Good To Be Alone?

Author: Andrew Comiskey
July 31, 2017
Sexuality has something to do with directing us out of our aloneness and into creative communion with others. God made it that way. However challenging that ‘gift-giving’ is today, it remains the way that we honor our parents, grow in appreciation of our gender and that of the other, and become parents ourselves. The Scripture says it best: how wondrous that God did not create us to be alone (Gen. 2:18)! (Special thanks to Theologian Dr. Mary McCarthy for this insight.)

How clever of the evil one to introduce the idea that real freedom comes from foregoing the aim of one’s maleness or femaleness and exploring any number of gendered selves (60+ and counting). As I engaged with many twenty-somethings who came to our Living Waters Training last week, I could see their battle to forego onramps to alternative identities so they might proceed on the one true highway to wholeness. A route defined by becoming the awesome man or woman, son or daughter of the Most High!

Think about this battle. ‘Tim’ has certain feelings for his own best male friend and comes out as ‘gay.’ Immediately he foregoes the intended good of his masculinity by offering it to a non-creative source (The friend’s mouth or anus.) Immediately, his parents are put in a weird position: they conceived him, after all, and want him to grow in that openness to life. Instead, he insists that they embrace his identity or else. ‘Or else’ probably means he rejects them for telling their truth. Tim’s new way imposes a prison of aloneness: alienation from his family and the purpose of sexuality. All he gets is a friend with benefits, and that won’t last long. Tim is alone. Satan has his way.

We forsake the enemy by entering into the great waves of mercy flowing from Jesus. We immersed ourselves in those waters last week. Repentance to Him and a process of gender reconciliation unites us with the Father’s love for us and the advocacy of His people. Surrounded by that cloud of witnesses, one begins to belong to his or her gender peer. One begins to appreciate the other. One begins to sorrow over the breakdown with parents and begins to access mercy for the damage done. Jesus becomes the conduit of ‘living water’ that liberates a community that (s)he has never known.

When we as the Church become what Jesus always called us to be—a tender almighty, consistent and trustworthy love that dissolves walls and reveals our naked longing for communion—the enemy will slink away like the defeated tyrant he is. Alienated children will discover their true home. This is a home where we live the truth together: ‘It is not good that we be alone.’


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