My Story - Trevor

GROWING UP

I was born into and raised in the United Methodist church; quite the middle-of-the-road type of church, theologically speaking.

But it was boring as a kid. Oh my goodness…we had our “children’s moment” but it was just that…a moment…this was before the whole “children’s church” got popularized, so I got to sit (I slept mostly) through the entire service. Mom would bring her quilted tote bag of goodies like coloring books and candy (anything from M&Ms to Skittles, Runts, or Reese’s Pieces…those were my favs..) to keep me occupied.

I remember one particular Sunday after having a taste of school for awhile in first grade, asking my parents whether we get a summer vacation from church, to which they replied “no”, and then I asked whether there was a point where we get to graduate from church like we do in school to which they replied “You go to church until you die”. My heart sank and I wasn’t so sure I’d be able to last; having to endure an old guy talk for what seemed like hours week after week.

I remember hearing stories in Sunday School but never getting really satisfying answers when I asked hard theological questions like: What’s heaven like? Will I see our dog, Fluffy, in heaven? How is it possible a boat could fit two of every animal? How would the meat eaters stop from eating the plant eaters? What would they do with all the poop? Why would God make the world and then destroy it, save a boatload of people and animals? Etc.

So I was a frustrated boy with a lot of questions and stories that I was told to believe and so, like Santa Claus, who also didn’t make a whole lot of sense, I believed God is magic. How did we get on this earth? Magic. How did a big fish swallow Jonah without digesting him? Magic. How did everyone get along on the ark? Magic. How did blowing trumpets cause a fortress to collapse? Magic. How did Jesus walk on water and turn water into wine and feed the thousands? All magic. Because God is God, there is no other explanation that makes sense, and since the Bible is infallible and everything in it MUST be true, that’s what it has to be.

Skipping forward a few years, in the Methodist tradition, like Catholics and Presbyterians, we are confirmed as official members of the church. We go through classes and learn all about our denomination’s history, we are asked to accept Jesus as our savior and then given a Bible.

I did this, but you could say I didn’t have the purest intentions in doing so. Everyone else was doing it and I didn’t want to be the odd one out, but more important than that, I had a HUGE crush on this girl and was doing anything I could think of to impress her. I thought getting saved couldn’t hurt my chances since she had already joined the club as well.

During my eighth grade year I met one of my best friends. I was kind of a nerd in school, and so, I was picked on quite a lot and this guy never picked on me. He actually treated me with respect. It was kind of nice.

He seemed to have answers to my questions and I was intrigued. I began attending his charismatic church’s youth group. Pentecostals freaked my parents out…which led me to become even MORE intrigued. Some teenagers would drive down to the river and get drunk and get high as their way of rebelling against their parents. My way of rebelling was getting drunk and high off of Jesus.

HIGH SCHOOL

To sum up my high school experience, it was all about following the Bible and what it said and embracing the “Full Gospel” which meant not only being baptized, but being “baptized in the spirit”. So, yes, I spoke in tongues, danced around like a crazy person and was even “slain in the spirit” once (even though I made myself fall due to peer pressure…I couldn’t be the only one left standing…what would that say about my faith?) To those who are unfamiliar with the “slain in the spirit” term, if you ever went on team building exercises and had to do a trust fall where you fall straight back and “trust” that your friends in the back will catch you…very similar, except people believe God is the one pushing (which in actuality it is just heightened emotions playing a big part and if you stand right, the slightest touch would knock you over. But that’s a whole different discussion…)

My whole mindset in high school was that Jesus could be coming tomorrow and there were so many who didn’t know Christ like I knew him and I didn’t want my friends going to hell, and so I thumped that Bible over anyone I possibly could to save them from the clutches of hell. I wasn’t mean about it…I think this is what frustrates me to this day how many Christians are viewed as people full of hate. I would argue that MOST are very well intentioned people who are only doing what they believe in their hearts is right, misguided though they may be.

So a lot of people in high school looked at me like I was crazy. But I was backed by multiple pastors, friends and contemporary Christian musicians who toted, “I don’t really care if they label me a Jesus Freak. There ain’t no disguising the truth.”

It was more important to get the gospel out to people than to be someone who was well liked.

I turned my back on my home church, labeling them as a “dead” church where the spirit of Christ was not alive – because there was no lifting of hands or contemporary praise music, no clapping or embracing the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

COLLEGE

So, when it came time to look at colleges, I wanted a Christian college. I chose a small private liberal arts college in Wichita, Kansas called “Friends University” that started out as Quaker affiliated but became non-denominational in the early nineties when financial bankruptcy loomed above the University’s head.

It was here that several people began challenging my views of Christianity.

I never got that chance to meet Christian singer/songwriter Rich Mullins, but he had attended the same University for his Music Education degree. He passed away the year before I came, but a lot of Rich’s friends soon became my friends, and I surrounded myself with people that referred to themselves as “The Ragamuffins”.

My chaplain, Dr. James Bryan Smith had several speakers come to campus that included: Brennan Manning, John Fischer, Carolyn Arends, and others, and these people seemed to say a lot of the same thing…

I will paraphrase using a steak as a metaphor since I grew up on a farm…(sorry vegans…just bare with me here…)

Christianity has become a very fatty slab of meat. It’s got some good stuff to it, but over the years has just added more and more fat. These people in my life challenged me to remove the excess fat, and get to the core of what it means to be Christian…the “Fillet Mignon” if you will.

I will never forget John Fischer’s message to us when he asked us “Where are you looking for God?”

I just assumed he was in the Christian music, Christian movies and Christian literature because those were the things that gave “glory to God”.

But Fisher challenged us to look outside the Christian subculture and look for God in places we wouldn’t expect.

He used Joan Osborne’s song, “What if God Was One of Us?”

I remember in the Bible where Saul/Paul was cured of his blindness it was like “scales being removed”…or something to that nature. I experienced something similar in my world-view and began seeing God in new places, and how certain “secular” movies and songs contained certain themes that seemed to speak to me, where they hadn’t before.

One huge challenge on my faith came when I had to come to a decision on where I stood on the issue of homosexuality. I had it in my mind that this was a perverse practice and that it was a choice and if God had intended this to be acceptable, he would have come up with Adam and Steve, and not Adam and Eve. These people were just confused and needed to repent or else, face eternal damnation. And it was up to me to convey this to them. But how does somebody do it in a loving manner? How would you even begin that kind of conversation? So I was scared and never really approached anyone about it. I really didn’t have any close friends that I knew that were gay, so that was my excuse.

I was in the college choir and there was a guy who stood beside me who came across a little feminine, but I had often been teased in high school, accused of being gay (since I was into music and drama and not football like so many of my peers). There were times that I wondered if that was the case, but having finally come to grips with the fact that I indeed preferred women, I just gave others accused of the same lifestyle the benefit of the doubt and assumed they were more of the “sensitive type” like myself.

Imagine my surprise when at dinner with some close friends, this particular gentleman and another announced that they were dating. Each other. Oh my god. I was now confronted with friends who I had known for several years and I knew these men loved the Lord, attended church regularly and were really great guys. Then on the other hand were my beliefs. And these things were clashing with one another. I ended up coming to the conclusion that homosexuality may be a sin, but as Jesus once said, “He who has never sinned may cast the first stone,” and I knew I certainly was not in that place, so I was still confused as to whether it was a “sin” or not, but had decided that if Christ had indeed come to take my sins away, then the same must hold true for my two friends. It would be about another seven years or so before I finally would come to the place of acceptance, and realize that homosexuality is something you don’t have a choice over, just like you don’t have a choice of whether you’re black or white and finally took a stand with my LGBT friends for marriage equality. But more on that later.

GRAD SCHOOL

I just about didn’t go to this school. I felt that my schooling wasn’t over and that after getting my B.A. in music, I wanted to get an M.A. in Communications…hoping that a Master’s in Film and Television would fund my music hobby. (Boy was I wrong.) I was looking into some larger film schools, but heard horror stories about how students didn’t get to touch any equipment for the first year, and were just studying books, and that when they got into teams to do their films, there was a lot of backstabbing as it was an “every-man-for-himself” type scenario to try to get that recognition and stand apart from the crowd…no matter what the cost.

I wanted a smaller school where I could get more teacher attention and didn’t have to fight with 200+ students for attention. I wanted to be able to get my hands on the equipment right away. I wanted a top-notch facility…using the type of equipment used in the professional world and not something 10 – 20 years old. And I preferred it to be Christian to prepare for the “Lion’s Den” of the secular world as I was kind of debating on trying my hand at New York.

So I chose Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. The same campus as the 700 club and Mr. Pat Robertson. I was actually in the process of filling out my application when September 11th happened. And I heard Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell discuss the tragedy and Falwell pointed his fingers at homosexuals, pro-choice people, and the like and said “You helped this happen.” To which Pat “totally concur[red].” I was so furious that I actually thought about ripping up the application and trying elsewhere. But a friend of mine said, “Are you going to let the comments of one man determine where you get your education?” I thought he had a valid point so I continued filling out the application, though I delayed it a year to think about it, and in the summer of 2003 I packed my bags for Virginia.

I was scared that there would be a dress code of suits and ties, but I was relieved when I found out that that wasn’t the case. I was also scared that everybody was going to be ultra-conservative, but found that, (at least in the school of Communication) the majority were very middle of the road like myself and also thought Pat Robertson to be crazy,so I found myself in good company.

I never found a church “home” that I felt comfortable with during my stay in Virginia. Most churches I visited were either mega-churches or I felt like I had stepped back 50 – 100 years in time…I ended up mostly attending a Vineyard church there. They were a more moderate charismatic church and I got the chance to be a part of the band, which I really wanted to keep my musical chops up as much as I could.

They seemed like a pretty cool bunch, very down to earth and I also got to help a pastor with editing together some church promotional videos, which helped with my editing experience.

But back on campus, every once and awhile I couldn’t help but feel a bit claustrophobic, spiritually speaking. Some peoples views just really got on my nerves. I worked at the campus cafeteria, and one of the executives of the 700 club was appalled that we were selling “TAZO TEA” because it said, “The Reincarnation of Tea” and “How dare we promote the idea of Reincarnation at a Christian school!” (I soooo wanted to tell the guy off, but I also soooo needed my job, so I bit my tongue.) IT’S TEA, STUPID! CALM THE F**** DOWN! (Is what I really wanted to say.)

So things like that made me feel slightly oppressed, so naturally, I rebelled…sorta…I grew my hair out to down below my shoulders. We weren’t supposed to have alcohol on the apartment premises, but I smuggled it in anyway. I also had a job running the campus shuttle bus, taking people around campus and to the campus apartments and back. I worked a lot of night shifts (when there hardly was ANYONE that was riding except for the few law students studying until the library closed.) Technically, the rules of my job were I was only supposed to have the radio tuned to Classic or Christian programming…or Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh’s radio programs…(I said to myself, “Hell no.”) So when I had people on the bus I had it tuned to country, and when the bus was empty, or if I picked up a Communications student who I knew appreciated my taste in music, I tuned into “Nights with Alice Cooper” and cranked it up.

So I’m a moderate rebel…sue me. (I just was scared to get kicked out of grad school.)

What was the purpose of this story again? Oh yeah, my spiritual journey…

Well, from my undergrad I had learned to loosen up a bit and remove the pole from my sphincter, but I was still trying to figure out what it meant to be a Christian in today’s society. Because I had embraced these progressive theological ideas, did that mean I was backsliding? I didn’t think so. I felt like I was growing and learning more, but that fear still remained. Some warned and told me I was “confused” and needed to regain Jesus as my first love because apparently I had lost Him along the way. Really?

I mean, yes, I felt I was more distant to my Saviour and did not feel the closeness as I had back in my high school days. But then the image of a father teaching his son to ride a bike came to my mind and I realized that I had needed to feel that closeness as I was getting a handle on things, but once I gained my balance, he let me go. He didn’t abandon me by any means, but I was free to take this journey on my own, with him cheering me on and always there if I should ever fall.

I also had another challenge to my faith. I had a friend in grad school who confessed his struggle with homosexuality to me and a few others. I would argue that this person was more in tune with Christ than myself and really had a strong desire in sharing the gospel of Love with anyone who would listen. But he was at the point of tears because he wasn’t able to change the way he thought about the way he saw certain men. He too had grown up in a Christian home and knew all of what the church had to say about homosexuality and desperately wanted to get right with God, but he was having a really tough time. We all vowed we’d pray for him and we’d always be there for him. I don’t know all that was tormenting this young man…whether it was his struggle with homosexuality, other things or a combination…but apparently it was too much for him to take and he attempted to take his own life.

My whole world stopped that afternoon when I heard that my friend was recovering in the hospital. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It also made me reflect on my own life. I’ve struggled with depression for the majority of my life, most of the time it’s moderate but there are times when it becomes severe…a couple of times when I even attempted taking my own life myself. (Again, that’s another story for another time…) But I wrote a long letter to this friend, and it was one of those weird times when I felt like I was writing a letter to myself, and really helped me and let me know I was not alone and it also offered me hope. Everything I wrote to my friend I really tried to take to heart myself.

But another question emerged. This person tried so hard to get right with God because he believed he was in the wrong. He was not flipping God the bird and saying, “I’ll do whatever I want!” He genuinely wanted to change but became so frustrated that he could not that he tried taking his own life because of it.

If homosexuality is something you CHOOSE, how could this person fail to change if he did all he could to think straight thoughts and he ended up believing the only way to keep himself from sinning again was to end his life??? A black person may do all he can to appear white, i.e., the late Michael Jackson. On the surface he may appear so, but inside, the man is still black. Eminem is white no matter how much bling and rap awards the dude aquires. We are who we are. And I wholeheartedly believe that you are born gay or straight. I think certain psychological events in one’s life may affect some and may serve as occasional exceptions to the rule, but for the majority, I believe you are either born gay or straight. I could go further into this debate, but this is about how my journey and how I have come to where I am now, and not necessarily my viewpoints on all these different issues.

THE FINAL CHAPTER – CALIFORNIA…THE REAL WORLD

So I had graduated with my master’s degree from my Christian graduate school and began looking for jobs. The search lasted for four months, and I was a few weeks from being kicked out of the University’s apartments when I accepted a non-paying gig as a p.a. on a faith-based film in Los Angeles. I had told God, “Anywhere but Hollywood, Lord.” And every door of opportunity slammed in my face, except for the one way out in Los Angeles. I couldn’t believe what I was doing, but at the end of July 2005, I flew out to work for free on a film in hopes of making contacts. That gig lasted a month and as luck would have it a good friend of mine from undergrad was going to seminary in Pasadena at that time and had a roommate move out, so I moved in. While I was in the process of looking for jobs, I was watching a lot of movies, courtesy of Netflix and my credit card. One I had heard a friend mention a film he was seeing to hear what they were saying about Jesus. This documentary was called “The God Who Wasn’t There”. I watched it with my seminary roommate, which he pointed out it had a lot of holes, but still had a lot of good points to it. The thing that got me was this filmmaker (an ex-Christian-turned-atheist) asking all these Christians about their faith and the history of Christianity as they left a Franklin Graham crusade outside of the Rose Bowl. Nobody really actually answered his questions, but instead came up with those clichéd canned answers, “Well I don’t really think about that. Jesus is Lord and I love Him and He’s all that matters. Yay Jesus.” Stuff like that. And I began thinking, “I really couldn’t answer these questions any better. I really don’t know that much about my faith other than what I’ve been told via pulpit and word of mouth all these years.” And it really got me to thinking and realizing there is SO MUCH that I did not know. An atheist knew more about the history about my faith than I did.

So I did the only thing I could do at that point. I started over. I became an atheist. For two days. And the more and more I looked at the world around me the more and more I was convinced in a higher power than mankind. Sure I do believe in science, and I do believe that natural laws have a big part to play in the creation and the life of this universe, and I do believe in evolution…BUT…I simply can’t turn a blind eye to this planet we call home, and the intricate details it takes to survive, and everything that life on earth entails…to call this “chance” is just mind-boggling…even if it did take a billion years. Then you look at things like evolution, the food chain, how life is balanced “just so”. I look at the birthing process in humans and animals. The human body, and how there are all these intricate processes going on without us even REALIZING that keep us living. Yes, all these are natural processes in of themselves, but this is just something I can’t attribute to “random chance”. I look at the large and the small: the green grass, a baby’s first cry, the moon controlling the tides, a forest fire giving birth to new life, summer moving to fall, fall to winter, winter to spring, and I simply can’t help but believe in a great author of all of this. How involved this greater intelligence is in our own lives is debatable, but after giving this some serious thought for awhile, I moved from an atheist to a Deist.

After almost a year of being in California, I finally settled on a church that one of the first friends I made in California attended with his then girlfriend, now – wife. It was a small church and a very small but growing young adults group. I felt incredibly welcomed there and at peace and when I tried to find out where they stood doctrinally, theologically and what not, they said they really don’t have any creeds they follow by because everybody is coming from somewhere different and they want to focus on the things that unify the church. I felt a bit perplexed but kind of relieved to hear that. It seemed like a very open-minded church. Our pastor often would have Wednesday night series on things like understanding different forms of prayer and exploring different faiths and trying to understand them better. I loved this, because I wholeheartedly believe that we fear what we don’t understand. There are of course, those who choose to be intolerant and close-minded and there isn’t much you can do to change their minds. But I think when it comes to things like Christians trying to understand things like other religious practices; they aren’t a hateful bunch of people, they just don’t understand, thus they are afraid and because they are afraid they get defensive, which many times gives the impression that nothing but bigotry and hate speech comes out of their mouths. But I don’t think this is necessarily the case.

Many of us from church went to a screening for the documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So”; a film about the clash between religion and Christianity. It featured people such as Episcopalian priest, Gene Robinson, as well as former House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt’s daughter, who are both gay…and both Christian. This film helped confirm what I already knew but it had just took the film for the knowledge to pass from head to heart, and I felt, again, as though I was seeing the world through different eyes. Eyes that were more loving and accepting and less requiring of an “Us-Versus-Them” mentality.

It was also shortly after this that I came to grips with my rejection of the idea of the Bible being the literal infallible word of God, (as so many churches list in their statement of faith) and finally took my own stance in believing that though the Bible is important and has a lot of God inspired insight, it was still written by men, who are completely fallible and are subject to their own opinions and prejudices, and using the Bible to back up people’s personal vendettas against others they don’t see eye to eye with; citing that “God is on THEIR side” is a very dangerous thing.

So then I went into what I would describe as a “Dark Night of The Soul” experience. I essentially had the rug that I had based my faith on pulled out from under me, and it was a scary experience…and it still is. Ignorance is definitely bliss. But turning back now would just be going against what I know now and wouldn’t be true to myself. It’s like staring at a blue pen and trying to say it was red.

So I began to ask myself, “Where do I fit in?” I realize labels don’t make the man or woman, but they can at least help point to a general idea of where one best fits in, and then you can move on from there.

So, would I consider myself a “Christian”? It depends on what you mean by that word. If you mean a faith that is based on a belief system being the only way to eternal life, that God is three-in-one, the Bible is the literal word of the Lord, that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary and rose three days later after his death, and the rapture, then I guess I don’t fit that definition of a “Christian” because I’m not sure I buy into these ideas.

HOWEVER, if, by a Christian, you mean one that believes in a higher power and believes Jesus was the best representation we could possibly have of knowing God in flesh form, and trying to the best of their ability to live their life according to what Jesus taught; learning how to love others as Christ did, and in doing so, being a “Jesus shape” to others…then yes, I am a Christian.

I have held on to three Bible verses that I would say are my essential “Pillars of Faith”.

* Mark 12:30-31 “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

* Micah 6:8 “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

* 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

So to answer myself and others, I found I fit best into Progressive Christian theology. But we’re all in the continual process of learning and relearning. That’s why it’s about the journey of this life that is so important, and not necessarily the destination, since, that’s kind of out of our hands.

In the Lord of the Rings, Frodo is distraught at everything that is going on around him. “I wish none of this had happened,” he says. The wise wizard Gandalf replies, “So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

What will we do with the time that is given to us? Will we bicker and argue and debate and try to force others into seeing things our way? Or will we open our arms and embrace diversity, embrace each other and live as a community as Jesus tried to communicate? It may be a pipe dream, but I’m with John Lennon on this one and will continue to imagine that world as long as I possibly can.

Enjoy your journey.