BORN AGAIN (Excerpt 5 of 8)

Abomination, Part 1

This is the fifth in a series of excerpts I am doing from my book “Born Again.” It’s from the third chapter, which is called Abomination. If you’ve not yet read the previous installments, you can find them here: First | Second | Third | Fourth

“If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)

When I was 8 years old, I had a crush on my tall, dark, and handsome teacher at our church’s AWANA kids club. His name was Dean. I’d imagine he was 20 or so at the time. He drove a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit. I remember him being kind. I don’t remember much more than that, other than that I was drawn to him, and I looked forward to our weekly meetings where he helped me memorize Bible verses about how to be saved from my sins. I doubt I understood at the time that it was a “crush,” because I was just a boy, but the feelings obviously left an impression on me. 

Photo by Sohan Sam

Those feelings were different than the feelings I had for Julie, another college-aged kids’ teacher at church. What I felt for her was fascination, because I thought she was so glamorous with her blue eye shadow and red lipstick and feathered hair and dark nylons and high heels. I knew I was supposed to be focused on learning about the Bible, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her shoes, which had blue leather straps and wooden soles. I was fascinated. 

It makes sense that a few years later, I went bonkers for a gorgeous lady dancing in a leopard-skin-print jacket on her album cover. From there, it seems all but inevitable that I would one day grow to love Dolly Parton, and eventually drag queens.   

One of my AWANA handbooks

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While fear, shame, and guilt affected nearly every area of my life, unquestionably one of the biggest impacts they had was on my thinking around the human body and sexuality.

When I was maybe 10 years old, I went through a phase where I was very uncomfortable standing up in church while the congregation sang hymns. The reason was that I knew if I was standing up, whoever was in the row behind me could see my butt. Or even see that I HAD a butt. I have no idea where this particular phobia came from, but somehow, I was a boy dressed in his Sunday best who was convinced that the hymn-singers behind me were focusing on his rear end. It’s bizarre, but I think it shows how pervasive my belief in the shamefulness of the body was.  

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The best I can recall, I learned about the “birds and the bees” from a book my parents gave me called Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which is a reference to Psalm 139 in the Bible. I think you can guess which stuck with me more: the fearful part, or the wonderful part.

One childhood summer day while riding my bike, I saw some folded-up papers in the street. I stopped and picked them up, and immediately realized that they were photos of naked women, likely from Playboy or a similar publication. I jumped back on my bike and quickly rode to an empty field not too far from our house, where I took a closer look at the pictures.

I remember two feelings from this experience. First, I was grossed out as I looked at their bodies. And two, I was very ashamed that I had just done such a wicked thing, and I worried about how God would punish me for it.

Snapshots from my AWANA workbooks

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You can read the next excerpt here.

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I intend for the foreseeable future for my posts to remain free, including the excerpts from Born Again. But if you’d like the full book, you have two options:

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(Note: The Substack back-end tech appears to be unable to accommodate the logistics of this offer, so I will reach out to you directly after you subscribe to get your shipping details and then place the book order for you myself.)

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