Women, Attraction, and Me

Warning:  In dealing with both sexuality and my struggles, this post is more frank at times compared with some of my other posts dealing with such matters, which are more "polished."  Reader discretion is advised.

In an ironic twist of fate, I actually never thought of myself as "gay"--that is to say, with same-sex attractions to the exclusion of any real opposite-sex attractions-- at least not consistently, until some point during the last year.  That's right, after being married.  I'm going to say, right now, that I think I was wrong to ever come to that conclusion, but right or wrong, I had rarely held that belief about myself before.  There was a brief period of time when I was fifteen, when I first realized I had same-sex attractions, that I actually did consider that I might just be "gay."  But after that there was a three to five year period when I didn't really notice the same-sex attractions at all, and then even after they returned full force and never let up again, I tended to think of myself as having both same-sex and opposite-sex attractions.  By pop-cultural labels (although I don't justify the use of these labels at all) this would make me "bisexual," not "gay."

So what happened?  Why, after so many years of not believing I was exclusively attracted to men, did I finally cave in and say that I wasn't attracted to women, that I loved my wife and enjoyed our intimate life and was attracted to her in certain ways, but that it wasn't a "straight" sort of attraction?  Why?  Because I finally succumbed to the pressure of society's lies about attraction and sexuality.

We live in a culture that is absolutely obsessed with lust and eroticism.  This has become so predominant that it has made its way even into Christian culture.  Christians have, often enough, conceded that sexual attraction must be the same thing as a raw, powerful urge.  Sexual attraction has been reduced to "Which gender would be most likely to 'turn you on' if the person walked into the room naked?"  That's it.  Visual stimulation and raw arousal have become the "litmus test" for sexual attraction.  So, for example, no matter how much I may enjoy being around my wife, no matter how beautiful I may think she is, no matter how much I may love her, no matter how much I may enjoy our sex life and long to engage in it with her, our society (and, sadly, many Christians) would say that I don't have a legitimate sexual attraction to her unless the simple sight of her naked body had the power to arouse me, the way that the image of a nude man might (if the context were sexually charged or suggestive at least; I do not get outright aroused by mere nudity on either gender).

Woah, duuude!  I totally can't even concentrate around
hot girls, man...

Now, I will say that there are times, sometimes more common than others, when I do have the sort of attraction to my wife that society would admit is a genuine sexual attraction.  And because I know my wife feels good about herself when I have those sorts of feelings toward her, I do seek to cultivate that and I hope that such a thing becomes more and more common.  I do want that, even if it's not necessary, because it is nice, it's enjoyable to have those sensations.  So I hope it gets more frequent, with time, and stronger.  Eventually I'd love to consistently have that reaction.

But I think I was wrong to ever believe that I had to experience that in order to believe that all the other ways I have been attracted to her were and are real.  A sexual attraction is simply that:  Attraction toward having sex with someone.  It doesn't matter if the reason you enjoy and desire it is because the very sight of her nude body drives you mad, or because you find the idea of sex with her to be the highest sort of affection, unity, and security with her.  Both are legitimate expressions of genuine sexual attraction.  The former is more raw and immediate, but the second is just as valid.  

I've had that second sort of attraction to women throughout my entire life.  And until I was fifteen years old, and stumbled upon gay pornography, that second sort of attraction was the only kind of attraction I'd had to anyone, and that "anyone" was solely female.  I wasn't all that interested in pornographic portrayals of women, because my attraction to women was more holistic.  I wanted to love a woman, to become one with her, to be by her side, to have us comfortably and lovingly (in marriage) explore one another's bodies just as we explored each other's heart and soul.  I wanted to give of myself to a woman, including my body.  I deeply desired to one day make love to a woman who was my wife.  But it was not a desire that was easily susceptible to the pornographic appeal our culture insists must be part of an attraction, because it was not primarily about certain visual stimuli "driving me crazy."  But did this make it any less real?

Well it says here that--
Oh...rhetorical question...

In recent months, I've finally started to reclaim what I once knew about myself:  That my attraction to women, and my wife in particular, is just as real and valid as any stereotypical "straight" guy's attraction to women.  It may not always look the same as his, nor the same way that my same-sex attraction looks (although, like I said earlier, sometimes it does, and that's happened more often over the past half-year and I have hope it will happen more often still), but that doesn't mean that it "doesn't count."  

It will take me a while, I think, to regain the confidence that my attractions to women do count.  And why?  Because it's taken years to tear down that confidence, so it's reasonable to think it might take years to get back up to it.  As of the time when I was a senior in college, no one could have convinced me that my attraction to women, although it certainly looked different from my attraction to men, was not real.  People who knew me back then can vouch for the way I openly pined for girls, and it was not an act!  But it was different.  While other guys looked at a beautiful girl and might have a reaction "below the waist," I--although I could certainly muster such a reaction and while throughout that period I often thought of a hypothetical "wife" during my struggles with masturbation--had a reaction primarily in my chest.  While other guys looked at girls as potentially "hot," to me they were "amazing" and "magical."  

So it took the greater part of a decade to reach the point to where I no longer thought my brand of attraction to women was legitimate.  I never really found myself addicted to "straight" porn, but had a terrible habit with "gay" porn; an empty meaningless fling with a woman wouldn't have done anything for me, while an empty meaningless fling with a guy (despite still not being nearly as appealing as a meaningful connection with him) did have a certain raw appeal that had no counterpart in females.  I let myself fall into the trap of thinking that my porn habits and the question of whose body by itself would provoke my desire the most was the key to determining my sexuality.  So more and more, I felt that maybe my opposite-sex attractions were an illusion, wishful thinking.  Less and less did I consider myself attracted to both genders until, one day, I nervously confided in my wife that maybe I had no actual attraction to women at all, aside from the capability of enjoying sex with her and obviously loving her.  It could take at least just as long, and be just as rocky a path, to get back to where I once was:  Confident that my attractions to women "count," even if they differ from the average male's.  

There are some things, however, that have given me pause, and have tempted me to sabotage my own efforts at recovering my full awareness of the validity of my opposite-sex attractions.  During my time of thinking I was simply "gay" I developed, as a consolation, a passion for one day being a beacon to others who were exclusively same-sex attracted and yet who were, like myself, people of faith. "This is possible:  Marriage to an opposite-sex spouse, having a family, without compromising traditional Christian values; you can have that even if you're gay, and it can be loving and authentic and real."  And I still believe it's possible.  Examples such as Josh Weed (look him up) make me believe that.  But if I am not "gay," then I am not an example of that possibility myself.  

Oh no!  How will they get along without your
shining example?!

Another such thing is fear that I am just kidding myself about the opposite-sex attractions.  That tempts me to just decide my attractions to men are exclusive, so that at least I won't have the experience of being disappointed if I find out the attractions to women are an illusion.  I'm an obsessive person, by temperament, so I'm constantly fretting that maybe I'm engaging in wishful thinking, as if I only imagine my attraction to women, even if I have more moments lately where that attraction seems more acute, jarring, and physically strong, as the typical "straight" or "bi" guy's attractions to women are.  It's easier to just call those flukes.  Because it would require less work to simply assume the most difficult reality is the true one, then anything else can seem like a mental house of cards, fragile and prone to collapse.  I get scared of that collapse, and run right back to thinking "No, I'm just gay; I'm happily married, love my 'private' life with my wife, and love her dearly, but I'm still 'gay,'" because it's easier to just "accept" that than it is to summon and maintain the mental energy that goes into overcoming my obsessive fretting and worrying in order to have confidence that it might be otherwise.  

In the end, the state of my attractions to women is not simple.  As a flawed human being, sometimes a particularly confused and stressed one, I reserve the right to be inconsistent.  But sometimes I do muster up the courage to not only resist but outright defy the definitions society places on what it means to be attracted to someone.  Sometimes, I feel on the cusp of some paradigm shift that will truly liberate me.  Will it make me "straight?"  Probably not.  My attractions to men may be here to stay no matter what my attraction to women is like (although to be sure I can integrate those attractions into my life in ways that are healthy, acknowledged, but not sexually acted upon).  But maybe I can find it within me to not put my sexuality in a "box," and to know that, whatever labels society might like to put on it, it may well be more malleable and fluid than labels could ever suggest. 

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Note:  The article "Against Heterosexuality, by First Things, is an argument that labels and categories surrounding sexuality, even including the so-called natural "heterosexual" orientation, are all artificial constructs anyway that actually do harm to traditional Christian sexual ethics.  I quite agree with this article, whatever my own sexuality may look like at any given time.  So it's worth a read!

A Poem for My Lord

I confess, I'm having a bit of writer's block, so here I'll just share this poem that I wrote years ago, to my Lord Jesus Christ. I often forget the passionate affections I have had for Him in the past, but at my best--sadly rare lately--I crave such closeness with Him that the longing for Him is equal to any (non-sexual) description of being "in love." I've not really approached such sentiments for a long time, and my love has had to be expressed through the action of living my Faith, without feelings to accompany it so much. But still, this poem captures some small picture of my longing for Him when I on rare occasion have just a sliver of insight into how amazing He really is...


My Love Who for the World did Die 

My Love Who for the world did die,
For Whom my heart now yearns;
To be the apple of Thine Eye
My soul now aches and burns.

 My Love, Whose dear beloved John
Did lean upon Thy chest,
May I, too, linger thereupon,
And find eternal rest.

 My Love, Whose voice commands the tide,
Speak sweetly to my ear,
For with Thee always at my side
Whatever shall I fear?

 My Love, as Bride finds ecstasy
Within her husband's arms,
I beg Thee, rapture all of me,
Engulf me with Thy charms!

My Love, as noble Jonathan
Loved David, chastely so,
So too may I, a lovesick man,
Find Heaven in Thy Glow.

My Love, oh please consume me whole,
For Thine I wish to be.
I crave for body, mind, and soul,
To be made One with Thee.

-By Joshua

Fishing for Love and Grasping at the Wind

There's this thing that I do, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.  It's simple, instead of coming right out and saying I need something, I hint at it; I make the need known in some indirect way.  You've heard the phrase "fishing for a compliment" before, I'm sure:  When a person says something like "I'm ugly/plain/fat/dumb/insert-something-negative-here" in hopes that a good and reliable friend or relative will jump in and say "No, you're not!  You're insert-high-praise-here!"  Rather than coming out and asking for the compliment or reassurance, you're sort of "casting a line" and hoping that the other person will take the bait, and a compliment will be caught.  Well, I'm not above doing that.  However, I don't only do it where compliments are concerned, I'm known to "fish" for pretty much everything.

I've gotten a little better about it over the past year or so.  Now, I actually have occasionally told someone, most often my wife, my desire or need plainly.  For example, I might say "Tell me that I'm not stupid because I did X, that it's something understandable that anyone could easily do," instead of "I'm stupid for doing X; who would ever do that, besides a moron?"  And what about if I need some sort of affection?  I've been more willing to tell spouse and friends alike that I would like a hug from them, although when it comes to friends I'm generally (and ironically) only comfortable enough to ask for such a thing from friends who happen to live too far away to provide it more than virtually (and this really is coincidence; I genuinely sense no subconscious avoidance on my part).  Still, it's progress.

Excuse me sir, but I might sort of kind of maybe like a hug.
(Who am I kidding, if I was this adorable I'd get hugs without asking!)

But why am I so afraid, as a general rule, to ask for what I need or desire outright?  I can think of a few answers to that question.

First of all, there's the fear of rejection.  If I avoid asking a question directly, I can't be directly rejected.  Let's take the "fishing for compliments" scenario.  If I ask "Do you think my face looks dry and too old for my age?" then I risk the person saying "Yes," whether bluntly or gently in a doomed attempt to soften the blow.  If, on the other hand, I say "I think my face looks dry and too old for my age," then it's more likely, if the person thinks my complaint is true, that they just won't say anything. In theory, that should sting less than having them dash my confidence outright.

The problem with this line of thinking is probably obvious:  Try to remember a time you fished for a compliment this way, and the person said nothing.  Did you really manage to avoid taking that as anything other than a confirmation of whatever answer you didn't want?  Yeah, neither did I.  If I complain that "I'm afraid I'm too short," and Friend A just sips at his beer and stares at the ground in silence, or otherwise avoids directly confirming or denying my fear, he may as well have said "Yeah, man, it's true."  I'm gonna end up thinking "Well, he had nothing nice to say, so he's saying nothing at all."  Which defeats the whole "protecting my own feelings" purpose of not having just asked the question outright in the first place.  At least, if I asked the question directly, I might have had a chance to talk it out with him about how that makes me feel, maybe coming to some resolution that makes me feel a little better in spite of the ugly truth.  And who knows, maybe his answer would have been something positive, and his lack of comment when I only hinted at my question was because he hadn't gotten the hint, meaning I will have tortured myself for no reason if I let myself assume his silence was an answer to itself.

Over-thinking; it's what I do.

Another thing that causes me to be so indirect is a fear of putting someone else in an awkward position.  This is both for their sake and mine.  It's for their sake because I know what it's like to be asked for something I'm uncomfortable giving, and I don't want to risk putting someone else in that position.  It's for mine because, naturally, they may eventually want to avoid me if I become that guy who asks too many uncomfortable favors.  Maybe I'm asking for a hug and the person doesn't like giving hugs.  They have to face the dilemma of not wanting to hurt my feelings but not wanting to hug me either.  Maybe they'll feel too guilty to say no.  

But I realize that this thinking is formed by my own encounters with people who didn't know how to take no for an answer.  When someone can't take no for an answer, his request is no longer a request, but a demand only disguised as a question.  He will punish the "wrong" answer by fuming, sulking, or otherwise emotionally blackmailing you.  The solution to the fear of putting people "on the spot" isn't to disguise my needs and wants in clever--but not-so-clever as to fail at getting the hint across--laments and games, it's rather to make it clear that I am willing to take no for an answer.  I'm not going to unleash my wrath, whether direct or passive aggressive, on the poor soul who denies my request.  Just because I've faced the experience, far too often, of having things demanded from me in the guise of requests doesn't mean that asking directly for something is inherently bad or "too forward."  

The worst thing, however, with only hinting around at my needs, whether for affirmation, affection, or whatever else, is that it leaves love to chance.  I'm fishing, you see, for more than just compliments or favors; in a sense I'm fishing for concrete expressions of love.  But the thing about fishing is that sometimes you don't get any bites.  How many friends and loved ones might be only all too eager to show me expressions of love, but I don't ask!  Even Jesus said "Ask and you shall receive," not "Hint around and you shall receive."  I can only imagine all the affirmation, the affection, the quality time, the utter outpouring of love I might have experienced if I'd only had the courage to be direct!  Instead, I've cast a net that may or may not come up empty, and I'll find that all my "fishing" was just a vain grasping at the wind.

MY wind!!!  You no can have!

There's also the fact that my fears point to a deeper insecurity; namely, that if others express love in a different way than I would receive it--and thus say "no" to some request of mine, because that's just not how they express love--then this means they don't love me, or at the very least that they love me less than I love them.  

I won't say that a person should not be willing to express love in ways he normally wouldn't, for someone who receives love in those foreign ways; in fact, I think that we should try to love people the way they need to be loved, the way they experience love, because when it comes to giving love it would be ironically self-centered to insist that you'll only give it on terms you find comfortable.  That said, though, when I am the one receiving love, I have no control over whether the giver will make that proper effort to love me the way that is natural to me.  I can only control whether I adapt and receive love in the ways he or she is willing to give it.  So yeah, while it may not be very loving for the giver to tell the receiver "This is how I give love, so you'll just have to take what I give you," it's also not going to accomplish anything, assuming the giver is that inflexible, for the receiver to be just as stubborn and refuse to feel loved unless it's on his terms.  Ideally, both should be willing to speak (and hear) the "language" of the other.  If both parties are doing their part, no one has any reason to complain or feel unloved.

So if I can learn to not take it personally when someone just can't manage to "speak my language" when it comes to love, then perhaps I'll finally be a lot less afraid of having some request of mine politely refused.  Maybe then I won't see it as a rejection of me, but just as a declining of that particular expression of love for me.  Maybe then I can ask for what I need more clearly and confidently.  I'm certainly not there yet, but by the Grace of God maybe one day I'll be closer.

Caring for "The Least of These"

I confess:  I don't do enough for the less fortunate.  To be more specific, I don't think I do anything, really.  It's true, a certain level of our income goes to charity every month, but it's hard for me to feel like this counts.  My wife takes care of the payments, and some of them--such as our donation to our parish--are on auto-pay.  So it requires no more real commitment from me than having my tax dollars go to welfare.  It happens without my needing to do anything.

So I'm stuck in a position where what little I actually do for the unfortunate comes so automatically that I have no more merit for it than I have for providing trees with carbon dioxide when I breathe.  Hardly the stuff to warrant a "Well done, thou good and faithful servant!"

Now I've heard it said that "charity begins at home."  I've also had people try to comfort me with the fact that I do take care of my family, and so I'm told that's my way of caring for "the least of these."  But there are reasons that these consolations ring hollow.  It's true that taking care of my family is incredibly noble and good, but it should never be an excuse to be lazy about caring for the poor, the infirm, the imprisoned.  First of all, Jesus was pretty big on saying Christians had to go above and beyond what pagans would do.  And even most of the "pursue your own happiness" philosophies often admit, if maybe grudgingly, that a person should take care of his own family.

So basic even a hedonist can understand it...sometimes.

Also, when Jesus told the parable of the sheep and the goats, where the "goats" who didn't care for the unfortunate were told to depart from Him, do we really think we can get away with saying "Well those people didn't even provide for their families!"  That's a pretty big assumption that doesn't fit with the spirit of the parable at all.  It's obvious that w'ere obligated to care for people other than our families too.  If we care only for our families, Jesus might rightly ask, "Do not even the pagans do the same?"

But if I am without excuse, then why don't I get out there and do more?  Why am I not out there working soup kitchens, giving money to homeless people I see on the street, giving company to the homeless, or hope to the imprisoned?  This question is too complicated to answer simply.  One answer is that I don't know where to begin.  For a man without a job, I do have a lot of demands on my physical presence.  My wife needs me to be bodily present at home more than is the case in many marriages, due to chronic health problems.  So one of the major reasons I don't have a job is, in part, also a reason I can't be out there in homeless shelters multiple times a week.

But there is also fear.  What if the less fortunate take advantage of me?  What if, when I give a little, they keep asking more?  What if I can't say "no," and then start neglecting my family?  This is probably rooted in my life experiences.  I have had people in my life who didn't know when to quit, and I did have a hard time saying "no."  I've had times when close loved ones, even my own wife, have gotten understandably nervous that, when someone asks me for help, I would give in even if it meant neglecting my family or taking more money out of the family funds than I ought.  It's all too easy to project all of that onto the unfortunate.  "If I give an inch, I'll end up giving a mile.  I won't know when or how to stop."  So, in fear of getting in over my head, I instead do nothing at all.

To be honest, I think a huge problem here is that I lack faith.  Specifically, I lack faith that something is better than nothing in God's judgement.  So if I can't be a regular Mother Teresa, I tell myself that smaller "easier" things will count for nothing at all.  As if I will reach Heaven and God will say "Depart from me, because even though you gave a little, it hardly inconvenienced or burdened you, so you may as well have not even bothered!"  Growing up, I often heard it said of Christian giving, "You have to give until it hurts."  And while I think that's the saintly thing to do, and I think that there will be great reward for those who do so, I can't help but think that there's a danger to this sort of thinking if it's taken too rigidly:  If I absolutely must give until it hurts in order for it to even "count," then it's tempting to not even waste my time giving anything at all unless it hurts.  It becomes "all or nothing."  This is obviously self-defeating.

Well, it's not a Thanksgiving Day feast, exactly, so
I'm sure they'd be just as well off doing without.

In the parable of the ten servants who were given one coin each, the only one the Master rejects is the servant who did nothing; we don't hear of Him rejecting even a servant who only earned one measly coin.  In fact, Jesus said "He who gives so much as a cup of cold water to the least of these little ones will by no means lose his reward."  And a small gift like that is something the giver won't even miss.  That's not an excuse to fail at continually trying to pluck up the courage and motivation to "give until it hurts."  The more you give, the greater the blessing.  But even if I never master that, God will not discount what seemingly pitiful good I do just because I could have done better.  Even mere dollars or tens of dollars a week, even an hour or so a week, it's all better than nothing.  It's a "cup of cold water."  There are plenty of "cups" in the cupboard and "water" in the fridge.  Neither I nor my family will even know it's gone.  What am I waiting for?

To Thyself Be True: The Get-out-of-Marriage-Free Card?

My wife recently came across an article which she passed my way on Facebook.  Being that she's married to a man with same-sex attractions, the article tells the story of my wife's worst fear:  The author--whom we're taking at her word strictly for the sake of argument, and if she's misrepresenting her spouse then the words that follow may not apply to him in particular--writes that her husband, after years of marriage and having fathered several children, decided to be "true to himself," and leave her for a man.  Having embraced an identity as "gay," he threw away everything he had built with his family in order to pursue that identity, an identity that we are told in our current cultural chaos must be fulfilled at all costs.  In his case, the cost was borne largely by the little ones and the wife, who weren't permitted any real say in this shattering of their family.   He was gay, and that was that.  According to the author, this same man fought for primary custody of the children, presumably won it, and forced the children to be part of his gay "wedding" even against their own reluctance to celebrate an event that, y'know, formalized the tearing apart of their family.

What do we make our children do next?
Tea parties in honor of the car that hit and killed a beloved pet?

The thing that was even sadder, however, is that a man like this husband often receives accolades and sympathy in our culture.  Keep in mind, I'm not saying that it's bad that people have sympathy for people who do wrong things.  But he's not merely receiving sympathy.  People like this man often are actively encouraged to break their vows in so permanent a way.  "It's okay," our society consoles them, "You have to be who you are!"  Actually, it's almost as insulting to people who are attracted to the same gender as it is to this man's wife:  Evidently, we are not real adults.  We don't have to be held to our promises.  When we make vows, we are evidently too stupid, or too scared, or too spineless to really know what we're getting ourselves into.  So then, when one day we want to leave our spouses to "be true" to ourselves, it's okay, because when we made the vows we just didn't "know any better."  Gee, thanks, culture.  I feel so supported.

Where did we go so terribly wrong?  The answer, sadly, is older than the gay marriage debate by decades.  We as a society began to accept the notion of no-fault divorce.  Not only did we legalize it, we began to condone it.  We began to accept that "Sometimes, it just doesn't work."  Sometimes, we argued, it was okay to break a solemn, lifelong vow for no other reason than just being unhappy with the arrangement.

What, though, is a vow even good for, if it's okay to break it at your own discretion?  The marriage vows generally contain some variation of "til death do us part," AND "for better or worse."  Those two sentiments have huge implications.  It means, when you marry someone, you are making a promise that not only will you remain spouses until one of  you dies, but also that you'll live up to this no matter how bad it gets.  Otherwise, it wouldn't be a variation on "for better or worse" but would be something more like "as long as times are good or I consider the hard times worth it."

A vow so touching it deserves its own Valentines Day card!

People have stopped thinking before they enter into marriage.  When a man (and all this would be true in the gender opposite scenario too) decides to leave his spouse, no matter how she wants to keep the marriage together, and his reasons are anything short of fear for his life and safety at the hands of real abuse,* then I see only three possibilities:

1.  He was lying about those vows, even as he made them.  This is despicable, and I don't need to say anything more about it.
2.  He hadn't really thought things through about what the vows meant before he made them.  The meaning of the vows are pretty obvious, though, so if he hadn't thought hard enough to grasp the meaning of "for better or worse," he had no business making the vows in the first place.
3.  He has "changed his mind."  This is about as despicable as the first one, because a vow means nothing if it's okay to just "change your mind" at a later point in time.

In all of these cases, the vow isn't being taken seriously.  The first man wasn't taking the vows seriously in the present.  The second man wasn't taking the future implications of the vows seriously.  And the third man isn't taking seriously a vow made in the past.  In all three cases, this is an enormous problem.  Vows, by definition, have to be taken seriously in all tenses:  Past, present and future.   And yet our no-fault divorce culture winks at a person who failed to take them seriously in any one of those tenses, or even all three.

If a woman can easily be excused for leaving her husband because "the feeling of love isn't there anymore," or a man can be excused for leaving his wife because he wasn't attracted to her anymore, then it was inevitable that eventually a man or woman could leave a spouse for someone of the same gender, and our culture would smile upon it as "doing what's necessary for your own happiness."

Yet the man or woman who breaks a marriage to enter a gay relationship is being praised with a deeper and more sinister irony than his heterosexual counterparts:  More so than any other person who leaves his or her spouse, the gay man who breaks faith with his wife is praised for being "honest," reportedly with himself and his spouse.  Let's get this straight (no pun intended):  A person who made vows that he either never took seriously or has ceased to take seriously, is praised for being "honest" for that very same fact.  Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?  The ultimate act of dishonesty--throwing a vow casually to the wind and no longer even trying to live up to it--is now called an act of honesty?!

You might wanna sit down while you
try to figure that one out.

If that's the sort of grace and mercy our culture has for men in my shoes, then I'll pass.  I don't need that brand of "love" or "tolerance."  It's insulting.  If the best way to be compassionate and loving to me is to teach me that my responsibilities aren't binding, and that the best way for me to be "honest" is by being profoundly dishonest about a solemn promise, then I want no part of that.  Besides, if that love and compassion are as unpredictable as society says my wedding vows are allowed to be, I'm not missing out on much anyway.


__________________________
*Note:  I'm not being inconsistent at this point in the post.  As a Catholic, I really do think a marriage vow covers "no matter how bad it gets" even including abuse, but that is one of the few scenarios where a person can be understood for physically separating and maybe even get a "civil divorce" for his or her own safety or that of the children; but even then the vow underlying the marriage still exists, if it was taken seriously:  Yes, that does mean that vowing "for better or worse" is so serious it borders on scary.  If you vow "for better or worse" or "to death do us part" or "forever" or "for life" or any other such thing and don't think it has such scary implications, or you think these plain and obvious words have some sort of hidden "escape" clause, then you haven't thought it through enough to be making the vow.

The Devil's Blackmail

Okay, I'm just gonna say it:  I do some stupid things.  Throughout this blog's short lifetime, I have made no secret of the fact that I'm not perfect, and I've talked several times of one of my chief temptations, namely my same-sex attractions.  But I want to make it abundantly clear that, when I say I do thing that are gravely and humiliatingly wrong, I'm not just talking about in the past, some time long ago that was magically resolved at some point--like when I met my wife, or married her, or when I became a father, or any other milestone that so many people might claim "turned my life around."  No, I still stumble.

In fact, I stumble in ways that leave me open to public shaming and embarrassment, things that could come back to bite me.  I won't go into details, because the details aren't relevant here.  But I've foolishly opened myself, even in recent times, to exposure.  I wrote a post about misuse of the word "hypocrite" not that long ago, and even if the word is often misapplied by "the world," I've certainly given the world potential fuel to misapply it to me.  I behave in ways that are unchristian, and sometimes when I behave in these ways I don't even show any sign that I'm remorseful or that I have any conscience in the matter.  By all accounts, it might seem like I'm a "traitor" from either point of view, whether from the view of faith or the view of the "anything goes" culture.  Two-faced.  Duplicitous.  To be honest, I'll admit one thing where I am a genuine hypocrite:  I find it scary and off-putting when others behave that way, and yet I do it myself and don't think I am scary.  It's very humbling for me even to admit that, because I am often as guilty as any Pharisee of thinking that "I'm more honorable than those sinners."  I'm not.  Not by a long shot.

What will I do if they find out I'm human?!

Anyway, the point is that there exists in this world, for all I know, the means to "expose" my sins, and to show everyone that not only are my failures still very much ongoing, but also that when I'm in "sin mode" I am a very different person than the person I want to be, the person that I would be proud to be.  I am no better than anyone, and I say that from the heart.  The reality of "me" is not always pretty or responsible.  I can be as stubborn or shameless as any other sinner in the whole world.  The only difference at all is that, by God's Grace, I am ultimately willing to admit that my sins are sins, but even then "in the moment" I sometimes put that reality on the back burner and won't mention it if it would be an "inconvenience" to the wrong deeds I'm pursuing.

God knows my sins.  And unfortunately, so does the devil.  And that snake would love nothing more than to use them against me, to intimidate me from doing anything good that might put my reputation on the line.  The devil is more shameless than any human sinner could ever be:  He is not above using cheap blackmail, and ever since I reached puberty he has used it against me.  Now, perhaps, he has more to work with than before, since as a family man it's even more "embarrassing" that I have the struggles I do.

Here's an example:  In very recent times I've even second-guessed whether or not I should continue promoting this blog, or ever consider attaching my real identity to it.  The fear is that if this blog, by some miracle, should ever really "take off" well enough to make a difference in people's lives, then it will also tick off all the wrong people.  Digging could be done to discredit me, and if someone dug deeply enough, I in my foolishness have left enough of a trail that their work could pay off.

"Give it up," the devil whispers, "If you'll stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours.  Just live a quiet life, keep your religion and your values to yourself, and there will be no reason for anyone to ever make your fears come true."

I offa you a deal out of the kindness of my heart.
If you refuse my generosity, I can't be held responsible
for what happens.  I'm just sayin'.

But I don't intend to do that.  By the power of Christ Who strengthens me, even my writing this post is a defiance of the threat.  I may not be giving details, but I'm admitting here that you shouldn't be surprised by the types of failures I've known and continue to know.  The devil wants me to be afraid that you might find out I do some really rotten things even as I write and speak about healing and faith, so I'm beating him to the punch and confessing it here.

I think that's why the scriptures say "confess your faults to one another."  I don't think that's only about confessing to a priest--there are other scriptures suited for that case--I think it's because being open about our imperfections and shortcomings cuts the fangs of the devil, and robs him of the fuel he has to use against us.  It's a scary thing, but we are called to be courageous.

I hope that if you take nothing else from this post that you take this:  If you're in a similar position, if you've ever worried that your mistakes might catch up with you, if you've ever felt torn between wanting to make a difference but also wanting to cower safely in obscurity, you're not alone.  I feel that very same way.  We're in it together.  Let's see if we can muster courage together too.  

Judgmentalism: More Secular Than You Think

We Christians are often accused of being judgmental.  "You people think everything is a sin," the secularists and modernists say.  Now, for one thing, I would question someone's creativity if the majority or entirety of everything fun or good they can think of falls under the banner of what we Christians would call sin.  It seems to me that if you must dip into sin to have a full life, you're doing something wrong.  Because the reality is that the number of things the Church and scriptures teach to be sinful is dwarfed by the number of things that are beautiful, good, and desirable.

But that's beside the point.

Get it?

I would argue that defining and identifying sin has nothing to do with being judgmental in the way that the word is usually used.  Usually when someone makes that accusation, they believe that we are judging people.  In fact, only God can do that, and Christians have taught that for centuries.  What we can do is judge actions, and point out that these actions lead to material and spiritual doom if left unchecked and not repented.  But actually, we are called specifically to not judge the sinner himself.  We are supposed to forgive.  That doesn't mean that, in certain cases, there are not consequences for sin, but it means that we do not hate nor loathe the sinner--not least of all because we are sinners too, and have no right!  If a Christian ever says of anyone, "He's a monster for what he has done!  He's disgusting!" then he is out of line, because all sin is a horrible offense against God, so we may as well be looking in the mirror and seeing a monster too; and if we do, then we've no right to turn up the nose at that "other" monster, if that's how we're so determined to define another human being; which we shouldn't in the first place.

Even so, the secularists and modernists paint a picture of Christians as looking down on everyone who sins.  They claim to be more enlightened, more merciful.  The basis of this is that they, or so they say, are not so quick to judge actions as wrong.  If you feel that something is right for you, whether it's getting drunk on weekends, or having sex with whomever you want, divorcing the spouse to whom you vowed yourself for better or worse because you "just don't get along anymore," or whatever else, the modern "enlightened" world tells you "You do what you have to do to be happy.  No one can say it's wrong."  And from this, they say they are more forgiving than we terrible, bigoted Christians.

There's an obvious flaw with this logic.  How can you "forgive" something that you haven't even judged as wrong?!  If I don't even think the man and woman who have a premarital fling are sinning, how can I forgive them?  You don't forgive someone for doing something that's morally permitted in the first place; you can only forgive them precisely because there is something wrong to forgive.

The truth is, when it comes to someone who does something they do think is wrong, the modern world is more cold and unforgiving than a Puritan in Salem.  Think about it.  The biggest things that our open-minded society still condemns are those things which "infringe on someone else" in some way, especially those things that both infringe on someone else and are illegal.  And once you cross those lines, our society turns its back on you just as quickly as the leaders of one of those cult compounds surrounded by walls and barbed wire fences.  You are labeled a monster; the media openly remarks on how disgusting you are; the internet is aflame with calls for your death, preferably not before you've first been tortured in ways that would make crucifixion look tame.

Unless  you happen to be a filthy criminal offender.
Then we'd rather you "NOT EXIST".  Sorry 'bout that.

But the worst thing is this:  We Christians are often affected by it.  We buy into it too.  I've been guilty of it myself.  Think:  You can probably think of at least one crime, probably several, that makes you think of the perpetrator as vile, as a monster.  There's probably some wrong deed that immediately pops to your mind as you read this, that makes you think "Well I know that I and my loved ones are better than that!"  It's as though we need someone to look down on.  In the modern world, where we are progressively more understanding and compassionate toward sinners, which is a good thing as long as we still recognize the sin as sin, we still reserve a certain place in the darkest spots of our minds for those other sinners.  They are the sinners that we gauge as being in a totally different category from most.

In the most extreme cases of our judgmental attitude, and that of the secular world as well, we will judge sinners as monsters whose motives or intentions are not even all that different from ours, but just happen to be oriented toward a sin with greater consequences and more tragic effects.  There are sinners in prisons--and some rightfully so (to send some people to prison can be necessary to protect society, and is not inherently judgmental if it isn't coupled with disgust and hatred)--who never desired to harm anyone, whose deeds did not even arise from cruel intent or a lack of empathy, but who were simply addicted to certain sins, just like any of us; but the sins to which they have the distinct misfortune of being addicted happen to hurt people in more obvious ways than ours do.

Instead of realizing that we were simply blessed that our own temptations and struggles happen to have less obviously dire consequences, we fill ourselves with pride:  We are not merely blessed; we are better people than those terrible, vile criminals.  We would never do that.  Never mind the fact, of course, that often we don't have the faintest notion of what it's like to be tempted to do "that."  And strangely, insanely, we think that our not being tempted gives us even more of a right to look down on those who are!  As if our not being tempted is something we accomplished, and not a gift from God, "lest any man could boast!"  How prideful, how arrogant, can we be?

And what about those sinners, even, who have had harsh or cold intentions, but who have since repented?  Can any of us say we have never had cruel or spiteful motives?  Most of us, if we are honest, have probably entertained thoughts we would be horrified to have made public knowledge, in moments of anger.  Ironically, we ourselves often lack empathy toward those who commit crimes we consider especially heinous, and some of us entertain, with sadistic passion, fantasies of them "getting their just desserts."  Would we wish to be forever "branded" by those moments?  We serve a God Who once said that to sin in the heart is to have truly committed the sin (although surely to do it in actuality would be to repeat it, so that doesn't mean we "might as well do it"), so we too are guilty.  Should we not show the mercy toward even "those" sinners, as we desire mercy?

How much grace we could share with the world if we lived up to a higher standard than that of the world!  What if we Christians were truly radically forgiving, loving sinners that even the world, with all its notions of "tolerance" and "open mindedness," rejects and demonizes?  What if we could visit the "worst" sinners in prison and, although we were wise enough to protect ourselves from those clearly not yet freed from their harmful vices, we would not nurture disgust for them, but rather pity and empathy, the recognition that "If only my temptations had been different, that might have been me?"  If we did that, then perhaps we would do what the earliest Christians did:  Attract souls from the truly most marginalized and rejected members of society whom no one in the world of unbelievers was willing to love.