Preface
I want to preface by saying I wrote this at a different time in my life, 5 months ago. I have always teetered back and forth, walking along, often crossing through, a hazy border of faith and unbelief. Sometimes I mourn my lack of actionable faith, sometimes I feel nothing. Sometimes I feel a deep sense of devotion, sometimes I feel nothing for my sins. This was a reflection on the struggles of a queer Christian, and grappling with faith borne from a tradition which precludes non-traditional families, relationships, and facts of life; sometimes to a very fundamental degree which resists all theological, polemical, and psychological tricks to soften this fact (Matthew 19:9). The very prerequisite corollaries conducive to my faith drive end up undermining every other fragment of my being so violently, that the type of cyclical moral dialectic shown in this monologue was a constant in my everyday life. Eventually, after enough of this, you give up. I think in the monologue itself I recall a prior time this very outcome was realized. It seems inevitable to me, at this point.
Nevertheless, I feel it important to publish this, as I try to rediscover faith, and at once accept myself for who I am. I know Christ’s mercy is unbounded, and He will take me back to His flock how, and when, He sees fit. If I am to be a recipient of His irresistible grace, as I am, as me, myself, and nobody else, let it be so. If these reflections are to be a memory of a faith less mature, less robust, less final, let it be so. If the inscrutable Will of God be manifest, and fashion of me what He wills, let it be so. What God has ordained, let it be so. Amen.
- E.A. Ramos
A Monologue
Written on May 24, 2025
Something key I realized is that being a prostitute is equivalent to being a tax collector in the New Testament. As in, something that leads to sinful behavior, but was also a means of earning a wage that we cling to in weakness and desperation, that made one an outcast and a social reject in first century Galilee.
But even so, through genuine humility, these end up justified over the boastful. The Pharisee and the Publican is one of the most powerful parables in the NT, simply because it completely destroys this idea that you can be in “perpetual sin” by taking this or that occupation, and have that “taint” you.
Nevertheless, I think the implicit idea latent in any synthesis of the NT as a whole is that, through faith, the tax collector may find the strength to cast aside the world and cease, but that in the meanwhile, acknowledgement of ones wretchedness and unworthiness, and seeking the Lord’s mercy, becomes itself righteousness.
If I don’t consider something sin, then, when I pray for forgiveness, I don’t even entertain it as something that requires forgiveness, and my heart asks not to be cleansed of it. What then? Does a general acknowledgement of unworthiness cleanse this? I think the answer depends on how “sola fide” one is, how strong the assurance attached to faith should be.
See, the problem is, I can’t find certain things sinful, unless I take an active role in stopping those things. Why would I do a thing I know accrues guilt, is bad, is sin? If I yield, I acknowledge that as failure, and seek forgiveness, the volition is towards not doing it, and that makes sense.
This scheme is not so much incompatible with sola fide, even though it exhibits a sort of “one needs to repent of venial sin” thing from Roman Catholicism. It works just as well in sola fide: true, justifying faith does seek out this dynamic, this constant seeking of forgiveness from God.
Which is part of the problem. Besides the fact I do not seek it out in general at the moment, I especially feel not compelled to do so for very specific things the consensus is “should be bad”, specifically certain sexual practices. Actually following through, to commit on these faith-driven assessments, is difficult to the point of nigh-impossibility.
The fact I can’t even bring myself to self-denial for this and trust the Lord that this is something to seek penance for, even if it isn’t sin, is proof enough that I can’t do the same for even basic things. If fornication and porn consumption aren’t bad, then why would getting a little angry be?
Anything which satiates my appetites for pleasure, schadenfreude, self-aggrandizement… if I can’t deny the apex expressions of these self-indulgences from within, how can I denounce them all? How will I be able to earnestly say to the Lord: “have mercy on me, a sinner”? I can’t really.
I think I might’ve gotten to the root of why this came hand-in-hand with my loss of practicing faith. I see these as exemplars of that which I could only ever renounce via faith in the statutes of Christ. If I cannot even give these up despite my faith telling me so, I stifle all the fruits of faith.
And then, I suppose I could feel constantly guilty, but, after a certain point, it’s easier to just not. And let the parts of my mind that are not faith-driven (i.e. most everything) to take over again in the evaluation of the moral character of these acts, which is to say, indifferent allowance.
I suppose it’s more fine grained. I stopped having practicable faith the second time because insisting on traditional sexual ethics for my partner was not going to work. So I took the worldly route. But see, instead of harboring self-hatred, I just gave up. This demanded too much of me.
A second avenue is allowable, one of self-renunciation to the extent that I can respect our partnership, one that does not intrude on it but focuses on private asceticism. And as we know, that which is private is what is most likely rewarded, public announcement tarnishing intentions, corrupting.
It’s interesting, most of my religious action at the moment is semi-public, in a forum, on here, between friends. When will I talk to God directly? I can any time. I suppose the faith to consider prayer anything except a time-costly, ridiculous action has been suffocated, or at least held back.
But in spite of any purported “private” self-denial, would it be possible to pursue such an endeavor, to the extent possible in my circumstance, without compromising love? Would it be loving to hurt my partner in my inscrutable “no"s, in privileging the unjustifiable asceticism of God? I guess this sounds like cope given the call to God above all other relationships in Luke 14:26. It’s really is a tired meme mostly touted by fundamentalists, but… what if it really is not love to indulge your partner in sin? What then?
Yet… what if love is the absence of that behavior? The secular heartbreak and so on… is this the love we are commanded to exhibit? This is a slippery slope and leads to the sickness of loveless legalism…
How is one able to hold this position, and also welcome all to the table, without making them a sort of second-class person in your heart, and then becoming the Pharisee again? “Oh the tax collector can come here and worship/pray, but he’s still a tax collector, unlike me, a real Christian”.
I think my weakness is not that I can’t suddenly become perfect despite my circumstance, but that I am discounting the idea of attaining a rough approximation of virtue despite my circumstance. And I suppose that I also see any approximation which cannot finish on a literal adherence to the Sermon on the Mount as worthless, when this is far from true. What does it mean that Jesus came to the sick? That the sick, in their sickness, can receive healing and care. The finalized curing of illness is a marvelous thing. But the Comforter treats the chronically bound much the same.
The root in Latin for “palliative” is “pallium”, a cloak. Likewise does the Comforter clothe us with the cloak of Christ’s righteousness, providing us with palliative nourishment, regeneration, and the strength to follow His example as best we can.
How can one truly recognize the profundity of one’s sin without giving up on trying to be good regardless? Or, more specifically, how can one in weakness yield to a circumstance conducive to sin, be bound to it even, while recognizing the gravity of said sin, and not give up on being good?
A few considerations from this monologue:
- When breaking free of that circumstance would be counter to love, one must bear it
- One can seek to improve in myriad ways, and always seek forgiveness for the fetters one recognizes, in humility
- This is a microcosm of the human condition overall.
This third point is interesting. Look to the broader picture: there are sins which one is not even conscious of, much less sins one is conscious of but cannot bear to cease. Or sins that one does not rightly recognize to be so, this is extremely common.
By this last one I mean not a sin which, in a struggle of faith, is periodically considered sin or not depending on the strength and drive engendered from faith, but that which even one of faith never acknowledges as sin. The domain of sin is more expansive than we can hope to conceptualize.
Constantly we self-serve or go against love. Our love goes to ourselves and our feelings in anger, scorn, pride. And these are common emotions, we are constantly embattled with them and we miss some, we let things fly. We can be assured of our salvation and promise of regeneration despite this.
And unlike an inter-social fetter, this is the fetter of the body, of unregenerate humanity. But recall that Christ has the keys to death and hades, and He lives forevermore. He has trampled death by death and to us in the tombs, restored life!
We walk as ones unfettered, despite our condition being fallen, us being in the metaphorical tomb and shackled. Our lives become imperfect rehearsals, precursors in a worldly stage to the Kingdom to come. We try our best to practice our lines, to do right by the directions.
When we inevitably miss the mark, we try again. And again. We embody the unfettered Life in a limited world, constantly checking ourselves to, hopefully, play out the ideal character of the Kingdom.
So that we may be bound to imperfection is not anything unexpected, we are called to be the lights on the hill despite our inability to attain perfection, to shine as bright as we can. Does this imply constant self-hatred? Not any more than the constant watchfulness and sorrow for our Fallenness
I am not uniquely tainted, or distinctly unworthy, we are all unworthy in ways we consistently want to put off, or not acknowledge. “There is no ethical existence under humanity”, to co-opt an oft-used pop socialist phrase.