A War of Loves

David Bennett

• Publisher: Zondervan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780310538127
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Sessualità e genere nella religione

At 14, David Bennett came out to his parents.
At 19, he encountered Jesus Christ.
At that moment, his life changed forever.

As a young gay man, David Bennett saw Christianity as an enemy to freedom for LGBTQI people, and his early experiences with prejudice and homophobia led him to become a gay activist. But when Jesus came into his life in a highly unexpected way, he was led down a path he never would have predicted or imagined.

In A War of Loves, David recounts his dramatic story, from his early years exploring new age religions and French existentialism to his university experiences as an activist. Following supernatural encounters with God, he embarked on a journey not only of seeking to reconcile his faith and sexuality but also of discovering the higher call of Jesus Christ.

A War of Loves investigates what the Bible teaches about sexuality and demonstrates the profligate, unqualified grace of God for all people. David describes the joy and intimacy he found in following Jesus Christ and how love has taken on a radically new and far richer meaning for him.

PART 1

THE SEARCH

CHAPTER 1

COMING OUT

You, LORD, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.

—Psalm 30:3

It was the first Friday evening since moving to the Sydney harborside, and a day after my fourteenth birthday. From a high sandstone outcrop bordering the water, I watched the sun set over a small mooring of boats. The chiming of their sails rang out from the cove and over the peninsula. A blush of ochre tinted the sky. Sydney Harbour Bridge was hidden behind the eucalyptus trees, but the cityscape was in view on the horizon, iridescent with skyscrapers.

Such beauty made me ache for someone to share it with—another young man. Standing in my untucked school uniform, I peered over the ledge, where water lapped at oyster-laden rocks down below. The ferry glided on the incoming tide with its monotone growl. Tears welled up from what I knew was true. I feel light enough to jump over the edge. The crushing ocean seemed lighter than my unwanted desires, and my feet dared me to step over the edge of the cliff. I pulled back in sudden horror. My heart raced as I ran home and the dusk fell.

Not long after, I found myself at school. The recess bell rang throughout the school grounds, and the summer sun shone over the brick buildings. More than a thousand boys, each in the traditional uniform of red-lined navy blazers, white shirt, grey woolen trousers, black shoes, and a navy blue tie, poured through the grounds to the entrances of the Anglican chapel. It was a chaotic sight that somehow always managed to become orderly in minutes as everyone lined up to enter. We resembled an army regiment at attention, with just a few naughty soldiers out of formation.

Soon the sound of hundreds of adolescent boys singing awkwardly from hymnbooks filled the chapel. As I took my place among the pews, my vision blurred. I had fond memories of singing solos in the boys’ choir before my voice broke, and of my favorite soprano solo: Howard Goodall’s “The Lord Is My Shepherd.” But today I was silent, repulsed by the thought of singing to a God I knew didn’t exist, since his only response to my unspoken questions had been a deafening silence.

My hardworking agnostic parents had attained an upper middle class lifestyle. Life was good, but I was often unhappy and lonely, surrounded by the boredom and beauty of the suburbs. I dreamed about escaping to the city, which offered the liberty and sophistication I craved.

Our extended family had a wide range of religious beliefs and convictions. With my Christian relatives, I often heard strange terms used to describe homosexuality. Either it was a kind of spiritual oppression that needed to be prayed away, or it was a result of sexual abuse that required serious healing. None of these pseudotheories fit me.

For other Christians, homosexuality was the worst of sins and homosexuals were God’s enemies. This rhetoric missed the reality of what I was going through and closed me down to the honest confession and self-acceptance I deeply desired ever since I awoke at the onset of puberty to my attraction to men. The widely variant views of why people are homosexual—genetics? abuse? father issues? something else entirely?—bombarded me. I felt so confused.

On top of this, coming to terms with my attractions at the age of fourteen meant entering an ugly, polarized culture war that spanned the globe. All I wanted was a place where I could be honest. All I wanted was to find a boyfriend and escape the monotony, and ignorance I perceived in the people around me. Then I could finally be accepted and move on with my life.

One night I cried out, “Take these attractions away!” Nothing changed, and the silence drove me farther away from Christianity. The attractions I’d felt since age nine weren’t about a lifestyle I’d chosen. They were about who I was.

Since a young age, I’d understood that a person’s romantic attractions shape their humanity. Love makes us human, and without it, life is not worth living. I wanted all that life had to offer, so I knew I had to keep my distance from those Christians who were getting in my way. Still, the message that God didn’t approve of people like me gnawed at my conscience.

For a year, I tried to think of the opposite sex the way my peers did. Then I dismissed such thoughts as ridiculous. I didn’t believe in God, so why worry anymore? My growing interest in men’s bodies had only increased, and the nervousness I experienced around certain members of the same sex brought me to a place where I knew I was attracted exclusively to men. I even wrote a poetry anthology about my inner secret.

As the chapel service ended, I concluded I could no longer put off the reality of my attractions. The more I denied them, the more miserable I became.

SEARCHING THROUGH SCIENCE

Why was I gay? Shows like Queer as Folk or Will and Grace simply told me I was made or born this way. That wasn’t particularly specific.

I began searching for an answer. I read through nature versus nurture arguments in studies. I googled everything I could find.

Simon LeVay’s research in 1991 showed there was a substantial difference between the brains of gay and straight men in the hypothalamus.² Other studies found that gay men responded to the pheromones of men, not women.³ Studies on identical twins showed a genetic contribution to sexual orientation, but not a genetic determination.⁴ More recent studies had shown the potential influence of the hormonal environment of the womb.⁵ Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory for homosexual behavior linked same-sex attraction to parental relationships. Environment? Biology? Genetics? Nurture? Hormones? Conditioning? Nothing was conclusive. Little was clear or known about the why of it. And that almost crushed me. Understanding myself seemed completely out of reach.

A war developed in me about how to understand this part of my identity. The belief that we’re all born this way wasn’t the whole story. I was more confused than ever.

READING THROUGH RELIGION

Since science couldn’t tell me why I was gay, I decided to try religion—and didn’t make it far.

Even if there was a Christian God, I felt disqualified from a relationship with him because of who I wanted to love. Yet I longed for intimacy of the spirit as much as that of the body—perhaps more.

Why did the relationship between Christianity and homosexuality have to be so complex? I read different Christian perspectives, progressive to traditional. Eventually I accepted the view that the apostle Paul was obviously unaware of any faithful, monogamous relationships between two members of the same sex. I decided his writing was a cultural artifact that didn’t hold the authority orthodox Christians gave it.

Throughout my schooling, I had been exposed to Christianity through camps, youth groups, and church activities. I always felt unable to belong, especially when I heard their teachings on homosexuality. Being gay was explained as rooted in a bad relationship with my father or other masculine figures. Whenever I heard this explanation used to dismiss the gay community, my stomach twisted. I, like many others I spoke to online, had a great relationship with my father. I had never been abused. My Greek father was an ambitious software executive and a generous man. We were different from each other, but I always knew he loved me. Our relationship was quite good; the father-figure story didn’t fit, and there were many gay people who had great relationships with their same-sex parent.

I felt like Christians were explaining me away, not entering into my experience. That was bad enough, but their explanation wasn’t even any good! I found it frustratingly hypocritical that Christians, who worshiped a savior of transparency and truth, couldn’t deal with my being honest about my humanity. Their obvious prejudice toward gay people only pushed me farther away. I perceived that perhaps homosexuality unearthed deeper problems in the church, especially an obsession with sexual desire.

All I knew was that I was gay, that I didn’t choose it, and that the God represented by many Christians could not be an all-loving, all-powerful creator. How could he allow my fundamental human desire for romantic companionship to be directed toward the same sex and then reject me because of it? My unchosen desire was incompatible with the term righteous, so I was hopelessly stuck in the “sinful” category.

Without knowing exactly why I was gay, I found it hard to summon the courage to come out. I was in awe of others I read about online who had come out to their families, schools, or faith communities. I wanted to take this step for the other gay kids at my school whose lives might be significantly improved by my action. But how to start? At school, insecure boys used gay as a casual insult.

Most of my school friends were agnostics or atheists and were more in touch than the Christian kids. To us, Christianity seemed like a club with narrow, oppressive political values. We aspired to the real freedoms we knew existed beyond it. Privately, I was still captured by what I knew of Jesus and reasoned that he had been the greatest human being in history. But he’d been lost in a human-invented religion that tried to make him into a god. I pictured this human-invented religion like the pencil sketches in my Good News Bible, portraying a cookie-cutter Jesus who made me gay (that would explain it!), then cruelly condemned me for it.

Yet I had a persistent inkling that maybe there was a deeper answer in those pages.

THE GRACE OF A GIRLFRIEND

As I was struggling with all of this, I started seeing a girlfriend, Liz, from our sister school. She made me laugh and had a kindness and warmth that attracted me to her. She liked me because I was different—I danced better than most at our school dances, and I didn’t stare at her midsection when we talked, like most of the other adolescent boys.

One afternoon we went to a film. Planet of the Apes was the only one showing. After I bought our tickets, we both burst out laughing when she said that all told, I won the award for the most unromantic boyfriend ever.

We enjoyed the hammy moments of the film and she held my hand for the first time, but I was preoccupied. By the time the credits rolled, I’d decided to tell her my secret. I knew she was a safe person, trustworthy and mature. I also knew my secret meant the end of our relationship, and I felt the weight of something like guilt in the pit of my stomach.

As we walked out of the cinema, she glanced at me. “I’m sorry this was such a bad third date!” I said.

She took my hand. “David, why does it seem like you never want to kiss me or be close?”

“That’s a hard question. I’m not really sure why I’m like this,” I said, looking away.

“Like what?” she asked gently.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for a long while,” I said, swallowing. “Remember my favorite park I showed you a few weeks ago? I’ve never had a suicidal thought in my life, but when I was there a while back, I wanted to jump off the cliff’s edge, and just about did it. I was petrified.

“I have to tell you, Liz—I’ve been attracted to guys since I can remember. I need to finally face it. I didn’t choose it, and it isn’t going away.”

As I spoke, relief came. And with it apprehension for what I had just voiced into the world.

Liz looked away, quiet. After a long silence, she bounced back with her usual direct but affectionate manner. “You need to come out, David. Need to. Tell your parents, okay? Promise?”

She hugged me, and I heard both sadness and concern in her voice. “It’s important you be honest about who you are. You can’t live with that eating away at you.”

TELLING MY MOTHER

I came out to my group of close school friends later that week. It felt amazing to be myself,...