Storm Stories: Rising Storm: Part Two

Today, I continue the defining tale of how I became TheNorEaster.  If you haven’t read Part One yet, click here…

YOU CAN’T GET A DROWNING MAN INTO THE BOAT BY THROWING A HARPOON

by TheNorEaster

Four months after I got out of the hospital, my friend was brutally beaten and stabbed to death.

So the world I had seen on TV after coming out of the intensive care unit was suddenly very real.  Very personal.  Someone made a deliberate decision to take the life of my friend.

And because I was not taught how to reconcile my faith in a loving God with such a detestable tragedy, I stopped going to church and started backsliding.  Big time.  I dropped out of college.  And I got drunk a lot.  Got stoned a few times too.  And I slept with a lot of women.  Even knocked a few them up.

But, my kids?  They’re dead now, too.

One deliberately.  The others…not so much.

And yet, of all the deaths I have endured, the murder of my friend was a rare occassion where I had no need to ask, “Why?”

I already knew:  he was gay.

A twenty-year-old kid had simply decided to be intolerant of homosexuals like my friend–to the point of putting a knife through his rib cage.

Several times.

The kid was caught about a year later, after bragging to someone in a bar about what he had done.

Bragging.

For obvious reasons, I haven’t written about this in detail until now.

I have heard politicians speak against homosexual “marriage” for the sole purpose of getting elected.

And I have seen the conservative branch of christendom vote for them for this very reason.

I have heard a pathetic drunk at a coffee shop in the middle of the night, telling sick jokes, laughing and shouting, “I hate faggots!”

I have seen hatemongers in my home state, holding signs that read “God Hates Fags.”

I have seen bumper stickers that pronounce “God made Adam and Eve.  Not Adam and Steve.“

And when I see that level of arrogance and such exploitation, and so much intolerance and such hatred–it’s like watching my friend get murdered all over again.

Time.  And time.  And time.  Again.

And every time, I hear demonic whispers:

Grace is a sham!

Love is a lie!

To hell with forgiveness!

Mercy is not for sinners!

When that happens, the temptations of my old life–drinking and women and drugs–also whisper.

And I want to stop caring.  I want to give up.  I want to die.

Because a world without God…I cannot bear.

But, above all, I try to remember that Christ died for the sins of the world.

For my friend.  His killer.  The hatemongers.  Me.

And those who know not what they do.

For you see, I too believe that homosexuality is a sin.  But after my friend was murdered, I realized that alienating sinners will never bring them to accept salvation.  And I learned a thing or two about compassion as well.

So I do things differently.

But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us

while we were still sinners.  ~Romans 5:8