Faith, Hope, and Love

“And now these three remain: Faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 

1 Corinthians 13:13

It’s really hard to say what these words mean.

My Christian upbringing certainly had its ideas: Faith was our unflinching devotion to our unobserved God. Hope was our belief in a life beyond this one, a life in which there will be no suffering, no affliction. Love was the sacrifice of Christ for humanity, the heart that forgets itself in service to the other, the presence of God on Earth.

But around the time I turned fourteen, I became aware that the Bible did not endorse Love the way I felt it in my skin–my affections were impure, unholy, abominable. For seven years I waged holy war against myself, first through prayer, fasting, and discipleship, then through research into pseudoscientific theories of sexuality, willful participation in conversion therapy, and vain and hedonistic attempts to reprogram my desires. When I finally realized that I was destroying my authentic self in the process of trying to become someone else, I came out as a gay man. 

It was easy enough to do–I had already renounced my faith and adopted a kind of false and bitter Atheism, simultaneously blaming God for all my strife and denying Their existence. It was necessary at the time, but all the same the Scripture I was raised on still lived rent-free in my mind. When I realized I would never experience true Atheism (the kind of confident and altruistic Atheism that feels no need to curse a God it doesn’t believe in) I decided I need some way of reclaiming Scripture from the traditionalists who are entirely convinced that their interpretation of Scripture is correct.

These songs represent my best effort. They carry years of trauma, heartbreak, and depression, but also flickers of hope, joy, and passion. They carry the pain of self-rejection, but also the bold and unflinching assertion of my humanity. Most of all, they carry my faith and hope in a God that is foremost Love, my faith and hope that Their Love reaches me not in spite of my identity, but because of it, my faith and hope that in the end, Love will always win. 

May love be with you.

–Lucas