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Exchanged Glory IV: A Time for Every Purpose
I was stuck – unwilling to go backward and becoming despondent about moving forward. I knew theologically that God loved me, but I was no longer excited about it. I felt like His slave, and He seemed like my unrealistic, demanding Master.
God had given me many blessings. In spite of this, however, my life remained a street-fight. I seemed to be two different people at war with each other. I had trained my reason and will to respond to Jesus, and I was sincerely glad to do that. At the same time, however, something in my emotions resented Him.
Deep in my heart, discontent brewed over the fact that I was being robbed of the chance to be who I felt I truly was, and that discontent grew greatly in the late 1990s. Something in me was still deeply bound to my wayward sexuality, and denying that part of me felt like violence against my soul. God seemed cruel to require me to give it up. The mental gymnastics I went through in order to suppress it were tearing me apart.
I could hold down the repressed anger that resulted, but there was no denying that it was there. More than twenty-five years of serving Jesus had only made it grow more entrenched. God’s rules seemed to be oppressive, and though a part of me liked having Him in my life, I was mad that He appeared to either be demanding too much from me or helping too little.
Often, I had to go into “robot mode” in order to stay away from the sinful desires that stirred within me. I disconnected from my emotions and tried to live out of pure logic. In the process, unfortunately, my feelings became incorrigible. They hated being pushed away, and they refused to be tamed. They demanded freedom. It was as if I owed them repayment for the fact that I had denied them for so long in order to obey Jesus.
Eventually I gave up on them. I looked at myself and said, “You’re a jerk. You should be happy, but you continue to whine. Remember the facts. If you express yourself, you will hurt everyone, including yourself. Until something changes, you have no other good choice but to hold your inner life in forced submission. It’s either that or act like a pervert. You need to do whatever is necessary to keep your emotions from turning into actions. Yell at them; disconnect from them; ignore them and hope they die from neglect. Just don’t let them ruin people’s lives!”
As the years went by, it became more difficult to yell at, disconnect from, or ignore my emotions. The inner revolt was growing rather than dying from neglect. More self-control was required to suppress it, yet it pushed back harder. It was as if explosives were being stockpiled inside of my heart, and I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep snuffing out the fuse.
I could feel myself heading toward disaster. My vision for my life was dying. I remembered back to when I had first believed in Jesus; I had followed Him with such great hope of the good He would do. Now, I was thinking in terms of hanging on till I died. The only realistic dream left for me seemed to be that I would be able say to the devil from my death bed, “I survived. You didn’t get me to deny Jesus.”
If I had honestly answered the question of whether God loved me, I would have said, “Yes He loves me, but His definition of love is different than mine. I appreciate that I am accepted because of what Christ did rather than because of my performance. I am also glad that His presence is with me, and this has given me a warm fuzzy sense of being loved. Unfortunately, there is something missing; I still have to go out and live the Christian life, and that feels like emotional abuse.
God can say that I am not under law all He wants, but that’s not the way it feels. Even though I know He can handle it if I sin, I doubt my wife and children can. I am saved by grace, and that makes a difference in my life, but in order to protect the people I love, I live as if I am under law. I don’t want to damage them, so I painfully squash my sin for their sakes.
God’s love works out to this: it is as if I have a father who hugs me, tells me he loves me, and then sends me off to work for sixteen hours a day in a sweat shop. When I object, He tells me that the only other alternative is for me and my family to live in the streets where we will be mugged. I appreciate that He helps me to avoid the streets, but it doesn’t feel like love.
There are only two ways that I can imagine my feelings changing. The first would be for Him to make the streets safe. If He would let me express my anger and my sexuality without my family being mugged by the consequences, the resulting relief would feel a little like love. I know this option isn’t realistic, however, and it also isn’t what I really want. What I really want is for Him to reach inside of me and do what He has promised, to transform me so that I can experience joy and peace.
Instead, His word lists requirements that seem to compel me to painfully shut down parts of my heart. If I don’t, my family and every other aspect of my life will fall apart. Obedience is better than disintegration, but it bears only a mechanical resemblance to love. I want something that touches my heart!”
It was what I wanted, but it wasn’t what had happened. I knew that the Scriptures said my life should be different. They told me that God had made me into a new person who was free from sin. The “new me” was supposed to delight in His righteous commandments. I was supposed to obey Him with gratitude in my heart. …That refrain was becoming old. I had claimed its hope for too long. I was tired of quoting Bible verses that didn’t ring true in the center of my being.
It was hard to avoid becoming cynical. Though I knew I had been powerfully touched by Jesus, a large number of my beliefs seemed to be little more than unrealistic utopian wishes. “The Holy Spirit lives inside of me. Christianity isn’t a religion of rules; God writes His law on my heart.” Where was the emotional reality that should accompany those statements!? Why did they always seem to boil down to, “force yourself to do what is right and suffer in ways that you never thought a loving God could require?”
I didn’t feel like God loved the “real me” – the person I had to live with every day. The “real me” was angry and saw sex through warped senses. The “real me” was torn between the external good I experienced and the fact that obedience seemed like inhumane treatment. The “real me” felt beat up and trapped by the Judge of Heaven.
God seemed to wave His hand over the “real me” and say, “Those feelings are lies. You are a new creation. Just have faith that you are who I say you are and everything will be OK.” That didn’t feel like love; it felt like treating my feelings as if they weren’t important enough to take them seriously.
I had waited for an inner transformation for so long. I really didn’t want to sin. I set my will to love everyone and to be joyful. I chose to believe for it when it looked like all hope was gone, persevering long after most would have given up. I turned from my desires. I surrendered everything I knew how to surrender …but I was getting tired of waiting.
God’s apparent neglect fed a nagging doubt in the back of my mind. Perhaps I couldn’t change because my faith that Christ could give me something better was a fantasy. Maybe Christianity was a lie. If that was the case, it would explain my frustration. I was trying to do the impossible. Who wouldn’t be frustrated?
I knew that others had reached similar conclusions. For example, some psychologists believed that sexual orientations like homosexuality were unchangeable. I didn’t agree, but my experience with the smoking fetish had given me more than enough reason to doubt. For eighteen years I had fought the fight of tough obedience, yet I couldn’t shake free from the gnawing compulsion that almost seemed to permeate my soul. I had believed God’s promises; I had held on to them through thick and thin; yet they seemed to have failed me.
I couldn’t just give up, however. I had studied the evidence for Christianity and knew that it was strong. Even more, I had seen Jesus work in other areas of my life. I had little doubt that He was a supernatural being who was involved with me. I sometimes wondered if He was a false god who didn’t keep His promises, but I rarely doubted that He was real. So I held on. Jesus had too much going for Him for me to give up over one area of disappointment.
Besides, it didn’t make sense to let go and indulge my desires. Though I would have found some relief, I knew it was the “street” on which my family would be “mugged.” I struggled long and hard to keep from damaging them. God’s ways were best, and I didn’t want to leave them. I just wanted them to come from my emotions.
I was stuck – unwilling to go backward and becoming despondent about moving forward. I knew theologically that God loved me, but I was no longer excited about it. I felt like His slave, and He seemed like my unrealistic, demanding Master. Life was a street-fight, and I was getting beat up.
I felt like a tragedy of sorts – a guy who had sincerely tried to let God live through him but had somehow missed whatever it took to make that happen. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t know how to change it either. It just looked like I was so messed up and broken that even with the grace of God there wasn’t enough time in a lifetime to put me back together.
I considered whether I should try to once again work with my emotions rather than suppressing and disconnecting from them. Maybe something had changed, and I could handle them now. Maybe this time I would be able to make my way through the chaos and find a new place of happiness.
It seemed too risky. The only time I was sure it had worked in the past was one time when I had stopped resisting the fetish,[23] and there was too much at stake to do that now. My family was doing incredibly well, and I was afraid to hurt them. What if I fell into some stupid sexual sin? What if my anger got out of hand? I decided to continue to push down my growing ugliness and hope that it would all work out somehow.
I figured that even if there wasn’t much hope left for me, my children still had a future. I wanted to try to shield them from whatever had gone wrong in my life, to protect them from the curse until I could bury it in my grave. If they could live fruitful lives for Jesus without the pain I endured, all of my suffering would be worthwhile.
They seemed to be doing well. They were picking up the good from me without the bad. I fought for that to continue.
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