Standing Honestly
Written by Dan McDonald
It was summer break between my
senior year in high school and my freshman year in college. I hadn’t scored to
be honest and it was the one thing I wanted more than anything else in my life
at age seventeen. I was raised in a home where we were not very religious. But
over the years I had been drawn to attend church on occasion, to read through
the Bible occasionally. Life had gotten tough, because teen years are so full
of stuff that we didn’t quite know how to face. For me, when nothing made sense
I took a walk to our back pasture and prayed. My prayers weren’t exactly
Christian prayers. They were more like wandering in the back pasture among the
Hereford and Angus with my two dogs, feeling sorry for myself because life was
painful and there didn’t seem much joy – just mostly sorrow and wondering if
life could fit. So I would pray. I would pray and ask God to reveal himself
like he had to one of the prophets. Sometimes I begged and sometimes I just got
angry and told God that he must be the most selfish being in the universe.
Sometimes I told him I would never believe in him and that I would never serve
him. But mostly I just wanted to know if he existed. I thought if I could get
him angry enough he might strike me dead. But maybe I would have the satisfaction
in that final moment of feeling at last he revealed himself. Then what I have
counted his answer to my prayers began to take place. Part of the answer was in
the Sermon on the Mount. I had an Old Testament view of God and I felt that if
the New Testament was so different from the Old, then I would have to keep the
old. But when I read the Sermon on the Mount I was overjoyed to discover that
Jesus spoke like the prophets. He didn’t mince his words. He wasn’t fine tuning
what he said to one person and then saying it differently for another crowed.
This was like the Old Testament prophets I had learned to appreciate as those
who had proclaimed the Word of God. He was like them and maybe all of them put
together. There was this sense about what there was in him, that all the others
were forerunners and preparatory advertisers and he was the real deal the
fulfillment of what the others had only been beginning.
In a few months’ time I began to
learn that he had died for my sins. I didn’t understand it the same way I do
now. But I was overwhelmed that God would become man and suffer death that I
might know life when I had become a sinner. I had pondered over the words of
the command that I was to love my neighbor as myself and I had begun to realize
I was selfish, willing to use people to get what I wanted. It seemed as if
nothing could be more impossible than for me to love my neighbor as myself.
Then there was that verse about whoever looks upon a woman to lust for her has
committed adultery already. I was seventeen I just wanted to score. Maybe I
overreacted to the words I read. I probably in some ways did over react. But as
I look back I was learning that there is a big difference between having
feelings of passion and desire and having love that is not the turning of a
woman into our passion object so that we get to use her for our pleasure. I was
seventeen and I wanted to score and also Christ had died for my sins and wow
God really loved me, and couldn’t he wait until I at least scored one time. My
life, at seventeen, was lived between the tension of would I score; and the
tension of would I at last follow Christ.
Eventually I determined I would
score. I was a bit upset with God and I would score. I was on a vacation and
had picked the perfect girl for the deed. She had no morality hang-ups and
maybe if I played my cards right. There was a group of us playing cards and she
was at the table. Somebody said something about Jesus freaks. The gal said she
didn’t believe in God, in Christ, in the church, or any of that expletive
deleted. I thought for a moment about how in so many ways I believed that Jesus
Christ was the Son of God. I thought of a passage where it said that Jesus had
said that whoever confesses him before men, he would confess before the Father;
and whoever denied him before men he would deny before the Father. I thought “not
here Lord, maybe some other time.” Then the thought ran through my mind that
one could not serve “God and …” It was as if God were calling me to make up my
mind right then and there about scoring or following Christ. I felt as if time
had stopped completely, as if the universe had stopped moving and it was waiting
for what I would say in that moment. I said with as normal of a voice as I
could muster in the moment, “I don’t know much about the church, but I believe
that Jesus Christ is who he said he was, the Son of God.” I felt free. The
tension was gone. I hadn’t scored. Maybe I never would. Maybe I never will. But
I was following Jesus, not so much because I had found him but because he had
found me.
For a long time I’ve felt like I
needed to say something about the issue of homosexuality. I stand with the old
path, and others are going to have to figure out where they stand. I have no
doubt that a lot of brothers and sisters struggle with same sex attractions and
with the passages they see that seem to speak against it. There are now a lot
of people saying they have found something or another in the Greek to disprove
what seems to be there in so many of the translations. I guess I am a sceptic
because there were a lot of Greek Church fathers who spoke the language of
Greek and never saw what some American with a few years of college Greek saw. I
know that Americans pride themselves in being smarter than all other people
ever in the history of man, but still I think it strange that all those Greek Church
fathers never noticed what an American noticed with a few hours of Greek in
college classes. I can only stand where I must stand. For every brother or
sister struggling with an attraction I will pray for you to stand with Jesus
and follow him. I will stand with you and pray for you. We live in a tough
world and there is no temptation facing you that is not common to humanity.
I know a lot of people will disagree with my stand. But for
me it is something like that evening when a group of young people were playing
cards. After I spoke my words that evening the talk about religion, church, God
and Christ didn’t come up again. I had spoken and the next hand was dealt. That
night I felt like I was standing alone. But now I feel there are those who
struggle with attractions and yet believe the Scriptures and the Christian
tradition have spoken. You might believe you are alone but you are not. For
those who struggle with feelings to which they feel they must say “no” you are
not alone. It kind of felt today important to say.
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