My Manhood

I've spent a lot of time and energy on this blog figuring out who I'm not, but I've not entirely put together who I am, and I think it's high time I focused on that. As I view it, I've filled in a lot of the negative space in this piece of art that I call myself, and now it's time, with God's help, to figure out my identity, to fill in the positive space.

I find myself thinking about all of the challenges that have led here. There are so many forces telling me who they think I should be. Cultural forces, both secular and Christian, have conspired to try to convince me to take up the identities they would have for me. I must deny them and disown that false self. It is only my Creator who gets to say who I am, and it's been a long labor of His helping me learn who I'm not. If I'm to do as I've said I wanted to do this year and accept the me God has made me to be, I need to understand who that person is.

Also, I should state that everything I write here is my best effort at this time, but it is a snapshot. There will likely be some things that change over time, and there could very well be something I miss or get wrong that I'll have to correct later.

Now, if this is me attempting to do my best to understand my God-given and God-shaped identity, there's only one logical place to start: my current understanding of God.

My Current Theology

By "theology," I mean my understanding of God and who He is. Before I launch into this, I do want to clarify that this is my best understanding as of the time of writing. It's quite likely that, as my relationship with God deepens, my understanding will change in some ways, likely by gaining more nuance or breadth. 

I think it's good to start this in a simple place. When the Apostle John writes that "God is love," I agree with him, but we need to understand the nature of that love. It is deep, caring, understanding, and it wants the best for us and it wants us. Something that I've come to realize is that I don't believe God's love should be characterized as selfless. Rather, it is the opposite: it is a love so intense that God wants nothing less than us ourselves, but in the truest and most authentic sense. What I mean is that God wants genuinely requited love. He will not force us to love Him because that would be cheap. God will not settle for something lesser. Furthermore, this love is not based on our worthiness or deserving (and such notions around love are toxic and selfish, anyway—pride denying others the chance to share their love for us).

God is also just, but that justness flows out of His love that would see us in loving relationship with Him and each other. Justice is about righting a relationship that has been wronged. Reconciliation, but genuine reconciliation (not feigned), is preferable to discipline or punishment. God makes it clear when speaking to Ezekiel that punishing the wicked (those who break relationships, who violate Love) brings God no joy; rather, God delights when the wicked turn from their ways and do what is right; that is, when those who walk in the way of hate abandon that path and begin to walk in the ways of love.

This, then, creates the moral orientation we all should seek to have. Laws attempt to guide people towards this, towards the ways of love, but they are always flawed because we humans, who implement and execute laws, are flawed. But if we weren't flawed, we wouldn't need laws. More on this when I talk about morality.

So, love is at the core of who God is, but there are other important aspects to who God is. He is a creator, and one who loves a wild and diverse creation. He is an engineer who designs intricate systems. He understands us and works to relate to us, and to help us relate to Him; yet He remains far greater than we are, for He is beyond our ways of life and our ways of thinking. He sees the entire picture, He knows all of us, loves all of us. He has both emotions and reason. He identifies with the provider and caretaker roles of father and husband (for these, remember that at the times the books of the Bible were written, the male head of a household was the one upon whom all other members of that household relied for their wellbeing, safety, and provision).

God is not bound by our laws, concepts, or moralities. Rather, His way of love is pure, and it is full of integrity. His depths are vast, beyond our plumbing, the vastness of Him beyond our comprehension. And yet, He seeks to have a personal, intimate relationship with each of us, to share in a love like that of a parent to their child. He wants to live with us, to speak with us, and to have an authentic relationship with us.

I love Him.

There is more I could write, but I feel I've left this in a somewhat mystical place, and that feels right to me. It is this nature of God, of loving us and wanting us to be our authentic selves, but also as His role as creator, as the one who twined together and shaped our authentic selves, that creates the foundation of the rest of what I will write here.

The Foundation

My manhood

Is

My childhood

Matured

Not

My childhood

Abandoned.

As I've wrestled through my understanding of who I am, my greatest point of struggle has been the result of feeling like the models of what it means to be an adult, and of what it means to be a man, do not reflect who I am. My favorite example for explaining this comes from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. In that game, you play as the hero Link as both a child and as a young adult. You start out as the ten-year-old boy from the forest, but then you draw the Master Sword and instantly become the adult hero. When this happens, the world you encounter is different, and you can no longer use some of the things you could when you were a child.

For a long time, I assumed becoming an adult would mean I would undergo a similar transformation. At some point, I'd go to bed a kid and wake up an adult, someone who was a different person in many ways. In short, I assumed I'd magically abandon who I was and become more like my father or the other men I saw. But that never happened, and it never will.

Now, it would be wrong to say that I'm the same person I was as a child. I was struck by this particularly poignantly when I tried to talk about Pokémon with some kids at one point, and while I'm still a fan of the series, I realized that I relate to it pretty differently than I did when I was a kid. Mind you, I still have intense nostalgic emotions for the first Pokémon T-shirt I got as a kid. I can still picture the white shirt with Ash, Misty, and Brock on it. Pikachu was there as well, I'm pretty sure, but it's the emotions, the excitement, that I most remember. But the flavor and nuance of my fandom has changed. I think back to the competitive Pokémon I enjoyed in college. I think about how I've considered the design, how I've seen the games change over the years and the impacts of those changes. I still like Pokémon, but I'm not the same kind of fan.

And this is what I mean. My childhood is not abandoned. The things I loved as a kid, I still mostly enjoy, but I love them in a different way. Now when I think about Star Wars, for example, I'm not thinking so much about adventures, I'm thinking about the craft of storytelling—for example, I'm analyzing how the Jedi lost Anakin or how I believe they became morally corrupt. I'm thinking about how the world is built. Or I'm commiserating with my sister about how foolish it was for Disney to make a trilogy without a cohesive plan.

And so the thing I have to recognize, that God has slowly helped me see, is that I will never "grow up" to be my father. Rather, I've grown up to be me, a throughline that connects from my childhood to my present.

So, who is present me?

Cuddles!

I still cherish the large plush duck, Quack-a-moley, that I got for either my tenth or eleventh birthday. This plush is something like a quarter-of-a-century old, and I still love him and hug him and am happy. I'm not your rough and tumble type of man. I'm a cuddly kind of person, who loves coziness and a good snuggle. Physical affection is super important to me, and one of the things that makes me happy right now is the hugs I get at church every Sunday.

I want a kinder, gentler world. I don't want to dominate, I want to cooperate. I want space for everyone. I want to be loved and held and wanted. I want to feel the literal, physical warmth of friends.

Sir Thinks-a-lot

I love thinking! I introspect a ton (as regular readers are keenly aware), but I also turn that outward by analyzing things. For me, one idea of a good time is analyzing a piece of media with someone while we're cuddling. I want to try and figure out how things work, and I want to understand things at a deep level.

I get lost in thought often, which is why I'm terrible at taking short showers. I'll think about faith, try to understand myself better, work through my feelings, ponder game design, figure out how the world could work better (this one is definitely affected by oversimplification), plot out some storytelling beat, or analyze something I've experienced (could be life, a movie, show, game, whatever). Thinking is the default state of my brain when nothing else is happening. It's also how I get inspired and motivated to do stuff! It's a key part of my creativity.

Thinking alone is great, but thinking with others has all kinds of perks, like a different perspective. Others help me see the world from a new angle, they point out things I've missed or overlooked, and they teach me things I didn't even know I didn't know. That's part of why a good chat is so wonderful.

Serious and Silly

There's a time to take things seriously, and there's a time to be a goofball. As far as I'm concerned, both are important! Though, these definitely need some explanation. To start with, when I'm talking about being serious, I don't mean stoic, at least, not in the emotionless-sense that it's come to mean (actual stoic philosophy is, as I understand it, different from modern concepts of stoicism). No, what I mean by being serious is to really care about stuff. Some people act as if everything is a joke, but that's not the kind of person I am. I have things I care a lot about!

On the other hand, when I'm talking about being silly or being a goofball, I'm in part talking about not forgetting the joy and fun of childhood. In many regards, this is the other side of the seriousness coin, where it's important to not be ashamed of your joys, but that's reductionist, because this also means just being silly! It's about bringing someone a smile or a laugh, whether that someone is simply myself or someone else.

This brings me neatly to my sense of humor. My favorite types of humor are wordplay and absurdisms. These often neatly intersect because language—and especially English—are so often absurd! Though, I want to elaborate on these some, starting with wordplay. When I say "wordplay," I include puns, of course, but I also find amusement in thinking about the literal meanings of idioms. This also means that I enjoy dad jokes, provided they aren't repeated every single time. That can get rather irritating!

Absurdisms more have to do with creating ridiculous scenarios. There are many Monty Python sketches that are this way, but pointing out absurd things about reality can also work (like some of what I enjoy about considering the literal meanings of idioms). Sometimes this can be more infuriating, depending on what absurd thing in the real world is being pointed to, though. Good absurdist humor often relies on a straight man (comedy archetype; a person who is "playing it straight" instead of just going along with the wackiness) who is pointing out how absurd everything is while everyone else goes along with it. Of course, part of the fun of this is seeing the bewildered reactions of said straight man. In general, this is humor that arises from circumstances, rather than making someone the butt of a joke.

Speaking of butts, I don't much care for the kind of juvenile humor that treats the mere existence of things like butts or farting (etc.) as inherently funny, as if they're a standalone punchline. You've got to put in more effort than that!

The main other types of humor I don't care for, or rather, have intentionally (if somewhat indirectly) come to dislike are types of humor I consider cruel. This notably includes mockery, though less cartoonish forms of slapstick also apply. Mockery is making fun of someone or something. It can be OK when directed towards things, but no one likes being mocked, and because cultivating love in myself for others is important to me, I've found myself coming to dislike mockery. This is different in my mind from teasing, but there's a bit of a wobbly line between the two. I do often enjoy physical humor, but some forms of slapstick simply seem to be about making humor out of physical cruelty. While I did enjoy that when I was younger, for similar reasons to why I've come to dislike mockery, there are types of slapstick I don't enjoy anymore, either.

Morality & Values

This particular category is going to require I really restrain myself so that I stick to an overview instead of digging into the weeds. I have a lot I can say here, so much so that it'd probably be several articles worth of words. So let's stick to the fundamentals.

The place to start is with a simple belief I hold that all right morality derives from a singular core, which is the loving character of God as discussed in the theology section at the beginning. I'm not one for tradition or its rules. I don't want to cling to a superficial understanding of morality. I want the real deal, something of sound substance, a morality that is both at once primal and profound.

The more I learn about God, the more I believe I have come to understand His morality. A simple way of describing this is to be in right community with God, others, and the self. Another way of saying it is that sin is that which breaks community. This first happens when we dehumanize others. By dehumanizing (or depersonalizing, in the case of God), we begin to fail in the path of love. We can also dehumanize ourselves, of course, which is also a problem.

This kind of morality, which sees community bound together with a type of caring love, also longs for reconciliation wherever possible. When the bonds are broken, it craves for them to be repaired. Hence, God is merciful and full of grace (for He wishes to draw us to Himself, but in a genuine way, not with bribes or in anyway that creates falseness).

We all fail to love each other as we should.

This standard is at once simpler than all rules or laws, which are mere shadows (at best) cast from the radiance of true morality, and yet it is also more complex, full of nuance. It is impossible for us humans as we are to judge based on the standard of love, for it requires a knowledge of all beings that is beyond us.

All just laws derive from this, the Royal Law of Love (as Scriptures call it), but any other law is inherently limited and flawed. We know this, as the phrase "legal but not ethical" proves. This isn't to say that culture plays no part in morality, as it does affect what it means to love someone (for example, what is considered rude and what is polite vary from one culture to another).

The phrase, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," really does sum a lot of this up, but only if we read it with a bit of imagination. What I mean is this: consider the positions actually swapped. So, for example, maybe you have a food allergy. How would you want people to treat you? You'd want them to ask if you have any food allergies. Therefore, you'd do the same for others. In other words, we respect the presence of unknowns. If someone doesn't know something about us, we'd want them to ask, right? We wouldn't want them to just do what they'd do for themselves, but to figure out what we want. We should therefore do likewise: replace unknown information with inquiries. It's this kind of thing, where we use our imagination to consider how we'd want the other person to act if everything was swapped (including a lack of information!), and then act accordingly. I believe that doing this will get you far when it comes to living righteously.

Sexuality

This is the last major category to cover. And boy howdy, is it a big one. I've written a lot about my sexuality because I've struggled a lot with it. In part, this is because church often feels very sexless for various reasons, which makes it hard for me to feel welcomed and accepted by God because I'm a very sexual being. God has told me otherwise, but I've struggled to believe Him in this, particularly emotionally. There's a fear there that's been hard to deal with.

But perhaps I'm rehashing things. Still, it's important context. Society, at least the way I conceive of it in my mind, feels hostile to sexuality; at least, towards the kind of sexuality I have. Though, I recognize that that perception is also built off of assumptions and biases. We're very good at blinding ourselves to objective truth, instead thinking our subjective perceptions are reality, even when we've functionally fabricated much of them.

As I've contemplated what to write here, I find myself thinking about a book I read a while back named untamed (yes, it's in lowercase like that, at least on the front cover!) by Alan and Debra Hirsch. There's a chapter in it called "Too Sexy for the Church?" that does go over this issue I've just been discussing. It's been ages since I properly read it (though I did just grab it off my shelf to confirm that what I thought was in it was in it, and it is). They basically state that sexuality and spirituality are two axes of relating; that sexuality is the axis by which we relate to others and spirituality the axis by which we relate to God, and that taken together, they are our desires to be known and connect to each other and to God.

I've found this to be very much the case for me. I find myself asking the profound question of, "When does physical affection turn sexual?" I don't quite know. Granted, there are some obvious lines, like interacting with genitals is often sexual (alternatively, it can also be medical or about hygiene). But things being "sexual" is so charged, as if somehow it's wrong if there's any sort of sexual edge to it. That's part of what makes this so hard to discuss for me, because that charge brings with it a fear of judgment.

For me, there's also the complication of being aromantic. I wrote about this recently in a hybrid poem/article. So I'm very sexual, but for me, that sexuality isn't connected to romance. It feels like romance creates the "socially acceptable container" for sexuality, but I don't have that container. That makes things complicated for me to know how to navigate, more when it comes to discussing this than it does living my life. For example, when I hug my sister, there is absolutely a sexual element to it. It's something of a connection with the feminine that I long to have a connection with. It's also a way for me to express my affection for my sister. I feel that some would condemn me for the sexual element of that connection, and I fear that condemnation. But screw that fear! I love my sister and value our relationship, and physical affection is an important part of expressing those things, of embodying them, at least for me.

As I think about this, it strikes me that the sort of melding of affection and sexuality that I experience may be a major contributing factor for why I primarily want to make female friends, even though life circumstances have resulted in most of my friendships thus far being with fellow men.

Another aspect of being aromantic, which I write about in the aforelinked (that's a word now) poem/article in more of an implied way is that I don't feel a sense of romantic ownership. At least, I haven't been able to detect one, but I guess I could discover one latter; not that I expect to. What I mean is that I don't believe I'd feel any particular kind of romantic jealousy since sexual acts conceptually seem to me like they're the ultimate form of affection. I don't care if the people I'm affectionate with are affectionate with others, too. This feels hard to write about because it's so countercultural, but to stop talking around it or euphemistically, I'm not concerned about a sexual partner of mine having other sexual partners, past or present. As long as I'm not neglected and things aren't done in an underhanded or manipulative way, that's what's important. (There are also considerations regarding things like STIs and pregnancy, of course.) I want to feel wanted and genuinely cared about, but exclusivity isn't required for that.

Overall, I'd describe my sexuality as being affectionate, gentle, and playful, not domineering or dominating. Love is important, but rather than being a romantic love, it's more a kind of friendship or familial love. There are degrees of intimacy, and it has a big impact on my relationships with others and the kinds of relationships I want to have. In short, my sexuality is more familial in nature rather than romantic, with a deep desire for found family and an attraction to women.

Various Final Tidbits

I might've discussed the major things, but there's still a bunch of minor things that are worth talking about, too! These will be in no particular order. A common theme that these will show is that I like variety, but I also like the familiar. There's an inherent tension there, but in short, I like familiar things that offer me new and interesting ways of engaging with them.

First up, there's my dislike of routine. Simply put, I don't like having too much of a planned-out schedule because it makes my life feel like it's on rails. This becomes psychologically oppressive to me. That isn't to say that I don't often do the same kinds of things week-to-week or day-to-day, but I don't like having a strict plan for when various things will happen, generally speaking. A bit of it is OK, and I have gotten better at seeing the spaces between scheduled activities, but I do overall prefer flexibility with my schedule. On the other hand, it would likely be helpful to me if I had some external guiderail for when it comes to going to bed—I'm also terrible at sleep schedules, which makes interacting with society difficult at times.

This love of variety also extends to my environment. I like having multiple paths through places, lots of decorations on walls, and different aesthetics for different areas. I like broad, sweeping vistas and cozy little side streets. I'm kind of a maximalist, in many regards, as I like spaces full of character.

I'm also a gamer, with many of my favorite games playing into this love of variety by either giving me a lot of customization options (Magic: The Gathering, Guild Wars 1 & 2, the Dark Souls series, Elden Ring, and the Pokémon franchise, to name a few) or variety in play patterns (like Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor and its sequel, which blend ranged combat, stealth, and melee combat excellently).

But it isn't just playing games that I enjoy. I also enjoy game design as a concept, and I love thinking about it and figuring out how games work. There's so many interlocking parts, and analyzing how they come together to create a whole experience is fascinating to me. This is also part of why I like making games myself! (Not that I've finished many at the time of this writing...)

That love of game design is related to my love of worldbuilding. I like thinking about how world concepts fit together and the consequences thereof. Indeed, most of my favorite stories put worldbuilding towards the forefront! This includes The Lord of the Rings, the Vorkosigan Saga, and So I'm a Spider, So What? This also helps explain why I'm a fan of the isekai genre in general. ("Isekai" is, as far as I can tell, Japanese for "another world.") Isekai stories tend to have a fairly heavy emphasis on worldbuilding, and they even make the exploration of that worldbuilding diegetic as the main character(s) have to figure out how the new world they've found themselves in works.

Another important aspect to me is that I'm something of a nudist. The idea that parts of the human body are inherently obscene is obscene to me. The ideals of body acceptance that nudism espouses resonate with me, as does the desire for the public and social acceptability of nonsexual nudity. In addition, however, I'd also argue that we should be far more comfortable with sex than we are with violence—only one of those belongs in Eden. Speaking of which, it should be little surprise that the shame of sin—and the breaking of community that resulted—would induce humanity to hide the parts of our bodies used for the most intimate forms of connection.

Conclusion

I think that covers the primary parts of my identity. There's a lot of smaller tidbits in those bigger sections, and there's always more detail I could go into about my interests, of course, but I want this to be more of an overview than some sort of exhaustive (and exhausting!) deep-dive.

Of course, I can write about all of this, and recognize God's shaping of who I am and His acceptance of who I am, but actually accepting that when culture so often gives me a different message about what is acceptable is pretty hard to do! Still, it's something I want to grow in, and I hope that by writing this article, I can not only help myself do that, but also begin to carve out space with and for others.

Thanks for reading!

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