equal, and a strong respect demanded of its followers towards people of other faiths. What I found most compelling was the close ties to Christianity and Judaism that I had already known some of, but not to the extent, where Jesus and Moses were as often mentioned as Muhammad (respectfully, peace be upon all of them, though I don't practice Islam.)

Violence was mentioned, but with far less frequency than what I had grown up reading in the Old Testament, and many passages made clear that violence was not something to be sought after. For when it was written, and for what it taught, I was blown away by just how unfair my assumptions of this faith had been. I had been raised to believe vile things, only to find increasingly strong similarities between what I was taught and what was clearly practiced in the Muslim faith.

Does that mean that Islam is without it's faults on it's impact of our cultures? Certainly not, just as Christianity has been used to persecute people, Islam too has some strict adherences that can often be interpreted to disenfranchise homosexuals, or in some cases be used to justify abuse against women. The take away for me though was just as Christians today would not say that the Bible encourages slavery, there is no reason to believe that Islam encourages the abuse of women, or violence against none believers.

This was a bit of a revelation to me. I spent sometime with the other perspectives as well to try and understand where these assumptions had originated. Watching footage of the atrocities happening in Saudi Arabia, and the explanations of it, I realized very quickly how political violence had weaponized a faith against its own believers to instill fear and it reminded me of the "Christian" abuse of the Spanish Inquisition or the Holocaust, both of which had also been political genocide's committed under the guise of nationalism and faith.

Now as I mentioned a couple of times, I do not attribute Christianity or even Islam as faiths that I profess to be true. I do however carry with me teaching from my childhood that still provide context and help in how I live my life. Perhaps one of my favorite is to not let the sun go down on your anger. This practice is rare outside of people who practice faith traditions. I still practice it even though I don't attribute these faiths because there is great value to me in making peace with others the day there is offense.

Faith is very important to us. I don't necessarily believe that a single faith carries all of the answers, and every person of a different faith may disagree with me, but there are great truths and lessons that are not inherent or obvious to us outside of the context of faith. Religions often are sighted as being ways to control populations, and there is likely some truth to that, but they also provide a context of how we relate to the unimaginably big and wonderous world and universe we live in, as well as to the immeasurably varying complexity of people around us.

We are unique and powerful creatures, a great force of good and sometimes an even greater force of evil. Our faith traditions in many instances have provided the necessary courage to people with strong convictions to withstand untold horrors and do the right things. I don't believe my journey is discovering truths in different faiths is over, but I find myself opening more and more to different faiths without a prejudice because there are remarkably enlightened, and compassionate people of faith in many of these communities. It is my hope to continue to learn from people of different faiths, and to grow in my understanding of why we believe in a God or gods, and what all of it means.