BUT STILL SAD
"Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?"...
"...You are not your own; you were bought at a price."
I
went visiting the "ex-gay" side of a blog sites Groups. Of course there's
very little "ex-", but a whole lot of gay. Not shocking, not for me
anyway, I knew that was the direction things were going. You put a
bunch of professed, "ex-gay" people together and you get "ex-ex-gay"
people. That surprises people, when they learn that "ex-gay" people
struggling together doesn't work. I'm surprised anyone could honestly
be shocked "ex-gay" people can't help each other successfully. Take a
bunch of people who have no real understanding of healthy and life
giving relationships, put them together, and you expect they learn how
to relate in a godly way in relationship??? Talk about the stuff of
fairy tales!! It's the blind leading the blind. In order to get truly
"ex-d" out of gay, it takes a group of people made new born by God's
own Spirit; a people infilled by the Holy Spirit constantly; people
devoted to one another as community and family. I think we used to call
this group, "The Church of Jesus Christ." That was the group God
called to reach the sexually and relationally broken, including LGBT
people. Instead the Church has attempted to foist her call and God's
purposes upon ill equipped groups like Exodus International. Critics of
Exodus International, as it turns out, were right in some of their
criticisms. Exodus got it wrong, because they allowed the Church to
force them to become something they never should have become. In the
beginning Exodus was intended to be an advisory group to help churches
reach and minister to people wishing to escape homosexuality. The
churches didn't want to be advised they wanted Exodus to take the
aspiring "ex-gay" off their hands. Exodus quickly became a dumping
ground for the church's unwanted gay problem. Do you know what happens
when you get a bunch of religious people struggling against
homosexuality, who come together to help one another "struggle" against
their lusts? You get a dating service for religious gay people. The
discerning gay person knows Exodus conferences are a literal smorgasbord
for the sexual appetite. Exodus is speed dating gay style.
In his exceptional book, Homosexuality And The Politics Of Truth,
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover says that homosexuality is akin to Narcissistic
Personality Disorder. For me it made total sense. Homosexuality is
kind of the flip side of Narcissism. instead of thinking too highly of
themselves the homosexual has a very low opinion of himself. In 2008
Sweden's twin registry, the largest in the world, was used to see if
researchers could find a reason why some pairs of twins were both gay,
but other pairs had only one gay twin. Because of the, still too small,
sample size the study isn't conclusive. Still it seems the findings
supported the earliest thinking about homosexuality; that homosexuality
flows from trauma. The Sweden Twin study showed that around 75% of the
twins, in which one twin was gay and the other straight, the gay twin
had endured some form of trauma(s) the other twin had not. The trauma
didn't have to be sexual in nature in order to be considered for the
study. We know trauma has adverse effects on adult humans. Think of
women traumatized by rape or spousal abuse. One of my best friends, a
wonderful Christian lady, who spent most of her life in abusive
relationships, said, on the eve of her approaching marriage to a
wonderful Christian man, "It didn't feel like love." She was so
accustomed to the drama and trauma, that when real relation; real love
found her it didn't "feel" right. It actually took my friend a little
while for things to "feel" right. She committed to the changes she
needed to make in herself, trusted God to guide and enable her change,
and then simply dove right in, never looking back. Believe it or not
the Bible actually addresses the matter.
"One who is full loathes honey from the comb,
but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet."
but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet."
Proverbs 27:7
Scripture
uses the most fascinating ways of telling the spiritual side of
matters. "Bitter", in Scripture most often means "poisonous". Start
the trauma in a person's life at a very early age, and by the time they
reach puberty bitter/poison is not just their normal fare, but the
preferred, all day everyday meal. The United States Military used to
have a term which actually became an official military term: F*U*B*A*R.
You've probably heard f.u.b.a.r., but did you know what it really
means? This is how it breaks down: "F"***ed. "U"p. "B"eyond. "A"ll.
"R"ecognition.
When the Bible speaks of sexual immorality it says some very unusual things.
For by means of a harlot
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
A man is reduced to a crust of bread;
And an adulteress will prey upon his precious life.
"A
man is reduced to a crust of bread???" Putting one's penis in a woman
(or man for that matter), not your wife makes you into a pastry??
Actually it isn't that far off from the understanding God lead me to in
my walk to freedom from sexual immorality. Trauma makes people feel
"different"; "broken"; "dirty"; "separated"; "abnormal". relationships
aren't the safe and life giving places they once were, or never were to
begin with. Then there is the biggest secret no sexually broken person
ever wants to face. "I am worthless, dirty, hated, and worthless."
People settle for less than God gives, not because they are modern and
happening. People don't settle for homosexuality, or hooking up, or
internet pron, or hooking, or stripping, because they highly value
themselves. The very center of the problem; the heart of it is, "No one
could or would ever love me, so I'll take whatever I can get."
Sexually broken people start having relationships in their own minds
rather than even attempting real relationships. I know a great many
people would say things like, "I know a lot of LGBT people, some are my
closest friends, and they have great relationships, are happy and well
adjusted adults." No one is ever going to let you in on the secret, we
didn't talk about it even among ourselves, so why would you honestly
think anyone would let an outsider in. As always its the dirty little
secrets that keep us enslaved. If our secrets were known we could be
set free, but nothing in our past will ever allow for that.
