Does God Hate Gay People?

Would you be able to see the signs needed to completely change your life, your job, your location?

At the top of his game financially and career-wise, 27-year-old, Timothy Dole*, took an impromptu trip to the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and when he came home decided to sell his rental properties, his car, quit his lucrative job, and move to Nicaragua.

The goal of the church mission’s trip to Nicaragua was to visit an orphanage and just show love to the kids. Spending time with the orphans and sharing God’s Word was the highlight of Dole’s trip.

Everything else about the trip was abysmal. The accommodations were in a compound flanked by machine-gun-armed security guards to keep the impoverished out. Wild lizards and geckos crawled through the bedrooms, and the communal shower they had access to was just a pipe that jutted out from a wall and dripped water. Each night there were mandatory blackouts to keep the residents from being out after dark and to deter the high crime. Far cry from the comforts of home, where Dole drove a fully loaded SUV, dined with the elite, and splurged on the latest Apple products.

One of the exercises the church organized was a trip to the market. Each volunteer was given 100 cordobas, equal to five U.S. dollars, and told to buy enough food to feed a family of four for a week. Dole wheeled and dealed by using all of his negotiation skills, and came back with more than any other volunteer. Beaming with pride, he displayed his wares for the pastor and mission leaders. But, that wasn’t the point of the exercise. The point was you can’t feed a family of four for a week with only five bucks.

When Dole returned home from that trip, his first stop was to Wendy’s where he ordered a spicy chicken meal. The total cost was five dollars and 56 cents.

“And it hit me. This one meal costs more than what a family of four tries to survive on. That stuck with me for weeks,” Dole said.

Not being able to shake the feeling of need in this other country, he spoke to his church leaders, his family, and his friends.

I wake up every morning and I look in the mirror, and think ‘Who am I? What legacy am I leaving behind?’ I throw sick parties or I own three houses? No, I want to help change the world.

Nicaragua is a country that lacks natural resources. That, coupled with the political issues and lasting effects of guerilla warfare in the late 1970s, left the people of Nicaragua with very few options of supporting themselves and their families. The whole goal of Dole’s church missionary was to empower these people to help themselves.

On his second trip to Nicaragua, Dole and the mission volunteers took a school bus to the town dump. As a garbage truck passed them on the road, they saw people crawling out from behind mountains of trash. Like scavengers, people swarmed. They hung onto the back of the garbage truck, grabbing and throwing bags of trash over their shoulders while others were ripping into bags.

“There were 4,000 families that had been displaced and created homes within the dump. And people would go through trash for something they can eat, something they can sell, or something they can keep. And it was heartbreaking,” Dole recalled the scene when they pulled out of the dump. On the side of one of the corrugated walls the people lived under, were spray-painted words in hot pink: “Jesús, te amo” or “Jesus, I love you.”

After returning from this trip, Dole’s heart was on fire for helping these people. Pastor Mike told him, “You’ve got the missionary bug. The Lord is calling you to do this.”

Together, they created a non-profit organization, to be run in Nicaragua and backed by the church and its supporters. The idea was to create a support system for the people by empowering them with job skills, life skills, and food and farming techniques. They called it Harbor Home International. It was to be Dole’s full life’s focus for the next three years.

The first step was to become certified in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). If Dole brought the gift of English to Nicaraguans they could secure jobs in call centers that service English-speaking countries. These are the types of jobs that would make a huge impact on the economy of their country.

After the third trip to Nicaragua and one to Spain for the certification, Dole was more excited and more terrified about this complete life change.

He sold his last rental property and his car and gave his two-week notice at his six-figure job.

There was only one thing left to do.

Dole needed to come out as gay to his Christian pastor.

“I felt strange about bringing up my sexuality out of the blue with Mike. It wasn’t something that ever came up. I acted under the guise of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ The finality of the trip’s plans created some urgency for me to have this conversation. I often wonder if I subconsciously had doubts about this move to Nicaragua,” Dole said.

Pastor Mike was shocked by Dole’s admission. He had no idea that his friend, and congregant, was gay. It took the pastor a good week of thought and prayer to decide what to do about the partnership and non-profit organization they created together.

“Ultimately, Mike had several options for our project: abandon the plan and shut down Harbor Home International, do nothing and carry on as usual, or lastly, I could still live and work in Nicaragua but would be segregated from the organization, acting only as an independent volunteer, with no ties to the Harbor Home name,” Dole said.

Dole did not want to shut down Harbor Home, he still believed in its mission and purpose. Doing nothing and just carrying on as if Dole never came out didn’t feel right to either of them, it felt like lying by omission. If the conservative members of the congregation, who were also financial supporters of the project, found out they had been lied to, it would reflect poorly on Pastor Mike, the church, and Harbor Home International. Not to mention, their funding would be pulled.

Ultimately, Dole decided to cut ties with Harbor Home so that it may live on under Pastor Mike and a new batch of volunteers from the church. By this time, Dole had visited Nicaragua on four separate occasions to plan and prepare and research for Harbor Home. Since his decision to separate from Harbor Home, he has not been back to the country that captured his heart.

Pastor Mike and Dole kept their conversation and Dole’s secret from the other church members and elders.

“I was thrown into a tailspin. Plans to move out of the country were canceled, my home was flooded, I had no car and no job.”

Dole couldn’t lean on friends within the church groups he attended, because he hadn’t come out to them and none of them knew the truth about why his move to Nicaragua had been canceled. His gay friends supported him, though more to vilify someone through bashing the pastor for giving Dole an ultimatum. Dole defended Pastor Mike’s decision, though. He felt some responsibility for not being forthright from the beginning.

“My sexuality had always been that piece that made me most susceptible to rejection,” Dole said. “I was always trying to work around it, above it, making myself the best in all these other areas, because at the time, I saw it as a weakness.”

This one-eighty had an immediate impact on Dole’s spirituality, as well: “I felt rejected by the Church. Overall I felt rejected by God.”

Dole searched for answers and peace. He joined and attended Gay Christian Network meetings, read books, talked to people he respected, and even sought counseling.

“It took several years until I was able to rectify and be comfortable with both my love for Christ and my love for men or my sexuality.” At last, a sense of peace was found when Dole decided that God still loved him.

Dole was able to take something else from the whole experience.

“I know I have a passion for helping people that have a need.” He now studies permaculture with the hope of bringing this knowledge to others so they can sustainably grow nutritious foods.

Today, when Dole reflects on the reason he came out to his pastor over a decade ago, he says, “I trusted Mike, both as a friend and a spiritual mentor, I wanted him to know all of me. I think I wanted to prove I could be both a Christian and a gay man.”

By pushing this idea, it forces the Church to make a choice. Some are still deciding.

*Names of people and organizations have been changed at the request of the interviewee.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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