“Here’s the Most Horrible Phrase in the English Language: ‘How have you grown in the Lord lately?'” Gay, Proud and Liberated A Reader of Mine Speaks Out

Bob Signorelli

Nov 20th, 5:14am

I grew up Roman Catholic in New Jersey. I wasn’t the alter boy type, just your run-of-the-mill Catholic kid. At age fifteen I was miraculously “saved” after inviting Jesus into my heart. That led to becoming a member of a local Reformed church and, after accepting the tenets of Calvinism, come to find that I wasn’t saved, but among the few that had and will be found. My new pastor explained we were Evangelicals and not closed-minded Fundamentalists.

When it became time to seek a college, he pointed me in the direction of several. I ended up selecting Gordon College (a non-denominational Christian school) on the North Shore of Boston. By the time I graduated, I was well indoctrinated into the Evangelical worldview.

Two weeks after graduation day, I married the young women I had met our freshman year. We decided to begin our careers together as missions and ended up working outside of Portland, Oregon for Youth For Christ. Our position was house parents for a group home for wayward teenage girls. The agency’s social worker never took a liking to us (our philosophy was show Christ in deeds, whereas the her mode of operation was, well, let’s say more direct, like cramming the Gospel down the girls’ throats). Anyway, an interesting story follows that I believe illustrates how we were at times head-to-head with the social worker. For obvious reasons, I’ll refer to her only as “SW”.

After settling into our positions, SW had my wife and I to her apartment for lunch and an informal staff meeting for, as she called it, “a change of scenery”. Before the meal was fully digested, SW positioned for her sneak attack and asked the most horrifying question. It’s one of those questions that when you hear it, your heart races and your blood starts circulating faster. The blood then begins to thicken and gel, then turns black. If you aren’t dead by the time it’s over, you wish you were.

The question was something like, “Tell me. How have you grown in the Lord lately?”

I choked, gained my composure and thought for a minute before answering, “What I’ve learned lately is that life is not distinctly black and white. There are varying shades of black and varying shades of white, but there are few, if any, absolutes”, I stated, adding “It’s like looking through the glass block builders use in bathroom windows, we only catch fuzzy glimpses of truth yet can never really see truth head on”.

There was something in SW’s lingering stare that gave me the heebie-jeebies…

Looking back, I think this encounter was representative of one of many a defining moment where I came to view other Evangelicals as short-sighted and misinformed. My wife and I returned to the East Coast the following year and (eventually) obtained promising careers in the real world.

Fast forward fifteen years and I’m finally confronted with an issue that has haunted with all my life. After careful self examination, I’ve decided I can no longer deny that I’m physically attracted to other men. I ended up leaving my wife to explore this and a divorce soon followed.

Any sexual hangups I may have postponed were now thrown to the wind. I was liberated and quickly made up for lost time with a new male partner who was also freshly divorced. My label was now Gay (and proud) and not a religious one.

It has only been recently, some twenty years later, that spiritual matters have once again taken a priority. I don’t know if this is attributed to an attitude of “been there, done that”, being cognizant that I am approaching the big 6-0, that I am once again single, or if God has other plans for me. Perhaps it’s a combination or perhaps it’s none of these.

What I do know is that I can’t again identify with the label of Evangelical as I thought I could. As I look around, I see flocks of Pharisees – hateful, vengeful and closed minded people who have attached themselves to a politically far right agenda. I see no Christ there and I question how this could possibly have happened. I don’t dwell on it, though I have a few ongoing hypotheses.

Despite this, I haven’t left my Christian faith – it’s brought be to where I am. I’ve come to rely on voices of reason, such as yourself, for my inspiration and refuse to be affected by bigots and fear mongers. 

It’s sometimes a lonely road, but it’s a road worth traveling with Truth as the road signs and Beauty found at every exit. Thank you for encouraging this journey, Frank.

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