Short Stories

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Jonathan woke abruptly. The deep sounds of the night were obscured by the thick walls of his basement room. The darkness made it feel like a prison.

Jonathan shifted. Most things felt like prison these days.

He lay there for a long time, not moving, afraid to break the silence that served as a weak substitute for peace. Peace was hard to come by now. Silence was fleeting enough. Catching peace was like catching the wind. It went where it wanted when it wanted. Jonathan wished having peace was like cooking. Just combine the ingredients of fellowship, worship and scripture reading, stir and bake for one half hour, and presto, you had peace.

Jonathan’s sigh was barely audible. No formula.

“You expected a formula? ” the demon sneered.

He sat up in bed and hugged his knees to his chest. He was so troubled that he could not even sleep an entire night through. He knew what the trouble was. That sin had happened again. That sin, the one his family and pastor and friends all called an abomination. That sin. The one that the Apostle Paul says is a result of self-worship rather than God worship.

That sin. Oh, God. That sin.

I’m gay. What will everyone think when they find out?

“Give over. You might as well stop fighting who you are,” the demon said, non-chalantly.

What had Pastor Danny said on Sunday? He remembered easily, since he had heard that sermon many times from family and friends. It had come from the first chapter in Romans. The passage was a familiar one to Jonathan. Many late nights he had spent poring over scripture in search of an answer for his struggle with homosexuality. The passage was simple:


They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.


Pastor Danny then used the rest of his time to outline a three-point argument why homosexuality was sinful. Close to the end of the sermon, Pastor Danny offered hope to homosexuals by saying that while Jesus hated homosexuality, he loved homosexuals, and that was why he had to die for them, just like he had to die for every sinner. He called the other members of the church to love them out of the sin.

Jonathan had heard the three-point argument more times than he had read Romans 1.

“Rubbish!” the demon spat.

He left church that day, angry and frustrated over the lack of understanding. He wondered if Pastor Danny even knew any gay people. Oh, he was sure that the pastor knew gay people in a counseling relationship. Pastoral care in the context of homosexual ministry usually meant that a pastor was sitting behind a yellow writing pad taking notes while his “ministry” was pouring his heart out about how much he hated himself for his temptation and failure to live a Christian life.

But were Pastor Danny and other pastors friends with homosexuals, Christian or not, who were at peace with their sexuality and did not want to change? Jonathan doubted it. And the pastor’s cool, analytical exegesis on the topic was very odd.

Coming home from church that day was awkward. His parents knew about his struggle, but they thought it dealt with. That is, they hoped it was dealt with and it was clear to Jonathan that they had no desire to discuss it more than was necessary. The thought of their son being gay was enough to send these two strong personalities cowering like the Elijah from Queen Jezebel. The only time his parents every discussed the topic was to condemn the behavior.

“The pieces don’t fit!” his mother would say, referring to the anatomy involved in the act of fornication.

“It’s a sin, plain and simple. And I have to answer to God for the stance that I take on the subject.” Dad would say, not showing nearly as much emotion as if he were taking out the trash or reading aloud from the phone book. His response always appeared much more spiritual than his mom’s. Or was that contemplative? Jonathan did not know, but the effect was the same—increased sadness, guilt and anger over why this was his struggle.

“The pieces don’t fit! The pieces don’t fit! God says the pieces don’t fit!” the demon taunted. Then it laughed at him, throwing its head back with a loud, guttural guffaw.

Jonathan looked over in the direction of the demon for the first time since waking. It was sitting on his laptop, the same place it always sat. It was a constant companion in his room. It had been there when he arrived home from church on Sunday. The demon knew what made Jonathan tick. Knew what would draw him away from God’s presence. And one look at Jonathan that Sunday afternoon injected the demon with a gleeful craving to feed on his spirit.

“You’re angry,” it had said. “They don’t understand you. They never will. They want to keep you from happiness because they fear who you are.”

Jonathan struggled to pull up Bible verses that would combat these thoughts.

“You feel terrible,” it continued. “But you know what will make you feel better.” The laptop seemed to open and turn on by itself.

Jonathan felt a twinge of excitement as he brought up the familiar images. All the while, the demon fed upon his scorched soul.

Afterward, Jonathan fell asleep, and when he awoke, the pain and anger he experienced coming home from church had given way to a numbness he knew all too well. The demon had re-taken its place on the laptop, quietly savoring its latest feast, not needing to hunt. The damage, after all, had been extensive.

Where is God? Jonathan wondered.

Ironically, after he had these weak moments, it always seemed as though his mind was at its clearest. He was able to see things, analytically at least, for how they were. After a plunder, as Jonathan had come to refer to these moments, he was certain of the sinfulness of the behavior, and certain of what, in theory, it would take to free himself of this destructive cycle. He knew that he needed other Christians to find some way to intervene in a very invasive way, a way that he would hate and rail against, but that would ultimately prove his means to freedom. He needed to be kidnapped from his flesh and dropped into an adventure that would reveal God to him in a real way. He had been searching for God for so long, but had not found Him among the people of the Church. That is, somehow, Jonathan knew that he had missed out on something that so many other people in the Church seemed to have: a real relationship with God that had brought them out of slavery and changed their behavior, and brought them closer to righteousness. Why had Jonathan not experienced this same kind of closeness, this same freedom? He did not know, he just could not escape his own sin.

And he knew that he could not escape on his own.

But the Church, including his parents, did not seem interested in the daily toil it would take to really help Jonathan. Everyone was busy after all. And yet, Jonathan never doubted the care that those who ventured to tell Jonathan how sinful his behavior was. In a way, they were the most loving, since they would risk the friendship with him to tell him truth for his own good. He just wished desperately that they felt the same urgency that he felt, to the point of pursuing him and caring for him beyond this lie that leads to death.

Jonathan sighed again. Now, here he was in a dark room, unable to find peace. He had clarity, but it was beginning to feel uncomfortable. Again. He could not handle the discomfort.

The demon stirred again. It could sense that the hunt was about to begin. Again.

“You cannot take the pain. You feel terrible,” it said. “But you know how to get rid of the pain.”

Jonathan stared long at his laptop…

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