Prodigal
FINN FUNSTON
I’ve always connected deeply with the parable of the Prodigal Son. The idea of always being able to leave and deeply screw up but always be allowed to return, be forgiven, and be loved just as deeply as if I had never left made me so happy. To have someone care for you just that deeply! I love my parents and I know that they love me, too, but as a child and even now, I always worried that their love for me was measured. That they would never be able to love me if they found out I was kissing girls, or the fact that I really wanted to be a gender other than what I was. I always thought that the second they found out, I would be kicked to the curb. Did that really happen, though? No. I was one of the lucky ones. I know others that weren’t, though.
I used to attend a small, private Christian school that would force their ideas of Christianity on students rather than forming an environment to seek and discover God in its four walls. Through them, I grew angry at God and religion in general while fearing everyday that someone would call me out for the fact that I identified as anything other than cisgender and heterosexual. The idea of being found out, kicked out, and outed to my parents was terrifying. My relationship with my school’s religion bled into other areas of my life, though, and it affected how I participated in my home church and my approach to God in general. I stopped going to church to find and worship God and instead only went for my friends and to build my resume through volunteering. Everything was fake, and I hated every aspect of religion. I was lost. I felt like the prodigal son, and I didn’t care. If God wasn’t okay with me feeling happy in my own skin, then why would I want to follow him?
My turning point came when I met a brand-new drummer and music director named Logan that started working at my church. I got to talking to her and it was only a few weeks before I found myself on the youth band. The thing that struck me as different about this drummer was how queer she looked. I felt comfortable coming out to her as gay and transgender because I felt that she wouldn’t strike me down like so many others had in the past, and sure enough, she didn’t. So, fall of 2018 I began my slow walk back to God, and he met me right there in the middle with the thanks to one, amazing queer Christian named Logan.
Logan knew my story. She had walked the path that I had in front of me of finding myself and finding how I identified fit into how God accepted me. If it weren’t for Logan, I wouldn’t have realized that queer Christians were possible. Isn’t that an oxymoron? Well, it’s not, and I think that it is imperative that those who identify as queer and Christian absolutely spread their Prodigal Son story with other members of the LGBT+ community who have turned from God due to pain inflicted by religion and show them the Christianity that we at Imago Dei have grown to love and cherish.
Finn Funston is 19 and a freshman at Bradley University. He is currently a middle school English education major but is very bad at making decisions, so he might be switching majors. He is originally from the St. Louis area and comes from a large family filled with foster and adopted siblings.