My journey toward sexual emancipation was not quick or easy. It began with a pursuit of purity, which aligned with my pursuit of intimacy with God – who I was discovering as Love itself. But most of my progress toward this end was intellectual. I needed to sort through the confusion of messages that bombarded me from the church, from my own experience, and from culture. None of these had demonstrated a healthy model of sexual expression.
However, I believed it should be possible for a Christian to study the scripture for indications of a better way that called into question tradition, culture, and my own unsatisfying experience of repression and ignorance. I was ready to make a change in my approach to understanding and responding to my sexuality. I had tried to suppress it for years with little success. It is a true saying that you cannot defeat an enemy you don’t understand. You cannot understand an enemy that you fear and are unwilling to study with curiosity.
I did not have anyone to hold open the opportunity for me to explore and cultivate understanding of myself or my sexuality, so I had to do it myself. This in itself was the beginning of a journey to live in love and freedom.
At the same time, the promise of the Messiah that runs through the entire Bible is one of freedom for people who are slaves to their knowledge of good and evil or to the natural drives of their bodies. The truth will set you free! Jesus is the truth and his purpose in being the truth, in presenting the image of God to the world is to set people free. The good news is that the old standard of good and evil is done and everyone is now invited to walk in the spirit. I believed this, and it became my first coming out as a Christian.
Freedom is a gift that cannot be received only acquired. You are the only person who can give yourself freedom. I can tell you that it’s possible to be free, but I can’t give it to you or even force it upon you – no matter what Plato’s analogy of the cave seems to indicate. I can only be free and invite others to do the same.
The fact that my identity as a son of God is as a free human being who cannot be bound by laws, regulations, and external expectations does not mean that I simply want to respond to every craving and desire that arises within me. Aristotle described the reason for education as helping the individual tame their inner dragon and direct its energies in positive directions. A human being is a beautiful and powerful creature. Free, they can do anything imaginable, including bringing harm and destruction to themselves and creation.
Paul describes a danger for those who are set free from an external moral standard (which is a helpful guiding compass). They may just become slaves to their own passions. There is a difference between understanding and mindlessly following desires.
This has been the choice for many since the days of Adam, but Jesus offered a new way. Instead of external social standards, written moral codes, or even the conscience, he offered life in the Spirit. The life Jesus lived defied all the expectations of the religious leaders, political zealots, and the outcasts of society he shared life with. I needed to learn what this was and whether it was possible to understand something like my sexual desire, which I had always thought of as sinful and dangerous to my life as a follower of Jesus.
And so my journey began…