The Opposite Same

            This evening, while absorbing textbook lingo, I came across a story. This story had two main characters. Their names: Denny and Joel. The story began immediately after the introduction to Chapter 5: “ Language and Culture”. Those two words have been run over so many times, they read as “ wish wash” to my brain’s natural system. The Chapter could be named “ Blah, Blah” for all I care.  Incessantly, for the past four plus years, Culture and Language have been drilled into the stream of my student self. Languages are different. Cultures create barriers. Together they make groups that disassociate themselves from other groups. These sects develop into a world that resembles a paint palette. One color here, another there, seldom do they mix. Our textbooks have no issue pointing out this fact. It has tainted out history books and scarred the older generations. I am detouring from my beginning thought. Let me get us back on track.

            “Language and Culture”, in this book of Communications, is used to segway right into Denny and Joel. Denny and Joel are two gay men waiting in line for a marriage license. It’s Valentines Day, and they want nothing more than to get that license. Hours pass, the line shortens, and they are four couples away from their answer. One less, one less, one more less and they are up. Denny and Joel, shoulders stiffened in anticipation, mirror the clerk with their application in hand. They push their application forth, under the box office glass cutout. The lady, without checking their purposes for marriage, their long relationship or even their address, declined the application.

            When I read the first two sentences of Chapter 5, I immediately was annoyed that these textbook people would use gays to explain Language and Culture. I kept reading. Denny and Joel’s scenery changed to a block party. At this block party, there were newlyweds that happily pranced down the street, hand in hand. Denny and Joel want to be polite, but these newlyweds depict the long road of restrictions that battle against their love for each other. Tension strains the ground as soon as the wedding is brought up. Heterosexuals, like myself, have no idea what this would be like. Homosexuality is a sin, just like any other sin that we struggle with. It’s real. And society doesn’t know how to handle it. Like the accidental pregnancy of fifteen year-olds whose hormones slipped them a honeyed drink, we don’t know how to handle it. To what can I compare this strain? Love is indescribable. It’s a feeling, it’s a butterfly, the essence of love. It’s a call or kiss, the actions of love. We use love to describe these feelings. What is lust?

            Homeosexuality is an illicit lust forbidden by God (Leviticus 18:22). Likewise, adultery, premarital sex, and other lustful desires fit under this category. Surely the Bible won’t tell you the wrong behaviors and withhold the solution. “ Keep watch and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak” (Matthew 26:41). The body is weak. Here we see that temptation is nearly impossible to overcome by ourselves. We need help. Just look up to the mountains. Rest your eyes upon the vastness of creation and read Psalm 121. “ I look up to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:1). We realize that our mortal bodies are subject to failure and regret. We understand that God has not left us hopeless. We learn how to walk this out from a conversation. The LORD told Moses in Deuteronomy 31:6, “ For the LORD your God will personally go ahead of you. He will neither fail you nor abandon you.” But we fall, we stumble and we cry. God knows every bit of our inner being. How we were delicately knit together in our mother’s womb. So he offers us a second chance, like Moses in Exodus 34. The first stone tablets were smashed when Moses threw them to the ground in anger. These stone tablets had each of the Ten Commandments written by God on them. Exodus 32:16, tells us that, “These tablets were God’s work; the words on them were written by God himself”. I would not want to be the one to break those. Moses did. Then later, in Exodus 34, God grants Moses a second chance. God gave Moses another set of the same tablets. God created those tablets, God created our hearts. He can piece back together our bodies, our hearts and ultimately our life.

            These truths are found after seeking. Matthew 7:7 explains, “ Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.” Healing is a process just like a relationship. Relationships take time, and endurance. I speak to myself when I say these things. Devotion to change isn’t so attractive sometimes. But we have the answer and it’s all around us. Who will take the time to seek for it?