Sexual Molestation and the Southern Baptist Church

His name was Lee.

I was 7 years old.

He would introduce me to sex.  To touch.  To the world of sensual delight that a young boy couldn't know was wrong, was forbidden and an assault on his entire life to come.  But it happened.  It was an awakening of senses that no child should experience before reaching a point of maturity.  And he led me down a path that I would have to weather alone.  No one would know about those times alone with him in my house, his parent's house until twenty years later.  By then I was in total denial of it ever really happening.  I wouldn't open those memories until 1996, then bury and slowly expose them over the following twenty years.  In the last two years (2016-2018) finally coming to grips with it and letting it become part of me, not the definition of me.

So let the party begin?!

I was a stranger.  Always on the outside, though those around me would think I was 'sensitive', mature, overweight and a slight loner.  I was a church-rat, kid of the Eighties who loved girls, poetry, music and John Cusack movies.  I went through my early years searching for my place.  I'd find connections in music, in our youth group - though that was somewhat a trouble point as well, and a major disconnect with reality.  I found Star Wars, fantasy, books and B-rate movies as a place to escape. 

And it all happened in the shadow of the Southern Baptist Church.  No, this isn't going to be an attempt to bash the church. I have some really great memories growing up there.  But I also can count the majority of my hurts in life to it.  The need for Hell-fire and Redemption.  The continued misrepresentation of the scriptures as a whole.  I was caught in the middle.  To those who watched me grow up I was one of the "Spiritually mature" ones.  I got the words, understood what a lot of it meant without the need for extensive explanation.  And I also understood the beauty of the hymns, the communion of the Saints, the need - the craving for others who shared similar difficulties.  But I was alone.  I was lost inside the betrayal I knew.  The beautiful trauma that I didn't know how to process.  

The problem wasn't in sex.  It wasn't even in Lee, though I used to carry a Louisville Slugger in my car for some reason.  The problem was silence and fear of being known. In Shame.  Not as a young boy, but as the ugly, dirtied monster.  That was who I was.  That was part of my psyche until just recently.  And I'm not writing this to condemn Lee or to wallow in self-pity.  I'm simply wanting to tell my story.  The way I was touched, felt and seen all wrap up into this man I have become today.  I'm not Chad without the abuse.  I'm not me without the realization that it impacted so much of my life.  But I'm also not me without the working it through and moving to a place where I recognize the hurts and finally embrace it and how it, along with so many other aspects, have shaped my life.

I am not me without Lee. 

Without the honest feel of sex as a young boy.

Without the acknowledgement that it was good.  And it was WRONG at the same time.

We all learn about it.  Though I hold the church and others accountable for not talking about it more candidly.  Hell, I'll talk about it.  Sex is good.  It's natural.  It's amazing.  It's also supposed to be found by choice, not through manipulations or rape.  The tastes and feel should be savored and craved with someone instead of learned in a dark bathroom as a young child.  Maybe if there was more communication and openness I would have spoken before.  Maybe the feelings would've been dealt with and honored instead of hidden and ignored.  Who the hell knows!  So let's talk.

How can I sing "God is so good", when everywhere that represented his presence continued to show me the bitter roots that we all carry at some point or another.  Yes, I believe in God.  There is a real deal being that I crave to know more of.  Yet at the same time I don't recognize the buildings that we have built to 'house' God as places of worship.  I struggle with being led to believe God is everywhere, yet we have to find some pimped out building to sense him.  HELLO!!!! REALLY?!?

Ever been to the top of a mountain? Listened to the wind rush over the waves of the beach? Heard the singing of a homeless man begging for food or money?  I won't criticize the beliefs of those who gather, just the shortsightedness. Look around you in the morning, when the first rays break the sky and the birds start to rejoice with expectation.  Or when you can watch the life force of young children at play in a park, running and free.  Untethered to the rules of 'living' the social sect of the church provides.

So I lived life a stranger, not the same as those in the group of boys I grew up with.  It was a secret I carried, but it also was a subconscious message that cried out whenever I saw others being treated in any way that was demeaning or discriminatory.  I witnessed the church’s handling of a drunk man wearing his best, dirty suit.  Closing their doors and not allowing him to enter.  A young African American girl’s uncomfortable face as she was leered at from those around her in a Sunday night service.  And then a gay man who sang marvelously being quietly asked to leave because he was different.  I found myself more a recluse at an early age because of witnessing this utter discrimination.  These and other memories would form my core belief that no one is better than another, and that we, as a society have a calling to be better.  To find our similarities instead of our differences.

What if I had opened the door for the poor, drunk man?  What if I had stood up and leered back at those who only saw the dark skin of the young girl? And what if I had told those in the choir that I too was different because of experiencing sex at an early age at the hands of my young abuser?  I hope to always uphold the need to be sensitive in responding to differences in all of us.

And it made me realize that those people are just as scarred.  Scared even.  I hid for years, but I am no longer ashamed of who I am.  I hope to never bow again to the fears and insecurities that bind.  

So my philosophy hasn't changed... what if we bulldozed them all?  Took every pretty, sculpted, glorious structure meant to idolize a God who doesn't need it, and just pushed them down.  Would it be like the Whos down in Whoville after loosing all their gifts to the Grinch?  Would there be a gathering unlike any we've every experienced?  Would the voices of many ring out, not to be limited or contained within the walls of a building?  Would the thousands on the seashore be fed with loaves and fish, and also fed with an awakening of the spirit that this generation, this century has never known?  And instead of closing doors and building walls, could we finally open hearts and open minds?

To those of us who've struggled, lived most of our life contained within our own hurts, could we finally feel that we too belonged?  Instead of a mark of dark hurt and sin, would we be able to ALL open up and share our secrets.  To find acceptance and love, and bury the hate and condemnation.  Hold hands with the queer, the dirty, the ugly, the ones like me, who've just never fit in.

I can hope for this.  For the other young boys who've been touched too soon.  For the alcoholic who can't find peace at the end of a bottle.  For the girl who was raped and gave her child up to abortion, unable to come to grips with the gift of life that would come from even the darkest hurt.

We've all been scarred in some way.  Even those who say they've never had a true hardship might find some piece inside that if exposed could cause them pain.  But what if instead of living in fear, we took that fear and bound it to love.  Love that goes beyond all the pain.

What if?

I am humbled that the God I run so quickly away from still calls out to me.  That I’m still struck with such a power when I hear his spirit on the wind.  And that I was allowed to live when I should be dead.  It’s not the church’s fault.  We’re all broken creatures.  But we have to do better.  How can we hide behind the pretty painted walls and stained glass when inside we all carry so many burdens that we just need to know are ok to drop down and leave behind.

It’s ok to leave them.  They don’t have to burden you anymore.

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28