Sexuality and Faith

At my last Worship & Ministry committee meeting, the following question was posed to me:

"How do you feel your sexuality relates to your faith?"

I was a bit taken aback by this, as I assumed I already knew the answer and found out when I tried to answer the question that, indeed, I am not clear on this yet. The answer I gave was something to the effect of since love is spoken about so much by Jesus as being so important, thus who I am capable of loving affects my faith. That answer isn't wrong, but it is incomplete.

The truth that I knew then and was too afraid to speak borders on severe egoism. I worried at the time, as I am worrying now, that sharing the true answer to that question would lead to charges that I was raising myself to God's level; further, that these charges wouldn't be altogether uncalled-for, either. But a truth that I keep to myself and am unwilling to have tested by people who might disagree with it or find it offensive isn't a truth at all, but just a shadow of the truth.

Here is the truth, egotistical as it may be.

The answer I gave is the beginning of the truth, but not the whole truth. As the cliché goes: "God is love". I find romantic love to be the closest we humans can get to experiencing the love God has for us. I don't know who first said that to be in love is to see someone as God sees them, but I find this to be true experientially. Thus, who I can love is connected to my faith in a sense of perception, that I can potentially see all these people the way God sees them.

And this is where the potential charge of egotism might be raised. I consider the fact that I am bisexual (or, more accurately, pansexual, if any of you are aware of the difference), to be a great gift from God. The fact that I have the potential to love someone regardless of their sex, seems to me a true blessing. I am capable of seeing so many more people as God loves them than most mono-sexual (heterosexual or homosexual) people are capable of. My potential to see someone as God does is, in a way, higher than most people whose attractions depend on the sex of the person.

I try to not let this make me think I am better than people who are only attracted to one sex, but the truth is that I find bisexuality to be a unique blessing. If God has a sexuality, I imagine that He or She would share the same sexuality I have. This is not to say that I don't think gender identity is important. I love my husband partially because he is a man and he wouldn't be who he is if he were a woman. But the potential to love a woman the same way I love my husband is there. The potential to love two people, one male and one female, is there. And I am infinitely grateful for this, even when it means I feel excluded from both straight and gay people.

I sometimes wonder if attraction to the opposite sex implies an attraction to what's different while an attraction to the same sex implies an attraction to what's similar. At least, this is how my sexuality often feels to me. And I consider this to be another aspect of my sexuality to be grateful for, that I can be attracted to the similarities and the differences. My sexuality is not only part of my identity, it affects the whole of my identity. My ability to relate to other's attractions taught me empathy for other's perspectives. And this has led me to open-mindedness, which is an enormous part of my faith, the ability to empathize with other people and their different faiths.

I hope this doesn't make me sound monophobic, if I can coin a term. (By this, I mean someone who thinks bisexual people are better than those who are only attracted to one sex.) This is just my attempt at answering the question I was asked honestly and fully.