February 18, 2014

• WHAT HURTS THE MOST

  Many years ago I had a friend, I always call him "Ryan" though Ryan is not his name.  When I met him we were both closeted gay men.   We were both in the closet for very different reasons.  I was in the closet because I wasn't ready to simply throw myself at something, just because some feeling I had.  I'd had lots of feelings and they'd often been wrong.   My plan had always been to carefully study the matter of human sexuality and find the proof I was simply born gay.   I never found any proof that people are born gay.  In fact people are not born gay, and what's more people aren't even born straight.   Some of us, due to temperament, may find homosexuality more easily than others.   Still biology cannot account for sexual preference in human beings.  It's not a matter of ideology or scientific approach.   It is a simple matter of  capacity.    Will a 16oz glass hold the liquid content of a five gallon bucket filled to the brim with water?   It's a no brainer 16oz. doesn't have the same capacity as a five gallon bucket.   Biology cannot account for all the matters, issues, social and family environment, and experiences which become forces which work together to form and channel what biology has given us.

  Anyway, Ryan had very different reasons for being in the closet.  His family was large and Catholic.  Ryan was the youngest and the oldest was about 15 when he was born.   Ryan's parents were older than most parents, and I used to think he simply didn't want to burden or shame his parents.    I would learn from his sister, many years after Ryan was dead from AIDS, that he'd been molested by his brother, who was the oldest in the family.  Evidently Ryan's mother had walked in on he and his oldest brother "messing around".  She walked out, and as she did she said, "Boys will be boys."  I remember Ryan saying, "boys will be boys," but it never made any sense to me.   Ryan's mother saw her young son being molested, but left him to his abuser.     I think Ryan stayed in the closet because he didn't want to deal with any kind of response from his parents.   Deep down Ryan knew he'd been abandoned to his abuser.  Ryan didn't want to learn that his parents absolutely didn't care anything about him.  He wasn't protecting his parents, he was protecting himself.

  People who are deeply and profoundly sexually broken have been badly wounded by the relationships which should have been life giving.   For very wounded people sex is actually safer than trying to connect deeply with other people.   What Ryan needed was for someone to reach into his life and lead him out of the dark hole he was thrown into by the people who should have loved him, but abandoned him instead.

  True relationship with God, through Jesus Christ, is the safest possible relationship.  The problem is it really takes someone who knows the truth about relationship with God to reach into the darkness Ryan had been plunged into.   It takes a constant and consistent faith that God can and will overcome the damage, and show people like Ryan that God gives worth to people who've been robbed of their humanity because they've been used as a mere object.    When was the last time a thing reached out to you for help?   Things can't reach out, they are things.   Is it little wonder that gay people, hooker people, porn addicted people don't reach out for help?   A thing is a thing and people who've been made objects don't know to aspire to anything higher.  Cursing their darkness, and their objectified sense of self, hasn't worked when the Church has done it.

  It's too late for Ryan, but there are lot's of Ryans and Lonnies who need a real life Christ follower to show the way to personhood and the freedom of true relationship with Christ and his children.   If you are a believer perhaps you will consider the plight of sexually broken people, and maybe you'll think of a new way to confront sexual brokenness.   What do you think?   Can Christians change the way they view sinners and find a better way to bring the world overcoming savior to the growing group of human objects who have settled for their "thingness?"

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