SPIRITUALITY AND SEXUALITY :
Struggle Or Synthesis

An essay by Michael Woodhead

For forty-six years, I have been involved in a conflict between
spirituality and sexuality -- are they able to be integrated into a balanced life, or are they
diametrically opposed. Or is there some other answer?

Interestingly enough, it began at a United Church summer camp. I
was seven, and my counselor molested me. I didn't see it as molestation
back then, and I still have a hard time accepting it as such today. For,
instead of the experience leaving me with a fear of sex and -- not unlike
many other molested children, a revulsion for sex or even the touch of
another person -- it instilled in me a fascination for it and a need for
acceptance.

My childhood thereafter consisted of various "experiments" with
other neighborhood kids the "you-show-me-yours-and-I'll-show-you-mine" kind.

In my early teens, I discovered masturbation and this became a
daily morning ritual for over eleven years and, too, it has been a method
of escape in times of depression and despair.

But my teen years were also a time of sexual confusion, a time
when an interest in the arts meant you were probably gay. I didn't think I
was gay, but I certainly had a keen interest in art, music, drama, writing
and fashion. Perhaps, I reasoned, I should have been born a woman.

This ushered in my transsexual period my late teens and early
twenties as I tried to find a way to explain my apparent feminine side. I
hoped that I might somehow obtain the necessary operation and medications
with which I could become the woman I believed I should have been.

When I was twenty-four, this period came to an end when I lost my
virginity to a girl friend when she found out I had never had sex with a
woman. Following this late initiation, I realized I preferred to be a man.

This did not, however, stop my fascination with sex.

Around the same time as my molestation, I also had my first
experience with spirituality at a Billy Graham Crusade. I don't recall
whether I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior at this time, but the music
and preaching certainly caught my attention.

When I was ten, a boy and I were caught "examining" each other.
Furious beyond words, my father dealt me a severe thrashing and thereafter
promptly enrolled me in the Kingston Bible College Academy. Perhaps he
felt such schooling would straighten me out.

Once more I became interested in gospel music, hymns and Bible
studies; from this time on until I was fifteen, I attended Sunday School
and sang in church choirs.

As I grew older, I began to study the teachings of other religions
as well as Christianity and I began to notice something peculiar -- they all
seemed to advise that in order to become more spiritual, one must become
less sexual. This led to further confusion and frustration because as much
as I enjoyed the spiritual aspect of my life, I also enjoyed sex. I was
sure the two could be somehow integrated into a balanced life.

It didn't help matters either when, upon accepting Christ into my
heart at age twenty-seven, two Christian girls allowed me to be quite
intimate with them. Then, much later, men like Jimmy Swaggart and Jim
Bakker succumbed to the very sin with which I, too, was dealing. If they
couldn't gain victory over sexual sin, then how much harder would it be for
me?

My continuing struggles led me to other avenues of help --
Sexaholics Anonymous, personal counseling, the deliverance ministry,
prayer, pleading and making deals with God.

It is an inescapable fact that God has made us sexual beings and
capable of extremely pleasurable sex at that. Certainly I do not condone
premarital or extramarital sex. But in my years in the church, I have
found that few Christians seem to be willing to discuss sexuality and how
it pertains to Christianity other than to fall back on the admonition that
to become more spiritual, we must sublimate the sexual.

How many of us are really able to do that? How many others
struggle as I do and cannot find those willing to listen, to comfort, to
not judge but rather to try and give helpful counsel?

It is also unfortunate that Christ never really broached the subject of sex
and we never really see him in any sort of personal relationship with a woman.

There is a great deal of sexual activity in the Bible, most of it
illicit, and much of this is never really dealt with from the pulpit, or is
kind of quickly skimmed over in order to get to the more "spiritual"
aspects of a study. Few Christians are even willing to discuss sexuality.
Why?

Are there skeletons in their closet that they don't want to reveal?

Lot and his daughters commit incest; David has a voyeuristic
experience when he spies upon Bathsheba; the inhabitants of Sodom and
Gomorrah apparently commit sodomy although it is not explicitly
stated. And there are other descriptions of perverse activities.

But there is also the Song of Solomon, a beautiful erotic work
that has all too often been used to express the relationship of Christ and
the church; but it is also a description of the beauty of a sexual
relationship between a man and a woman. It is both spiritually symbolic and
physically celebratory.

Christians decry the preponderance of pornography and explicit
sexuality on the Internet, motion pictures and television. But churches
don't seem to offer satisfactory ways to resist such influences, nor
suggestions on how to respond in healthy ways; rather, they seem to condemn
and offer little help or understanding for dealing with such temptations.

Perhaps one of these days, I and others who share the same
personal conflicts, may just find the answers we seek. Perhaps, as in many
other areas of life, it all comes down to a matter of choice. I have begun
to see this more and more. We choose to do something right or wrong, or we choose not to do something. And only we can be held accountable for our own actions.

"[You] Flee also youthful lusts" - II Timothy 222

"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed." - James 114

"[you] abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" I Peter 211

So, ultimately, we choose to obtain the freedom we are promised in Christ.

And this, I believe, is the answer I have sought these many years.