HEALING, REPARATIVE THERAPY, AND CHRISTIANITY

The term “reparative therapy” has gotten a lot of bad press. The pro-gay community believes that this term connotes repairing the same-sex attracted as if something were inherently wrong in this individual. Actually, though, reparative therapy focuses not on repairing a deficient human being but, rather, it focuses on helping people repair “relational deficits” so their legitimate need for emotional connection and gender identification can be met in non-same-sex attracted relationships.

Psychoanalytic literature has long acknowledged that the same-sex atraction drive is actually a “reparative drive”— one which “seeks to fulfill needs that are normally met through the medium of the child’s attachment to the parent of the same sex.” Elizabeth Moberly writes, “In this sense, the homosexual love need is essentially a search for parenting.” If parenting is what a man or woman needs who struggles with same-sex attraction, then a person has no greater parent than his or her heavenly Father.

It is not by coincidence that the vast majority of ministries offering healing to those struggling with same-sex attraction are those of the Judeo-Christian faith. It is because we are the only ones who have a God who calls himself “Abba” or “Daddy.” God knows that our greatest need is to be deeply loved and properly parented because we are created to be his children, and He is our perfect parent.

The main approach to most Christian “ex-gay” ministries is to restore in men and women the truth that they are loved by God as “Father” and they can go to him first and foremost to fill their need for love, security and identity. Exodus International member ministries, for example, are not brainwashing camps that prey on the vulnerable. No one is forced to attend without consent, and the mean age and background of people who participate in these ministries is late thirties, well- educated, motivated, and highly religious. Claims that these ministries do irreparable damage to people are also unfounded. In fact, the opposite has been reported to be true in a recent study by Stanton Jones and Mark Yarhouse in Ex-Gays: A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation.

Some Christians may be skeptical of psychoanalysis and family systems theory, and they may be wary of putting unnecessary blame on parents, but in my own experience struggling with homosexuality, in the myriad of conversations I have had with parents of children who struggle with same-sex attraction, and in talking with men and women who experience same-sex attraction, I see a consistent pattern in its development.

Mel White, a Christian man who is a gay activist and author of Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, virulently opposes the notion that male same-sex attraction is a reparative drive to fill unmet emotional needs for male intimacy and a father connection. Yet, listen to his own words as he describes his first sexual encounters with men: In the darkness Mark and I undressed and climbed into bed. I didn’t know the first thing about making love to another man. Even the thought of anal or oral sex with a stranger repulsed me. The whole process seemed awkward and alien if not evil…. But I was determined to go through with it. I had wanted to love and be loved by another man for so long, nothing else mattered [emphasis mine].

Thomas was God’s gift that night, and as I relaxed and thanked God for the gift, I began to experience a quality of relief I had never known before. I was a lost child who had suddenly been rescued by a loving adult, a fugitive who could stop running at last, a weary traveler who had finally found his way home [emphasis mine].

It is no secret that “a person’s identity is formed in the family of origin” and that our “self-concept is shaped by what we believe our parents think of us.” Moreover, the Bible shows how broken families produce broken children. The first book of the Bible, Genesis, is replete with examples, many of which were among the families of the patriarchs.

The Scriptures emphasize in the Old and New Testaments the sanctity of healthy, God-centered families and the importance of a healthy relationship between parent and child. In fact, it was through the human family that God decided to come into the world so that he might save the world. He did not beam himself down to earth or land via a divine space craft; instead, he chose to come to earth through the womb of a girl and grow up in a family with a mother and father and brothers and sisters.

When it comes to the efficacy of reparative therapy, God, himself, is the ultimate reparative therapist. His goal in the death and resurrection of Christ is to repair our “relational deficits”—the most important being our relational deficit with him. His goal as Father is to bring us, his children, back to himself.

It is not by coincidence that the last words of the Old Testament are these: “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse” (Malachi 4:5-6).