Reflections From Bolivia

I’ve tried to write my feelings down for a week now. It’s taken me draft after draft to express what it was that laid itself on my heart from my experience in Bolivia.

The sites were both stunning and heart breaking with beautiful landscapes and their captivating mountains cradling broken down mudhuts and treehouse homes. The people had big beautiful smiles and eyes that sparkled when they spoke but their bodies were ravaged by years and years of hard labour and poor health care. I know that being there and meeting the people has changed me, but what I found was that it was my own church community that had the biggest impression on me. I wish I could say that the impression was completely positive and uplifting but it wasn’t.

In the evenings our team would gather together to share the “treasures” of the day. A friend back home was weighing heavily on my mind so when the group dissipated I confided in two good friends. I explained my concern for my girlfriend whose wife was beating her. Growing up in a Christian home and being among those I considered like in faith I expected their reaction to be one of deep concern and love. I never expected my good friend to look at me and say “Well, there’s her first problem!”. Yes, my Christian, drinks a bottle of wine and sleeps with women outside of marriage, friend was blaming my friend’s sexual preference as the cause of her physical abuse. A few days later at the breakfast table, the oldest lady in our group made some sort of comment indicating we needed to cure the “homosexual issue”. Perhaps it was the way she said it, I don’t know, but these experiences completely floored me as a Christian and honestly as a flawed human being.

Attending church all my life I’ve heard the comments on homosexuality before. I’ve been told that somewhere in the Bible it is indicated as a sin, as is: abortion, premarital sex, drunkenness, cursing, divorce, pornography, etc. I’ve been told it’s stated somewhere but where?

When you grow up in Sunday School you memorize Bible verses like: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and love your neighbour as yourself” or “For God so Loved the world that He gave His only son, that who-so-ever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life”. There is an amazing piece of scripture about removing the plank from your own eye before taking the sliver out of someone elses. It’s all about judging others and how important it is to recognize our own sins before judging someone else. Other amazing scriptures tell us to, above all else, LOVE one another and to show the love of God through our actions and words. If you searched the index of a Bible for the subject “homosexuality” you most likely won’t find it. If you go on Biblegateway.com and put “homosexuality” in to the keyword search, it doesn’t exist. Now, try that same exercise with the word “Love”. Search the Bible for love and you will find it saturates the word of God just as it is suppose to saturate our lives.

I was honestly disappointed and angered by my friend’s comments about my girlfriend. First of all, the same faith that claims homosexuality to be a sin also claims divorce, drunkenness and premarital sex a sin, and he’s experienced each of these, some on a regular basis…as do I. In a faith that tells us not too judge others before ourselves, I found his comment entirely too hypocritical, it was as though he was tripping over the plank in his eye in an attempt to remove a sliver from my girlfriends. Secondly, we are suppose to show God’s love and love above all else. When Christians start rallying against particular “issues” and screaming words of hate, how is that God’s love being shown? I feel ashamed to be associated with Christians who do not know that the only way to show love is to give love, no matter the sexual preference, marital state, race or extracurricular activities.

I am proud to be a Christian. Proud to believe in a God that commands us to love. Where my faith turns to shame is in these comments of ignorance and intolerance. It’s not that I am ashamed to believe but I am ashamed to claim to be taught by the same teacher as these ignorant hypocritical beings because there clearly has been a miscommunication somewhere.

I’m not sure if all of this is a generational thing. I don’t know if it’s simply a reaction of my idealism. Whatever it is, I believe, above all else, i am meant to love and save the judging for God. So I chose to live and love to the fullest, without prejudism.