This week, I have decided to dig up some of my old writings from a few of the darkest times of struggle with my sexuality. The following piece is from an anonymous blog I kept in early 2012, and is a few months down the timeline from Monday’s post. This piece is about my first falling out with the traditional ethic on homosexuality.
I am what they call “Side B” over at The Gay Christian Network: someone who believes that same-sex activity is not God’s design or best for humanity and is therefore sin. I have held this view, to varying degrees, for the majority of my Christian life. Even when I challenged the traditional view, in my heart of hearts I was still Side B.
That has been to my advantage. It probably kept me from indulging in the secular gay club scene as a young Christian, and it has given me the listening ear of conservative Christians who want to better understand homosexuality but would probably never give me the time of day if I were not Side B. As wrong as their bias is, I have used it to my advantage on this blog and elsewhere to promote a message of relentless love to the gay community.
On this blog and elsewhere, I have shared my experiences, theology, and most importantly, my unwavering belief that God loves all human beings. What I have only hinted at, though, is the deep, destructive agony that I have lived with for the past few years. I have not told of my near suicide attempts, my substance abuse, my severe cutting addiction, or my long nights of agony. I have not told of the days when crawling out of bed seemed too great a task, the many tears I have shed in loneliness, or the number of times I have screamed at God – the times when my attempts at piety and endurance have given way to white-hot fury. I have only hinted at how deeply haunted I am by my past in the ex-gay community, how people so well-intentioned and kind instilled a message of such destruction and decay in my spirit.
The truth is, for the past four years I have felt like a homesteader trying to survive on barren soil, slowly growing more callous, ugly, and bitter with every passing day. I have grown resentful and depressed, feeling as if I passed burnout many years ago. Sometimes the grief is so great it hurts to breathe – it is not unlike grieving the death of a loved one. I am terrified of the empty space in bed next to me – aware that, with my Side B views, I am not choosing indefinite singleness but instead lifelong isolation in a church and culture that does not understand or support celibacy. I am aware that I may wake up alone every morning for the rest of my life. I am aware that my Side B beliefs mean that all the purest, most beautiful dreams of relationship I possess are inherently corrupt. They are a hallucination that I am trapped within, and I do not know how to be free. I am aware that, by being Side B, I didn’t have a say or a moment to discern if celibacy was God’s path for me, regardless of whether or not God has given me the gift of celibacy.
In long nights of prayer, I confront the reality that God’s ways are higher, that He is indeed a God as mysterious as He is merciful, and that our faith is not cheap. Rather, it is a faith that demands all things, that strips us of all rights, and may even strip us of all our dreams. My prayer on these long nights has been, “God, I cannot live like this any longer. I may kill myself. I don’t know how to live like this anymore, but if you want me to, I will.”
At a moment when the agony was becoming too great to bear, I read an article by Wesley Hill, who is one of the public faces of Side B gay Christians. In this article, he wrote about the great author Henri Nouwen, quoting one of Nouwen’s friends who said that despite all the alternatives offered to Nouwen regarding his homosexuality, Nouwen, “chose to live the wound. Again and again, he chose to live the wound.”
That was when I broke.
“Is that all I can look forward to in this life?” I asked myself. “Is that all people like me can look forward to? Choosing to live the wound? Again and again and again?”
The cold reality is that I do not know how to live like this. I do not understand the difference between suicide and self-sacrifice, or if there is a difference at all. But I am finally coming face to face with my humanity: if this is the path God is calling me to, I cannot follow it. It would be wrong to say it might kill me. It would be more accurate to say it has already killed me – as evidenced by the hundreds of scars on my body from a cutting addiction that has flourished like a fungus in the damp darkness of my silence.
My side B beliefs are not sustainable. There is something written into the coding of what I believe that makes this discipline inherently destructive. If I want to live, I must reconsider what I believe and why I believe it.
I am filled with fear as I make this confession. Experience tells me that most traditional Christians have a worldview that makes them particularly inhospitable to questions regarding sexuality. And I am haunted by questions. I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, watching as my cozy worldview burns to the ground. I go on long runs on mountain trails and ponder how many holes there are in my traditional thinking, how much I have to contradict my own values and hermeneutic to come to the Side B interpretation. Most balk at these words because of the aforementioned worldview that is extraordinarily inhospitable toward any ambiguity regarding scripture and homosexuality.
When I finally admitted all that I was terrified but experienced an extraordinary release. For the first time in four years, I feel like a real human being again instead of some numb creature who lives under rocks.
What this is all really about is not me, sexuality, or “the gay issue.”
It is about what we believe about God. It’s about His sovereignty.
If I truly believe that God is sovereign then I can risk being honest about what I feel because He, in His sovereignty, is able to handle it. For me to ignore my questions is, in fact, a lack of faith – it shows that I do not believe God is sovereign enough, nor Christ’s grace great enough, to handle my human condition of questioning.
I believe that Jesus is big enough to handle my pain, my questions, my crumbling worldview, and my departure from a strict Side B theology. He is, and always will be, the center of my life, for there is no other name by which we are saved. In Him, there is the grace to journey towards truth; but, like learning music, we will never reach perfection or truth until we overcome our fear of failure. It is only God’s grace that allows us to overcome that fear.
What I want to leave you with is this: I have the courage to say all of this in a public forum, but the vast majority of people like me do not. They are terrified of sharing their journeys with you because they have felt your inhospitality. They have felt your coldness and are terrified of ever experiencing it again.
As you read this, do not think of me. Instead, think of them.
