I write this for all the other Black, Gay, Christians out there who do not see themselves reflected anywhere in the world in which they live. I write this for all the Black Gay Christians who want to live righteously but have a daily struggle with the flesh. I write this for all the Black Gay Christians who wrestle everyday with the wounding of their spirits as a result of their pursuit of craven lust. I want you to know that you are not alone. I am here with you. I understand that it has not been easy for you. Ours is a disenfranchised grief, one in which we cannot speak about openly without being judged, labeled, criticized and accused of being homophobic, anti-gay, self-hating and confused. This is our burden, the thorn that occupies our flesh. It is a wound that we all share, one that we look to our God to heal. But how did we get here?
For me, I grew up without a father. I grew up with a broken sense of my male identity. Even to this day I still do not know who I am as a man and struggle with interacting with other men in a non-sexual context. My fathers absence left a deep emotional scar on my psyche leading to gender confusion, role uncertainty and this deep yearning for male intimacy. Not having my father as a model of healthy masculinity, I was forced to construct the concept of masculinity from the incomplete and often times tragic stories of women who were abandoned, hurt and abused by men who possessed a wounded masculinity. Not having access to anyone who could challenge these stories and biased beliefs left me with a one-sided perspective of masculinity. I begin to see masculinity as an intruder, a destroyer, something that I must protect myself from. I was the man that I wanted to love but at the same time the man that I had to protect myself from becoming.
Hearing these stories and subsequently forming these beliefs did many things to me as a young boy searching for a positive male identity. One of the most salient things it did to me was create within me a deep curiosity about men. I wanted to know how they peed, how they talked, how they breathed, how their bodies measured up against my own. I had questions about my own maleness, questions that either went unanswered altogether or answered through the conduit of pornography. When I was younger, I would watch pornography. Moved by the stylized versions of physical intimacy and the power that masculinity had on female bodies, I felt a strange mix of fear coupled with a strange desire to conquer that fear. Where not having access to my father created a deep scar, pornography became the salt in the wound that would ultimately reinforce my same-sex attractions.
The funny thing about scars is that if they are left untreated, they metastasize into wounds and wounds left untreated slowly graduate into full blown disorders. I feel like my curiosity about healthy masculinity was left unaddressed and because of this it resulted in a deviation away from Gods intended purpose for me as a man.
I lived my life as a gay man for 14 years and within that time I sought love from other gay men, men who were just as (if not more so) broken as I was. All we could be to one another was each others destruction, human bad habits that would ultimately reinforce our false beliefs about masculinity. In many of my relationships with other men there existed a spirit of competition where I begin to question if it were possible to build something with someone who only saw me as an enemy to their own existence. Such adversarial relationships seemed counterproductive to the mission of growth and sustainability I sought in love. In other relationships, insecurity and this overwhelming need to assert dominance and articulate power became a major bone of contention that ultimately led to the untimely dissolution of our bonds.
After many failed relationships, I gave up on finding love with men. Enter my hoe phase. During this phase, I quickly discovered that the life is full of men who use lust as a tool to avoid intimacy. For years I used lust as a way of avoiding pain, deceiving myself into thinking that I could engage in casual affairs without consequence to my spirit. At first I felt good, I felt satisfied, content, powerful, relieved. And then my spirit would convict me. I would break out in tears at the most inopportune times. I would cry and wonder why I was crying. I did not realize that my behavior was having an effect on my spirit that I didn’t quite understand. After we would cum, they would go and I would be left feeling so alone. The love and closeness that I wanted eluded me because all we were to each other were ways to avoid the love we wanted. Secretly I did not trust men. I did not trust their intentions. And while I wanted closeness with them, I realized that it was not safe to love them. Many of them were running from the same demons I was running from and a man only symbolized a new way to hurt. Men were both the cause of my affliction and the cure and many times being with them was either a matter of how much I wanted love or how much I wanted a pain that was compatible with my own preexisting damage. Many of the men I chose had one thing in common: feelings of unworthiness. Many times I chose them because they were my mirror reflecting back to me my own inherent feelings of unworthiness as a result of my fathers abandonment.
I can sit up here and say that it was the trauma of not having a loving father that was solely responsible for my convicted spirit but truth be told it was not. I was raised as a Christian. I was brought up to speak the beautiful language of redemption. My foundation was rooted on the tenets of sacrificial love, selflessness and purpose. After examining scripture, researching and reviewing the bible, God’s love letter to mankind, I learned that being gay is not Gods will for my life. It runs contrary to his initial purpose for me which is to be fruitful and become many, fill the earth and subdue it. With gay life often times you have to deny your spiritual side for the sake of satisfying your flesh. Your connection with God is the first thing to go because secretly you have been told that God hates you so you think a relationship with him is impossible, if not dangerous to your identity. But this is a lie. God does not hate gay men. He calls them in from their destruction. He tells them they can be more than just a collection of emptiness. He tells them “yes come as you are but don’t stay there because there is more to you than just cumshots and regret”. He dignifies you by His belief in your more. Too many times we as gay men are sold a faulty bill of goods. We are lied to and told that we were born this way, that there is no hope for us. That this is who we are and there is nothing we can do to change that. But this is not who we are. We have made an identity out of our wounds. So many of us are operating from wounded versions of ourselves thinking that this is who we are when in actuality it is not. It is the broken us, the traumatized us, the us that lives blinded by self-deception and familiar confusion. But God says we are more than just the parts that hurt. We are more than just broken comfort zones that only work to keep our spirits in bondage to destruction. We are reflections of Gods grace and carriers or divine purpose. This is our calling, our true purpose in life.
While in the life, I was lost. I wish I could say that I am not anymore but I am still lost, trying to find my way completely free of the life. So many of us are lost and yet it is familiar so we stay because we feel trapped. We feel hopeless, like to leave would mean loneliness and for many of us we are afraid of dying alone. We are afraid of having no one. So we stay in a life that is killing us because it is all we know. We have invested years, time, energy and resources into our confusion and it has become a misguided form of security for us. All I know is that I don’t want this life anymore. Being gay just doesn’t feel good to me anymore. It feels lonely, empty, devoid of the genuine closeness and intimacy that I want to experience with a man. I want platonic intimacy. Something that doesn’t constantly put my life in jeopardy. I don’t think of gay as a sickness I think it is a natural consequence of unnatural circumstances and what I mean by that is this: it is not natural not to have a mother and a father who genuinely cares for you. It is not natural not to have genuine family support. Many gay men and women alike are simply seeking the family closeness they never had growing up and are using sexuality as a means to get it. At the root of many of our orientations is our desire to reclaim that fundamental level of developmental closeness we did not receive during our formative years. I know for a fact that my hunger for male closeness is a direct result of my fathers absence. Deviation is usually the result of deficiency as every deviation seeks to restore some part of itself that was missing.
For those out there who are struggling with their faith, who are being convicted in their spirit daily as God tries to call them back into the fold, please know that you are not alone. There is a reason why none of the boys worked out. There is a reason why you can’t feel completely whole when God doesn’t pour from out your mouth. You are a spiritual being having a human experience. You can never feel completely whole living out of alignment with your purpose. For me, my purpose is to praise God, to be a living reflection of His will. The late nights, early mornings spent chasing after strange penis, the indiscriminate sex with strangers, the indifference, the danger, it is out of alignment with my well-being. Not to mention it is exhausting. Being a gay man is exhausting and it is wearing on my spirit. Everyday I pray for relief and rescue and while I wait for answers while working out my faith, I want those out there to know that I am praying for you too. You are not alone. I love you and God loves you too. We can be victorious!
