Post 84

Post 84   Hello again

My contributions have been directed primarily to men who find their same-sex erotic responsiveness incompatible with their deeply held moral and religious commitments. I have learned ideas and strategies that can support men wishing to understand better why their inclinations persist and how they can work to find a new, better-suited personal reality. Following I share a few ideas.

While I possess an elbow and choose to use it when I extend my arm, I am not my elbow. The same agency and personal choice applies to my entire body, my fingers, eyes, ears, and brain. The controller or “I” is my mind and spirit. I can enhance my body or destroy it by what I choose to eat or drink. Likewise, what I choose to think about and do or avoid doing can be harmful or helpful. We need know that we are each “driving our own bus” and in charge of our trip and its final destination. We need to be grateful for and in tune with our spirit.

            We live in an ordered world. There are laws both physical and spiritual.  We cannot break either without incurring negative results. Generally, we put ourselves at risk and break ourselves to the extent we ignore or break these laws. Learning physical and spiritual laws and abiding by them provides each of us our greatest personal liberty and freedom.

We are created with a conscience, a sense of right and wrong. That prompt can be helpful when attended to and not ignored. But squelched too often, we lose even our ability to recognize it.

Life is about growth – from beginning to end. Each day is preparation for the next. I am persuaded that life is purposeful, that there are critical things to be accomplished during our brief mortality. We can overcome mistakes as we subscribe to truths and values.

Secular academia relies primarily upon the experimental method: seeing is believing. Proof must be gained through our five senses to be considered reliable. However, people of faith share their conviction that believing brings an ability to see and understand certainties not otherwise readily apparent or previously known. Faith can bring about miraculous results.

When we do good we feel good. When we do something wrong, we want to run and hide from our actions, to not be found culpable. We hope and expect that our tie to these acts will never be found. But our thoughts, the desires of our heart, and our behavior is recorded perfectly and indelibly in our brain. In the beginning, commandments were given, and it is folly to expect no final reckoning. We must not live our lives oblivious to the reality of ultimate, inescapable moral consequences.

Having grown up gay and now having been married, helped raise our nine children, and lived a new reality for over sixty years, I have hoped to bring encouragement to others desirous of greater personal peace. I studied psychology, human development, and family relationships. I studied principles of learning and various forms of therapeutic intervention. I read many books about homosexuality written by both straight and gay authors. I worked over ten years to organize the many things I learned, and wrote, with my wife our book, Homosexuality Reframed: Growth Beyond Gay. Interestingly, the best advice I can give to those who grew up gay and desire change is to be found in its afterword. I reported, “Paradoxically, the greatest gains came when I stopped trying to not be gay and, instead, focused on following the two great commandments: to love God with all my heart, might, mind, and soul, and to love myself and my fellowman. And that has made all the difference.” I finally avoided the hole in the sidewalk by “walking down a different street.”