By: Andrew Cone
Andrew Cone was part of the group of confirmands this year. As part of their commitment to the church, each of our youth in this confirmation class was asked to write a statement of faith. Several confirmands shared their statements with the congregation in April, including this statement by Andrew:
Who is God? To me, God is like a call to action in my life, or the reason to do anything or go somewhere. An example of this was at our final confirmation retreat. Pedro led us in an activity in which we closed our eyes and walked in the direction the wind seemed to be blowing. There was a stream that was flowing near where we did this activity, but I wasn’t sure how close it was. Completely void of all visual stimuli, I walked right up to the bank of the stream, but didn’t step in. It was only once I had opened my eyes that I realized just how lucky I was to not have stepped in. Looking back at this event though, there was no “luck” involved. God had led me there before telling me to stop.
Moving on, this year my faith in God has been a bit shaky. If any of you didn’t know already, I am bisexual and have a gender identity of gender fluid.; this means my pronouns are he/they. This has been a struggle at school. There is this one kid in my Geometry and Language Arts classes who will walk up to me on almost a daily basis saying things like “Love can only happen between men and women,” “You must be confused,” or “There are only two genders.”
Why would somebody with so much power, like God, allow somebody like me to get treated as if I was less than somebody who identifies as straight? I mean, why does straight have to be the default? This leads me to an example in the animal kingdom where homosexuality is important. According to science, homosexuality can be found in more than 1,500 animal species. It was also discovered that homosexual animals are very important for the survival of these species. Why might this be? Well, it is because when heterosexual parents die or disown their offspring, homosexual couples would adopt the orphan child and raise it. Heterosexual couples usually will not do this because they are busy reproducing. Guess what? Animals raised by homosexual parents turn out to be completely fine.
This brings me to the point: all these other 1,499 species don’t show homophobia. The only one that does is humans. Personally, with this struggle from homophobia, God’s light got dimmer for a while. Through the confirmation process though, God’s light got brighter and brighter, shining through the fog of hate. This leads me to today, standing in front of all you explorers of your own faith journeys. I hear you saying that I can confirm that the path God has put me on is the right path for me. This brings me immense comfort and peace.
