What made you decide to try to change?
Posted on Sunday, February 10, 2008 at 8:54 AM by Duncan Bouwer
It's interesting that when I finally made a commitment to changing, it didn't take me a lot of time to decide to do it. It was what lead up to it that took the time.
I started reading books about the occult in 1989 when my lover left the country to live in London (see "Were you happy as a gay man?" for that part of the story). I was into all sorts of things, reading about Theosophy, Wicca and the Caballah mostly. Some of the literature that I read, mostly the New Age stuff spoke about the Christ consciousness, and because I had been a nominal Christian before, I didn't find it too hard to pray to the (non-threatening) Christ consciousness. I was praying quite regularly when I played the part of Jesus in the musical "Godspell" at the end of 1990. Of course, I could do all the things I wanted to, like smoke dope, drink a lot, sleep around etc. if I wanted to, because the new age religion very obligingly doesn't prescribe behaviour except to adjure us all to goodness.
Some time before a friend of mine moved in with me because he didn't have a job or a place to stay. He was a fallen Christian who was also into the gay lifestyle, and of course all his good Christian friends were praying for him, so they just started praying for me too! Since I was getting closer and closer to faith in the true Christ anyway, this was just the nudge I needed. It wasn't that I knew that they were praying for me or even would have approved, because they were all, according to me, a bunch of lily-livered wimps who looked pretty boring.
One morning while I was walking in the park with my dog, I was praying as usual, when I just had the overwhelming conviction that what I was praying to was a person and that his Name was Jesus and that he was rightfully Lord of my life. It wasn't a very emotional experience. But I did realise at once that my life would have to change, and somehow I had made the preparations in my mind to be willing. Perhaps the inherent chaos of my life (See "Were you happy as a gay man?") had plowed the ground up.
The bottom line is that I knew from my past growing up in a conservative Afrikaans Community, what the Bible said about homosexuality (For a discussion on the subject, click here) . I found myself saying to my new Lord that, whereas I was gay and I knew what he thought about that lifestyle, I wouldn't be able to change myself, so I would expect him to change me if he wanted to. The rest of that story is told at "Do you ever think about having sex with a man anymore?" and "How has being a Christian influenced your sexuality?
Posted in About Me (RSS), Archive (RSS), My Story (RSS), Struggle (RSS)