Tarzan, Phil Collins, and a Machete

In preparing to write this post, I was desperately trying to remember who wrote the soundtrack to Disney’s Tarzan. That animated movie had me dancing and crying in my living room as a kid. The suggested google search revealed this:

Clearly, I’m not the only one who has strong feelings about this movie.

Sure, the scene where the gorillas trash the camp to the sound of lively scatting lives rent-free in my head, and the idea of jungle-moss roller-skating had my 90’s heart aquiver. There was something greater that resonated with me, though. Phil Collins’ music was playing the background of a story I felt all too deeply.

The story of being alone in the jungle, without my people.

I don’t remember the first time I described my journey with sexuality like this, but it’s been over a decade. It’s become part of the little mental script I run in my head whenever I tell my story, an illustration that's resonated with other LGBTQ+ friends I’ve met over the years. As a teenager, scrambling towards Jesus, trying to share my experience and get any kind of help from my church, I told it a little something like this:

Being gay in the church has felt like being lost in the jungle, alone with just my Bible, a faithful machete. I don’t know where to go - there’s no path I can see. It’s dark, and I'm hacking away at the brush, just trying to figure out where to go. Carving a path and hoping it’s the right direction. Praying I find a way.

That’s how it felt, for a long time. Just me, alone in the jungle, with my machete. I could see why Tarzan would make a family of the gorillas, why he’d befriend an elephant - it’s hard to be lost and alone.

The journey had its twists - years I spent seeking a healing that never came, and failed relationships with women that confused me and wounded them. The church, which I hoped would help me find the way, often did little to carve through the jungle foliage with me. In fact, what little I heard about same-sex-attraction in the church seemed to make the way more confusing - the foliage grew thicker, the light dimmer, as I was made to prove my worth or meet ever-changing goal posts. It took years to be able to include others faithfully in the conversation - and instantly, I felt more hope. Sure, I was still lost in the jungle, but now I had a friend or two by my side - in my best moments, even pastors that walked faithfully with me - and we were looking for a path together.

You can imagine what it was like for me to find our community. My first Revoice, in 2019, was a discovery that the jungle did, in fact, have trails. And not only were these trails clear, they were ancient, tied to the faith I’d treasured, and they were filled with fellow travelers. I never could’ve imagined a community like Revoice existing. Here I was, arrogant enough to think I was alone in the jungle, when great trail-blazers were going before me. The Wesley Hills and Greg Johnsons and Eve Tushnets (I use the plural because I firmly believe each of us who speaks on a stage is but one of many who live faithfully with Jesus each day). What is it that Paul says - no temptation has overcome us except what is common to man? It’s so easy to believe we struggle alone. What a great lie of the enemy. What a shame we believe it.

For so long I thought I’d have to give up on Jesus because He just didn’t seem to have a path for me. I was trying - I was trying so hard to be holy enough, to be faithful enough, to be spirit-filled enough to just be able to be like the other men in my life. To be able to have a wife and kids and be a man of faith.

I didn’t know Jesus had carved out a path - in many ways, a path He lived - through the dark jungle around me. I didn’t know He’d filled that path with guides. I didn’t know He’d made a way, and indeed Jesus continues to BE The Way, to a full life with Him in singleness. To empower, bless, and bring delight in faithfulness in hard circumstances - yes, in the fires of temptation, but also in the heartaches of singleness, in the stone-fall of judgment, in the heartache of religious rejection. I didn’t know, but I know now. I know I can be a man of faith, single and celibate and not incomplete and not rejected. I know I can be a man of faith, gay and loved and imperfect and redeemed and being redeemed. On my worst days, I believe the lie that I’m alone in the jungle still. (Christ, protect me from my worst days and the lies of the evil one!) Most days though, I know better.

Last night I made a new friend. Through my work at Revoice, I got connected with a young gay man in his 20’s. Over Zoom, he shared with me his story - how he’d known he was gay from a young age. How he came to know Jesus in his teenage years, and committed to celibacy (at the age of 14!), and he's followed Jesus faithfully for over a decade. In all those years, he’d never spoken to another gay Christian. Through tears, he said to me “it’s so nice to talk to someone who understands.” Soon, he wasn’t the only one crying. I know exactly how he felt.

I shared with him my little illustration of being lost in the jungle… he texted me this morning and said, “The more machetes, the merrier.”

Isn’t that just like God, who makes fools wise and the weak strong, to take little old, isolated, lost-in-the-jungle me… and let me wield a machete alongside a fellow traveler. To bring him into the well-worn paths of grace. To get to be for him, what Revoice was for me in 2019.

Over my years in sexuality ministry, I’ve heard folks be suspicious of our community’s desire to find one another. There are concerns, it seems, of the risk of temptation that might occur when gay Christians are in the same room. Others seem to find our need to gather to be a rejection of the church - as if we silo ourselves away and reject our broader sibling-hood in Christ. Those concerns have often baffled me… they say nothing of the rejection we face each Sunday, and say nothing of the immense temptation of isolation. I won’t put too fine a point on it in this post, but I’m marveled at pastors who worry how I might sin when I meet other gay men, and don’t consider the many temptations of isolation in life-long celibacy. I wonder why Christ and the New Testament authors would so repeatedly command us into community if community is so great a risk to our faith, and not the very nourishment that feeds it?

So many of us - thousands, I now know - have spent years convinced we were the only ones lost in the jungle. We gather together not because we’re looking for an excuse to sin, or because we need everyone to be EXACTLY like us, or because we need to feel normal (although that last one sure is nice, I’ll admit). We gather together because we’ve spent so many years afraid and alone, and for once it’d be nice to be afraid and together - or, in God’s grace, maybe not even afraid. 

We gather together not because we reject our local church, but to give us strength to go back to it. To feel understood for one week so we can be misunderstood for 51. We gather for the stories of our elders - in age and in spiritual experience - who can teach us the sweet Way of Jesus, the path we’ve been looking for. We gather so we don’t figure it out alone, exhausting ourselves with hacking and slashing through the brush, but so we can walk the narrow road - isn’t it Ecclesiastes that says “if one falls down, his friend can help him up? But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him.” We gather to have friends who help us when we fall. What a mercy.

Frankly, if my experience is any indication, we gather to be The Church we have always believed in - and invite our siblings (all our siblings) to do the same.

As I write this, I’m praying for others like my friend last night, alone but clinging faithfully to Jesus. I’m praying that their local church would be the Body in all the ways they need. I’m praying that the Spirit would strengthen them with hope, peace, and contentment. And yeah… I’m praying that we find them, and they find us.

After all - the more machetes, the merrier.