Coming Out Day 2011

Overdue
This blog is long overdue. Though many of my friends for whom it is meant may speak Afrikaans, German, Swedish or perhaps another language, I write it in English  simply because it is not easy to choose the words every time again. If I had the time and energy I would have preferred to write to many different friends individually, because what I am about to write is quite personal.

With only a few more formalities remaining, I will officially stop working with the wonderful Christian Missions organization I have worked with as a volunteer for nearly twelve years. This decision came at the end of a process which at times has been difficult and painful for both sides.


A  long road

The process began when I discovered that I was different. Looking back over the years I can trace that awareness back to my first year in high school, but I managed to suppress the feelings I had and to reinterpret them for such a long time that I was about 28 before, for the first time, I dared to admit to myself that perhaps I was what they call 'gay'. I certainly was not happy about that. Still don't like the word very much, but for lack of a better term in English. It took another couple of years before I admitted it to a friend and told a few leaders, friends and family about that. Fear of rejection, but also fear of falling away from God kept me from being open. The message I got was very black and white. I still remember the words of a colleague who did not know about me when she said: "I am sorry, if you are gay you can't be a Christian."  Or the words of a prominent church leader who asked when I was getting married and when I told him that there was nothing on the horizon said: "I hope you are not queer."  Those words felt like daggers in my heart. I silently endured their pain for fear that once I told the truth, no more words would be spoken.

I should not judge. For I have spoken words like that myself.  As a young pastor I affirmed that homosexuality was a choice, even though I tried not to be too judgmental when saying that. But if it is a choice, one simple choice, why could a thousand determined choices, not cure me? I prayed. I tried therapy. But nothing changed. In fact, it got worse, because I was left with more and more questions about God and life. In this period I started studying the Bible more intensively. This was and still is an exciting journey in itself, giving me a passion and appreciation for the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. It also confronted me with evidence that everything was not as black and white as I always learned or thought.

If the world seems black and white, it is rather due to the glasses we wear. Even trying to squeeze everything into seven rainbow colors may not do justice to reality. In fact a panel beater often has a hard time finding the exact kind of red when repairing a damaged car, and a famous painter may struggle to mix the yellow of the flower he wants to paint. Is that why Jesus taught people not to judge? As humans we are simply unable to judge the motives of another person, especially when we are standing at some distance from them. On top of that our judgment is often colored by our own fears, insecurities and pain.

Coping and Changing

Once I recognized that I was different, I thought I could cope living in a community where happy families seemed to be the only legitimate expression of intimacy, by keeping busy. I filled my schedule with exciting challenges, travelling and teaching. In my free time, I escaped into a world of adrenaline and instant success, playing computer games. At least that kept me from the street and reasonably free from temptation. Lonely summers and long weekends finally got the better of me. The safe Christian bubble I was living in became suffocating. It is hard to make real friends if you always keep a significant part of who you are, hidden from others. What do you do when you feel the situation is unfair, but you cannot even talk about it? What do you do if you feel depressed because you are lonely and not understood? On an internet forum for Christian gays, I met people whose stories sounded much like mine. Real people. Some of the stories about their struggles broke my heart.

Listening, thinking, praying I became convinced that I could not make a contribution towards making things better by keeping silent. I also had to confront the pride in me that was not willing to be known fully for who I am. Not that my whole identity is defined my it, but it does have a significant influence in my life. Keeping it to myself resulted in internal struggles and tensions which affected who I was outwardly. Can you imagine what it does to someone when you are never able to even say that you like the appearance of another man? Or why you are not married?

Dialogue

Being open about it was not all that simple either. When I became more open in public it became important  what I thought about relationships and what the dreams for my own life were. I have become convinced that trying to get healed or living a celibate life are not the only, and in many cases not the best options open to a Christian gay or lesbian person. I would have to go into too much detail to explain why I say that here. I am not sure if and how I can explain such a paradigm shift on a blog like this, but perhaps I can try to do so in more blog entries if people have specific questions.  Ever since I read the biography of David du Plessis in my youth, I am convinced that dialogue is key. That is why at first I thought that a continuing dialogue would benefit both me and the organization I worked for, but the embarrassment my views would cause for an organization dependent on the goodwill of a conservative constituency made clarity important and led to the decision to terminate our mutual commitment.

And now?

Though in some ways it is also a relief, it is hard to describe how much this hurts and how much the uncertainties and changes which it brings with it, will influence my life. Even though there were some aspects of YWAM life which drove me nuts and it sometimes tolerates views which are absolutely heretical, it remains a special family. For now I am planning to finish my studies at the university of Utrecht, hoping to stay in the Netherlands after that. This is where my life has developed for the last 13 years.  As I said a little more than two years ago when I came out to a group of colleagues:

"In the end I hope that my greatest love will always be for a very special man, a man born of a virgin, who died on a tree and was resurrected from the dead."

Though the sad undertone of this song of Ray Boltz express many of the emotions I experienced through the years, some even when I write this, it does not say it all. On Coming Out Day 2011, it is a relief to no longer look over my shoulder when I say:"I'm gay, and I'm OK."

Anti-Intellectual Christianity produces Anti-Christian intellectuals.

While hunting down a newspaper article about a new interest in the Bible in some Dutch churches, my eye caught the title of an article on the content page of an otherwise unimposing little magazine called Mission Frontiers.

Under the theme: “Are we losing more than we’re gaining” I noticed the words “An Anti-intellectual faith and the tragic consequences for Britain’s Evangelical Awakening. “ I just had to read the article and smuggled the magazine to our office consoling myself that it is already an older issue and that no-one at the base seems to read them anyway.

In his article Jonathan W. Rice relates how the evangelicals impacted British society in the 18th and 19th century. They played a key role in ending slavery, abolishing sati and infant sacrifice in India, bringing education, rehabilitating prostitutes, reforming prisons, lunatic asylums etc. Yet they were also known for their petty legalisms and repressive behavior codes. The mixed results are summarized by a historian in the following way:

“Between 1780
and 1850 the English ceased to be one of the most
aggressive, brutal, rowdy, outspoken, riotous, cruel and bloodthirsty nations in
the world and became one of the most inhibited, polite, tender-minded, prudish
and hypocritical”

One of the saddest results of their “practical” religion however was the intellectual weakness of it.

"True Christianity, they believed, did not entail entering the marketplace
of ideas. They did not think it worthwhile to intelligently engage the skeptics,
German Biblical critics, agnostics and atheistic philosophers of their day.
Instead, they claimed, God had called them to a purely practical faith: to send
forth missionaries, to help the poor and downtrodden, to better peoples’
manners. These were the things pleasing to God; not intellectual debate or true
apologetics."

Rice goes on describing how as a result of this Anti-intellectual tendency an alarming number of the children and grandchildren of these Evangelicals turned from the faith of their parents. He tells the tragic story of the classic author George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) who at some stage wrote that she would be happy if the only music she ever heard again would be worship music. A couple of years later she rejected Christianity after reading Hennell’s Inquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity and Strauss’ Life of Jesus and became an ardent atheist.

What makes this anti-conversion of Evans so sad is the fact that the claims of both Hennell and Strauss have been completely refuted in modern times. Rice asks why Evangelicals from the 19th century failed to produce solid responses to Straus and others. Hennell and Strauss however have their modern day equivalents in the Jesus Seminar, Michael Baigent etc. Rice heckles the lack of response to the Anti-Christian propaganda of Arun Shourie in India and I am afraid that the situation for a few exceptions of people like McGrath and Wright is not much better in Europe or America.

The Anti-intellectual tendency of evangelical and charismatic Christianity of our day has bothered me for years. In the last year however as I started to participate in discussions on an internet forum, I have become increasingly aware of the unpaid bills of the section of Christianity in which I have been actively involved over the last two decades.

I have heard stories like that of Mary Ann Evans from different people. One of the key elements is usually a very naive literalistic reading of the Bible and some of the infallibility claims made about it. When people discover that the world is not as black and white as they have learned, it seems that they are often shocked into blindness. If only there would be guides who could take them by the hand and lead them through their first shocked moments into appreciating the rainbow of the colorful riches of a personal God displayed in the Scriptures. Were it not for a couple of people like Ed Sherman, Dirk Bouman, Wilrens Hornstra and the books of Wright, Peterson and others, I guess I might have chosen the safe dark corner of blind intellectualism where things fit nicely into the black and white categories albeit that all things end up being black.

Anti-intellectualism is an easy but in the long run devastating response to the new antichristian voices of our day. The Anti-intellectual sounds I often hear even in my own Christian community somehow remind me of the unwise choices of bank managers in the last couple of years. The immediate results are not bad. We can simplify faith with formulas and slogans. In the long run however, we pay a dear price when we do not teach people that loving God is not only done with your heart, but also with your whole mind.

The whole article of Rice can be read in the Archives of Mission Frontiers in the March-April 2008 issue under the title: “An Anti-intellectual faith and the tragic consequences for Britain’s Evangelical Awakening. “

Jesus Juice - John 2:1-12

A recent discussion in our community made me think of some of the problems I had as a young South African Pentecostal Christian with the idea that Jesus might have actually turned water into wine. (See John 2:1-12) In the church I went to the consumption of alcohol was seen as a grave sin by many. Even from people, including my parents, who were less prone to pronounce this judgment on someone who would drink the occasional glass of wine, I always got the feeling that alcohol in any form could better be avoided as something that inevitably leads to abuse.

To me this attitude in a society where the abuse of alcohol is a very real problem that has devastated many families is quite understandable, although the fact that it is understandable would no longer automatically convince me that this is the only appropriate attitude towards all alcoholic beverages. Racism could be explained in a society that has been plagued by racially motivated violence, but it could not be acquitted on that basis. I know this example is extreme but I am using it to show that an explanation could not automatically be accepted as an excuse. But wait, I am digressing.

It was clear to me. If wine was not inherently evil it was at least potentially poisonous. How on earth could Jesus make something like that? When I learned about the quantity of the water turned into wine, the problem became even worse. It became apparent that this miracle did not concern the small quantity of communion wine which would be allowed to wet the lips in some less spiritual churches. It is actually amazing that as a young person in the 20th century, my biggest question did not concern the question whether Jesus literally changed the chemical substance of water into that of wine, but whether that substance would in any way resemble the one that could only be purchased by adults under certain restriction at specific licensed stores. God’s infallible Word could not possibly embarrass us as Bible-believing Christians in such a way! There must be a good explanation.

I was relieved to hear that I was not the only person thinking that. A well known evangelical speaker , wife of a pastor in a traditional church, solemnly declared that Jesus, who loved people would never make wine that could be intoxicating and thus damaging to families. I was also comforted to hear from another speaker that there are different words in the original language for wine and that some of them could actually refer to mere grape juice.

After the recent discussion I revisited some of these explanations on the internet and noticed again the serious inconsistencies present in evangelical hermeneutics.
Let me quote an example written by one Chuck Northrop:
“ ...Consider these examples of the word "wine" being used in Scripture with reference to unfermented grape juice. Joel 1:10 says "The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth." (This refers to grapes dried up in the fields, which could not be intoxicating.) ...”

Now I may be stupid, but I see no indication in this description of economic crisis suggesting that the grapes were still in the fields unless of course you ignore the reference to the land mourning. In fact, the phrase about the wine is followed by one about the waste of oil, another liquid just as common as wine in the ancient Middle-Eastern home as part of a parallelism. What makes this argument even worse is the fact that this references comes from the Old Testament where the source language is Hebrew whereas the reference to Jesus turning water into wine belongs to the New Testament which was written in Greek. So even if the writer of this article could prove that the word translated with wine in English could mean non-alcoholic grape juice, which he doesn’t, his proof is still irrelevant as John’s account of the changing wine does not concern a translation of that Hebrew word, but the translation of a Greek word for which he has no similar proofs.

It is this kind of conjuring that not only makes a mockery of Christian apologetics, but also discredits the very Bible such people profess to believe. This type of explanation is not seriously interested in what the Bible really has to say on the subject, but more interested to use (read abuse) the Bible to defend a point of view that is already fixed in concrete.

The evidence from both the text and history seems to point to wine that probably contained at least some amount of alcohol. I like the idea of someone that the wine Jesus made, although real wine, would not have an intoxicating effect on any guest, no matter how much of it he drank. Yet even though I like the idea, the problem with it is that it again reads things into the Bible that is simply not supported by the text.

Our reading of the Bible will be healthier if we would simply recognize that when coming to the Bible we need to first put our questions aside and try to understand what the original intent of the writer was. What questions were the author of the fourth gospel trying to answer. What was it about Jesus that he was trying to say in relating this incident? Simply put: Is our reading of the Bible determined by what we think or is our thinking formed by what we read?

Apart from the issue of hermeneutics in this matter there still is the issue of theology. We are often encouraged not to limit God because for Him “All things are possible!” This actually usually refers to expecting God to do certain types of miracles. It somehow never occurs to people that if what they sing is true, it could also be possible that God is not going to act according to their expectation. Maybe it is possible that God does not always choose to heal, not because He cannot, but because He can choose not to.

Maybe Jesus is the kind of person who could make 600 liters of wine, and yells “Prost” as he raises a glass with his friends!
What would it take to dislodge us from the religious icon we have painted in our minds? Can we try to understand what Jesus was doing at a wedding in a small Galilean town and what this incident wants to say about Him? Can we allow Jesus to be a living person that does things that may conflict with some of the opinions we hold or do we prefer Him to conform to our idea of what is proper? If so, we need to consider the possibility that we are no less guilty of making a graven image than some more traditional forms of Christianity we often criticize for what we see as disguised idolatry.

As a young Pentecostal I was secretly proud that we were not caught up in dead tradition like "some" churches. We had the "new wine" of the Spirit, which we of course did not see as a problem because the wine was spiritual. We may have been oblivious to the pain and devastation sometimes caused by our self-assured “Spirit-drunken” utterances in the family of God. I sometimes wonder if it would not benefit the family of God if we would be a bit more moderate in the consumption of some of our newfound wines. The older I get, the more I appreciate the conclusion of an ancient writer who spoke of the vanity of the doings of man including our certain theologies. He also writes:
(7) Go, eat your bread in joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. (Ecc 9:7)

Even in the middle of the challenges that new knowledge about science and history bring to my faith I still believe that for the Bridegroom all things are possible, not only changing water into grape juice, but also making real good wine.

O thirsty ones, come drink with me
A priceless wine, a fountain free
His living water turned to wine
The taste, the smell – for sure divine

O sinful ones, behold Him there,
The grapes of wrath He treads – despair!
The cup of anger He did toast
Our lives to Him have mattered most

Beloved ones, now to the feast!
With loud applause welcome the Groom!
His words are sweeter than the wine
It rings: “Beloved, you are mine”
Raise up your glass, filled to the brim!
The wine He kept till now is best.

Why?

A question of a friend about Judas'betrayal of Jesus made me think of this song by Michale Card. The deed thoughts of the lyrics never cease to touch me.

Why - Michael Card

Why did it have to be a friend
Who chose to betray the Lord?
Why did he use a kiss to show them?
That's not what a kiss is for.

Only a friend can betray a friend,
A stranger has nothing to gain.
And only a friend comes close enough To ever cause so much pain.
And why did there have to be a thorny Crown pressed upon His head?
It should have been a royal one
Made of jewels and gold instead.

It had to be a crown of thorns Because in this life that we live
For all who seek to love, A thorn is all the world has to give.

And why did it have to be A heavy cross He was made to bear?
And why did they nail His feet and hands?
When his love would have held Him there.

It was a cross for on a cross A thief was supposed to pay.
And Jesus had come into the world To steal every heart away.
Yes, Jesus had come into the world To steal every heart away.

Some more pics

For some more pics of the time in Greece,

you could visit my album at

http://picasaweb.google.nl/Vleendehollander/Griekenland2008

“Een mooie Pinksterdag”

I wonder how Paul felt when he returned from his journeys in Greece? Did he miss the food or was it good to hear the news or the latest gossip from a shopkeeper in Caesarea in one's mother tongue? As much as I like travelling, it always has it's less pleasant moments, like waiting a whole night on an airport for a flight that leaves at 4:50 in the morning! The fact that I have done similar things before does not seem to make it any easier.

There is one reward though. I think few things beat the feeling of arriving in the Netherlands on a summer morning, especially when it is also a public holiday. Both the airport and the train to Apeldoorn was not very busy - no sign of hurried businessmen or tired laborers dragging themselves to their workplace. A pleasant temperature enabled everyone to dress in comfortable summer clothing, ready to exploit the sunny weather on this "Mooie Pinksterdag" (Beautiful day of Pentecost)

The fields were green, the sky bright blue. Even though my eyes were red with hay-fever, I think that if I would have to imagine heaven, I would describe it as a summer morning in Holland. It is an atmosphere in which you feel the desire to attempt great things... tomorrow. It may stay forever, I will never get tired of it. It was good to be in Phillipi and Corinth, but even better to be back.

At the bakery this morning, the lady behind the counter looks with astonishment as the previous customer leaves in her car and tells me that the person lives just at the next corner, not even 200 meters from the shop. I cannot imagine why anyone would choose even the most luxurious limousine above walking or biking even three times that distance in this nice weather. How can we be so blind to the paradise we are living in?

Thessalonian Testing

It would be a bit challenging sleeping in the train, but we have done it once before. So I felt kind of prepared for the trip when we left Porto Rafti at about 20:00 on Thursday night. The bus was a bit late, and the busdriver had a very strange idea about climate control. While the temperature outside must have been in the lower twenties, not bad at all. He seemed to have thought that it was a good idea to try and recreate the typical summer temperatures of Greece, by turning the heater of the bus to it's maximum capacity. Because the travel bag on my lap blocked the space between me and the seat in front of me, the hot air coming from below had nowhere to go. To compensate a bit, or was it to recreate the Greek sea breeze, the air of the airconditioning coming from above my head was quite chilly. So there I was sitting feeling like some volcano, hot from below, with some chilly snow at the top, leaving me a bit ready to explode!

After an hour and a half , when we finally reached the metro station, the destination of our initial bus trip, it turns out that the metro is closed, apparently because it is the public holiday. We were astounded. The only time in the Netherlands when public transport closes down is from about 8 o clock on New Years Eve. With some trouble we managed to convince two taxi's to take us to the train station, where our next surprize was waiting. The trains were also not going.

The irony of it all was that we had booked tickets and reserved beds for the night on this train. Aparrently no one knew that the trains were not going to go when they sold the tickets or they did not care to tell us that it is a Greek habit to sell tickets for trains which they know would probably not go at all.

When we tried to talk to people at the station a friendly young lady told us that all the nations around were not working on that day, mentioning England, Italy and who knows which other countries. I sincerely doubt if the 1st of May in England would mean a national train strike, but OK, Italy I can imagine. It did not seem possible to convince her that there is a slight difference between celebrating a public holiday and having a national strike. Maybe both words come from the same Greek word. You never know! This all happened while the electronic boards were still announcing the departure of our train in about half an hour. The person responsible for updating the information, i.e. announcing that the trains till the next mroning were all cancelled, was apparently celebrating workers day too.

While I was describing the Greek mentality in some poetic languag, two of our team went of to look for a place to stay. The rest of us were sitting outside the station at some restaurant discussing the value of the EU and it's subsidies to this country of hard-working people.

The two scouts returned and led us to a place where we could all try to catch a bit of sleep. There we were. Six people in a small room. Two ladies and four men. Most of us just crashed in our clothes since we would have to get up in a couple of hours anyway.

When we got to the station it turned out that the train was full and the only option left was to take first class tickets. No ammount of protest could convince the person behind the counter that it was actually a blimmen shame that we had to pay extra to upgrade our tickets to first class while they refused to return the money we spent to reserve beds for the night train.

So at about 6:50 we were sitting first class on our way to Thessaloniki. Well it had some advantages. A free coffee and a nice compartment. Between nodding away we managed to enjoy the view of a beautiful Greece we would otherwise have missed during the night.

All in all it was a nice trip, even with the hassles. We comforted ourselves a little by the fact that the apostle Paul probably had some trips that were a lot more difficult. How long would it take him to make the journey that took us more than 5 hours in a fast train over mountains and through tunnels? I guess we could learn something from his attitude in Phillipi....