No matter how far a Southern man goes, he can't outrun Scripture. After a decade as an open atheist and nearly half as long as an openly gay man, the Word still imperceptibly slips from my lips at the odd moment or two. Usually I laughingly say, "Ask and it shall be given you" -- Matthew 7:7 -- as an ironic twist on "you're welcome" to many friends who are in the know about my personal beliefs.
Few friends know that that verse is part of the hymn to which I was baptized, at 13 years old, and entered the body of Christ. I excised myself from that body soon after and became a humanist, but the words are still in my heart -- their wisdom, and the wisdom in all the Gospels, still linger over my life, guiding me at some points, warning me at others.
In the end, the Bible is just a book -- much like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, which some Duke freshmen have threatened to boycott reading. The young men and women believe the nudity and same-sex relationship depicted in the graphic novel violates their religious beliefs by exposing them to material they find morally objectionable. They are right in their beliefs, but misguided in their objection -- and could likely do well to actually begin their college careers and learn something before they start dismissing their professors and peers.
But I certainly do not want to cast the first stone, nor do I want to focus on the violence, genocide, sexual assault, racism, torture and various other morally objectionable themes found in the Bible and other holy texts that likely form the foundation of these students' beliefs. I have neither the stomach nor the training for apologia. What I have is a lifetime, short as it has been so far, of reading these same texts -- well after I, too, realized that they were the tools of men and women who sought to unmake the parts of my identity I found the most precious.
After coming out as atheist, I turned away from the Bible. I militantly spurned my family's King James as a bloody and gaudy story book. As I matured, I returned in stages -- first with the Gospels, then Acts -- cherrypicking my way around the faded magenta type of Christ's words. My faith as a Christian never came back, but the noise of my anger trickled down a diminuendo of years as I reapproached cautiously the text that had literally followed me my entire life.
Strange that a book of faith has taught a faithless gay man so much. When I doubted whether I would one day know the true love of a family, I turned to Ruth 1:16 -- "For whither thou goest, I will go." When I struggled over whether to uproot my life and save myself from a toxic career, I turned to Ecclesiastes 9:6 -- "Forsake the foolish, and live; and go in the way of understanding." And when a gay friend hung himself from his own ceiling, I turned instinctually to the words of Matthew 5:8 for comfort -- "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."
Of course, I am not blind to what the Bible says about me -- both as a gay man and a non-Christian. I do not ignore the passages calling me "abomination," or the extortions of Christ that only through his claim to divinity will I avoid an eternity of fiery perdition. These words cut deep and in the hands of the cruel have hurt -- even cut short -- the lives of beautiful queer individuals. I do not excuse away this ugliness; I trust in myself to know wisdom when I see it and take heed of knowledge wherever it so happens to take root.
To the freethinker, everything is propaganda. You must learn to quench the alloy of your confidence and your convictions in the murky waters of doubt. So tempered, the resulting strength becomes less prone to shattering when struck against the hard choices of life.
I found this strength after four years of a top-notch college education, where professors and peers confronted me with ideas that shook me to my core. I came out the other side with many of the same beliefs, but still changed -- something akin to what we mean when we say "individual," capable of measuring the worth of my beliefs and the beliefs of others no matter how uncomfortable they made me. For those Duke freshmen beginning this semester, I advise you approach Fun Home in much the same way I returned to the Bible -- with an eye toward the men and women you will become in four years, and not the children you still very much are. The time has come to put away childish things.