Cheyenne Bennett's Blog

August is one of my least favorite months. This time of the month is especially rough. Three years ago, on August 17th, my grandma died in front of me. It was the one promise she ever broke. July is also rough because that’s when her clock started winding down. This time three years ago, I thought I was going to lose my job because I picked her over it. Like heck I wasn’t spending every moment possible with her.

The following months aren’t entirely my favorite, but I’m learning to like them again. Except for October.

Two thousand nineteen was the year I burned. It was the year I almost didn’t rise from the ashes.

October of 2019 was when I finally had to admit I wasn’t straight by any means. And I almost died. I was actively trying to come up with a plan to as I put it ‘bye-bye’ myself while also working forty hours a week. No one noticed anything off. If they did, they probably chalked it up to grieving. I couldn’t reach out for help because I felt I’d be burdening them. I felt I wasn’t worthy of the help crisis lines offer. I felt alone in a hurricane made of lava.

The reason I wanted to die is because what I heard from ‘Christians’ is that God hates people like me. That we’re all going to hell. That there is no redemption for people like me. That, somehow, there’s something so wrong with us that He can’t love us. Can’t save us. I had read that it was a mistranslation, that it got warped, but that felt too good to be true. After all, if the people teaching all say the same thing, it must be true, right? There was no way I wasn’t condemned. No way I was redeemable. If I couldn’t be salvaged, if I couldn’t be His, if I couldn’t go to Heaven, living felt pointless. What was the point of staying if I was going to spend an eternity in hell no matter what I did? No matter how hard I tried to be good. And I tried begging Him to ‘fix’ me.

I remember one night very distinctly. I was in the shower after work. I remember the cold slimy voice whispering in my brain to just end everything. Nobody’d miss me. Nobody would care. It’d be better if I just left. God didn’t want me. How could He? I was falling apart. And silently, I asked, ‘What am I, God?’ And this warm Voice like a ray of sunshine replied, ‘You are loved.’ And do you know what I did? I ran. I ran hard. Because it was way easier for me to believe the lies I grew up with than to believe the truth that I was loved, that I was okay, that I was wanted, even when that truth was staring me in the face.

I stayed gone for months before I started reading. I devoured everything I could find about the translation changing. It’s true. The more I read about it, the more I understand why the church changed it; the original translation condemned pedophilia. Not LGBTQIA+ folks. Considering the church is a safe haven for pedophiles, it makes perfect sense for them to change it and to say we’re all child molesters. Did you know that in the Torah there are six different genders?

One of the things that really made me start questioning the church was: If God made gay animals, why is it so far-fetched for Him to make gay humans too?

And, slowly, I started meandering back. I basically wound up separating myself from the church as a whole and completely restructuring my faith. I don’t call myself ‘Christian’ anymore; that word is so warped and twisted and it no longer holds any positive meaning for me. I follow Christ. I follow His teachings. I follow the Bible. I don’t follow the church, though I do attend a local Methodist church. I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t have religious trauma because I do.

It took almost three years for me to get my faith in a solid place. Almost three years for me to feel like I’ve finally risen from the ashes.

In Jewish tradition, a name isn’t just what a person is called. It is what the person does. What they are about. The names of God in the Old Testament aren’t just what He is called; they’re what He does.

In the book of Genesis, Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac. At the very last second, God provides a ram because of Abraham’s obedience. Abraham calls Him ‘Jehovah Jireh,’ which means ‘God my Provider.’

He is still the Provider. He is still Jehovah Jireh. He never changes. Even when it seems like He won’t come through and it feels like you’re talking to a brick wall, He still provides. It’s just in His time.

When you were a kid and you went shopping with your parents, how many times did you pick out a toy you really, really wanted? How many times did you beg your parents for the toy? And how many times did they say, ‘No, not yet. Maybe later. Put it back’? You put the toy back. Because, even if you really wanted it, you know they mean the ‘maybe later,’ even though it feels like forever away. And what kid is good at being patient?

So do you kick and scream because you had to put the toy back? Or do you put it back as asked and wait, even though ‘maybe later’ to you means anywhere from five minutes from now to five million years from now?

It’s the same way with God. Sometimes, you really want this thing. You want it so bad you can taste it. But He says to put it back. ‘Later. Not right now.’

Do you have the temper tantrum? Or do you say ‘Okay. Maybe later. You know what You’re doing’? Because He does know what He’s doing. Even when you really don’t like His plan. Even when you think His plan sucks and wonder if He secretly hates you. He does have your best interest in mind. He doesn’t secretly hate you.

It’s better to not throw the tantrum. It didn’t work out well for Jonah. Put it back. Trust Him.

Let’s go on a trip together, shall we?

On this trip, we go past your old house. It’s in disrepair. Some of the windows are busted out. The siding is falling off like a snake shedding its skin. The yard looks like a small forest. The roof is shedding shingles and caving in. The door is halfway off its hinges. A shiny ‘Condemned’ letter is the only nice thing about the house.

The inside of the house is worse. The stairs are falling apart, making any trek upstairs as treacherous as climbing Mount Everest. The peeling wallpaper is a flourishing ecosystem for fuzzy mold and mushrooms. The equally moldy carpet is spongy and feels like it might give way beneath you at any point.

Sure, you left things here when you left. You miss those things. You want more than anything to go get the things you left behind. But are the broken, warped things you left worth risking your life? Is there anything up there worth climbing the dangerous stairs? You could fall and break your neck. By the time help comes, you could be dead. Is it really worth it? Is it really worth your life?

You don’t live here anymore. You moved. You don’t even get your mail here anymore. You have a nice, new house that isn’t falling apart and isn’t a health hazard. You have new furniture and new things that are good for you instead of broken and warped. You changed your address, so why do you keep coming back here?

It is the same way spiritually. So many times God redeems us and delivers us from things we shouldn’t have. And so many times, we go right back to our old address. Right back to the old things. Because we like those things. Those things are fun. But they aren’t good for us.

You moved out. So why do you keep going back?

I’m sorry for the hiatus. I sorta forgot this blog existed for a bit. I’m back now somewhat.

What’s changed since I’ve been gone: My grandma died, I came out, I started a jewelry business, and I started proofreading.

I also essentially had to deconstruct my faith and sort through what’s actually the truth and what’s man’s agenda. But my faith is stronger than it’s been in years.

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

That verse is 2 Chronicles 7:14 NIV. It’s a verse that God has brought up repeatedly to me. Mostly when I say things like ‘But the church doesn’t care. They’re actually part of the problem.’ That got me the response, ‘I’m not talking about them. If My people.’

According to Jewish tradition, a name isn’t just what someone is called. It is also what someone does. It is who they are. One of the Jewish teachings revolving around the Ten Commandments, specifically ‘Do not take the Lord’s Name in vain,’ is to not do bad things in God’s name. To be called by His Name is to keep His Commandments and to act as He would have acted. When Moses asked, ‘What is His name?’ he wasn’t just asking ‘What are You called?’; he was asking ‘What do You do? Who are You?’.

Who are His people? Are you the ones protesting at pride telling my people God hates us and that we have spiritual terminal cancer for who we love? Are you the ones saying ‘Build the wall’? Are you the ones saying Black folks don’t matter? That ‘white is right’? Take a step back. Who does that sound like to you? Whose teaching does that sound like to you? Because that isn’t the God of the Bible. That isn’t the God Who called Moses from the burning bush. The God Who called Peter to get out of the boat. So whose people are you? Whom do you serve? Whose name are you called by?

Let’s break this down. In 1946, the verses in Leviticus and in 1 Corinthians were changed. Verses that meant ‘child molester’ were changed to mean homosexual. This isn’t the only source on the matter, but it is the one I chose because it mentions both Old and New Testaments. In the New Testament, Jesus healed a centurion’s servant. Praised the centurion’s faith even! Now here’s the kicker: The original Greek can be translated as ‘boyfriend.’ If it were the crime the church says it is, why wouldn’t Jesus have instructed the centurion to ‘Go and sin no more’ as He did so many others? Perhaps because it’s not actually a sin.

Do you remember the story of the least of these? Do you remember Jesus and His family leaving for Egypt because His life was in danger? Do you remember the Old Testament talking about treating immigrants kindly? How can you claim to follow Christ when you reject His Word? How can you claim to serve Him when you don’t care about the least of these? About immigrants and refugees? When all you see looking at a brown immigrant is someone who stole a job you didn’t even want? How can you claim to serve Him? To know Him? Do you remember the story of Miriam and Moses’s wife? Or that Jesus Himself said, ‘Love one another’? Being anti-POC and anti-immigrant violates that statement, which is also the eleventh commandment. How can you love someone if you think they’re less than you? Unequal to you? God created us all equally. God Himself stated He is no respecter of persons. We’re all equal in His eyes.

So whose name are you called by? Whose actions do you perpetrate? Do you act as God would? Or do you act as the Deceiver would? As Satan would? Whom do you serve? Are you God’s people? Whose are you?

You know how they say history is doomed to repeat itself? They’re right, and I don’t mean just about world history. Humanity is simultaneously hitting the self-destruct button and the undo button. It’s not just in politics. It’s in our everyday lives. And every time we swear it will be different. We swear we won’t make the same mistake. But we do.

For example, I try to fix things the ‘easier’ way, only to royally screw up. Then I’m forced to fix it the right way, taking more time. Five seconds later, I’m trying to use the ‘easy’ way again. I know it’s more likely to make the problem worse, yet I continue to do it.

Spiritually, we make the same mistakes that were made in Eden. We believe the whatever-it-is we’re not supposed to do won’t hurt us, much to the Betrayer’s delight. A little while later, like a lactose-intolerant child who decides to disobey their parents’ rules and eats an entire gallon of ice cream, we realize we screwed up big time. Like the guilty child, we try to hide what we did. The rules weren’t put in place to hurt us but to protect us, though we don’t realize this until after we mess up. When asked about it, we try to bluff our way through the questions. Or blame others for our actions. And then comes the repentance. We’re sorry for our failure, at least until the next shiny thing we’re not to touch comes along. Despite us being nothing but a bunch of traitors, the King loves us anyway.

Why do we do these things? Because we think maybe it will work out differently this time. Maybe God won’t call us out on it. Maybe He won’t notice. After all, there are eight billion people on Earth. He’s omniscent, AKA all-knowing. He knows how many hairs are on your head. You honestly think He won’t notice you running to your doom? We keep picking the same fruit, thinking it won’t be bitter on our tongues each time we pick it.

They history is doomed to repeat. I say the same, except for this. If we fight hard enough, we don’t have to keep playing it again. If we resist the Betrayer when he comes knocking with poison fruit, we can break the cycle. What it comes down to is us and how willing we are to stop hitting the repeat button. Once we start falling, it isn’t always easy to stop. But, once we stop falling, we can rise and take our places in the Great Romance with the God Who sacrificed His Son to save us.

So, I’ve been thinking about the Church as a whole a lot lately. And I’ve noticed a lot of things that are so far from right.

1: Love

Do we honestly remember what it means to love the lost? To love sinners? To love even each other? Or are we too busy searching for the ready-made Christians or the wealthy or the famous to see the dying and lost lying on our doorsteps? We seem to be too busy casting stones to bind their wounds. Do you honestly think by hating these people, by not loving them, by judging them, by not reaching them, and driving these dying people further from the God Who loves them that you’re doing the Father’s Will? No, you’re not. Instead, you’re being judgemental, stiff-necked, and you’ll have blood on your hands. The sinners you’re scorning are the least of these; Jesus Himself said ‘Whatever you do to the least of these, you do also to Me.’ I know you can love people straight into hell, but love is also what will save them. We are called to love them. We are called to reach the lost and the dying. We are called to show these people God’s love. We haven’t been doing that. We have been trying to pick and choose who is worthy. Honey, trying to God’s job for Him is what got Lucifer cast out of Heaven.

On an even more worrisome note, do we even know how to love God? Do we truly love the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? I don’t believe we do. I believe, like the Laodicean church, we have forgotten our first love and grown lukewarm. Our first love is to be our love for our King. Not our love of wealth or prestige or any of the other distractions surrounding us. If we truly loved God, we would try to fulfill the Great Commission. We would be trying to reach the lost instead of telling them they’re too far gone. Love does not equal hate.

2: Worship

Do we even know what worship is anymore? Or have we just turned it all into a show? I believe we have. Worship is where you stop and where He begins. It is being in the presence of I AM and locking in solely on Him. It’s not caring what Ms. So-and-So three seats behind you thinks or if Mr. What’s-His-Name in front of you can hear you or not. It’s not something you do for everyone to gawk at. It’s you and God. It’s being in the throne room and being alone with the King and nothing else is important and nothing else matters in that moment. If they hear you and don’t like it, why’s it their business anyway and why do you care? What the Father thinks of you is infinitely more important than what anyone on earth thinks.

3: Judging

I touched on this a little bit above when I spoke about love. We have become quite judgemental of everyone around us. We think it’s our job to deem people worthy to even set foot in the building. If they’re not worthy and they come in anyway, we run them off. They would never fit in, we say. They don’t do things the way we do, we say. They drink, we say. They’re adulterers, we say. They’re gay, we say. They killed someone, we say. They stole something, we say. They’re Muslim, we say. They do drugs, we say. They cut, we say. They have tattoos, we say. They have a porn addiction, we say. WE say their sins are too bad. WE say they’re too far gone. WE say God could never love them. He loved you, didn’t He, sweetheart? Look back at who you were the day before you met Him. Look back at the things you’ve done. I know you’ll probably say ‘Oh, I never did anything that bad.’ Honey, the time you coveted your neighbor’s new convertible made you just as guilty as a thief. The time you were checking out the hot guy/woman while your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend wasn’t looking made you the same as the adulterer. Sin is sin is sin. It makes no difference what it is. So get off your high horse before you fall off and break your neck. Stop acting like an attack dog when you’re supposed to be a sheep. Sheep don’t eat people, figuratively or literally. The judgement and the hatred need to stop. WE are supposed to be a religion of love, not one of condemnation and hate. Again, love does not equal hate. Judgement does not equal grace. The world has enough hate in it. We could use some love and some grace.

4: Compromise

Compromise isn’t easy, is it? Not until it comes to our relationship with God. It becomes all too easy at that point. It’s easy to compromise on speaking the truth because no one wants to hear it. People would rather gouge out their eyeballs with a plastic spoon than hear the truth. So we gloss over it. We either hammer down on one group specifically or we leave out hell completely. Hell is a very real place. We don’t mention hell because it’s scary. You’re dang right it’s scary. And it needs to be preached about so ore people don’t end up in that nightmare. We don’t talk about testing the spirits to see if it’s of God. In this day and age, we need to be wary of all things, no matter how innocent it might seem. The devil is like a young lion seeking whom he may devour. And our compromises turn us into the perfect snack. We compromise on truth because we don’t wanna make people mad or hurt their feelings but the fact is they need the truth more than they need oxygen. If we speak truth to them in love, we’re doing the right thing. But skirting around it like a three-year-old afraid of a Halloween decoration helps no one.

I end with this. There is a war coming. We’ve been fighting it since the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve fell. It’s about to get a whole lot worse. Unless we decide to get out of this coma, how can we fight? We can’t. An army is no good unless they’re ready to fight. From what I’ve seen, we’re just a bunch of spiritual couch potatoes. If we don’t change, if we stay on this spiritual couch where we decide nothing we do is wrong, if we don’t come back to our first love, we’re nothing more than an easy snack for demons. Let’s get back to God and get ready for this war, eh?

FOR KING AND KINGDOM!

Have you ever noticed how desperate we search for gray areas? We are black and white people looking for the nonexistent gray area. Things we know are wrong but we convince ourselves are okay.

And it’s so easy to believe the lie  that these things are okay. The white lie doesn’t hurt anyone; it’s okay to tell one so you don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. A lie is a lie and a lie is wrong. White magic/Wicca (I know I’m going to get hate for this and I don’t care) doesn’t hurt anyone. Lies. White magic/Wicca/whatever else it’s called is still witchcraft. It’s a different face to the same demon and it will eat your soul with gusto in the end. Drinking is okay because I didn’t get drunk. No. Remember the Word: Do not be given to strong drink. Porn is okay because I watch it with my SO. No. Do you honestly think God approves of you watching random people have sex? Uh, no. It leads to being unfaithful in your heart to your person. There’s no gray area. There’s only black and white. Right and wrong. Lost and found. Death or Life.

And then there’s the substitutes. Most things are easy to tell the differences. Plastic isn’t porcelain. Laminate isn’t actual wood. Can you tell the difference between cubic zirconia and diamond on sight? They’re very similar, aren’t they? They both sparkle. They’re both clear. And, above all, they’re pretty. But one is very real and very expensive and one is a cheap substitute and worth very little.

Now, I’m not here to discuss jewelry. I’m here to talk of something of much more value. I’m here to talk of spiritual cubic zirconia and diamonds. We live in a world of substitutes and real. But, unfortunately, a spiritual substitute costs you the most valuable thing you own: your soul. At the time, you don’t think of that. You think of ‘It’s harmless.’ Honey, that ‘harmless’ thing has teeth like a bear trap and it’s gonna sink them in you the minute you drop your guard. You go to psychics or the new age store(read: demon emporium)and you see nothing wrong with it. A psychic is the devil’s substitute for a prophet and the new age mumbo jumbo that promises to cleanse your home or give you peace of mind is like putting a band-aid over where you lost a limb. You’re creating more problems than you solve. In trying to cleanse your home, you allow more things in. Heck, the most dangerous thing in the world is marketed as a children’s game. Do you honestly think you’re talking to Great-Aunt Martha when you use a Ouija board? No. You’re talking to something that wants to eat you. Now, if you wanna be demon chow, go ahead and keep using it. That’s between you and God, but you’re gonna let something in and you’re gonna regret it.

Do me a favor and watch the video of the Katy Perry Halftime Show and tell me what you see. I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw a test as well as a substitute. What do you see when she rides in on the back of the lion? I saw the Whore riding on the back of the Beast. Why a lion? Why do you think? Because it’s the devil and he loves nothing more but to try to spit in the face of God. Fast-forward to her song Dark Horse and it shows a chessboard. What I see is the devil saying ‘I’m winning. I hold all the cards.’

Look at the lyrics:

I knew you were

You were gonna come to me

And here you are

But you better choose carefully

‘Cause I, I’m capable of anything

Of anything and everything

Make me your Aphrodite

Make me your one and only

But don’t make me your enemy, your enemy, your enemy

So you wanna play with magic

Boy, you should know what you’re falling for

Baby do you dare to do this?

Cause I’m coming at you like a dark horse

Are you ready for, ready for

A perfect storm, perfect storm

Cause once you’re mine, once you’re mine

There’s no going back

Mark my words

This love will make you levitate

Like a bird

Like a bird without a cage

But down to earth

If you choose to walk away, don’t walk away

It’s in the palm of your hand now baby

It’s a yes or no, no maybe

So just be sure before you give it all to me

All to me, give it all to me

So you wanna play with magic

Boy, you should know what you’re falling for

Baby do you dare to do this?

Cause I’m coming at you like a dark horse

Are you ready for, ready for

A perfect storm, perfect storm

Cause once you’re mine, once you’re mine (love trippin’)

There’s no going back

I want you to tell me what you see when you truly look. He who has eyes let him see. I’ll tell you what I see. I see the same ‘promise’ the Betrayer made Jesus in the desert: I’ll give you the world if you bow to me. There is no maybe. There is no gray area. He promises to be your friend. To love you. To want you. He promises you the world. He promises forever. He can’t give you what he doesn’t have. He will give you death. He will give you loneliness. He couldn’t even be faithful to the One Who created him! He tried to become higher than God! Do you honestly think you can trust a despicable, lying creature like that? ‘Cause, sweetheart, you can’t. He offers a hand in friendship and holds a dagger in your back. He doesn’t love anyone but himself. He is a liar and a thief and he will destroy you if you let him. He says he will protect you. No. You’re demon chow. He doesn’t want you. You’re just a pawn to him. A meatsuit. A body he can possess. He says you’re his forever. He says there’s no going back. No, honey. You can always go back Home to the One Who loves you at your most unloveable. You’re just one step away, so you best start running for Home to the Lover of your soul before the end comes. Because the end is coming. And when the true end comes and we stand before the Throne on the Day of Judgment, there will be no mercy for those who believe the Betrayer’s ‘promises’. Come home while you can, wayward son and daughter.

Nobody ever said exactly how hard this would be. I never knew I would be hunted or hated the way I am. I never knew I would end up on the Betrayer’s hit list. I never knew there was no such thing as neutral ground in this war for humanity’s souls. I never knew I would have demons come after me. I never knew I would be one person facing down the gates of Hell, but I know I am and I am not alone.

I never knew what the prophets went through. I never knew how much like a train wreck seeing the end is. I never knew just how depressing it is. And just how much the knowledge likes to wedge itself in your brain. I never knew I would feel so alone.

Even not knowing these things, still I follow. I do not regret following my King.