I love long car rides. I generally prefer to drive anywhere I can go by car in less than 10 hours rather than go through the hassle of getting on a plane and flying. It is another story if I’m stuck in a car with a stranger or someone I don’t trust. It is particularly unsettling that my distrust is for my own father.
To say that one particular ride left a scar is an understatement. I was in my early teens. My parents had been divorced for several years and things were already tense between us. I lived with my mom most of the time and managed to keep myself busy enough to avoid my dad as much as I could. But I couldn’t say “no” when he wanted me to visit my grandpa, who was in the hospital in Columbus, two hours away from Findlay where I grew up.
That’s how I found myself in his truck, shotgun mounted on the back window, Smith and Wesson handgun under his seat, on route 23, surrounded by cornfields, riding south toward Columbus, the cab feeling more and more suffocating as the minutes slogged on. Then, he reached over to turn down the radio.
“Son,” ugh … even as I’m writing this 25 years later I can feel my chest constricting. One word out of his mouth and there was no direction this could have gone that could have made the rest of my day feel better. He kept going:
“I know you’ve been hanging around with a lot of people who are ‘different’ than us,” (here, I already know he is referring to the one gay friend I’ve managed to find in my tiny home town) “but it’s our job as Christians to show people the right way.”
At this point words could not have passed my lips if I had wanted them to, but at 15 years old, I had neither the wit, nor the emotional fortitude to respond to that. I set my jaw and willed the tears to remain firmly in their ducts. But he wasn’t finished:
“And if you ever turn gay, I’ll shoot you.”
In Acts 4, the apostles speak to the people about Christ’s resurrection and the priests (the same ones who had Jesus crucified) arrest them. How inconvenient! These trained theologians went through all the trouble of killing the Son of God, who was trying to get everyone to love each other, only to have him come back to life and have his ministry carry on anyway.
At some point, I’m sure they thought they were right. Like everyone, they were taught a certain way and were truly appalled by this carpenter claiming he had more authority than they did. Confronted with the evidence of Jesus’ teaching, miracles, and resurrection, they could have made the choice to open their minds and accept Christ’s call to love one another. Instead, they locked his disciples away (and eventually executed most of them) in an attempt to cling to their outdated beliefs.
My father thought he was right. I don’t know if he intended that his threat would somehow change my “gayness,” if it would cause me to hide it, or if he might have actually followed through and killed me. When your father, or anyone else for that matter, is rejecting you because of something you can’t change, it is hard to stop and think about what is going on in their head.
What I am confident about is that I can choose to learn and adapt and, when confronted with similar situations and situations I think I know something about, make the decision to love first and ask compassionate questions later.
Yours in love,
John