Coming Out, What's It All About?

[HKHaugan]

Epi.20 Coming Out of the Closet

One of the punishments I used to hear from some kids in my early years was that if they were bad, their parents would lock them in the closet until they said they were sorry. My parents never did that to me, thank the Lord. Closets are dark and darkness induces fear and fear makes us extremely aware of our aloneness. Fear causes us to bury a lot of stuff in our minds and hearts, most of which lie beyond our present memory and recollection. Any closed-in space that inhibits sight and movement brings anxious thought, images of terror and frantic reaction.

In the old school days of the 30’s and 40’s it was not unusual for a teacher to punish a disruptive child by sitting them in a corner of the back of the room facing the wall. It was not only a physically external picture of isolation but a separating, condemning and internal feeling of worthlessness. Branded. As you grow up there are all kinds of socially isolating techniques used by peers to set a standard of acceptability and rejection. Actually, it never ends. There is a youthful evaluation that gets more sophisticated as you get older and advance into adulthood. From high school taunting to the professional in’s and out’s of office politics, it continues to and after the grave. No matter what area of human interchange, we face standards to test our internal processing and our external behavior. This is the pressure placed on our individual aloneness.

Aloneness is the deepest and most profound experience in our conscious self awareness. It is the minefield influencing every step we take. Yes, being alone in our bodies is something everyone knows. We share it with all human beings. Is it any wonder the Lord God said it was not good for the man to be alone (Gen.2:18)? Most every piece of literature you read points to aloneness as a prompting factor in man’s struggle for purpose, significance, self-worth and relationship. All human endeavor is driven by the need to overcome aloneness and its fear. This is the closet out of which we all come. There is no exception. Everyone is coming out of this closet. Look at this song by the Weeping Willows:

"Looking For A Home"

Behind my smile there is a lot of pain
a forest fire of lust runs trough my veins
my soul burns with a hunger for revenge
I'm better at making love than making friends

I claim to know the real thing from the fake
'cause I've already made the big mistake
But when she flutters back into my mind

I wave her off Like a buzzin fly 

Watch me as I mingle in the bar
I'm searching for a girl who'll scratch my scars
A little bit of me is more than much
I'm like a junkie hooked on human touch

I've learned to walk trough life unsatisfied
I've learned to stow away the hurt inside
I'm like a spider clinging to a reed
'cause I don't get the things I really need

I hope one day big love comes tumbling down
Well, if it won't I know here I'm bound
The gravel road of love seems might long
and hell is here on earth when you're alone

Ooooo I'm just looking for a home
Ooooo I'm just looking for a home

But the question is this: what is the best way to find a home, to ‘come out’ of aloneness? What and who do I choose that I can trust with my every next step? So much of my life has been lived from one choice to the other hoping they have been more right than wrong. My deepest needs are being right, being recognized, to round-trip love, so that what goes out comes back and be loved in return and that it feels right. The fear is extending one’s aloneness and not getting a return.

Fear is the darkness in the closet of self-revelation. It’s the curtain between what lies deep within and our willingness to face it and deal with it. Our ultimate fear is being alone.

So, when someone says, “I’ve decided it’s time for me to come out of the closet.” Exactly what does that mean? First, do they really understand what they are coming out of? What’s the closet they’ve been in? It usually refers to some kind of attraction and the immediate assumption that it should be expressed sexually. But where does that idea come from? Just what is its source? To have that assumption is learned from somewhere. Afraid to ask the question, due to the prideful fear of exposing one’s self as personally lacking, one listens around for some connection that might explain what and why the attraction causing some physical reaction, aloneness is awakened to a need within.

This moment is where the local ‘know-it-all’ gives his or her seemingly authoritative view and it might be allowed to sink in. Then, along the way, others saying similar things are accepted as their ‘expertise.’ Their defining experience plus a need for acceptance and recognition, close the gap. A connection is made. They are the combined authorities. Now add some other factors, emotional pain because of an unloving mother or father, an abusive family member, a local person who exploited what they sensed was your quest for friendship. The moment of personal choice came and the exploiter was given an opportunity that was not wanted but was just enough to tip the scales to accept an unwanted identity which now has to be justified.

All of this happens at the expense of lonely personal choice. The acceptance of an identity based on some external physical reaction and its implied need. Anything that is based on that premise is temporary because it really doesn’t answer the deeper needs of the heart for real acceptance, recognition and relationship which are lasting. Temporary is superficial and superficiality is not truth. It is a pointer to the need for truth.

But what is the closet really about? It’s not the sexual drive or any other physical, emotional or intellectual drive for that matter. It’s what causes the choice of how to respond to whatever drive is awakened. And we do that in our aloneness. That’s the real issue. Aloneness is the closet, the real closet. When we ponder any inner feeling, desire, need and drive, it’s a process that takes place within our aloneness. Can we really trust our selves, our perceptions, our reason, to make choices? The purpose of this line of self-interrogation is to reveal one major factor in every human being, imperfection. No one has either a perfect mind or a perfect heart when processing what happens within. We are flawed from birth. Facing our closet of aloneness and its accompanying fear is the bottom line issue that is hardest to face. Fear is our weakness and pride its champion.

The flaw within the alone being we are is the spiritual factor called sin. Sin is imperfection. Sin is what makes us feel alone, be alone and try to overcome it. Sin is what exaggerates our feelings of aloneness. Sin is what causes our inner sense of being to reach the conclusions we do. Sin is the root of all our confusion, our insecurity, our inner conflicts, our broken relationships, our whole broken world. No matter what we say or do individually, it will be laced with imperfection. Sin is not visible or controllable, but it is very real. You can see its effects all around us.

Sin causes us to make all our choices based on what, in our aloneness, we deem is best for self. From birth we are saddled with the need to know how to fit in where we are at any given moment. It’s tricky. No one is born with that knowledge. It has to be learned. The very fact we have to learn proves our imperfection from birth. Because of sin we never get it perfect which means we have a moral nature that needs to learn and practice the difference between right and wrong. There’s good, better and best as well as bad, worse and worst. In our need to fit in to our world and its people, we feel the imperative to get it right as opposed to wrong. Only one person ever got this right and got this inner process from birth---Jesus. He was born by the Spirit of the One perfect God. His whole life was a life lived in perfection.

For us it takes learning. Learning to make choices about the best way to live and set some kind of social and economic goals in order to survive. We have to learn about what is good and how to avoid evil. So we open up to being taught and that becomes the conditioning we receive from our interaction with family, friends and daily circumstance. They make us who we are. Pain, pleasure and the mix of how we dealt them. The good and bad people, including all their imperfections, with whom we chose to associate, influenced us along the way. Here is the bottom line: we are the sum total of how we chose to assess, react and adapt to all those influences. That total, that summary, that combination, is the closet out of which all of us come. Our choices formed our personal closet of aloneness. Its darkness is called sin. So all of us are coming out of some kind of dark closet that we have used for an identity.

This is where Jesus makes the difference between having an identity that is lasting and one that fades as the culture and the body fade. If we accept an identity that is founded on our inner drives, will it last? Is our identity based on an eternal relationship or one that fades in the shadows of our self centered sin? Or do we choose someone with the perfection that gives us an identity with a true orientation that builds relationships, builds a family, enriches society and produces stability and productivity in our children?

This brings up the whole issue of sexual identity. There really is no such thing as a sexual identity (Gal.3:28). Our physical bodies perform all kinds of functions one of which is a sexual function enabling relational pleasure and reproduction. There are many others like a food function, a digestive one, a walking function, add a seeing, a hearing, feeling, circulatory plus numerous others. But identity, how we see ourselves, is an invisible choice based on our social conditioning. Identity is a choice. True, we can choose to let our bodily functions identify us but is that really how we want to be seen by others when it comes to our humanity, being individual persons, being an ‘I am?’ Our physical body is a multi-functional unit.

To allow one function to identify and subject all the other function to it, reduces who we are as whole persons, bodies housing an ’I am” with limitless possibilities.

Also, it reduces, limits and cuts us off from those around us, destroying the potential in us and others through the separation and isolation our self-justification and defensiveness ignites. It’s sin on steroids.

Before I chose to be identified with God in Jesus Christ I was an American with a Norwegian heritage, a Floridian living in Jacksonville, an alumnus of the University of Florida, an Episcopal clergyman, a husband to my wife, a father to my children, a lover of country music, a conservative, a fisherman, a runner, someone who held all kinds of jobs while hitchhiking, a traveler and, desperately wanting to fit in wherever I was, I could draw from a bevy of identities to satisfy my need for acceptance. All of those are fading in the light of my experience of Jesus Christ and the effect He has had on me since I accepted Him as Savior and Lord. With Him came a new identity to replace the self-chosen identities the social moment demanded.

Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ I chose Him to save me from my self-centeredness, to rebuild my true identity---an image and child of God. It’s an eternal identity that makes the present my sharing ground instead of my getting ground. It’s not what I get from others but what I have been given to give away that is reorienting my life. Now my physicality functions to serve a living God. My spiritual identity is who I am. It is to know God in Jesus Christ and to serve Him. My identity is not determined by my physical desires, my needs and my longings. Nor am I locked into the attitudes and opinions of others and their identities. This means my identifying with Jesus gives me the confidence, the stability and the power to be who I am in Him. To make spiritual choices before anything outside of me calls me into His orbit. My aloneness is an opportunity to experience belief, trust and faith. This is true for any disciple of Jesus. Especially when He says, “And surely I am with you even to the end of the age (Mt.28:20)” and “I will ask the Father and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever---the Spirit of Truth (Jn.14:16)…He will remind you of everything I have said to you (Jn.14:26).”

Therefore, if we are attracted to anyone, we have been given a new means to evaluate what is happening in our mind and heart. It is a spiritual evaluation based on our relationship with Jesus and directed by His Word. He and His Word are my orientation. Nothing else really works. Every other identity will end up separating and alienating me in some form or fashion. As the writer of Ecclesiastes observed about what happens outside of God, “It’s all meaningless vanity, a chasing after wind (1:2,14).” If what I am sensing in myself or in others doesn’t coincide with Him and His Word, then I am faced with two choices. First, the temptation to follow the spirits of the moment which are from the evil one. Or second, follow the Lord’s counsel to deepen my spiritual awareness of the presence of God and discover His personal will for me as I go from one moment to the next. This is how my new identity in Christ works. It’s eternity in the present and the present in eternity.

So if any attraction is physical then we’re choosing to be defined by what our physical body wants. Then we might say, “But that’s what I feel.” Then we’re choosing emotions to define us. Suppose we say “I was born this way.” Then I may say “I want to change my physical body to fit my conclusions about myself.” Aren’t we declaring our reason, our emotion and our motivation are controlled by our physicality, therefore uncontrollable? If we are our only source for determining our behavior, then we’re stuck, doomed to live out what we conclude about ourselves. That leaves us with only one lonely alternative: defend and justify our self-defined natures.

Instead of parents locking children in a closet maybe what’s really happening is that people choose to to be locked into the closet they self-determined works best for them. We have to ask this: how’s that working for them? When they get what they want do they get what they really want? When they look back on their lives what promise lies ahead for them?

The problem is this, self-definition by its very nature is imperfect since it comes from a flawed mind, heart and spirit. History with all its records has shown this one basic reality---self-identity dies when the body dies. This is precisely why we need an outside source we can trust to give us a way to evaluate ourselves spiritually beyond death and into eternity. That’s why we need a return to our spiritual nature to deal with life in this world. Identifying who we are belongs to God. We were created for a relationship with Him and Jesus Christ is the One who provides it. His Word defines us in the simplicity we can observe from our physical bodies. He made us invisible images of Himself to live in visible male and female bodies to serve Him by reproducing and developing the physical and social environment in which we live (Gen.1:26-28, 5:1-2).