Somewhere Over The Rainbow

When you see a rainbow in the sky after a heavy flow of rain what do you think of? Do you think of the radiant colors? If gold is at the end of it? Or the pride flag?  (It’s crazy that I’m writing a post like this on National Coming Out Day (10/11)).

I personally think back to the promise God made to Noah after the flood. The rainbow is literally my top one favorite biblical symbol because of its meaning and who created it. God keeps all his promises. Literally, the only time you see a rainbow is after rainfall or sometimes during a sun shower. You don’t see it any other time because that is how God created it. It’s quite humorous to reflect on the rainbow after a heavy rainfall. It’s God’s way of saying “don’t be a scaredy cat, my promise still stands.” 

I don’t want to unintentionally spend this whole time geeking out over the rainbow but the weather phenomenon is simply put -so cool. For the last 10 months I have been in Florida where the rainfalls are heavy yet transient. The rain ranges from light to heavy in the span of 10 minutes. As a New Yorker, I’m used to rain falling ALL day but down in Florida the rain is so off and on that I don’t even bring an umbrella outside. I just wait it out until the rain subsides.  Anyways where am I going with this? The few instances that I saw rainbows down here were exceptional. The sight of it literally leaves me speechless and I can’t help showing excitement at the vibrant colors. As seen in the pictures below:

(You can’t tell me that ain’t a pretty sight to gaze upon.)

One thing that profoundly stands out to me is how the enemy consistently works around the clock to override God’s symbolic blessings to dilute its meaning and have it represent some form of wickedness. The rainbow is an example of that. Now of course when you search “what is a rainbow” on Google, the first thing that pops up is the definition, which is “an arch of colors formed in the sky in certain circumstances, caused by the refraction and dispersion of the sun’s light by rain or other water droplets in the atmosphere.” When you search “how was the rainbow created” on Google, you see a highlighted paragraph from the National Geographic Society that gives it’s generic answer “When sunlight hits a rain droplet, some of the light is reflected. The electromagnetic spectrum is made of light with many different wavelengths, and each is reflected at a different angle. Thus, spectrum is separated, producing a rainbow.”

Where am I going with this? What I am trying to say is the rainbow, a symbolic biblical blessing is not known for its originated purpose. It is known for that in the Christian community, but to the world it is the symbol of LGBTQ pride. As I briefly mentioned before I am from New York, where pride month is June. Usually, there is a pride parade and the month is dedicated to celebrating the LGBTQ community. You have stores and restaurants with rainbow flags standing proudly in the front of it to show its support and overall rainbow galore. If I were to walk out in a rainbow shirt, and rainbow accessories just for the heck of it during this time I’m pretty sure that it would be assumed that I am wearing it in support of the community.

Now, I am only speaking on this because I don’t really see anyone else discussing it, which I can understand why; we live in a society where love is symmetric to support. This means that if I love you, I agree with you and support you but If I don’t support you then I don’t love you and borderline hate you. That’s not true at all.

If anything it’s the opposite, if I don’t support your actions I can still have love for you. If anything it shows the love I have for you to be able to tell you I don’t agree with you. To blindly support a person through thick and thin even if the decisions they make are hurting them is not true love. This is not to say that you shouldn’t support people either. You can support people you care about but don’t be a yes man. Don’t simply support the good decisions just as much as you do the bad ones. That is not healthy.

I’m going to provide an example. Let’s say you have a sibling, best friend or someone who you truly care for and they are in an abusive relationship. Their significant other badly beats them on a frequent basis and treats this person you care about as if they’re worthless. This relationship is as toxic as it gets. So, you meet with this person and they visibly look terrible and tell you “I know he or she beats me badly but he or she loves me. I’m not going to call the cops, I just need to be better (you know making excuses).” Is it better to understand their reasoning and watch them suffer or to disagree with that reason and find them help even if they can’t see it for themselves?

If you have a sibling, best friend or someone who you truly care for and they are abusing themselves with substance abuse, is it better to support or to not support and try to lead them to help even when they feel they don’t need it?

Some people who disagree may say “what does LGBTQ have to do with abusive relationships? What does loving someone have to do with substance abuse?” The thing is I’m drawing a picture, the circumstances I used may be extreme but in reality what these themes have in common is destruction. Each example provides an instance of a person in a destructive situation and if you notice I put at the end of each situation “even if they can’t see it for themselves” and “even when they feel they don’t need it.” Sometimes people can’t see how destructive a situation is; or how severe it can be for them.

The wages of sin is death. Even if the sin is as simple as loving the same sex. Even if the sin is worshipping false idols, etc. Some people may ask “what is the problem with loving the same sex and being who I am?”

Well, if we’re going that route, what is the problem with people who don’t smoke, drink, murder, and have good morals? They’re not hurting anybody either by simply living, right? The problem is that God is not in the picture. The problem is without being saved, without the Spirit being revealed to you, without accepting Jesus as your personal savior and dedicating your life to him and living for him the right way you are a child of the darkness. The world. 

Now, I am not saying that when people stare at the rainbow they think “wow look at LGBTQ.” I just find it crazy that the rainbow out of all things is used as the symbol. It originated with Gilbert Baker, an openly gay man and drag queen who designed the first rainbow flag. In a interview he says “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’”

But it’s not the truth. It’s a false perception of a reality that goes against the purpose God designed us for since the beginning (a union between man and woman before God). So what does Baker do? “Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).”

The enemy wants people to believe that the sin they are doing isn’t wrong but good. That the wickedness they’re indulging in is harmless when it is in fact destructive. What we need to remember is that the enemy KNOWS that God is REAL but he wants us to believe that God isn’t real because the enemy is a salty hater with a future set in stone. He knows his fate and wants to bring as many people down with him. He tries to make people think that this earth is all there is and their heaven should be on earth. He tries to dilute God’s blessings.  Is it harmful to be gay? Is it harmful to love the same sex? No. Not by standard definition or worldly perception.

What is harmful is the sin that is being committed with no remorse. What is harmful is where the unrepentant sin can possibly lead you if you choose to continue to keep God out of the picture, not accept him as your savior, not live for him the way He wants us to, and denounce the wickedness to walk with him. That is when it becomes harmful to the person. It is not a life of peace.

Anyways, I didn’t mean to spend so much time discussing the rainbow but what is the point of writing my reaction or thoughts to particular chapters of the bible if I have to limit my viewpoint on things? 

Now to continue with the rest of the chapter, we have God blessing Noah and his sons, telling them to be fruitful and multiply. They are given authority over animals, who will fear them. Thank God because I always talk about the disruption of balance between animals and humans. I genuinely feel that some animals were given superpowers at this point and the fact that we can’t fully tame them unless we try to raise them as babies and hope they continue to trust us enough to not randomly attack us gives me anxiety. Animals are ruthless. At this point, I sometimes give dogs the side eye because you never know what they are thinking (I know this is paranoid, but I blame sin). God spends his time not only blessing Noah and his descendants  but warning him of the things that are not to be done in the covenant. For example, murder and not eating meat that still has life in it. God warns Noah that He would punish them for theses deeds. 

After establishing His covenant with Noah, we learn about Noah’s three sons “Shem, Ham, and Japheth”. Ham being the father of Canaan. From Noah’s sons came people who were scattered over the whole earth. Noah eventually plants a vineyard because he is a man that worked on the land he gets DRUNK.  There are many debates on whether or not Christians should be drinking. Here is my viewpoint, wine can be pleasant. The problem is over indulgence like what Noah did here. He wasn’t perfect. His overindulgence led to him lying out in his birthday suit.

Do not overindulge. My dad likes to drink a glass of red wine with his food when we go out to eat because it helps with his digestion. Does that mean that he’s going to hell? No. My dad barely drinks in the first place. 

Moving on, Noah out here naked and passed out and instead of Ham immediately covering his father, he went to gossip to his brothers? Ham, buddy? One job. Cover the man, then keep it to yourself. That was probably more embarrassing for Noah. Shem and Japheth come to the rescue and cover Noah without looking at him, as a sign of respect. Noah wakes up the next day hopefully with not too much of a hangover, finds out what Ham did and curses his son Canaan:

“Cursed be Canaan!

The lowest of slaves

will he be to his brothers.”

Then he blesses both Shem and Japheth. Afterwards, the chapter ends on Noah living an additional 350 years after the flood (DANG) making it a total of 950 years that he lived on the earth (DANG) and then he died. 

A lot to unpack in this chapter and blog post. Let me know what you think in the comments!