Invisible Lines: Religious Belief
What is a calling?
“As a person believes, so they will act.” Sam Harris
A second invisible line for me, after sexual orientation, was religious belief. And just a reminder — I’m using the term “line” as a metaphor and overall theme in my writing for anything designed or drawn for us by others, taught to us as the truth or the way the world works, or told to believe, follow, and remain within for our own good.
I’ve tried to illustrate across previous posts that in my life experience, some lines were bold and obvious (Adult Authority). Others were more thin and subtle (Gender, Sexuality). And some were invisible and almost impossible to see, until they weren’t (Sexual Orientation, Religious Belief). Which brings us up to this post.
But let me first return to the consideration from my last post — determining if full time Christian ministry was in fact my “calling.”
What is a calling? I’d had one pastoral mentor back in Mississippi describe it as doing something, particularly vocational, because there is nothing else you can do, not necessarily as a last resort but because no other option is as compelling. I believe my own calling was fueled by an amalgamation of this and a number of other perspectives.
True, I had no other idea as to what I could do for work if I did not continue to pursue Christian ministry full time. Although I had a minor in political science and a close second in theater, it was the study of religion that had most interested me. Even as I had once dreamed of being an actor and later a politician, I was now fully convinced that being a follower of Jesus and searching for God was the most meaningful and significant route a person could take in life. I was struck in an early religion class by a quote of the theologian Paul Tillich who described religion as, “The state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of the meaning of life." I wanted to be grasped by this ultimate concern in such a way that I might discover this answer for myself.
At this time in my life the best answer I had as to the meaning and purpose of life was love — love of God and neighbor. I wasn’t so concerned about sin or the notion that all humanity was doomed to hell unless we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. This theory of atonement1 always felt like an unnecessary philosophical reach to me. But I did believe, as I’ve already written, that the world could be a tough place and we all needed love as a means to help us through it. I also believed at this time that Jesus was the best example of this kind of love — a love of service and self-sacrifice.
I felt a purpose in this notion of service and self-sacrifice. I used to listen over and over again to the words of the Christian music singer/songwriter Stephen Curtis Chapman in his anthem, For the Sake of the Call. “We will abandon it all for the sake of the call. No other reason at all, but the sake of the call. Simply because it is Jesus who calls. And if we believe we'll obey.”
This was the highest commitment a Christian could make, in my thinking. And I was not to question, but rather simply to follow the leadings God was offering, or as I wrote in my divinity school application, “the tugs on my heart.” Ironically for me, within this purpose of self-sacrifice was also an element of self-protection. For I hoped deep down that if I truly loved God with all my heart, mind, and soul, that “he” would remove altogether these urges and attractions I was having for other men. And if that was not to be the case then I figured the church would be a safe place for me to love and be loved as I lived a single and celibate life.
I was surprised when a friend of my grandfather piercingly observed and said to me that I didn’t seem to be that excited about going to divinity school. On one hand I reasoned that I wasn’t necessarily supposed to feel excitement about answering a call to service and self-sacrifice. This was the point of self-sacrifice, was it not? Not to feel excitement, but to do something anyway.
On the other hand, I wish I could have admitted that I was actually afraid, and not only of the course requirements of a three-year master’s program at a prestigious divinity school such as Duke University (more on why I chose Duke in my next post), as a friend posited could be the cause of my anxiety. I was fearful and anxiety-ridden because as I prepared to move once again to a new place with new people, historically a scenario I had found hopeful, I wasn’t sure how much longer I could suppress being gay. And on a deeper level, my alter ego was struggling with the suspicion that suppression would remain exhausting and hopeless if I continued to try. That being said, I arrived in Durham, North Carolina for my first year of divinity school along with my first prescription for an antidepressant. By God, I was gonna do this — pursue full-time Christian service and ministry.
*Thanks for reading and/or listening. Continue to next post Gone to Carolina. To read from the beginning please go to Why I'm Writing.
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Atonement is a concept within Judaism and Christianity, which holds that humans must atone (make amends for a wrong or injury) for their sins against God. The Christian doctrine of the atonement states that Jesus Christ atoned for human sins by his death on the cross. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy