June 23, 2013

• EXODUS INTERNATIONAL IS HISTORY!

   

  I'm Coming Out of the Closet!
  

   

  Now that Exodus International is no longer the bastion of "ex-gayness", I can now stop being "ex-gay"!!   Now I can be just, well...yeah, coming right up with that...any minute now.   Its a hard call, or used to be.   When you don't belong to anyone you are never sure who or what you are.  Oh, I had a family I belonged to, but that family was headed by a husband and father who didn't love the family he created.  The cherry on this yummy familial confection was a an uncle who moved in with us, when I was about three years old.  If you've read my blog, you know I call this uncle, "Uncle Monster", he's a psychopath who finished the incredible works of unlove dear old dad had begun.  I'm not sure when I figured out, the two men who had complete control of my young life, not only didn't love me, but also convinced me no one ever could or would love me.  Was it when uncle monster made me cry out in fear and pain, but dad shouted at me to shut up?  Was it when uncle monster plunked my 4 or 5 year old butt on the roof of our house?  I don't need any pity for what happened in the past.  I'm establishing that there are very good reasons why I always felt different and ultimately cut off from relationship and my own identity as a male.  What about mom?  What about my siblings?  Their circumstances were the same as mine.  The two most powerful dictators in their lives were the same two men.  I do not have the permission to tell their stories, but I can say all of us suffered.  I was cut adrift before the of 5. 

  I did have Ben.  Ben was my imaginary friend when I was 6.  Ben was actually a lot like me, but he was loved, popular at his school, a good athlete, and incredibly nice.  I was none of those things, so I was lucky to have Ben.  Ben and I would hang out in my yard, in the field behind one of the house's in the neighborhood, or on the cool jungle gym and rope swing in the Cowyn's back yard.  Ben and I had a bit of a rocky start.  I'd want to talk and push each other on the rope swing, but Ben would simply stand silently looking at me.  He never said a word, or played, he'd just stare at me, in total science, and without moving.  The only time Ben ever moved was when I had to go home for supper.  He'd turn and walk briskly away from me, until the next time I wanted to hang out. Needless to say I ended the friendship.   I'm the only person I know whose imaginary friend didn't like him.
  

  Actually fantasy would save my life.  The only people I had were the ones I imagined. After Ben I got better at creating fantasy friends. I was the creator of my own world, because I needed it.  My real world was incredibly toxic.  I didn't know my imaginary world was also toxic.   I didn't know that other people might like me...maybe even love me one day if given a chance.  I had my own little emotional prison in the real world, and my own little imaginary prison to escape the real one. 
  

  Do you remember Elizabeth Smart?  The young teenaged girl, kidnapped from her own bed, in her families home in Salt Lake City, by a handyman and self-proclaimed Mormon prophet?   For months the little girl and her captors eluded discovery, even though they were often right under the nose of the people searching for her.   Do you remember when she was found?  The police stopped three homeless vagabonds in the middle of the street.  The officers separated a heavily disguised Elizabeth Smart from the older couple with her.  If you'll remember the officer who questioned Elizabeth pulled her out of her kidnapper's hearing, and even placed himself between her direct line of sight and her attacker.  Still, when questioned; asked point blank, "Are you Elizabeth Smart?"  Smart denied she was Elizabeth.  Over and over again the officer had to ask Elizabeth, "Are you Elizabeth Smart?"  When Smart finally admitted who she was it was in a barely audible whisper. 
  

  Trauma takes prisoners.  Abusers take prisoners; molester's take prisoners; manipulating control freaks take prisoners; drug addicts and adulterers take prisoners; illness and deprivation takes prisoners too.  Sometimes the trauma in life comes from the illness or death of either a child or a caregiver.  And guess what?   How people respond to trauma also takes prisoners.   My dad/uncle trauma took me prisoner, but I built my own walls in an attempt to escape.  When I escaped every day I pushed myself further and further away from others, because I was honestly convinced that if my dad and uncle would or could not love me, no one else could either.
  

  Why did the cop in Salt Lake City have to ask Elizabeth Smart over and over again, "Are you Elizabeth...?"  Elizabeth had developed a "slave" mentality.  Her abuser/users had convinced of their threats, power, and authority.  She accepted, against her will, that she was powerless to do anything else.  Why is it so hard for Christians to overcome sin, even in the face of God's incredible promises?   We've been sinning all our lives, and we're enslaved.  Smart's kidnapper had renamed her, and when the cop asked, the first time she gave the false name given her by her jailer.  Elizabeth was completely out of the power of her abusers/users, but she held to the lie.  Could Elizabeth have escaped that day without the intervention of a police officer?   No, Elizabeth would have remained in her master's hands.   The same is true of people who are sexually broken.  So long have we lived in the cages thrown down deep dark holes, that even in the light, power, and promises of God in Christ Jesus, we'll stay in those cages.  We'll allow people to label, and keep sticking them back on us, even after Christ has stripped them all away.  Even Exodus International wanted to stick label's on people, "ex-gay".   I needed someone to intervene on my behalf.  I needed someone to keep telling me the truth, to keep walking with me, away from sin's prison.  I need someone to keep reading my rights, "If the Son shall make you free you will be free indeed."   "There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.  For through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set you free from the law of sin and death."   THOSE ARE MY RIGHTS!!   "If anyone is in Christ they are a new creation; the old has passed away.  Behold everything has been made new."   The law of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, set me free.  The laws of sin and death have been handcuffed.   Should Elizabeth Smart be forced to add the name, her kidnappers gave her, to the name her parents gave her?   No, of course not!  But to be honest about who she is, and what happened in the past she really should add the false name she was given, because it did happen, Smart's kidnappers had the power to make her go by the false name they forced upon her.  That is the facts of the case, and for the sake of honesty, she should add her false name as well.  Smart is just in denial and someone really should help her be who she really is.  I mean she could say, "I'm Elizabeth Smart "ex- (state your false name here)..."  That would be honest. 
  

  Elizabeth Smart doesn't have to accept the labels her kidnapper forced on her.  So why is it I have to live with the labels forced on me by those who abused, misused, and neglected me?  Why do I even have to accept past labels I used to wear?  Oh, yeah, those feelings of attraction for other guys.  Those feelings don't just evaporate, and there is simply no, "praying the gay away."  And God doesn't simply take feelings away.   Feelings begin to change when we change our behaviors.  But before our behaviors change, the direction of our thoughts must change.  Change thinking, change behaving, and feelings will change.  It can be quite a battle, but that is life.  Life doesn't work the way fantasies work.  If life is worth living then living it truthfully; not hiding, not escaping the hard stuff; not avoiding the deeper feelings, and childishly demanding that God just make it all go away.  In the name of protecting the truth, i.e. "I am unloved and unlovable."  I never had the chance to find out if anyone could honestly love me, and who cared anyway, I'd been settling for sex so long it was a part of me.  I'm a college educated guy who, though not a biology or psychology major, have always followed both sciences very carefully.   I knew that choices which lead to behaviors change the brain's chemistry; habitual behaviors literally create a neural pathways, kinda like a shortcut.  Just like a foot path which is often walked becomes a recognizable path the more it is used, so behaviors make firmly entrenched and well worn paths in our brains.  The fact is once a shortcut is made that path never completely goes away.  That does not mean that behaviors cannot be changed permanently.  New pathways can be made, and old paths will deteriorate with the passage of time and disuse. 

  There is another factor when it comes to Christians and changing.  The message of Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles is of spiritual new birth.  The Bible teaches a literal new birth, through a new act of creation within the human being.  This new spirit is linked directly to Jesus Christ, through something many of us imagine as a spiritual umbilical cord.  Through this new spirit created from the stuff of God's own Spirit, the Christian is remade from the inside out.  So Christians are not merely changing brain chemistry, but change is powered by a spirit empowered to live eternally in the presence of their eternal God.  The change comes from a new spirit, not an old brain with well worn sin paths cut into the brain.  It is the Holy Spirit who does the real hard work of change, but part of God's work includes making us part and parcel of that work.  Christians aren't simply to sit around and "pray the sin away."  Real change in thought and deed begun, guaranteed, and completed by God in and through us means we have to agree with and move with God toward the freedom he has worked and continues to work in us.  I am no longer the sum total of the harm of abusers and users.  I am now the sum total of God's promises, and the final result is that God will utterly conform me into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ.  Neither I nor any other person can conform a mere human being into the image and likeness of God the Son.  Only God can conform a human into the image and likeness of his Son.  It is not I who overcome my sin and the scars those sins have made on my brain.  I am in the hands of the almighty who is molding and making into a new creation in every faculty and part of me.  When God is done nothing I was made of will exist.  None of the brokenness will remain, none of the damage done by other to me, and none of the damage from my sin will exist.
  

  In Christ there are no "gay Christians", no "ex-gay Christians", no "murdering Christians", no "racist Christians," and etc.  What the world needs from the Church is not a condemning judge, not acceptance of sin, and most certainly not Christians who have no opinion.  When God clearly says, "You shall not..."  then that is the judgment of God, and every true believer holds to the judgment of God.  It is God's standard and he will enforce that standard. 
  

  It is fitting that Exodus International go the way of the DoDo.  No Christian should label another Christian with "ex-" anything.  No Christian should label or wear the label, "gay Christian".  No believer in Jesus Christ needs or deserves any other kind of label besides, "New creation."   No one should be segregated and labeled because of their past.  If you are a brother or sister in Christ then regardless of your past I'm deputized by living God to walk with you away from your sin and slavery.  I'm authorized to read you the rights you have in Jesus Christ. 
  

  Exodus was a good idea, it just wasn't God's idea.  God's idea is and always will be the Church, and if the Church will do what he tells us to do, and do it his way, the chains fall off, the prisoner walks free, and all the past labels fall off, including "prisoner". 
  

  • 7:47 PM
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