bastard

[i posted this originally without a title, but have since come up with one that i think suits this blog entry.]

being born an accident is a tough thing to come to terms with, especially when you realize that words like the one above can actually describe you according to webster. as many people know, i grew up without a father. it’d be very easy for me to blame a lot of my problems on that simple fact alone, but the truth of the matter is i just can’t do that. for one, that would be incredibly unfair to my mother. also, just because it would be easy doesn’t make it right. i’m a firm believer that people should take responsibility for the choices they make. i do, however, have to sympathize with the people in my not-so unique position.

recently i compared two groups of people that i spent some time with on the same day. the first was a group of kids at an orphanage and the second was a group of people living on the streets. both groups of people have had similar lives in that most have been orphaned by their parents, and all of them had been orphaned by the society they lived in. i realized that the biggest and perhaps only difference between these two groups was simply the realization of hope in their lives. the orphans had been given affirmation, and because of that affirmation they were given an identity, and because of that identity they were given a purpose, and because they know their purpose they have hope for the rest of their lives. God did the same for Jesus at his baptism. God said, “this is my son, with whom i am well pleased.” all fathers are supposed to do that. the street dwellers had been told that they were garbage and that the community would be better off if they were to not exist any longer. some fathers do that instead.

it took spending time with those two very different groups of people for me to really pinpoint something in my own life. this epiphany has been more of a gradual thing in my mind as i’ve been processing it for some time, but have only been able to see part of it because of how in the middle of it i was. i realized that only very recently had my life been given affirmation, identity, and purpose. i suppose i saw a lot of myself in who i spent time with that day. and i think i saw both ends of that fork in the road. i’ll explain.

my whole life i was told that God hates sin. of course that made sense to me, even as a child. if heaven and God are both perfect, then sin couldn’t exist there. and God hates sin because he wanted better for us, his creations. he loves us so much that he hates sin. see what happened right there? what happens when the line that just got drawn in that sentence gets blurred? i was a mistake, the direct result of two people committing a mutual sin. my parents were never married if you were wanting proof. so God loves me, but hates how i got here. my whole life has been a subconscious search for the answer to the following question: which scenario would God want more? a human being like me being in the world despite the circumstance, or less sin in the world to begin with? God loves me, but He hates sin. how do you reconcile the two?

thankfully, only 24 years into my life, i’m able to see the whole picture. the whole picture so far, anyway. i know that i’m a mistake, but i also know that in the higher sense i’m not any kind of mistake. God could have very easily not let my mom become pregnant, and that in itself makes my existence a unique miracle. and i have to believe that. i have to believe that. if i don’t, it’s a very dangerous way of life.

there’s a reason that “fight club” is one of my favorite movies and books. there’s so much truth in that story. it reflects the truth through the eyes of a world exhausted of its own rhetoric. phrases like “we’re a generation of men raised my women,” and “our fathers were our model for God. if our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God?” and “we’re God’s unwanted children, so be it,” speak so loudly to me about what’s wrong with the world. one of the thoughts in the book that went along with that thought was that the reason things like “project mayhem” were started was that it was better to get God’s wrathful attention than to be ignored by him completely. if i didn’t believe that God loved me and wasn’t fathering me Himself, i wouldn’t have any trouble subscribing to that idea. it’s only now that i can come full circle with these ideas.

God hates sin. if i took that idea to heart and stopped right there, my life has no reason to be anything good. i know, that kind of doesn’t make sense, but follow me for a second. i was, in earthly terms, an accident. i was the result of a sin, which God hates. at that point, there’s no reason for me to believe that God loves me and wants me around anyway. i would have no reason to want to be anything good. God would only be the god of the people he wanted around to begin with. He wouldn’t be my god. there wouldn’t be any need to impress him. if i was God’s unwanted child, so be it. it would be better to piss him off than to be ignored by him. as “fight club” put it, “losing all hope was freedom.” the loss of hope would free me to do anything with no regards to the consequences. my life would have no reason to be any different than those of the street kids in honduras huffing glue just to get through the day. my eyes would be as empty and hopeless as any one of theirs.

that God is fathering me is a recent revelation. i know now that i have a reason to hope. i know that God loves me, and he even likes me. i know that God made me exactly as He wanted me, and even if mistakes were made by humans it doesn’t supersede God’s desire for what He wants to do with me. and finally, i know that because of all of that, God is trying to make a point with my life and has a plan for where it should go. hope is the key. and hope is what God gives to bastards like me.