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One Flesh: What does it Mean?
<page 80>You may wonder how I went from the sort of experience I described at the end of the last chapter to the person who twenty years later felt almost abandoned by God as I struggled with my sexuality. (I described this in Chapter 6.) It is quite simple. I left college, where I had been able to be open about my struggles, and I moved to a situation where openness was much more difficult. This eventually caused me to put a veil over my remaining issues, and my emotions dysregulated as they festered beneath the surface. After many years, I felt as if I was headed for an emotional breakdown (which never occurred, but it took some significant changes to avoid it).
When the answers to sexual sins aren't presented and openly discussed, a person struggling with them will tend to see their difficulties in terms of three options. They will say:
"I have been resisting sexual sin, but it still feels like so much a part of me that I wonder if I will ever change. I need a miracle in this area of my life (a quick transformation). There doesn't seem to be any other workable answer."
"Since I haven't received a miracle, maybe I am a misfit (someone who is different). Perhaps it is time to rethink what I have been calling 'sexual sin' and accept that this is just 'who I am.' I can't change, so maybe I need to be brave enough to let people know that Christian sexual norms are wrong for me. I am tired of living a lie."
"I feel like I am a misfit, but I also believe that my sexuality is wrong. I guess that makes me a monster (someone who is evil and can't do much about it). Nothing helps. I pray; I try to obey; I confess; I go for counselling; yet I wake up every day the same. I suspect that God has given up on me, and why shouldn't He?"
When I bottled up my emotions, these three options presented themselves to me repeatedly. The "glory to glory" change process that had been transforming my emotions seemed to have stalled (though it was working in ways I didn't understand). Year after year I tried to find answers, but my gut level emotions grew worse. So I hoped for a miracle, yet it never came.
That left me with the possibility that I was a misfit – that I just needed to accept my sexuality as it was. Though I was controlling my actions, my inner experience seemed to constantly say, "If you were honest, you would admit that this is not who you are. It is crazy to continue to pretend that God's standards are working for you; you will eventually break from the strain."
Yet if I gave into being a misfit, I knew that I wouldn't be able to justify that choice, and this left me with the dark specter that I was a monster. What if I was hopelessly perverted with no possibility of being anything else?
Fortunately, the Holy Spirit was working, and I devoted myself to walking day by day with Him. He kept me hoping for something better. I also had my experience from college as evidence against the growing message of doubt coming against me. I knew that, at least once, God had powerfully touched my sexuality, and that gave me hope for a fourth option. Perhaps I could once again return to being marred clay that was gradually being reshaped by God.
Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something at the wheel. And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make.
<page 81>Then the word of the LORD came to me, saying: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?" says the LORD. "Look, as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel! (emphasis added)
(Jerimiah 18:3-6)
What could have caused me to bottle up my emotions after my experience with being open at college? Was it a fear of other Christians? I don't believe so. If I wasn't afraid to open up to others at college when my actions were out of control, why would I be afraid once my actions were in line with the truth? To be honest, I probably should have been more afraid, because it is likely that some people would not have reacted well, but I hadn't had any bad experiences in that area, so I was naïve about the possibilities.
If it wasn't fear of Christians, was it fear of the world? I don't believe that this was the case either. I had turned from peer pressure as a teenager, and I was happy with the results. By the time I came out of college, my life had been transformed, and I was optimistic about the future. Once again, I probably should have been more afraid of opening up, but I had a good deal of confidence in God's ability to protect me.
The title of this section is, "The elephant in the room." This is an expression that refers to an obvious issue that no one wants to address. It's big, it's important, but no one wants to bring it into the open and say, "We need to talk about this." It was this sort of issue that caused me to back away from openness about my sexual struggles, and I still believe it is "an elephant in the room" today. I have never heard anyone (including me) spend much time on it. Now, with fear and trembling, I will do my best to describe it.
Consider me when I was twenty-two years old. I had embraced the unveiled approach to life, and it had worked marvelously for me. Against all odds, I had been delivered from a difficult sexual problem, and I saw no reason why I should not continue to be open about what remained of my issues. Then I got married, and I found that when a married man describes ongoing sexual struggles, even if he has his actions under control, his words will likely be interpreted to mean some combination of the following:
His wife is failing to meet his sexual needs.
He doesn't really love his wife.
He is inconsiderately forcing his wife to deal with the personal and social struggles a woman will face when her husband speaks in this way.[24]
I remember attending a church retreat shortly after I was married. In a men's meeting, the Pastor of the church advised us to not mention our sexual struggles to our wives. He said that <page 82>women aren't built to handle that sort of discussion, and it would only cause them distress. (This is the one time I remember someone publicly addressing this "elephant in the room." It was basically a two-sentence recommendation to avoid discussing the subject with our wives.)
I immediately noticed that his words contradicted my approach, and that bothered me. In my mind, if I had been transparent with my friends at college, how much more should I be with my wife? Also, his advice made me feel as if I would probably need to lie to her, and I hated doing that. So I occasionally spoke with her about my sexual struggles, which generally ended up with my wife being hurt and me being confused. I thought, "What just happened? How can women see this subject so differently than men do?"
In time, I decided that perhaps the Pastor was right. His counsel still didn't make sense to me, but experience had taught me that honesty could hurt my wife, and I didn't want to do that. So for her sake, I decided that unless my struggles started to affect my actions, I would keep quiet about them.
The environment in most churches supported this decision; Christians didn't speak much about sexual issues, and no one seemed to have much insight into them. So it seemed best to follow their lead and play it safe …and as long as I was playing it safe with my words, I figured I would play it safe with my thinking also. The general counsel about sexual temptation was to remove it from your mind as quickly as possible, so to the best of my ability, I refused to allow tempting thoughts to surface in my heart. I stuffed them down and hoped they would go away. Doing so felt unhealthy, but I had to admit that trying to make my way through them no longer accomplished much. If I wasn't making progress anyway, why allow feelings that made me feel dishonest and might hurt my wife?
As I mentioned earlier, I believe these decisions led me to slowly spiral down toward an emotional breakdown. I learned through experience that being wisely honest about my heart was essential for understanding how to handle it. This makes me wonder what similar decisions are doing to others. Since we currently have over half the men in our churches looking at pornography, I suspect that many are missing out on God's grace because the fear of hurting their spouse keeps them from asking for help.
If I have accurately described sexual sin in this book, the majority of men in western society are entering marriage with sexual issues of one sort or another. Both as a society and as individuals, we have not guarded the gift God has given us. As a result, desires that are as strong as death, cruel as the grave, burn like a fire, are difficult to quench, and pull us to risk all of the wealth of our houses are undermining our families. And if I have described God's answers correctly, these sorts of problems can only be dealt with by His power as we live in an unveiled way. We need to be transparent before Him, ourselves, and hopefully a few others as we behold His glory. This is the nature of our relationship in the New Covenant.
But if transparency places our marriages at risk, what should we do? The husband knows he must deal with his issues, but he is afraid that the process of doing so might backfire and wreck his marriage.
His wife's struggle is understandable. When her husband admits to sexual struggles, it can create a lack of trust that I suspect can just about ruin the marriage for her. It forces her to question the nature of her relationship with him, and this throws her into dealing with her own <page 83>emotions that are as strong as death. She experiences firsthand that jealousy is as cruel as the grave (Song of Solomon 8:6). It will take a great deal of grace from God for her to make her way through that.
Unfortunately, however, we have a situation in which the husband probably needs for his emotions to come into the light. If that doesn't happen, they will slowly eat away at him. Yet he is faced with the dilemma that if he seeks help, any honesty with his wife might result in her feeling either that she is a failure or he doesn't love her. Then if transformation takes years of work, she may feel that if his love for her requires that much effort, it can't be real.
The husband may see this and conclude that gradual change is unacceptable. It would put him in a situation where he appears to be failing his wife even on his best days, and he fears the consequences of that. It will seem as if the only way to protect his marriage will be to manufacture some sort of quick change. He will abandon the marred clay approach and try to make a miracle happen.
Unfortunately, the miracle approach can backfire. His emotions can go underground and resurface in ways that seem to defy God's promises and common sense. Then he will be left feeling that he is either a misfit or a monster.
You may expect that I will now spell out a simple and elegant solution to this dilemma. …I don't know of any, and I suspect that there is none. When a husband and wife are both dealing with emotions that are as strong as death, how could there be? I have hesitantly made my way through this issue for decades, and I am still doing so as I write this book. It has taken a great deal of hard work. The only answer I have found is based in the last quality listed in 2 Peter 1:5-7.
…and to brotherly kindness love. (emphasis added)
Love is the English translation of the Greek word 'agape.' Paul spelled out agape love in these famous words:
Love (agape) suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
We need to ask, "What is the correct response for a man who is trying to escape from sexual sin when he feels his wife isn't responding in the way he needs? And what should he do if he feels the entire body of Christ is not giving him the support he needs?" In that situation, is he justified in being provoked?
It has been almost forty years since I left college, and I have never again found the sort of experience I found there. Trying to deal with this led to a good deal of confusion and struggle in <page 84>my life, and I could have easily been provoked. I could have thought evil of others or behaved rudely toward them. Would I have been justified if I had?
When we are faced with the temptations to blame those around us, we are at a key juncture in our lives. A good deal of our future blessings or difficulties hang in the balance of what we choose. If I had selfishly sought my own, I could have ended up pushing people away rather than reaching out to them. I might have cut myself off from the body of Christ, saying that they were just too insensitive and judgmental. Rather than esteeming them more highly than myself (Philippians 2:3) and considering how difficult it was for them to even understand my problems, I would have done exactly what I was accusing them of doing. I would have judged them.
This would have created a rift between us that would have hurt me worse than anyone else (Matthew 7:1-5). It probably would have led to spiritual starvation, and that likely would have pulled me back into sexual sin. …Yet I would have felt justified about it! After all, if people weren't meeting my needs, didn't I have an excuse for my problems?
Fortunately, God's word gave me a different path. It was to bear all things by taking responsibility to do whatever it took to find answers directly from God if necessary. It was to believe all things by trusting that He would work everything for good in spite of both my imperfections and the imperfections of those around me. It was to hope all things by trusting for His best, even when I couldn't seem to find His best. It was to endure all things by continuing to lay down my life and serve simply because it was the right thing to do.
This is what agape love looks like for a recovering sex addict in a situation where it is difficult to find answers. God rarely gives us exactly what we feel we need. We will find ourselves in circumstances where we must love people even when they seem to have let us down. We must face up to the possibility that either we misunderstand what we need or God has a different plan for meeting our need. Then we must look to Him to supply directly. (There is, of course, the possibility that someone is being emotionally abusive toward us, and we can rightly protect ourselves from that, but I have rarely found myself in that sort of relationship.)
Agape love is often far messier than the lofty words we use to describe it. It can be helpful to think of it as "decision love." It doesn't depend on feelings; we love by choosing to do the right thing, sometimes in spite of our feelings. For a recovering sex addict, this can mean treating people well even when we feel that we are being rejected or neglected.
Agape love can also mean moving past the anger we feel that others seem to have it easier than we do. Love chooses not to envy the blessings they enjoy. It rejoices in the truth that they have been spared from the iniquity we must overcome. It is happy when they can rely on the first line of defense, even if we can't – and it accepts the fact that this means that some will be unable to empathize with our struggles. And when we appear weak and foolish, love leads us to not seek to parade ourselves; it is not puffed up. It accepts, if necessary, situations in which we look less-than-stellar, and seeks to find contentment in God as we stumble through painful circumstances while finding His way.
Love does its best to work with the people God has placed in our lives. For me, this meant learning to live with others in a situation where they felt it was unwise to explore the sorts of sexual issues that threatened my life. I had to choose to love them, even while for years I seemed to be slowly losing my battle. I made mistakes and endured the gradual loss of my joy. I struggled to come to grips with emotions that refused to yield to silence. Yet when I felt abandoned, love told me not to abandon them. We were all part of the body of Christ, and we all needed to be connected with each other (1 Corinthians 12:15-26).
<page 85>I complained to God many times – and I believe I needed to, because He was the only one who could help me through my feelings. Yet even in my complaints, I had the Scriptures to tell me to continue to add virtue, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love to my faith (2 Peter 1:5-8). God's word told me to live out 1 Corinthians 13 as best I could, and this led me to find His way through the difficulties rather than to give up and give in to being a misfit or a monster.
What else made sense? Would it have taught anyone a lesson if I became angry and fell to sin? I wish I could change the way that women tend to feel about husbands who are trying to escape from sexual sin. I wish I could make sex addicts willing to do the hard work of facing their bondage and overcoming it. I wish I could impart to the entire body of Christ the wisdom we need to shatter the lies of the devil and find freedom from the sexual plague that has infected us. I wish for many changes, but I can't make them happen; only God can. All I can do is to lay down my life, share what I believe He has given me, and pray that He will do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).
There is a spirit in the world that says, "If you feel your victimhood with enough self-righteous anger, you have a right to angrily attack those who you feel are causing you pain. We see this in many groups campaigning for their rights. They take complex issues and reduce them down to the simple message, "The way you are acting hurts me, so I am going to belittle you or attack you!"
This naïve approach will bring division. It can never bring life-giving healing and transformation, because these come with the wisdom from above that is gentle, willing to yield, and full of mercy (James 3:13-18). God's people are all trying to make sense of feelings that are as strong as death in a world that bombards us with sexual insanity from every direction. Doesn't it make sense that we will sometimes be confused and make mistakes? Shouldn't we expect that we will sometimes be frightened, and some of us will be hurt as we stumblingly make our way forward?
Love is the bond of perfection that ties our lives together as we find our way (Colossians 3:14). It is a ninth line of defense. It helps us through everyone's imperfections as we together grow into maturity (Ephesians 4:14-16). Love brings God's grace into situations that could descend into discord and strife. It helps us to overcome our own sins, and it sets the stage for Him to create a hospital in which repentant sinners of all types can more easily behold His glory and be transformed.
Finally, there is a priority in agape love. We need to love God more than anyone else, even those closest to us.
If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
<page 86>Though a wife may prefer that her husband not speak to anyone about his struggles, if the only way he can bring his actions under control is to reach out to others for help, he must do so. The cost of continuing in sin is too high a price to pay, even if it is for his wife.
He may want to protect her and his children from finding out about his sins. He may fear that honesty would appear to be hatred that would destroy his family. Yet his relationship with Jesus is more important than his relationship with his wife. Even if walking with Jesus costs him his marriage, that is a cross he must be willing to bear.
This doesn't mean he automatically needs to tell the whole world about his problems. Love for his wife will cause him to seek for a way to work things out quietly with a few people, if possible. Yet even when he is being careful, there is always the risk that word of his problems will reach a wider audience. If taking this risk is the only way he can get the help he needs, love for Jesus must override love for a spouse. This is part of the cost of being a disciple.
For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it – lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, 'This man began to build and was not able to finish.' …So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.
(Luke 14:28-30, 33)
Ultimately, our life is about our relationship with God first and others second. We should try to please people (Romans 15:2-3), but sometimes we need to choose between God and them.
Doing so can be complicated. How do we love someone when our actions seem to say that we hate them? When should we make their lives easier, and when should we make them more difficult? We need the Holy Spirit to guide us.
We will make mistakes along the way. One mistake I made was to try to bury my remaining sexual issues out of fear that they might hurt my family. My emotions ended up dysregulating beneath the surface, and it took me many years to learn what had gone wrong. Fortunately, God is greater than our mistakes, and He will use even our missteps for good (Genesis 45:4-5; 50:20). I didn't get the miracle I hoped for, and I had to face my inner misfit and monster, but in the end, God took my marred clay and reshaped it from glory to glory.
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