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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: This Side of Paradise (not about the book) (07/14/11)
If understanding is the ultimate representation of light then misunderstanding, confusion, chaos and perplexity all represent darkness. Darkness is the absence of light. Preaching directly to the church of His day, Christ taught, “Ye are the light of the world.” So since, according to Jesus, the church represents light then what does the spiritually dismal condition of the world that surrounds the church today subliminally tell us about the current spiritual condition of Christianity’s light? On this side of paradise the only truth to be found in attempting to understand God through the organized church is that it’s truly no walk in the park.

From pulpits erected from fear and then fueled by a Satan-spawned hate, Christian leaders have successfully demonstrated that they have no clue to how they have grossly confused the entire world and their own congregations with regard to God and the highly explosive topic of homosexuality. With practiced sincerity, they preach of a loving, graceful and longsuffering God, but then by their actions present a god of discrimination, manipulation, intolerance, deception and hypocrisy. The God that organized Christianity has publicly represented has to be at best, schizophrenic, and at worse, false. It’s that simple when viewed through the bright light of understanding.

After being gay for most my adult life, I have remained contently celibate for going on seven years now. Fortunately for me, today’s church had very little if anything to do with my eternal change of heart. Christ, alone, helped me to understand my sexuality when Christianity was ill equipped to do so. The way I view sexuality now is all God’s doing, from start to finish. In as much as there exists traits within me that caused me to be born black and prone to hypertension, I was also born to eventually become same-gender attracted. I was physically, psychologically and spiritually prewired to eventually become gay. Spiritually, I was as gay as one can be. I was happy and gay for over two decades until the spirit of love arrested my thought life. There’s absolutely no way that any straight, never-been-gay opportunist wearing a collar can convince me otherwise. It’s in the blood. That’s why I needed Grace’s transfusion utilizing Jesus’ blood. Scripture backs me up if not one grossly-misunderstanding zealot these days hasn’t the courage to.

If Christ was ministering in the flesh today, He wouldn’t be chasing homosexuals from synagogues like I’ve witnessed pulpits doing all my life. Instead, He would be vehemently preaching against the lot of organized Christianity, perhaps worse than He righteously judged Judaism and Israel. So much hypocrisy, abuse, manipulation and lying have gone on behind Christian pulpits that I can’t understand why more Christians haven’t already washed their hands of the church altogether. There has to be more to Christ than organized Christianity. With the track record that Christian leadership has racked up just during my lifetime one can hardly blame writing like this on the eventual demise of organized Christianity as we now know it. No, the great falling away prophesied by Christ will, unfortunately for Christianity, be self-inflicted.

Christianity must understand that it can’t have it both ways. We must either do the right thing the right way all the time, no room for compromise, or let the love, grace and peace of God be our most prominent motivational guide. Otherwise, Christianity will always end up stuck in the blind ditches that it so often digs itself into.

Yeah… this side of paradise sucks. Types of gods and illusion-spewing forms of godliness are in full bloom. Pulpits are leading believers when they can hardly tell their right from their left. If the insanity of Christianity today is what the believer has to look forward to for an eternity then it’s easy to understand why more people tend to opt for the Christian’s hell over attending and supporting the likes of Christianity today. No obvious signs of Christ’s body can be found hardly anywhere it should be able to be, except in sacred Scripture. To be absent from this ocean of mind-numbing chaos, confusion and darkness and present with the Lord in paradise should be every sober Kingdom citizen’s current fantasy.

Lord, please save us from your followers.
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Shann Hall-LochmannVanBennekom 
08/03/11
Wow, what a courageous testimony. Although many may not agree with you on all points you expressed your points with passion. I did feel some anger too but I believe you have every right to be angry. I hope many people will read your story.

If I may give you a tiny piece of advice Revise this and start with the paragraph I was a gay man. It grabs the reader and pulls them in immediately. Sometimes if you start out too theological, people skip over the story and never read the real root of your message.

Also consider changing the title to something like Formerly Gay Forever Joyful (that's kind of cheesy) but I think people need the title to match your main point. Someone who struggled like you needs to see in the title that you know what it feels like to be in their situation,

Again I really commend your courage and think you did a great job. Don't give up only you can tell your story.