I had a good day today, mostly. Went to short school and learned about fire resistive construction, which is a subject I'm starting to get really interested in. Then I went to see my supervisors get a human rights award from the city for helping with my transition. I got a hug from a rather senior city official - good to have friends in high places! I live in a good place.
I think I stuck my foot in it, though - not there, but earlier. I don't know why I try to talk to Christians. (I'm speaking of fundamentalist Christians, of course. Most Christians are compassionate and accepting. Very confusing, really, that they all use the same word to describe such vastly different world-views and religions.)
What can you do when someone's world-view is based on believing that you don't exist? Just by by stripping off the mask of deceit that brought me to the brink of suicide, I'm too big a threat to them to ever connect or have any meaningful dialogue at all. It’s painful to realize that. I’d really like to believe there’s more hope, that love can move them, that there is common ground somewhere to be found. But I'm starting to see, from experience, and Sally Kerns, and Concerned Women for America, and the American Family Research Council, ad nauseum, that they're at war with me, and have no interest in connecting with me, only with eliminating me from their lives and their world - and if I don't defend myself, if I don't fight that war back, I'll suffer the consequences.
Yet I keep trying, longing, to talk, to connect, to explain that I just want to be free to be who I am, and to be safe in my own community and society, and that I think it's just fine they're who they are, and I'd really like it if they were safe, too.
Silly me. When a fundamentalist Christian sees me, he has no choice but to question her own worldview, and that of his pastor and friends, or kill me (either figuratively or literally speaking). And it's a hell of a lot easier to kill me.
Why don't I get it?
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5 comments:
"I think it's just fine they're who they are, and I'd really like it if they were safe, too."
This sounds more Christ-like than the words you were greeted with by the "Christians."
I'll stand with you.
I will too.*Mumbles* got nothing better to do with my afterlife after all.
Thanks, y'all. I just wish I could, y'know, start a dialogue. But I'll be damned if I can figure out how.
seda,
I have read and replied to your comment on my blog.
I will say this. I am a fundamentalist Christian and yet I do not hold to the idea that you do not exist or that you should be killed etc.
I know you read my post on this subject and you should understand my thinking at least a little bit. You know, for example, that I believe that we should operate from love in all things. Jesus called us to the highest standard, and while I haven't reached it I believe it is attainable with God's help.
This standard accepts everyone in love even if they don't hold to our beliefs. Jesus said, "Forgive them for they do not know what they are doing," from the cross. I think that is a powerful prayer. I'd like to think that I could have the same heart when being persecuted for my beliefs, but I know that such a heart does not come in spite of the life lived. I must live with that kind of love and compassion if I can hope to die with that kind of love and compassion.
Nick,
I hear ya. It's damn hard to hold that unconditional love and forgiveness in my heart while y'all are persecuting me for my beliefs. Frankly, it hurts.
I'm working on it.
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