"...sittin' on the dock of the bay..."

sent in by CurtDude

[This was posted on the old forum as a response to someone else's post. I thought it was time to add my two cents to this forum, so here it is slightly expanded.]

It was May 1984, and the Sunday morning service was just about ready to begin at the Baptist church in the Pacific NW where I had attended all of my life. I had been a John Denver-clone 70s Jesus Freak...I believed in the Gentle Shepherd and loving the world. Totally involved in being fired up for God. As the 80s and The Reagan Years rolled on, I was finding myself more at odds with my youthful idealism.

I was also a young homosexual man who was realizing that there was only one choice for me as a follower of Jesus: a lifetime of celibacy while all of my friends got married. At the same time, my studies at university were giving me exposure to other people, other beliefs: I had begun to exercise my mind, my rational capacity. "Geez, there were other religions out there, along with non-religious people, who were just as convinced as I was in their beliefs." (Duh, maybe there's a next logical step.) I had also participated in a mission trip to India (a construction project - I was always uncomfortable with direct evangelism), where the Hindus seemed perfectly content to remain Hindu. The thought of all those wonderful people who I had met burning in hell forever really brought home what I had rather glossed over for years as “well, the Lord knows best and I really don’t know uh it’s like up to God duh I guess uh blahblahblah”.

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