The Imitation Game
Movies that make me write essays, part one.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a woman, I put away childish things. ~1 Corinthians 13:11
[1994, California, USA] At age 19, I sat on the hide-a-bed sofa in my first apartment, watching a news program. On the screen, a man I admired very much revealed that he was gay, that he was HIV positive, and that he had spent years hiding both of these things about himself out of fear--fear of so many things, but in particular the wrath of mankind. His name: Greg Louganis.
He was an Olympic diver. I had watched him win his gold medals, and thought him very beautiful, but also very sweet and as one tends to, admired him because of his greatness. The thing he could do impressed me: I thought it was amazing that he could slice through a body of water and hardly make a splash.
He amazed me.
But, as a young Christian woman, I listened to his story and struggled to contain the confusing emotions I held. I loved him...and I hated him. Because I hated his actions. I hated the thing he was. Or so I thought.
I should make it clear that I was never taught to hate anyone, gay, straight, or otherwise. But I was taught what was right and what was wrong, and some elemental thing inside me had always curled up in hate at the aspect of wrong. And, regardless of the old adage, Hate the sin, love the sinner, there tends to be some crossover. Or at least for me, I hadn't figured out the line of delineation quite yet.
"He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. . . . He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one."~C.S. Lewis (1952)
I was working my own imitation game. Read the scriptures, interpret/decrypt the message, decide what to do with that information. Live it, pitch it, or figure out just how personal those messages could be.
It took time (it's still a part of my journey as a human, I believe, to work out how to love everybody, even those who are "wrong," the ones I just don't like for whatever reason, the ones I disagree with, and the ones that I'm supposed to love, because, you know, they're my mother, but I have issues with her--which is an entirely different blog post!), but I have had these different life experiences that brought me to Friday night this week, and The Imitation Game.
Sitting in a movie theater watching one of those "based on a true story" Oscar-bait films about real people who did heroic things secretly, who were wronged by the injustice of an imperfect world, etc...I don't mean to be sarcastic, but you know what I mean, right? Every day heroism often doesn't get a movie made about it, even 70 years later.
This movie, though, hit home very personally. It made me think about the people in my life who helped me understand things I could have never hoped to understand at age 19.
Because what I realized is that it takes great courage and heroism to live your truth, in whatever life you have been placed in, and just because I am not gay does not mean I don't have that same obligation.
My truth has come in the form of people who impacted me, and I daresay changed the course of my life and my view of myself because they were gay. There is a line in the movie where Keira Knightly's character says (in effect) to Benedict Cumberbatch's that if he weren't the way he is, the entire course of the world would be different. I said a very similar thing to a friend of mine who came out to me several years ago--that the reason we were such good friends, the reason that I liked him as I did, and that we got on so well, was in fact, because he is gay.
I don't profess to know it all, or to even fully comprehend the few things I think I do know; but what I'm certain of is that 19-year-old me had to love an Olympic athlete so much that it nearly crushed her to learn he was gay so that when I fell in love with a gay boy nine years later, I could glean the lessons I was supposed to learn from it.
"The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls. We feel we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs." ~Joseph Smith
I don't know what it all means, ultimately; personally, however, I came to the conclusion a while back that the God I believe in, whom I will stand before one day for Judgment, will not care if my neighbor was gay, straight, or otherwise. What He will ask me about is if I loved my neighbor, if I served my neighbor, particularly when it was hard to love and serve my neighbor. He will want to know in what ways I changed myself, in what ways I let His love change my heart, in what ways I gave His love--the love He has abundantly poured out upon me--away.
I hope I find at that day no imitations at all, just me, just the real deal. Just someone who took His name and used it properly.
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a woman, I put away childish things. ~1 Corinthians 13:11
[1994, California, USA] At age 19, I sat on the hide-a-bed sofa in my first apartment, watching a news program. On the screen, a man I admired very much revealed that he was gay, that he was HIV positive, and that he had spent years hiding both of these things about himself out of fear--fear of so many things, but in particular the wrath of mankind. His name: Greg Louganis.
He was an Olympic diver. I had watched him win his gold medals, and thought him very beautiful, but also very sweet and as one tends to, admired him because of his greatness. The thing he could do impressed me: I thought it was amazing that he could slice through a body of water and hardly make a splash.
He amazed me.
But, as a young Christian woman, I listened to his story and struggled to contain the confusing emotions I held. I loved him...and I hated him. Because I hated his actions. I hated the thing he was. Or so I thought.
I should make it clear that I was never taught to hate anyone, gay, straight, or otherwise. But I was taught what was right and what was wrong, and some elemental thing inside me had always curled up in hate at the aspect of wrong. And, regardless of the old adage, Hate the sin, love the sinner, there tends to be some crossover. Or at least for me, I hadn't figured out the line of delineation quite yet.
"He (the devil) always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. . . . He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one."~C.S. Lewis (1952)
I was working my own imitation game. Read the scriptures, interpret/decrypt the message, decide what to do with that information. Live it, pitch it, or figure out just how personal those messages could be.
It took time (it's still a part of my journey as a human, I believe, to work out how to love everybody, even those who are "wrong," the ones I just don't like for whatever reason, the ones I disagree with, and the ones that I'm supposed to love, because, you know, they're my mother, but I have issues with her--which is an entirely different blog post!), but I have had these different life experiences that brought me to Friday night this week, and The Imitation Game.
Sitting in a movie theater watching one of those "based on a true story" Oscar-bait films about real people who did heroic things secretly, who were wronged by the injustice of an imperfect world, etc...I don't mean to be sarcastic, but you know what I mean, right? Every day heroism often doesn't get a movie made about it, even 70 years later.
This movie, though, hit home very personally. It made me think about the people in my life who helped me understand things I could have never hoped to understand at age 19.
Because what I realized is that it takes great courage and heroism to live your truth, in whatever life you have been placed in, and just because I am not gay does not mean I don't have that same obligation.
My truth has come in the form of people who impacted me, and I daresay changed the course of my life and my view of myself because they were gay. There is a line in the movie where Keira Knightly's character says (in effect) to Benedict Cumberbatch's that if he weren't the way he is, the entire course of the world would be different. I said a very similar thing to a friend of mine who came out to me several years ago--that the reason we were such good friends, the reason that I liked him as I did, and that we got on so well, was in fact, because he is gay.
I don't profess to know it all, or to even fully comprehend the few things I think I do know; but what I'm certain of is that 19-year-old me had to love an Olympic athlete so much that it nearly crushed her to learn he was gay so that when I fell in love with a gay boy nine years later, I could glean the lessons I was supposed to learn from it.
"The nearer we get to our Heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls. We feel we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs." ~Joseph Smith
I don't know what it all means, ultimately; personally, however, I came to the conclusion a while back that the God I believe in, whom I will stand before one day for Judgment, will not care if my neighbor was gay, straight, or otherwise. What He will ask me about is if I loved my neighbor, if I served my neighbor, particularly when it was hard to love and serve my neighbor. He will want to know in what ways I changed myself, in what ways I let His love change my heart, in what ways I gave His love--the love He has abundantly poured out upon me--away.
I hope I find at that day no imitations at all, just me, just the real deal. Just someone who took His name and used it properly.