An anonymous Grace Downtown member shares the way his faith and his sexuality have challenged one another ahead of our upcoming talk on the Bible and sexuality.
I struggle with same-sex attraction—something that isn’t broadly understood in the church and harder to talk about.
This means different things for different people. In my case, although I have little sexual desire for other men, I’ve found myself repeatedly emotionally attracted to other men. These instances have sometimes ended in destructive emotionally-dependent relationships where I’ve sought feelings of one-ness, closeness and permanent companionship that look like marriage, but without the covenant of marriage.
…feeling like I was a disappointment…
I recognized my attraction to other men by adolescence. Silently comparing my desires to the “normal” desires of others around me led to a weighty sense of isolation and lack of camaraderie with the other kids. I felt like an outsider looking in. Bolstering these feelings of isolation, the churches I attended were either completely silent on the subject or preached a general message condemning homosexuality without clearly highlighting the nuanced difference between feeling a desire and actually acting on it.
To a kid, the difference between desire and practice isn’t obvious, and the general message of condemnation left me feeling like I was a disappointment to my family, my church, and my Lord. I felt like God somehow must have created me wrong or made a mistake in calling me to himself. I felt like a failure.
I never told anyone about my attraction to other men until late in college, when I met a faithful Christian guy with a similar experience. We hit it off well when we met and very quickly established a deep emotional connection, from which we built up to sharing these desires with each other (both for the first time).
We found some level of freedom in giving words to these hidden things, since, over the years, these unspoken desires veiled in secrecy had built into fear. From our shared experiences, we were able to help each other process years of feelings that had never seen light and encourage each other to strive for holiness.
But even together, we struggled to figure out exactly what living a life of sexual wholeness looks like. After college, my friend and I went our separate ways, and I returned this area of my life to secrecy. Only years later, after coming to Grace Downtown, have I been able to open up again.
…love, acceptance and compassion…
As I’ve grown more mature in my thinking, I’ve better understood the nuances of God’s teaching in the Bible. I’ve recognized and know now that there is no condemnation for my attraction to other men. Different than all the past churches I’ve attended, Grace Downtown has been intentional about speaking this truth in a variety of contexts to ensure that it is heard and understood. Hearing affirming words of care and acceptance from church elders has been welcoming, freeing, and has communicated love well in a way that I’ve never felt from a church before.
As I’ve processed and understood that I’m not condemned for my innate attraction to other men, I’ve realized that God didn’t make a mistake in creating me or calling me; he made me beautifully, but my sexuality has been marred by sin and the brokenness in the world. As I’ve slowly become more comfortable bringing this hidden area of my life to light and sharing it with others in my community, responses of love, acceptance and compassion from God’s people have reaffirmed these truths.
However, the Bible does provide a prohibition against same-sex sexual relations, so it doesn’t make sense to nurture my attraction to the point of encouraging sexual desire. Even though I now understand the Biblical nuances about homosexual practice and can accept in faith that homosexual practice isn’t God’s design for us, this realization didn’t magically change things. I still struggle with the same attraction issues that I always have.
The Lord does not promise to rid our lives of temptation and struggle, but he is faithful to help us endure it. I believe that to live in righteousness before the Lord, I have to subject my desires to his rules and submit to his authority. This is the cost of discipleship—to resolve conflicts between duty and desire by choosing the path of obedience.
At some level, I can also recognize how his rules are designed to care for me. I’ve experienced enough broken relationships due to inappropriate emotional dependence on other men to recognize the price of letting my desires rule. In at least one relationship, the price has been great damage, division and discord between me and another brother. Our friendship will likely never fully recover or reach the potential it should have.
…I don’t understand why things couldn’t be different…
But at some level, I still don’t understand why things couldn’t be different—rejecting these desires still hurts deeply in ways I cannot fully explain. My choice to not encourage and indulge my attraction to other men leads me to intense periods of loneliness as I acknowledge the depth and consequences of this choice. I feel an intense longing for a type of companionship that will never be met. I imagine a world without rules, in which I find myself emotionally fulfilled by permanent companionship with another guy. Sacrifice does not become real until one is forced to confront its true cost. In these moments, I feel acutely the cost of my choice.
…the power and value of a supportive community…
When I’m wrestling with accepting this cost, the power and value of a supportive community becomes most apparent—especially a strong community of men. For me and many other men that struggle with same-sex attraction, healthy friendships of great depth with other men meet some of the missing emotional need and are crucial instruments the Lord uses to provide support and to help us resist temptation and unhealthy attraction. Relationships of significant depth between men are hard to find and take work to cultivate, especially in a culture that often encourages men to be independent, be self-reliant, and find fulfillment entirely through pre-defined wickets of success. Based on this perception and the fear of judgment, it takes significant emotional energy to share my attraction issue with other men and to ask for the help and support that I need.
Even after being open with other men, navigating deep friendships with other men is hard and complicated. On one hand, the sense of attraction toward other men can lead me to easily overcome the cultural paradigm of individualism and invest in developing deep and healthy friendships with other men that would otherwise not exist. These friendships can bear great fruit in brotherly accountability, personal growth and in working together as partners in the gospel to accomplish kingdom work. They also supply much-needed emotional support.
But to even build these relationships, I have to re-engage the hard choices I’ve made and be reminded of the cost of sacrifice as I intentionally stifle the emotional attraction that can develop. There is also the risk that I’ll experience deep rejection and frustration as close friends pull away. It has happened before. Sometimes it’s justified. Sometimes it’s not. Either way, it hurts.
…my sexual attraction is not my identity…
I don’t consider my sexual attraction to be my identity. Although I continue to process through emotions and actions associated with experiencing same-sex attraction within the church, living in wholeness and pursuing righteousness involves so much more than sexuality. By design, the very nature of sexuality makes it a pervasive influence on many areas of our lives, but the redemption found through a firm identity in Christ affects our lives even more powerfully. Keeping this perspective in mind keeps me from dwelling on my temptations and stagnating in other areas of my life as I wrestle with and process through things. God is intent on sanctifying the whole me—my sexuality is just one piece of what he’s working on.