Presented in 7 Chapters
by David Wilkerson
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- Chapter 1
I am a strange creature with two opposing minds in one body. Two distinct life forces in me keep trying to control my actions.
There are things about myself that scare me. Things like a great inner need that can't be explained. Like the constant need for love and fulfillment. Also, those subtle desires that surface on occasion, making me lust for experiences that are contrary to my better nature.
I can't explain why I am such a dual person when it comes to right and wrong. The evil that I hate is always present in me. The good and moral desires are there too, keeping my mind in constant turmoil. It is not an every day, all day long battle, but the evil, at times, tries to overpower me.
Just when I think I've got my act together, things fall apart, and once again I am doing things I really don't want to do.
This war between good and evil is raging in all mankind. A minister, exposed for adultery, confessed: "My evil nature held a strange charm over me. It made me chase false dreams that I knew would fade away. It kept me chained to a lust that finally destroyed me. It forced me into compromises that weakened me. Its promises of true love ended up only as a mirage. And, even though I knew I would keep on getting hurt, I followed the dictates of my evil mind like an obedient slave."
A former Jesus person, who once played with a religious singing group, tried to explain why he is back with the crowd, doing drugs and booze.
"All I know is, there was a terrifying struggle going on in my body for control. There was an evil presence always in my mind, trying to overthrow every good and decent thing I tried to do. This evil part of me kept dragging me down, making me do things I really didn't want to do. It was such an overpowering presence, I obeyed its every command, and I ended up with feelings of guilt, loneliness, and emptiness.
"Yet, when I escaped all the noises of the crowd and withdrew from my pleasures, a poor, lonely self deep within me cried out for satisfaction, like the pitiful call of a starving child. The voice cried out, 'Please don't leave me alone; feed me; help me; give me love.'
"At times a part of me felt angry with God for not taking the sin out of my heart. I got tired of the battle in me. The enemy of my soul seemed so strong, and I felt so weak. The righteous nature in me wanted God to stomp out all the wickedness, pluck out my overpowering, sinful desires, and set me free from my sin.
"I know there is a part of me that wants to obey God. It has nothing to do with churches or preachers or moralizing do-gooders. It is even more than just a desire for forgiveness. It is more than just getting my soul saved. It has nothing to do with the fear of Hell or damnation. It is even more than a need for peace and fulfillment. It is a need, in the very deep of my soul, to know God in a very personal way and to feel His love. Some day I hope to get back to God and be free."
Hundreds of alcoholics and addicts pour out their pitiful stories to me in my office. Almost without exception, I hear the same confession: "I hate it! It's turned me into an animal. It was fun at first, but now it's destroying me. I'm like two people. I'm hooked by a mind habit; now I can't stop myself. Still deep in my heart, I want to be free. Show me how to get out."
One of my drug addicted teenage friends, in desperation, laid back on his bed, drew out of his veins a full syringe of blood, and splattered on the ceiling the words: HELP, GOD!
The homosexual dilemma is one of the most complex of all inner struggles between the dual natures, even though most gays do not think of their sexual preference as a life-controlling problem. To them, homosexuality is normal and they resent any suggestion that they are agonizing over their lifestyle. Most claim they are not.
From Castro Street in San Francisco to Greenwich Village, New York, I have heard numerous gays tell me how very well adjusted they are. They boast there is no more guilt in them, and that they are proud to be gay. They tell me over and over again that only mixed up, paranoiac gays want out.
A gay activist leader in San Francisco warned me, "There is not one gay in this city who wants to change. You preachers are simply wasting time. We are not sick—we are not in need of a so-called cure. We are proud, better adjusted than straights—and we have every right to resent religious fanatics coming into our areas to try and change us. Go back to your wife swapping, fornicating straights, and get them to change. Leave us alone."
Nevertheless, the homosexual community cannot explain why a growing number of gays are now admitting to mind blowing struggles with their gayness. The heavy drinking, the high rate of suicide, the constant psychoanalysis are clues that suggest the struggle between the two natures is still raging in the hearts and minds of gays.
I have a homosexual friend who told me about his inner battle with lust and his struggle to be free. He said, "When I started out in homosexuality, a part of me enjoyed it and another part of me hated it. And I hated myself. A strange feeling began to overtake me, and I started to feel as if there were two of me—two opposite parts of me, making me frustrated and depressed. I developed an insatiable appetite for sex, and desire pushed out the guilt at first. I became obsessed with my own body. The sad thing is that lust consumed all my thoughts and energy, and I felt powerless to do anything about it. I felt my mind tearing in two different directions. One part of me enjoyed wild sex, because it gave me temporary relief. The other part was sickened by the horrible acts that I hated. I was trapped. In spite of all my success, I felt lonely. When the sex drive overpowered me, I turned to alcohol for relief. Somehow I knew that what I was doing upset my whole body system.
"I began to wonder what kind of God would create me with a lust for this kind of sex and make me a prisoner of my own body. I gave up on any possibility of escape. I would just make the best of things as they were. I would find a way to live a dual life and accept the way I was. I'd quit the struggle to change.
"I began to curse God for letting me be born with a monkey on my back. I felt God had abandoned me. Now, another person was controlling me. It spoke to me from far away, from down a deep, dark tunnel. The other me, the good and spiritual me, became just a whimper. Homosexuality completely dominated my personality. It took charge of my life, and I was helpless to resist."
I was listening to a cruising homosexual in the Tenderloin section of San Francisco describe the terror in his soul. "Friend," he said, "the trading of bodies in a gay bar is the most insensitive thing on earth. It is degrading and repulsive, because most gay bars are now just information whorehouses, dispensing gossip, pamphlets, and raising money for political causes.
"It is terrifying to have to get your sexual needs met out in the streets. I pick someone up on the street and hope something good will come of it. I keep hoping love will happen. Every Friday and Saturday night, the hope is raised that maybe this time it will happen. My one great love will appear and liberate me from my prison of despair.
"But it never happens. I carry in me a deep sense of fraud, a feeling of being cheated. All the promises I give or receive of lifetime commitments are broken, and what is supposed to be the one great love of my life withers and dies. I'm soon back in the chase, trying to scratch an itch I can't locate. I'm back to loathing myself and feeling abandoned."
Another gay, dressed in full drag and calling himself Renee, told me how he actually gave permission for a part of himself to emerge and integrate with the other part of himself.
"Reverend," he said, "I can parade around like this because I'm in a gay safety zone. Your terror is caused by trying to control your sex drive properly; mine is caused by trying to score properly. Most gays in my circle are as insecure as me, fearing failure. The coded sexual bargaining keeps you looking. You score, then soon you're back, hoping for a better score. Your hunger is never satisfied; you never get enough! But, brother, it sure leaves the scars. Even my gay friends tend to look at me like 'a twinkie in butch drag.' Their laughter is more cruel than straights.
"One day I decided to act like the outcast I felt I was. I was tired of broken dreams, endless hurts, and constant loneliness. I made my choice—I would free myself. I knew I had a dual identity, that I was really two people, and only one would finally win. I quit the counselors, put aside my pill popping, and decided to make friends with my body and show it off as I pleased. Renee is the name I've given my dominant self. Through the day, I am a professor in the classroom; at night, I allow Renee to surface, and I compete in the pursuit of male trophies.
"In my honest moments, I know it's all superficial. I see my friends battered and abandoned, hurt and wounded by all this destructive competition. Some of my best friends have committed suicide. I feel terribly sad when all alone, even when I have no reason to feel that way. Sundays are downers. What a day of shadows and regrets. Sure I'm gay, but say what they will, I still can't rejoice in it. Renee bores me now. My friends really don't care about me. The cigarettes are getting stale. Being popular and on top has no meaning. The drinks just depress me. I get restless quickly. What I'm doing is sure dead end. I'm a forty-two-year-old gay in drag, strutting around trying to deny a tragedy."
I know of one homosexual who thought a sex change could end his inner turmoil. He writes: "I couldn't stand to act as a man. I tried to; even got married, but was soon divorced. I decided there was no help for me, so I entered the gay world and gave in to all my desires.
"My desires took over my reasoning. I was like two people at one time. I wanted to be a woman; I thought like a woman; so why couldn't I be a woman? I found a doctor and had an operation that changed my sex. I believed I had gone too far for God to forgive me, so I appeared in a nightclub as an exotic dancer. But my sex change didn't bring peace to my heart. I settled for lust, for the thrill of the moment, the evening out, the expensive clothes, fine foods, jewelry, drinking, and attractive escorts.
"But when I was alone, I still had to face myself. Looking in the mirror, a woman peered back at me, but I was the same person I'd always been on the inside. I still felt lonely, rejected, and my battle continued.
"I found it wasn't easy coming out. There is always guilt and fear of being discovered. But slowly you harden yourself until it stops bothering you so much. You have days when it still bothers you, but you make excuses or get drunk and high to forget. At first your body rebels against unnatural acts, but you force yourself to conform, until it is no longer painful. Then you end up telling yourself these acts are natural and beautiful to you. Days, weeks, and years go by, and excuses keep you from ever facing the truth."
The Struggle to Be Holy
I have read the pitiful confessions of monks who have shut themselves up in monasteries for years, trying to conquer their evil passions. Still, their evil imaginations almost drove them insane. They did not achieve power over lusts through isolation from society. Just when they thought they were freed from lust and that all fleshly desires were under control, they would fall under a spell of runaway passions and unbridled evil thoughts.
One certain monk lived for fifty years in a subterranean cave, trying to bring his body under subjection to the Spirit. Others buried themselves up to their necks in burning sand, hoping to "burn out" their iniquities.
I have read of monks who slept on bundles of thorns and piles of broken glass. Others bound one foot, hopping around on one foot until they lost use of the other. One monk forced his body into a loop of a cart wheel and stayed in that fetal position for ten years, having to be fed by others.
Simon Stylites stayed for thirty years on top of a column, and when too weak to stay there, he had a post erected and chained himself to it. All of these self-torturing methods were inflicted by monks trying to do away with the evil presence in them. They were trying to annihilate that part of them that lusted after sin.
In the Middle Ages, long processions of flagellants traveled from country to country, moaning, weeping, singing sad songs of repentance, and whipping their bare backs as they marched. Thousands joined these processions in an effort to "whip out the evil."
St. Etheldra believed her flesh was so evil and dirty, she refused to wash it. She walked about, unwashed and covered with filth, revered as a saint because she had supposedly conquered her flesh.
I read the Bible and discover I am not the only person caught in a struggle between good and evil. David was a man loved by God. Yet he committed adultery with Bathsheba, then murdered her husband to keep him from discovering she was pregnant. He was driven to despair. He admitted, "My sins are over my head....They are too high for me. I can't understand myself....There is no soundness in my flesh....There is no rest in my bones because of my sin. My loins are filled with a loathsome disease."
Paul the apostle said, "My own behavior baffles me. For I find myself doing what I really LOATHE, but not doing what I really want to do....I often find that I have the will to do good, but not the power. When I want to do good, only evil is within my reach....It makes me a prisoner to the law of sin which is inherent in my mortal body. For, left to myself, I serve the law of God with my mind, but in my unspiritual nature I serve the law of sin. IT IS AN AGONIZING SITUATION....WHO CAN SET ME FREE FROM THE PRISON OF THIS MORTAL BODY?....ONLY CHRIST!" (Romans 7:14-25 Phillips Translation).
Two of Paul, also? Yes! It was an agonizing battle in him between a spiritual and an unspiritual nature locked in constant struggle. This agonizing wretchedness Paul describes is the most frightening experience a person can possibly endure. It is a dreadful fear of losing control—a dreadful fear of angering God by giving in to secret sin once too often, or worse, being given over to its control.
The victim who gives in to the law of sin begins to think, "What do I have to do to get victory over this evil in me? I've cried a river of tears—I've tried willpower—I've condemned myself—I've made a thousand promises to change—I've read everything I can get my hands on about how to become holy. But I'm at the point of exhaustion. Will God give up on me until I learn how to struggle free? How can I stand up against such a powerful force pulling me down? What's the use?"
Those who don't have this tremendous inner struggle have either come through it by faith or they are dishonest people. They are not grieved by their sins, because they choose to overlook them. Some have become hardened by their sins, and they no longer feel any pangs of conscience. Others have designed for themselves a framework of elaborate excuses and justification for everything they do, absolving themselves of all weaknesses and faults. It is a common practice of those who discover they have a life-controlling problem to study history, psychology, sociology, and religion—to find justification for their behavior.
But the honest seeker can't beg off so easily and live with himself. He must see his ugly carnal side and admit, "I am sold under sin as a slave. There is nothing good in me without God. I am weak, frail, sin-prone, in need of the Lord's help daily." Actually, the holier a man becomes, the more aware he is of his own sinfulness.
Over one hundred years ago, the great Scottish preacher, Alexander Whyte, called for honesty in admitting to the battle between the two natures in us. He wrote:
Writers have been afraid to speak out the whole truth about their tribulations. The truthful person must admit there has not been another with so weak and evil a heart as mine, no evil life quite like mine; no sinner beset with as many temptations and trials as me. He must admit to his own experience of inner sinfulness; that his sin is malignant; that sin, at times, still has dominion over him; that indescribable evil lurks in his heart; that all this goes on in his own heart. This is the everyday agony of every man among us whose eyes are open to his own heart.
There is nothing else of which you can be so sure and certain as the sin and misery of your own evil heart; your own self-seeking, envy, malice, pride, hatred, revenge, and lust.
To Chapter 2
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