by Logan Lynn
VOICES
In The Trenches
H
The Recovering Christian's
Guide to Overcoming
Godlessness
aving gone through an incredibly traumatic spiritual
crisis centered around the very core of my identity as
a young man, I spent many years dismissing all people
and things which I perceived to be related to God. I
escaped the fundamentalist Christian cult I was raised
in around age twelve and any brand of faith practice I may have once en-
gaged in (or longed for) stayed there on those pews when I left.
people who represent that which I am most afraid of, the more I see my
own panic around the space they hold in the world. It becomes clear as
time goes by that it is also me who is shut down and unwilling to budge.
On the side of Christian opposition, I don’t want to hear that I am a bad
person for being gay, and on the side of Christian affirmation, I don’t want
to feel like I am broken because I do not believe. Within both communi-
ties, I am cast in the role of “other.”
Pretty early on in my journey away from the church I figured out that there
are a million different ways one can push away the heartbreaking feeling
of being lost and the promise of being alone for all eternity. Drugs worked
for me for many years, as did distance, and then closeness, then money,
then sex, and anything else I could use to fill the empty space in my chest
where faith and God used to be. This is the experience many queer kids
growing up in conservative Christian homes are facing now, and that ex-
perience of Godlessness is something that many of us are still struggling
to overcome as adults.
The pain of losing family and friends and the dream of life which was col-
lectively constructed for me by said family and friends was unbearable at
the time of its passing, and the memory of losing that dream can be just
as painful as living it was. I’m guessing for LGBT-identified Christians,
finding a welcoming congregation full of other queer believers and allies
makes the journey into their adult spirituality easier, but what about those
of us who don’t believe in Jesus? How are we supposed to fill the space cre-
ated by the removal of community, doctrine, and belief?
After intentionally not stepping foot in a church building for two decades,
some recent community work led me straight into the doors of one of
them. There have been times before where I have had to really look at
the experience I had with organized religion years ago and work hard to
develop a new relationship with those old walls in order to heal, but this
new work unearthed ghosts and feelings which I had forgotten about. Oc-
casionally it’s difficult for me to separate the believers who have caused suf-
fering in my life from the believers who haven’t. I tend to size Christians
up before they even have a chance to show themselves, and I have recently
come to the conclusion that this is a flaw in my character.
The idea that all Christians are bad, based on my experience with bad
Christians as a child, is false. Not all of Christ’s followers are evil and
clearly not all of them hate gay people, as there is an entire thriving popu-
lation of gay Christians who attend welcoming, LGBT-affirming churches.
My reducing the entire religious community to one particular thing is as
offensive as when people reduce the entire queer community to one par-
ticular thing. Am I really that closed-minded?
The answer is yes. I actually AM that closed-minded. The more I sit with
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After years of searching, I’ve concluded that the only thing that actually
matters is love. I’m not talking about God’s love when I say that, but if
someone chooses to believe that God IS love, then I guess I am. The word
“love” has been hidden under years of biblical misrepresentation and hu-
man judgment, buried in pages of ancient rhetoric which has been used
as a weapon against our people for centuries. It’s no wonder some of us
have a hard time receiving that “God is love” message from the teachings
therein.
I am truly happy for those who are enriched by the church and fully sup-
port the work that groups like the Community of Welcoming Congrega-
tions and Metropolitan Community Church do for queer Christians and
our allies. For the rest of us, I hope we can always remember that there is
never just one way to go about enlightenment. You don’t have to be Chris-
tian to be spiritual, and you don’t have to be spiritual to know love. If God
is love, then you are not Godless. None of us are. Don’t ever let anyone
ever tell you otherwise. That’s just the devil talking.
Logan Lynn writes In The Trenches. He is a Portland based musician, activist, writer, and is
a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. Reach him at Logan@JustOut.com
July 2012