Like a diamond that weighs down your hand, that makes you avert your eyes for its rainbow brilliance, coming to know Jesus has continually revealed just how dingy, superficial, and man-made the things were I used to consider treasure. But God has saved me and shown me that saying yes to Jesus is far better.

It’s easy for people to misunderstand why I left a life of romantic and sexual relationships with women. They string the list of renunciations together like a necklace — no to former love, no to former sexual patterns, no to fulfilling unasked-for attractions, no to a way of life — and to some this looks like a type of adornment. To many more, a chafing collar.

My life, however, is sustained by a resounding yes, a yes that is only found in Jesus Christ. Like a diamond that weighs down your hand, that makes you avert your eyes for its rainbow brilliance, coming to know Jesus has continually revealed just how dingy, superficial, and man-made the things were I used to consider treasure.

But God has saved me and shown me that saying yes to Jesus is far better.

A Better Authenticity

Perhaps nothing carries more cultural cache today than the longing for the authentic, especially in the self. But how can we tell what our authentic self is? The answer of the culture around us is to look deep within, mining our desires. Because these spring from within us, they must be the keys to who we are. We have only one life. The greatest tragedy is to waste it by forcing ourselves into someone else’s mold.

This finds force especially in the realm of sexuality, where boundaries are cast as repressions that strangle the true self. Because I still experience but don’t pursue same-sex attractions, the world calls me foolish, like someone trying to dam the Mississippi with popsicle sticks. They see a no to those attractions as too feeble to hold back their desires.

And they’re right. That no is too weak to resist what naturally wells up within me. But the better authenticity Jesus Christ has revealed to me is strong enough to withstand, and overcome, because it woos me away.

If giving free rein to my desires was the key to life, why had it only sometimes brought me happiness? Just as often, I reaped mediocrity or pain. Contrary to what I believed, pursuing my natural desires did not create fulfillment, nor were my desires fully trustworthy just because they were, and are, “real.” An itch can be very real, yelling out to be scratched. But for some ailments, scratching just deepens the wound. A different cure must be found.

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