The "best seller" on this blog is my essay, "I was in Hell." It still draws folks in from various sites around the net - including that link that I cited earlier, the Yahoo search on "Episcopal Hell". Since 8 August when that was published, I feel that, boosted in no small part by the prayers of those of who who read it, some major changes have happened: I've moved out of San Francisco to a new place. I've refocused a good bit of my time an energy on not earning a huge salary, but rather on just making ends meet. I've felt more as if I am finally willing to "grow up" than at any time in my previous 39 1/2 years.
While my commitment to live chastely is stronger now than it was those few months ago, I know how close I daily walk to sin. And while my commitment to live chastely is stronger now than it was those few months ago - I know how often the evil one trips me up with sins unrelated to chastity. In other words, a person who struggles with one set of sins is no more nor no less a sinner than a person who struggles with another set of sins. I need to seek out, daily, the Will of God for my life, and I need to remind myself, daily, of my sins of pride and anger, of impatience and judgement.
I've been working on clarifying my own thoughts on these "issues" even as I was approached to have my "In Hell" essay published (most likely coming out in May, pardon the pun). My ontology notes about "being" gay are part of this process. Yesterday, in three different contexts, I found myself saying "just because one wants to do something is no reason to do it." One context was an email I recieved from an e-stranger, I hope now an e-friend. The writer asked how anyone could convert to Orthodoxy when it discriminated against gays. Ok. A loaded question, and it sounds too confrontational when it's place there, all by itself, without the rest of the email. But there it is.
So I took the day to reply - mostly typing notes at work - and then shaped them all up into what I think is my thoughts, now. I've edited it so it no longer reads like an email... I prefaced it with this caveat: I'm not a theologian, this isn't "official teaching". I urged the writer to consult with a local Orthodox Priest if anything I said sounded too wacko. You may see things with which you disagree. Replies welcomed. Prayers begged...
It's not easy to address one thing, one "issue" in Orthodoxy. The question of sexuality touches on the Church, the Holy Mysteries, the Scripture, the Saints... I converted to Orthodoxy two years ago, after nearly 20 years as a nominal (at times) or inactive (at other times) or very active (some few times) Episcopalian. During that same 20 years I was also quite active in the gay-rights movement. My big stumble, on the way in to Orthodoxy was what to do about my lifestyle. How could I, who identified himself as gay, find a way in this Church?
A number of things did it for me. But nearly every step on the way in has required a redefinition - or a rethinking. The teachings of the Church are so different that, at times, it seems they just don't fit in to the categories of the questions we ask. At times it seems - rightly so, I think - as if this is a totally different religion than anything "christian" to which I'd been exposed before.
One thing I had to adjust to was the Orthodox teaching that sin is not a breaking of a law, per se, but rather a sickness we all have: we get it from our parents. Laws are hard to keep, I confess, but living into this other teaching has been even harder. At times I wish there was a list of dos and don'ts. When I get the flu, and get all congested, nothing tastes right, I can't talk, I don't feel social, and sometimes just normal sounds feel as if they are causing pain. My perceptions of things is edited, if you will, by my sickness: I can't trust my perceptions to be the "real thing" even as 'real" as they seem to me. The same is true of Orthodoxy's teaching on sin. We can not trust our perceptions - even our emotions and desires are disordered. We come to Church for healing.
What that calls into question is, of course, the idea that one's feelings may or may not be right, may are may not be "God given". In other words before I can ask such questions as "What is good?" "What is whole?" or "What is right?" I need to answer this question: am I qualified to answer?
I had to answer that last question with a profound "no" after a whole lifetime of saying "yes, I am qualified." It's an American Truism that we can answer such Questions ourselves. It's an Orthodox truism that we can sometimes - but not others - and it is also true that no matter what the answer, we should run it past the Church to make sure we're right.
That's where I found myself: because an answer may be right or wrong - why risk being wrong when there is a ready resource? I had lots of desires, lots of wants, lots of plans, lots of ideas.... the Church asked me to double and triple check them against Her doctrines. Did I dare?
Now... is homosexuality a sin? Well, the Church doesn't teach that it is: for all that someone may quote Leviticus or Paul, others are very right to note that the other commandments - sometimes in the same verses - are not kept: but we can not read the Bible alone, in a personal vacuum, as we must read it as the Church teaches it. The Church does teach that sexual acts committed outside of the Mystery of Marriage are sins, yes, but being attracted to people of the same sex? That's part of the fallen human condition. Same-sex attraction is not a sin. It is a temptation - just as much as any other temptation in this society of physical temptations. But the Church asks us who live with same-sex attraction to say "no" to that desire, just as She asks those who are married to say no to desire for parties other than their spouse. It doesn't matter who you are attracted to - if it is not within the bounds of matrimony, it is a sin. That may sound as if I'm playing semantics. But I'm not.
Giving in to temptation is a sin however. We are taught to struggle with sin, to wrestle with it, and by God's grace, to win. But the giving in is the bad thing. And yes, sexual acts committed outside the bounds of Holy Matrimony are a sin.
In today's world, however, we've come to classify sexual attraction as a quality of "being". We refer to people as "straight" or "gay" as if it were "what they are". That's not a position the Church holds. People are either male or female. After that, there are moral choices to make. I have to say, in all honesty, that this teaching was harder than the "sin" teaching for me to deal with. I mean, in this society we "really are" what we say we are. I've had 20 years of activism to deal with, many many friends and a cadre of "exes" to deal with. "I am straight" or "I am gay" are, in today's world nearly doctrinal statements. I've said them too, as if they are doctrinal statements, defining folks by what I assumed they did. We modern folks rightly say that neither St Paul nor Moses would have known "being gay" as we know it today. Does that mean we are right? Do our current constructs of sex and orientation (50 years old or less) outweight the last 6000+ years of human experience, as well as the last 2000+ years of Church teaching? I think not.
This issue of "being" is seen not only in how we speak about it, but how many (who I would classify as homophobic) react to the issue itself: they act as if, on the moral scale, there is murder, genocide, global thermonuclear destruction and then gay sex. They talk about things "those people" can't do in Church - and I fear that you may hear some Orthodox people using the same language and for this I need to ask your forgiveness. Yet, in the Church there is no scale as such - neither are there "gay people". It's not a case of a person "being a sin". But teaching that something (any thing at all) is sinful is not the same as discrimination. I'm not sure how it could be seen as a discrimination issue - by which I usually mean oppression. To me it seems more oppressive to abandon a person to their own desires and longings and say, "That's ok, dear". That's what happened to me in the liberal churches. It was "ok" - go have fun. One (Episcopal) vestry member even opined that we needed to come up with ceremonies blessing gay men with their multiple partners. Her words were, "We need to find a way to bless what it is you do."
It really is a world-view question or a paradigm shift: this view of sexuality. It is a twist I never expected to encounter: rather than tell me I was wrong, sinful, evil, the Church told me to change my filters, get new glasses. The Church said I wasn't looking at things right. Of course not - I was using my own internal senses as a guide, unguarded, unfiltered.
The Trinity requires us to live in open communion with each other, to stay away from unjust acts, to work against injustice in a non-judgmental way. To many in today's world it is unjust to say "you can't do that". To the Orthodox it is unjust to encourage someone to live driven by desires that pull one into immorality. It is unjust to say, "that's ok" when it's not.
In that Trinitarian light, judgmentalism also must be avoided. My own experience as a man living with same sex attraction in the Orthodox Church is that I've never been accepted more warmly, from friends and strangers, to my priests, to my fellow praying folks. There is a warm love there that I've never felt before - and that after 20 years in churches as well as various newage groups. We are all sinners: if I think I have any room to judge anyone, I only need to look at my own life to see something just as bad. The sickness of sin takes root in pride, or anger or judgment or greed or whatever. We all fall - even if the fall is only judging others for their faults. As we pray during Lent, "Grant me to see my own faults and not condemn my brother". No one has judged me for "being gay", neither can I judge anyone.
Likewise the church has always spoken out against discrimination in the real sense: there is no reason to deny housing or medical benefits or jobs to persons based on their situation.
Our culture doesn't like Rules. We hate to be told "must" "have" "shouldn't" and "don't". In some ways that is our cultural cross to bear. We picked it up, I think, with the 1960s stuff. The culture has removed rules at nearly every turn and insisted instead on "rights" and "desires" and "personal space". My short experience in Orthodoxy has been a removal of those things, a slow stripping down until I was left as a Person in God's Image. That's the only way I could come (or stay) in the Church. But, to return to the sickness analogy, I was the sick one and God was the Doctor and the Church was the Hospital: it wasn't up to me to dictate the treatment to the experts.
My own experience was fleeing from theological liberalism (no virgin birth, no resurrection, etc) and realizing that the same liberalism that allowed for me to be a sexually active non-married person also allowed for tossing out the other parts of the faith. If I wanted the faith of the last 2000 years it also came with sexual morality. I didn't see it as discrimination but as rules of the road.
Makes a lot of sense to me, Huw. Thanks for sharing your struggles so openly. I'm glad your "I was in Hell" post is being published and pray that your words will be a light and inspiration for others.
I have spent almost half my adult life gay and half desperately trying not to be. I got 'lucky', or prayers were answered, and I met a man I could love. However, when I returned to the Church after years of being a lesbian I was given very little leeway - homosexuality, I was told (by other laity) is a sin against nature which is worse than a sin within it. Eventually I was left to get on with recovering by the action of one of the dearest and kindest hierarchs of recent times. However, while I agree with you about any sexual activity outside marriage being a sin, have you ever dealt with the idea of sins within and against nature? I'm not within reach of a Bible and don't have the exact quotation to hand but it's St Paul and, I think, Romans.
Huw
Thank you for this post. It is quiet, gentle, faithful, truthful, and necessary.
Havdala
Every sin is a sin against nature. Our true nature is designed for theosis - coming into union with God. Any and every sin stands in the way of that, be it homosexual sex or being crabby with your kids. That's part of what Huw is talking about in referring to sin - all sin - as a sickness. It's a defect of nature; we are damaged goods.
The idea that homosexuality is uniquely a "sin against nature" is really a way of minimizing heterosexual sin, by suggesting that lust, fornication, and adultery are somehow "minor" because the sexual desires that tempt us to heterosexual sin are perfectly healthy, but homosexual desires are unhealthy and unnatural. But if heterosexual desire (outside the sacrament of matrimony) were perfectly healthy, it would not be sinful to yield to it! God does not withhold from us that which is healthy and makes for wholeness; He warns us against those things which harm us and keep us from health and wholeness.
The Biblical reference you were looking for is Romans 1:26.
Christopher, I think you make a good point that "Every sin is a sin against nature," but it is important not to throw out the concept entirely. It has a long history, both in Holy Scripture and our theological tradition (East and West). I don't think it needs to imply any minimizing of heterosexual sin.
great post. you are an example to me of living a life in full view of His holy light.
Dear friends - thank you all for these comments.
Havdala - I'm torn, here. On the one hand I agree with Christopher that all sins are sins against the nature God created us for. On the other hand, I know that the Greek in that passage in Romans is very clear: para-phusis - against the natural order.
I remember 20 years ago, reading John McNeil's "The Church and the Homosexual" and remember a long (long long) discursus on the "real meaning" of those words. A google on those words will turn up several more such writings. What I took away from that was a rationalization that I lived with for 20 years.
What I bring back to that now... well, yes. My physical nature (my phusis) shouldn't be attracted to men. Nor should I, given the natural order of things, want to do what I often want to do. Yet I do. My desires go against my nature. Also "para phusis" might be seen as using my phisical self for acts for which it was decidedly not designed.
Yet, to return to Chrisopher's point, just because we have a category in which to place this sin, doesn't place it in a different ranking, I think. I confess my lust when I confess. I confess my "oggling" (sp?) as Fr V said to me once in his Russian accent. Some part of me may be "aimed the wrong way", but my confession sounds much like any other man's, I think. I don't think a sin against is any worse than a sin "with" nature. Indeed, in the listing of sins that are para phusis, Paul admits a whole bunch of things... "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenantbreakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful..." (I love that line... "to do those things which are not convenient")
But still, I take comfort in Paul's teaching which he continues on that theme in Chapter 2 where he says, "Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things." (vs 1). God judges and we may even know the judgment of God (vs2) but we who judge others are thus guilty of the same thing (vs3).
That was probably the best essay I've ever read on this subject. Thank you for sharing your heart and your knowledge!
As always, Huw, very good. I know many people who would take solace in your words and example. I hope the publication of your original essay reaches their ears and helps us all to see how to better serve Christ.
Though I understand scripture differently, Huw, I am quite taken by your eloquent, winsome, and profoundly candid words -- thank you. May God continue to bless you.
Dear Hugo - welcome! I pray that I'm not saying anything different from the way the Church reads the Bible, although I'm nearly always wrong. I ask your prayers.
I don't think I've ever been called winsome - although my homiletics professor called my preaching "coy and fetching". Go figure.
I can only confirm, though with a different suitcase full of experiences, that coming to Orthodoxy is a jettisoning of rules and formula and a taking on of health and wholeness.
One day I will finally be made well. Even now I know there's medicine to be had, but can not yet take it.
Pray for me a sinner, envious of the bounty you now know.