WB Aging Well
Last week my mom had me sort through a bin in her basement. It was filled with every childhood sketchbook I ever had. I was amazed to discover comics and drawings from grammar school. It was like walking through my own weird progression of design and humor. One thing was immediately clear: my 10-year-old daughter is a FAR superior artist compared to my own drawings at the same age! The biggest treasure was this goofy multi-page comic I drew in 9th grade for my friends called “At the Rest Home.” It envisioned me and all my friends in assisted living together. I sent pictures of it to my High School friends and they all remembered it!
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As I sorted through old drawings, poems, and stories, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own journey as a closeted gay kid. Some of the drawings represented the innocence of my childhood, where I suspected I was a little different but I didn’t care. Then my drawing took off and I was constantly making comics for my friends at a time when I knew that I liked guys instead of girls, and I was called “gay” and “f—–t” by older kids because I was artistic, quiet and sensitive. Adolescence was this weird time of confidence in my art, my humor, my faith; and complete fear that people would find out I liked guys. I figured I’d grow out of it, and I thought that the fact that girls were no temptation somehow meant I was being really holy in the '90’s purity culture. Some of the things I believed and said in the name of purity culture were so harmful to me and to others, but I was so sure Jesus would save me from my same-sex attraction, so I went above and beyond. I worked hard to prove to the Lord that I belonged in God’s kingdom! I saw the scripture in black and white, literal terms, and I was certain that this was the only way to salvation.
So long story short (too late!), all this reflection challenged my thinking on maturity in the faith. As I teenager and young adult, I genuinely thought I was more spiritually mature than my peers. I prayed, fasted, read the Bible daily, spoke in tongues and raised my hands in worship. I didn’t kiss anyone until I was engaged to a woman. I played by all the rules of the evangelical church and would up depressed, anxious, and living a lie in order to appear perfect. I wasn’t more mature than my peers. I hadn’t achieved Christian perfection. I wasn’t holier than anyone around me. I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t have it all together. But from the outside, it looked like I did. I had convinced myself and others that I was spiritually mature, but now that I’m out, so much of my previous faith development seemed like a precursor to who I’m becoming now.
I draw comics about real guys, historical Christian giants who were anti-gay. I believe in a Bible that is anti-gay. But I believe in a God who is pro-gay. It seems contradictory. If I truly followed Paul and John Wesley then wouldn’t I continue rejecting my sexuality and live out my days in suicidal depression, hating myself for who I was made to be? But I do truly follow Paul and John Wesley. They didn’t teach me what to think. They taught me how to think.
Paul was anti-gay. I don’t argue that the Bible "clearly" states that it is a sin for a man to sleep with a man. But Paul didn’t live in the 21st century. Paul didn’t know gay Christians in committed monogamous same-sex relationships. It wasn’t in his worldview. Same for John Wesley. But I believe I can follow Paul and John Wesley’s pattern of thinking about who God is, who people are, and how the Holy Spirit moves in new and unique ways across time to bring about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven in the name of Jesus. Even if they came to different conclusions because of their context, I have received the Holy Spirit, and I am in a deep and loving relationship with Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior. I have not forsaken him in order to live an alternative, degenerate lifestyle. I have discovered him more fully in accepting who God made me to be.
I’m not interested in intellectually changing minds through a Bible study. You have to do the hard work of meeting gay Christians and learning that we are real and that God loves us too. We were made to be in relationship with the same-sex. It’s not a sin or a result of the Fall. It’s not a mental illness or disease. God’s infinite wisdom saw fit to create LGBTQ+ persons for the betterment of the world, and we are living our natural lives for the glory of God. Paul didn’t write a new law into existence. The only new law is the law of Christ: “Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” Paul’s “rules” are his way of discerning how to do that…for his time. They were never meant to be our new 10 commandments. They are there to teach us how to think for ourselves, how to interpret what the Holy Spirit is up to now.
It’s not my job to convince people to read the Bible this way, but I’ve made it my mission at Wesley Bros Comics to be doing this type of theology from the beginning. I’m thankful to be surrounded by a community that also approaches the bible with this sort of sensitivity. Thank you for your commitment to responsibility and grace. Thank you for believing in me and supporting my ministry to the least and the lost. Let’s do this together!