Men's Group

I have been fortunate to be a part of a men's discipleship group for the past several months.  The group also has a component of it which focuses more on accountability, and I will likely write about that aspect of this in the near future.  This larger discipleship group currently is comprised of 10 men.  We meet every Saturday and it is organized through the church I attend.  We have been working through the Men With No Regrets workbook series.  I was very reluctant to participate in this group, however I was encouraged to make the commitment to it by my pastor, who was organizing the group, and by a good friend who would also be participating.

Looking back, I think my reluctance to jump into this group was brought on by a couple of factors.  One of them was certainly my past experiences when in groups of heterosexual men (church or otherwise); be it a group of 3 or 50.  When I find myself in some type of group or gathering of men, I have a tendency to focus on the ways that I am different from them rather than seeing all of the ways that we are similar.  This usually leaves me with a sense of feeling that I don't really fit in or belong with them.  In all honesty, I don't really have an interest in many of the things that these guys tend to talk about.  I like sports, especially football, but I don't feel the need to be up on every aspect of it or to know every stat.  I enjoy participating in sports such as football, softball, etc., but I'm really not all that good so I tend to shy away from them.  I like family and kids, however not having a spouse or children, I feel like their is only so much that I can add to conversations of this type.  In addition, I just get a sense of not being considered "one of the guys" on some level.

Dissatisfaction With Friendships

For the majority of my life, I have had a general sense of dissatisfaction with my friendships.  I am speaking more to close friendships, not the every day type of friendship that wouldn't fall under the category of good or close friend.  I don't, nor have I ever felt like my friends, the close ones, are able to truly relate to me or understand me; my loves, my fears, my motivations, etc.  Often I feel disappointed in them, in so much as it really doesn't even seem like they want to understand me - or if they do seek to understand me, it is only with the intent of proving there fears about me right or wrong, or to use the knowledge to manipulate me.  Sure, most ask questions of me at times to perhaps gain some insight, but it generally seems to be a curiosity prefaced by their thought that I am somehow not normal in my thoughts and emotions.  Certainly I have my areas of "unusualness", but this difference they experience between me and themselves does not necessarily indicate that my thoughts and emotions are somehow wrong.

I think in many ways, when I initially started attending my church in January 2010, the men there who knew of my past were very reluctant to be open to friendship with me.  I certainly felt, and still feel, that I have to prove myself to them in some way.  This is not at all the case with all men, but it is a reality with many of them.  It is somewhat in line with the prevalent feeling of many homosexuals seeking Christ in the church in that it sometimes seems like Christians expect you to fix this sin of homosexuality before  the church will embrace you - rather than the church embracing the homosexual and walking alongside him while God transforms him and "fixes" the problem.

Friendship: Part 1

Greater love has no one than this, that
one lay down his life for his friends.

Looking back on the friendships of my past, they were often marked by great happiness and conversely, great sadness and pain; sometimes in rapid succession.  The happiness was in spending time with a friend who's mere presence can brighten my mood and give me a sense of being loved and accepted.  Sadness and pain upon the realization that the label "close friend" or "good friend" seems to have a totally different meaning to me than it does for so many others.

"Love does not give up on people when they are struggling. It does not give in to despair in the face of extreme difficulty. It does not declare that someone’s heart can never change or that a broken community can never be healed. Love hopes all things. Understand that whenever we give up hope, this is really a failure to love, because love hopes."

I suppose it would help if I clarified my ideas of what types of friendships I have experienced.  First, "friend" is not a label that I throw around loosely.   I try to be realistic in identifying the type of relationships I have with people.  For the most part, I don't consider co-workers to be friends.  With few exceptions, I always look at them as acquaintances.  I would also apply the acquaintance label to most people I socialized with at certain places such as bars.  These were people with whom my contact was limited to certain times or places.  If I removed myself from those places, whether it be the bar, work, or even church, I would not necessarily maintain contact with them or continue on in any type of relationship.  They are all relationships that are conditional on some factor other than a mutual, voluntary choice to have someone be a part of your life.

Hope and Singleness

A friend recently asked me the question "What gives you hope?". It came up during a discussion about my outlook on marriage. I expressed that I don't have a pull to get married, and in fact I don't suspect that it is God's will for me to do so in the foreseeable future, and likely ever. It struck me that what my friend was really expressing through this question was his view that without a spouse I was facing a future of uncertainty, loneliness and incompleteness; that I was somehow falling short of God's plan for His children.

It has been my observation that the church in general does a rather poor job of expressing God's gift of singleness to people.  Christians often make assumptions that singleness is a temporary condition.  Temporary in that, under "normal" circumstances, it is only to be experienced while one seeks out that significant person to join with in marriage.  This attitude implies that marriage is the highest of callings and leaves singleness as some sort of inferior state of existence.  I also see the idea expressed, often subtly, that upon reaching a certain age, one who is still single must be in that situation because they are somehow damaged, are sinful, or otherwise "broken".  Even those well intentioned phrases of referring to one's spouse as "my other half", or the statement that the marriage partner "completes me" further perpetuates this myth of single people being somehow only half a person or incomplete.