Does God love gay men? by rudenski Blog entry

Blog: The Gathering Place
by rudenski

Does God love gay men?

Okay...so I talk to God...then why do I need religion? I don't really...I could just turn my face to God and look straight into the light of God's love and walk right out of my body... but I am still here so I must have some lessons to learn.
I have been talking to God since I was a child but my perception of God has significantly changed over time... Perhaps this is why I am still in a physical body?

Date: 12/29/2006 10:27:40 AM ( 18 y ) ... viewed 3600 times

I remember having school peers who rolled gay men and beat them up as they walked out of bars when I was a teen. I recall approving of this criminal activity so in a sense, I was an accessory to their crimes. There was something in me that disapproved of harming others but those gay men in my eyes were fair game. At others times, when I was a teen, I remember saying with my own mouth that every gay person in the world should be rounded up and put on an island then nuked. I still talked to God and though God talked to me...I went right on thinking gay men were an abomination. Was it because my preacher told me so?

When I was a child, I could swear I was asleep when my preacher read from the Bible and declared that these evil gay people were not God's people and the preacher cited verses of scripture where God destroyed Sodom and Gemmorah(a spell check said this word was spelled wrong but the root word was immorality). Does God hate immoral people? I had never asked God if God hated people with different morals than my own but somehow I connected two different things...God and religion and formed my own theory that God hated gay people. When AIDS came along, another preacher said that AIDS was a curse from God for immorality and in particular for gay men in San Fransisco. I believed it. I never asked God if this was true...I had even met God by this time in a NDE and knew that God was love...but still...I rationalized that there was an exception for gay men. There was no reasonable explanation for this in my mind but this is what I believed. How could someone who has met God believe that God hated gay men?

In person, I treat everyone the same. I treat everyone with kindness. On the inside there may be a war going on but in person...I try to be as loving as possible. Meeting God in heaven, I found that God even loved me...and I am not talking about just love...I am talking about love so strong that God didn't even see my twisted thoughts and actions I wished I had had never done...and thoughts I wished I had never thought...God loved me as if I was God's favorite child who had come home...and I was greeted as an honored guest... Back to the topic... When I returned from heaven to my body... I had a new outlook on life... I told everyone I loved them or at least I tried to show it by my actions. I was still prejudiced about homosexual men but I treated gay men who I ran across with kindness and respect. The same was not returned to me. Over a dozen gay men who I came across told me that they wanted to have sex with me over the years. It was very offensive to me and it disgusted me down on some primordial level.
Many of those men told me that they loved me even. I would tell them that I was very straight and that I was not interested. I was almost always told by these men, how these men were abused sexually when they were children. It was as if they were under some kind of spell and they were drawn to me even more because I outwardly was compassionate although inwardly I loathed them. I have never had a woman ask me for sex who I met for the first time in my life but several men have. I always thought that was a bad deal...ha...

I worked in a warehouse when I was first starting a family. One of my co-workers, whom I considered a friend, didn't show up for work one day. My friend had helped me work on my car one time. I went over to his apartment and we put an alternator on that was in a difficult place to get to in my van. Richard never asked for anything in return. He was kind and helpful. A few weeks later, when Richard didn't show up for a couple of weeks for work, I began to worry about him. There seemed to be a kind of secrecy about the whole thing. I later found he was in a hospital and had some kind of rare brain fungus. I finally found out where he was and I went with my family to visit him in the hospital. He told me the insurance company didn't want to give him some kind of special treatment. He did seem glad that we had come by. We wished him well and I later heard that he died from complications due to AIDS. I only found out that he died and had a funeral after the fact. No one told anyone from work but later we found out that his parents didn't approve of his lifestyle and they didn't even go to his funeral. Richard never told me he was gay. I had long admired Richard and even though he was gay, I loved him on some level. It was during this time that I changed my mind about God creating AIDS to kill immoral people. Whatever Richard was in his personal life, the times I spent with him at work and outside of work, he was honest, sincere, and a true friend.

I am beginning to understand that there are reasons why we come to this earth. We want to learn some very specific things. When I was in heaven, God asked me if I needed to learn more about love. I always thought that it was a kind of question that
begged me to learn how to love others. I have gone through many stages of learning about love but what I have come to understand most is that it wasn't about me loving other people...it was about God's love... God loves all of us...who have a soul...every one of us. We "all" may have what religious texts may call an immoral life...I know that God still loved me even though I had many areas of my life that were not... from a religious perspective...moral... God looked beyond my cruelty and my own sexua| immorality and saw what was good, and right, and beautiful....inside of me...

Through the years, I have tried to make my list of people I loathe shorter. I don't always succeed. I believe I have had a breakthrough on many levels. I once upon a time believed God hated Atheists, Muslims, Blacks, Catholics, Gay men, Alcoholics, Drug Addicts, the homeless, and I am sure several other kinds and types of people. I am still here so I know there is still more to learn. I believe the hardest thing of all is to learn to love those who believe that God hates "Atheists, Muslims, Blacks, Catholics, Gay men, Alcoholics, Drug Addicts, the homeless, and I am sure several other kinds and types of people." Perhaps this is my last lesson before I walk into the light? I am still here so I must have some reason to be here...