Aspects of the identity issue
His problems in this regard center in two areas of life. First, he experiences great discomfort or awkwardness in the company of men, particularly groups of men and particularly in unstructured situations. He always feels as though he is outside their world looking in. Often he doesn’t share the same interests that other men have, and this sustains his feeling of always standing apart from them.
Second, the identity issue is manifested in his belief and frequently in his experience that in many areas he cannot do the things that men do. Not just in the company of other men, but in the family and elsewhere he feels a great inadequacy in exercising the masculine virtues, particularly taking initiative and exercising authority. This may find its expression in his assuming a very passive role in life or, as it does in some men, in his taking on a brittle type of assertiveness that tries to cover up feelings of weakness and insecurity.
Obviously these characteristics can be present in men whose sexual orientation is heterosexual, but there is a fundamental difference in the nature of this shortcoming in the two types of men. In the man with a heterosexual orientation, these insecurities rest on an often subconscious belief: “I am inadequate as a man.” In the homosexually oriented man, however, the underlying belief is “I am not a man.”
Most boys and many men struggle long and hard to prove – largely to themselves – that they are adequate as men. Most of us who grew up homosexually-oriented gave up that struggle early on. Believing that we never really could be men, we sought another man’s manhood.
Whenever I am asked to describe what happens in the healing of the homosexual man, I address the three areas just described: behavior, attractions, and identity. I explain that the struggler can expect to achieve total or near total victory in the area of behavior, a significant if not complete shift in the direction of his sexual attractions, and he can become totally comfortable and at peace with his male identity – his manhood. I am convinced that such change is possible for any man who truly seeks it and who surrenders his life and his sexuality to Jesus.
The centrality of identity
Although the healing of the homosexual man is in many ways an indirect process – flowing out of the broader changes in his spiritual life – almost every homosexual overcomer is going to have to confront all three elements of the problem. He will not recover until behavior, attractions, and identity have all been dealt with and to some extent transformed. Although his natural inclination may be to focus on behavior and attractions – because this is where he feels the most distress – I believe that the richest fruit will be borne in his life if he focuses most strongly (and early on) in the area of identity.
This is true for two reasons. First, identity is more amenable to direct attack than behavior or attractions. I have yet to meet the man who one day said, “Today I am going to start being attracted to women rather than to men,” and, barring the rare bona fide miracle, found that anything really changed. As for behavior, although trying to be obedient will always remain an essential part of the healing process, a change in behavior without a corresponding deep change in identity may be little more than “white knuckle” abstinence. Identity, on the other hand, as I will show, can be changed significantly through a program of conscious choices and specific actions.
The second reason the change process can be furthered so significantly by dealing with the identity issue is because a man’s incomplete male identity is what drives and directs homosexual behavior and attractions. This broken or incomplete male identity is the steering mechanism that gives direction to our sexual attractions and the engine that powers our sinful behavior. Let’s look at this in some detail.
Seeking the other
With respect to attractions, the essence of sexual attraction seems to be “differences” or “otherness.” Certainly for the heterosexually-oriented man, some sexual attraction may lie in his knowledge that his penis interacting with a woman’s vagina can bring extraordinary pleasure. But we all know that there is so much more to sexual attraction than this. What about a woman’s breasts? Why are they an object of sexual attraction to a man? These are simply organs that are there to nurse a baby; they have no direct sexual function. What about her hips, the roundness and smoothness of her skin? What about even some things that she does that are intentional, such as letting her hair grow long or wearing lipstick?
Why should these things stir up sexual attractions in most men? There may be a number of reasons. A woman’s body – her breasts, her roundedness – can stir up a man’s desire to be nurtured; her differences may intrigue his appetite for mystery; her vulnerability might trigger his desire for conquest. All of these make sense, but what most draws man to woman sexually is that she is “other.” She possesses things that a man does not have in himself.
Those characteristics that a woman has that a man doesn’t have, that symbolize woman, draw him to her. They express the feminine and they draw his masculine. The masculine part of a man longs for that other. Looking at it spiritually, the man may be longing for completion, for restoration of that part of him that was removed when woman was created. Or perhaps because male and female together can reflect God more ably than man or woman alone – we were both created in God’s image – a man’s longing may be for a completion that more fully reflects his Creator.
I am a man, and I look to find my completion in woman. But what if the man does not have the inner sense that he is a man? Will he experience the same attractions to a woman? Will she be his “other?” No, and this is critical. If he feels that he is not complete as a man, his first longing will be not for women but for complete manhood; he will be drawn to the masculine in other males. This will be his “other.” This will be his missing rib. This will be his means of attaining completion. It follows, then, that the development of our manhood – finding completion in ourselves – will do great things both to decrease our same-sex attractions and to start drawing us sexually to women.
