Paula's Place: Compulsive Behaviour

Thursday 16 February 2012

Compulsive Behaviour

I have recently discovered Janie's blog she often has interesting and challenging thoughts, but has this week posed us all interesting questions on why we do what we do, and is what we do acceptable. In turn her thoughts were provoked by this post from the blog "Healing from Cross Dressing". this site takes as it's premise that cross dressing is

A sin
Harmful to families and society in general
Curable behaviour

It is also written from a christian point of view. As a christian myself I have to take seriously at least some of what is written here, I would certainly give value to the points on damaged relationships, although i may question the reasons. If you can read bot blogs with an open mind and see if you can come to any conclusions. I haven't managed to yet.

2 comments:

Thorin25 said...: Hi Paula, thanks for reading my thoughts. When I get some more time I'd like to read some of yours as well. Perhaps as brothers in Christ we can helpfully challenge one another :)

I glanced through your page on Christianity and Crossdressing, I'll have to read it more carefully later. I've saved the link. I have some other posts you might be interested in, such as one on Deuteronomy 22:5.

Anyway, hope that we can have some good dialogue

Thorin25; 20 February 2012 at 17:05
Thorin25 said...: It seems I couldn't post a comment on the Christianity and crossdressing page of your blog. So I'll just give a couple quick comments and questions here.

You said - "Paul of course talks about it being OK to break The Law as long as you are not bringing others into temptation." What passage did you have in mind there?

Although the Bible is not as clear as we might like on this, I think there are various types of laws in the OT. All of them apply to us, but in different ways. Some were fulfilled by Jesus in such a way that we no longer do them as Christians, (like sacrifices). But others Jesus fulfilled for us but we still do them as a way to love God, (such as the 10 commandments and other moral laws). So we are not supposed to "break" any of the Old Testament laws. You can read more about my views on the Law on my blog in my Deuteronomy 22:5 post if you are interested.

I'd like to challenge you on your idea that God would heal you, answer your prayer, and take away the crossdressing desires, "if" crossdressing was really wrong. God never promised to take away our temptations to any sin. That is part of the Christian life. Why can't we believe that the rest of our lives will be a struggle of not giving in to crossdressing, just as the rest of our lives are also a constant struggle not to give in to greed, pornography, selfishness, pride, adultery, etc. Why make an exception for crossdressing?

Through Jesus I would say that I have found freedom from crossdressing. That doesn't mean I have no more temptations to it, but I am free from being controlled by them, and the desires have heavily diminished. We live in tension as we wait for Jesus to return to this earth when he will finally take away all our temptations to sin. Faith in Jesus right now does not take away our temptations.

Often crossdressers think that the only alternatives are having crossdressing desires and giving in to them, or not having the desires and not giving in. But there is a third way, that is God giving you the help you need to overcome the temptations that you still experience.

Feel free to push back on my thoughts, I'd love to dialogue about this.; 22 February 2012 at 19:29