But, he said, how could god love him - he was a homosexual! He was abnormal, perverted, unnatural. His homosexuality was like the mark of Cain on his forehead. Wherever he would go, whatever he would do, he would always have that mark on his forehead - and god would always hate him for it.
I suggested that this was nothing more than foolish pride, and very foolish pride at that. A being as great, as incomprehensible, as powerful as "god" - would it have time to sit around hating a particular person? Nonsense. In it's greatness, it's abundance, it's glory, would it be inclined to despise those who had lost their way, those who were different, beings it had itself created? Who could believe such foolishness?
I then suggested that he should never mind about god. We can know nothing about god, so why bother? We cannot see him/her/it, we cannot touch, cannot hear, cannot talk - why bother? If this being deemed it important for us to have a "personal relationship" with it, would it not provide a way for that to happen? But no such way has ever been found.
That is the heart of it. You cannot love what you do not know - and we do not know god. You cannot admire what you cannot conceive. You cannot understand what is incomprehensible. So, why bother?
This is only pride. It has not been given to us to know god, to comprehend god, much less to have a relationship with god. That is for another time, another place, for another state of being.
All that you can know, now, here, on this earth, is yourself. The mystics realised this long ago. Sufis, monks - they knew it long ago. Know yourself if you would know god. If you don't know yourself, you will never know god. And when you do know yourself, you will know how meaningless this question of god is.
Never mind about god. Mind about yourself.
You are a homosexual - this is what has been given to you, this is what you are, this is all you can know. Why do you resist?
When you say god hates you, you are saying, I hate myself. You are blaming god for your own self-hatred.
And, do you love god? How can you love that which you don't know, that which you cannot see, that which you cannot comprehend? This is not love - love is 2, never 1, love is 2 beings, not 1 being in isolation.
God does not exist in any way that we can understand. You must drop this subject, cleanse it from your mind, give it up. You are only wasting time with it. Many have talked about god, have said many things, developed many doctrines and dogmas, religions and belief systems - and they are all wrong. How can you devise a set of beliefs about something which has no form, no shape, no existence in our world? You cannot. You can guess, you can speculate, you can deduce - but you cannot know, for certain, you cannot be sure, you cannot say anything absolutely.
If you desire to know god, then listen - LISTEN - to Jesus: God is love. To find god, you must find love, you must experience love, you must find the other, the 2, not the 1. You will never find the other as long as you hate yourself, because when you hate yourself, everyone else will hate you too. They will know you hate yourself, and they will say, there must be some reason for it. And they will hate you too.
It may be the hardest thing you ever do, to love yourself despite your
homosexuality, but that is what you must do. Don't pretend that god hates
you just because you hate yourself.