Johni's Journal

Johni Patton

Description

This is a true story...in as much as one person's truth can be. It is a chronological description of historical facts, painful moments and surprising revelations of my life as a gay Christian, including the admission that God spoke directly to me. Intermingled with original email excerpts I exchanged with a Christian broadcasting host regarding the sensitive issue of homosexuality and the Bible.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781622875627
• Langue: English

Extrait

Johni’s Journal: One Person’s Truth About God’s Gay Children
Johni Patton


First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
Johni’s Journal

One Person’s Truth
About God’s Gay Children

First Edition Design Publishing
Johni’s Journal: One Person’s Truth About God’s Gay Children
Copyright ©2014 Johni Patton

ISBN 978-1622-875-63-4 PRINT
ISBN 978-1622-875-62-7 EBOOK

LCCN 2014935706

March 2014

Published and Distributed by
First Edition Design Publishing, Inc.
P.O. Box 20217, Sarasota, FL 34276-3217
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means ─ electronic, mechanical, photo-copy, recording, or any other ─ except brief quotation in reviews, without the prior permission of the author or publisher.

Cover Art “Under My Thumb”
By Robert Grossman
© Robert Grossman 2014
The facts in this book are all true. Some of the names and locations have been changed to assure the protection of individual privacy.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (KJV), English translation of the Holy Bible.

All Scripture quotations designated (GNV), are taken from the 1599 Geneva Bible translation. Copyright © 2006-2007 by Tolle Lege Press. www.TolleLegePress.com . Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All Scripture quotations designated (NASB), are taken from the New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. ( www.Lockman.org ). Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All Scripture quotations designated (RSV), are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All Scripture quotations designated (NKJV), are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Prologue

I was lying on my back in bed alone in the dark room with no windows, worshipping and praising God. When a light appeared above me and slowly descended, becoming so bright I had to look away. In the moments that followed I heard God’s voice.
He spoke directly to my heart using the familiar words of my vocabulary. I learned not to share my experience causally for each time I tried I saw faces change from anticipated excitement, to a moment of contemplation, followed by the inevitable patronizing smile.
For more than a decade I chose to keep silent…the silence of a coward.
I asked Jesus into my heart at the tender age of 11 and was spiritually reborn in Him at 22, giving me a solid belief in His constant presence. Yet I avoided religious institutions for fear of continued harassment towards my sexual identity as a lesbian.
I also avoided the Bible, a book I believed to be wrong if it taught people to despise those who wanted only to express their love for each other while sharing their love for God. I adopted a rebellious stance towards believing anything written in Scripture, or preached at me from the pulpit, trusting instead my feeling of an opposite truth in my Spirit.
In high school, my classmates voted me most popular for three consecutive years, and I liked… being liked .
After graduating I joined the Navy. It was during boot camp that the reality of my inherent sexual orientation surfaced, bringing with it answers to many unasked questions. I began to understand my indifference towards a committed relationship and the ease to which I had remained a virgin all those years. Not because of some sense of duty as I chose to believe, but simply because I was not attracted to the opposite sex.
I did not want this to be true, I did not want to be a homosexual. I wanted to be like everyone else. Even after being confronted with the overwhelming evidence I resisted, thinking I had a choice, a choice to avoid being rejected and ostracized.
How does one deny love? Deny a desire to commit to a companion for life. A desire not based on sexual activity (an activity that is merely one form of expressing a deep love), but a desire to love and be loved unconditionally. A desire that is born from an unexplainable passion that bubbles up from some mysterious area of the heart…an area that will not be denied.
I could not convince my heart it was wrong to love.
Ultimately, misery forced a decision. I decided to follow my heart. For the first time I had known genuine desire, a desire that corrected the distorted vision of my world and splashed vibrant colors across the grey landscape of my heart. A desire that intensified emotions of pleasure as well as pain, revealing simple truths such as the essence of a love song, the yearning to pledge love, the torment of jealousy and the sadness of a broken heart.
I knew I would never again be satisfied with the rehearsed semblance of life I had once accepted as authentic.
My decision not to conform provoked frequent assaults based on persuasive religious theology that forbids homosexuality. A theology that inadvertently rips the flesh off the very souls it intends to save, a theology that not only hurts the homosexual but also those who rightly accept the homosexual for who they are. For among this group are many precious lost souls who see by example followers of a god who persecutes innocent people.
I give glory to God for providing me with a childishly ignorant awareness of religion, and for my measure of faith that protected me from believing the threats that He would forsake me. I thank God for His merciful love that kept me from becoming just another victim who opted to take his or her own life as a result of unintentional, but nonetheless cruel… spiritual violence .
I outwardly portrayed the strength to fight injustice, while silently struggling with an ache to be accepted by the community of Christ. Like a moth to the flame I longed to fellowship with the very community that made me feel rejected, a community that appeared to be dominated by those who used acceptance as a weapon to force my conformity, reminding me of a bully on the playground who demands, “Everyone will play by my rules, or you can’t play at all!”
The very community that inadvertently taught my young son to hate a god who hates his homosexual mother, another innocent casualty caused by a biased theology.
Is it vanity that some of us assume everyone thinks alike? An assumption that encourages one to expect certain behaviors in others based on their own personal awareness, the sort of assumption that encourages an innately heterosexual individual to define homosexuality as the act of two innately heterosexual individuals engaging in homosexual intimacies.
I understand such an assumption all too well, as I’d been just as guilty of it myself. In the first few years after accepting my sexual orientation, I honestly believed that all women secretly felt as I did. I believed that financial, social and/or religious constrictions forced them to deny those feelings. Then I met a uniquely adorable heterosexual man whom I grew to love as a dear friend. Out of my sincere desire for his happiness I allowed myself to not only accept…but also hope that there were women who did not simply tolerate the romantic desires of men, but women who could truly love a man with the same passion I felt towards another woman.
For many years I simply would not subject myself to people or environments that were disapproving of my sexual orientation, knowing that certain negative comments would be hard to endure. I can compare the feelings to freely allowing someone to stab me repeatedly with a knife.
I gave way to anger and resentment, unaware that harboring such emotions would erode my spiritual armor, removing the shelter of God's peace and joy. Engulfed in my own sorrow and self-pity I succumbed to depression, allowing my mind to take me deep into a pit of darkness, bringing me close to that fragile line between reality and insanity. I was tempted to surrender, fully believing I could step from the conscious into a comatose world of my own making.
Feeling utterly powerless I cried out to God. I cried out to God to hurry up…to hurry up and take me home.
From the depths of defeat rose genuine submission to God’s will. He awoke me from a nightmare, washed me in the warmth of a bright clean fresh day and showered me with grace and mercy as though He had been the one waiting on me . Gratitude enlarged my heart with a desire to please Him.
I learned to recognize the promptings of the Holy Spirit who compassionately transformed my words, actions and thoughts. I learned to put my trust in this Comforter who systematically convicted me of sin or assured me of righteousness. I learned not to be afraid, and with each conviction I grew to trust Him more.
I felt led to listen to Christian broadcasting stations, even though I would at times have to tolerate negative teachings about homosexuality. I was enduring such a broadcast when I felt the need to respond by email, making an effort to express my convictions that I agreed with their definition of homosexuality…an innately heterosexual person should not be engaging in homosexual intimacies.
Just as strongly I agreed with my own definition…that an innately homosexual person should not be engaging in heterosexual intimacies.
I received a courteous answer from the host with a reference to our disparate views of Scripture, a response that also implied a promiscuous behavior towards anyone who engages in homosexual intimacies. In all fairness this was not the first time I had heard this blanket condemnation used to justify intolerance of my sexual identity, intolerance that felt like oppression. The sort of oppression that is compa