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Identity, Pleasure, and Fulfillment
I'm bewildered by Lady GaGa's popularity. For one thing, my more...conservative side recoils at her outlandish and garish performances, not to mention her appearance. To be honest, that part of me prefers the way she looked when she was in high school.
Another thing that bugs me is the "inspiration" she's become for people who are "labeled as freaks by society", particularly the gay community. Now, truthfully, she is. Her quirkiness, her creativity, I mean if you want to see someone who's busted out of their shell, seems like you needn't look any further than GaGa!
Plus, I remember her saying in an interview that she dresses the way she does so that her fans can feel ok for being different too. Enter your average gay guy, starved for acceptance from society as a whole, picked on by your ultra-conservatives who want to put him in Hell before he even gets there, enjoying recent victories but still feeling like he's swept into a battle for his way of life, for his very IDENTITY.
Hmm...perhaps that's the wrong analogy. I should personalize this completely, since I am speaking in first person, after all. For me, GaGa stands at a door holding an invitation for me to "come out of the closet", be free, be open, be "who I really am."
But who am I, really? Am I the sum of my desires? Am I me in my best moments or my worst, or both? What are my best and worst moments? These philosophical questions eat away at millions of people. Probably why most of us are content to be guided by the whims of emotion, ever eager to pursue whatever "makes us happy."
As a Christian, that's not enough for me. I mean, I want happiness, but I want God more. If I, in essence, make my own happiness my highest pursuit, it becomes my god, my idol if you will. It surely is a poor substitute for God (if He is Who the Bible claims He is). God, being the source of all good, is also the source of all happiness. So if I give up what makes me happy (when He says that what makes me happy is a sin), I have to trust Him to somehow make me happy in a different way.
That's where I, as a homosexual, said, "Wait! These desires make me, and the people I share them with, happy. When I feel another man's body against mine, when we kiss and fondle, I feel sooooo good. Sheer pleasure races up and down my back and wraps my mind and heart in a warm blanket. When I was with my last boyfriend, we would spend hours just singing songs to each other over the phone, and I was ready to be loyal to him...how can these things be evil? How can You, God, ask me to give up what makes me happy, if You're the source of all Goodness, including happiness?"
The reality has set in on me: all those happy, pleasurable things are good in themselves. We human beings are born to love one another, on different levels. We're born to make friends, find lovers, and give of ourselves to each other, in laughter, in affection, in unselfish sacrifice, and when we're married, in sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy, as I've learned, is not just physical, and even then, not just obvious sexual pleasure and stimulation. Sexual intimacy is also physical in the hugging, the embracing, the caressing of skin and stroking of hair. Sexual intimacy is emotional intimacy, mental intimacy, and spiritual intimacy (if you don't believe in the spiritual aspect, ok. Have it your way).
That...that intimacy is POWERFUL. Powerful as it is, however, it's really only a finite symbol of the intimacy that deep down, we crave to have with God. Sadly, at this point I bring no empirical facts to prove it, only the evidence I've seen in myself and others: Those who have given up everything for God, get it back from Him in the ways He wants them to enjoy it. The ways they enjoy everything turn out to be better than what they had before.
As a bisexual man, this meant that the only sexuality I'm allowed to enjoy is that which pulled me toward the opposite sex, according to God's laws. Despite the debate that rages over what His laws actually mean, I am convinced they are clear: Homosexuality, if nothing else, in the form of satisfying the desires inherent to it, IS undeniably FORBIDDEN. No fantasies are allowed to be indulged in. No romantic relationships with your own gender, and no sexual acts with them whatsoever.
"But I'm born this way!" someone reading this would tell me. You may very well be right. Honestly, I'm undecided on whether we who call ourselves "gay, bi, lesbian, pansexual," or whatever, are really, truly born this way. For me, I may very well be. I'm honestly inclined to believe some of us may be "born this way." If you're born this way, it's who you are, right? Right?
Not necessarily. You may be born that way, but it's not who you are meant to be. As a Christian, I believe our homosexual desires, whatever their natural cause, are spiritual symptoms of our fallen nature. We are all born with sexual desires, and so many of us fall prey to innumerable perversions of that desire: *****, necrophilia, adultery, fornication, masturbation, rape, bestiality, and homosexuality. I don't include bi or pansexual since those are just ways of saying you can find anyone of any gender attractive, which includes homosexual desires indirectly.
Thus, we have God-given desires and pleasures that are twisted and used in ways that are God-forbidden. Thus, you and I, people with deeply ingrained homosexual desires, must decide whether we're going to give up to God the enjoying and fulfilling of those desires. We must decide whether we'll agree with God and call them and the actions they produce, a sin, an offense to a good and holy God.
Now here's the real test of faith: in giving them up, you and I must decide if we're willing to trust God to give us the pleasure and intimacy we seek on His terms, further trusting that it will be better than what we once clung to.
On a related note, if you don't even believe in the God I'm talking about, or if you have a different interpretation of the Scriptures that I use to support everything I just wrote, then obviously we're gonna be at an impasse. You may think I've lost my mind. You may be convinced I'm gonna start advocating (even indirectly) the stoning of adulterers and homosexuals. That was a different time, and I still ask God sometimes what He meant by dealing out such harsh and unrelenting judgments on sin.
Nevertheless, that's not where we are. We live in the age of God's grace, where we have a thousand and one opportunities to give Him a chance, to try doing things His way instead of ours, and to see just how good He will be if we let go of everything we think we know. Ultimately, everyone who rejects God and His Son Jesus Christ, is basically saying, "You're full of it. I know better than you what I need out of life. I know better than you how to take care of myself, and your way isn't it for me."
So be it. It's your choice. Always has been. That's the gift that was given you, to use or abuse at your own discretion. The worst lie, of course, is the one that says, "I just can't help it. I can't change." You and I can always change. First, we must want to, and then, we must look to One Who is willing to help us change, once we agree we're wrong and start living life on His terms.
Think about it. Please.
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