What is Man?

What is Man? 

“What is man that You are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4).

We are who we are in part because of where we’ve been and the experiences that may have triggered the development of same-sex attraction. For me, childhood sexual abuse and father abandonment were certainly factors that had to be dealt with and have been. Still, I struggled, and put myself in places I should never have been, as others have done. In all those places, God was “mindful” of us. We hid; we paused; we ran; we rejected grace; we fell again in sin.

I accept responsibility and the consequences for the harm I caused, but my regrets cannot become a barrier to my repentance, even if those I drove away choose never to return.

Why Not Just Give Up? 
Giving up and giving in is not an option for a Christian. It denies the reality of God’s transforming power and negates the promise that He can create in me a new heart and a new mind. My problem is my very stubborn soul.

I can’t imagine it was the Lord’s will for me to spend the years in the dark, but to find my way into the light. If I was so stubborn that public revelation and embarrassment was the only way to get there, then that was the path He had to establish for me. And, even in this, there is joy about what God can do with a repentant soul.

Why Not Walk Away? 
A “struggler” does not choose his sin. None of us wrote an essay in the fourth grade saying that what we want to be when we grow up is a same-sex struggler who lives a lifestyle that guarantees anger, frustration, isolation, loss and detachment. Some see the struggler as using the life he shows—church, family and career—to enable the life he hides. This is not true.

Digging out and dropping the double life for one of transparency has been painful, but has opened the door to help others who struggle.