Fool for Christ

How do I attempt to explain to someone that I once was gay and am no longer? That I am now married to a woman and have a baby?

Culturally speaking I am a fool. I am lying to myself and to my wife and to my daughter. I must be this terrible person stringing my wife along, lying to everyone I know and to myself as well. The voice of culture states that eventually I will come out of the closet and that I will admit my sexuality, and they will applaud my relinquishing my “false identity as a so called straight man”. My so called unhappiness and unfullfillment will lead me out of where I am at present and into the world’s standard of living. Some people looking at my life now, will state that I really wasn’t gay to begin with, that I was probably bi-sexual or just experimenting.

All of this is expressed without the full knowledge of my life and what has happened in my life. These are generalized statements which are made without even knowing me and how I think or feel These are judgment statements, definitely not words of acceptance and diversity, which are used so much in today’s statements of human rights.

Having just returned from a marriage conference which was designed specifically for those whose marriages were impacted by homosexuality in some way, I was reminded of our foolishness in the eyes of the culture of today.

1 Corinthians 1:27 says: “But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty;”

To the world marriages which stay together even though impacted by someone who struggles with homosexuality is foolish. The husband or wife (the one who doesn’t struggle with ‘this’ issue) is considered a door mat, naïve, ignorant, stupid and weak, yet God uses the weak things to be strong. He uses the foolish things to confound the wise.
Sadly this is a view that is becoming increasingly more welcomed in the body of Christ. Welcoming the easy way out, as divorce rate rises way past the world’s statistics. Is there hope? Do we believe that God is a God of impossibilities and do we believe that He can do anything? Many marriages have survived the homosexual struggle of a spouse, as they submit their marriage and lives into the healing hands of God, rather than through the eyes of the world. Many lives are being transformed and made new. These lives are changing because of their radical belief in a God who does not leave them undone, empty handed or alone. Trust is being rebuilt in the arms of hope and this takes strength, courage and much submission to the Lord Jesus, rather than trusting in ourselves and our own strength.

This past weekend I met men and women fighting for their lives and for their marriages. I saw and heard them, desperate and needy, pouring out their lives at the foot of the cross and in the body of Christ. The Lord God Almighty heard their cries, wiped their tears and soothed their hearts. These men and women may have looked foolish, weak and sickly dysfunctional to the world standard of strength, but what I saw was genuine strength, courage, honor and love. I saw a community that couldn’t care less of what the world thought, but radically pressed in to serve one another in prayer and love. I saw beauty in the ashes of many couples.

2 Corinthians 12:10 states, “that is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I am thankful that I have this weakness, that I will be insulted by the world, that it will be hard sometimes and I will face plenty of persecution from the world’s eyes, for when I am weak, then I am strong. This foolish standard of pressing in to Christ even as I struggle with same gender issues, this embracing my ‘true identity’ as a male made in the very image of God, designed to walk with my wife as two people united to show the world the character of God is good. Very good. I do it with joy, and with the utmost of gratitude to Christ who was the ultimate fool.