I’ve got a long, winding story to tell you that involves the discovery of my sexuality, soul-searching with my spirituality, and how I've come to understand and reconcile these two dimensions of my being.
But first, let’s ease into things by talking about my experience with furries.
You know, the animal people? I’ve written about the profound creativity of their artistic expression through anthropomorphic characters, as well as how they model the importance of creating a community that celebrates individuals and aspirational, authentic living. However, I hardly talk about how I exist in that space. Since 2016, I’ve put loads of time, love, and energy into a furry persona (a “fursona”) with alternative social media, commissioned artwork, and self-published stories. Only a handful of family members and close friends are privy to surface-level details since I keep most of this stuff under wraps — and it’ll stay that way for the time being.
And no, it’s not because I'm maintaining anonymity with a morally hypocritical, shameful double life. I say that because furries are stereotyped as sex and porn addicts at best, or zoophilic at worst. If you go looking (which I advise not doing), you will find stories of both in the fandom. But cherry-picking from a vast minority (while ignoring the vast majority’s response to unhealthy or immoral behavior) isn't fair in representing any group, whether we’re talking about Catholics or goths or Trekkies. In addition, because furries are human beings, they also have sexualities like you and me. The manner and degree to which furries sexually express themselves through their characters wildly differs from person to person, so it's often a part of being a furry but hardly all there is to being a furry. Pick any fandom from anime to comics. Sexual expression isn't unique to furries.
In a general sense, most people don’t understand why furries get so much joy and fulfillment through anthropomorphic characters. A good bit of what I do and say and like as a furry would also be silly and bizarre to many outsiders, so I prefer not sharing what they wouldn’t even get. Nevertheless, if all of it were exposed to the public, I wouldn’t fret or feel guilty. There’s nothing to be ashamed of because my boundaries are for my comfort. I want to preserve a separate space where I’m safe, understood, and free to be joyously weird with like-minded peers.
Yes, evil can thrive in secrecy, but privacy isn’t an automatic indication of wrongdoing. Christians in particular should know there’s a time and place for everything. It’s not that everything they do should always come to light, but that everything they do is made of light. Jesus tells his followers that attention to every moment’s context is a holy posture crucial to living righteously. He’s saying, “Being good starts with being self-aware and socially aware. Check your heart. Read the room. Vibe check within and without.”
But I didn’t have that outlook when I joined the furry community. As much as I resonated with the subculture, personal discrepancies threatened my place among these people, who acted in ways that proved their desperate need for God. And I was desperate to set myself apart as salt and light in their world. If I could be a furry and a Christian, then so could others!
Over the first couple years, I saw my growing art gallery and blossoming friendships as opportunities to share my faith in vulnerable, honest ways through my character. My own desires of self-expression were certainly at the heart of my commissions and stories, but if I could also share my love for Jesus through my character, then that’d be a victory for sharing more of my full self in a new and niche community where many had left faith behind.
I had good intentions, but you know what they say about those. My particular path to hell was paved with the puffed-up pride and piety of a savior complex. It’s easy to develop one of those when you grow up being given all of life’s secrets: what our purpose is, how we got here, what’s right and wrong — all that jazz. But an important thing I’ve learned is that God works through everyone — Christian and otherwise — to reveal truth and humble people. I don’t think Christians really understand just how much his ways are not our ways, especially in how he uses the “foolish” to shame the “wise.” I couldn’t imagine the full extent of this until I started meeting people outside my particular religious bubble. For me, furries were used for that purpose, who not only helped bring my intellectual and spiritual hubris out of my ego's shadow, but also made me aware of my personal blind spots. I had been so sure of everything when I had hardly known myself.
How so? We need to rewind the clock. I have to show you how long it took life to lay out the groundwork for me to step out of my bubble; how long it took God to wrangle my force of will into entertaining the mere possibility that I could be wrong.
I was homeschooled. That should say enough about how much exposure I had to different people and ideas up into my late teens. I joined online forums dedicated to videogames (rest in peace, Game Informer blog community) and Bionicle (shout-out to BZPower) in my youth, but I rarely made friends that way. I just tossed my opinions out there without any motive for developing deeper connections. You could say my approach was characteristic of the early years of Facebook — I’d post about what videogames I was playing over the weekend or who my favorite Toa is. Maybe even what I was eating for lunch. Nothing more.
I can blame some of it on my intrinsic introversion, but my social experiences beyond church gatherings were nonexistent. College and social media changed that. I met atheists in higher education! Twitter and YouTube gave me closer looks into the crazy beliefs of democrats, as well as the practices of weird traditions like Catholics and Presbyterians. If only they knew the one true way of conservative, complementarian, reformed, Calvinist, Baptist fundamentalism. How could they not see the foolproof logic and reason in my worldview? This was when I started to “expand my horizons” by reading and watching more material that … well, ideologically reinforced my preexisting notions with narratives and stereotypes I was told to believe — that I wanted to believe.
Up until that point in my life, I was living inside an ivory tower where I had reached the top. I opened the hatch with my eyes adjusting to the light. Then, I carefully stepped over to the parapet and surveyed the ideological landscape. I scoffed and shrugged. This was what the world had to offer? My belief structure was perfect.
Did I really understand why it was perfect? Why I believed my worldview and convictions were intellectually and morally and spiritually superior? Not really, but that didn’t matter. Exposure to differing ways of life and thought didn’t change much for nearly a decade. Everything already felt right and worked for me. Those were good enough reasons — until they weren’t.
Dear reader, I hadn’t realized my ivory tower wasn’t even made of ivory but rather a fake veneer of the stuff. What I had been given and built my life upon was, in fact, more like a Jenga tower. Its crowning battlements were so obnoxiously large and wide that I couldn’t even look below to see how pieces were falling out of place as I observed and met more people on the outside. These dislodged pieces all contributed to an inevitable collapse, but only one had the privilege of finishing the job. Let me tell you about that piece and the key moments that brought it out inch by inch.
The first gay friend I made was hurt by my traditionally Christian views regarding people like him and his partner. Having grown up evangelical himself, he said, “Christians nowadays usually love parameters more than the abstract truth that comes naturally for a God so huge and so complex.” I politely affirmed that I had no ill will toward gay people — only that I wanted what God wanted for them to live their best lives. The scriptures have always been clear about sex and gender, but to him, this very certainty was not only untrue but disappointing. “Your identifying as a Christian while loving the tiny box you sit in is a grating and unpleasing sound to my ears, incompatible with the love I've experienced from God.”
I was so upset. Who did he think he was to presume what God and his love are really like? After all, Jesus told his followers to deny themselves in order to truly live. No matter what my friend said, my theology funneled me toward one conclusion: he was led astray by the false promises of sin in his understanding and experience of the divine. Good outcomes, good works, and good feelings aren’t always signs of godliness. No matter how the truth affects one’s well-being, God’s good will and design come first — that goes for sexuality, too. I did acknowledge my scholarly shortcomings and more limited life experience, but I appealed to church history and a host of renowned authors and theologians. I couldn’t just take him at his word unless I did way more studying and reflection, so I felt it wise to end the conversation there.
Looking over those text messages again, I’m impressed by how much grace and patience my friend held for me in spite of my callous presumptions about his views and relationship — made all the more frustrating by how kindly I had dressed my wounding words. I had stood firm, but the pain and pity he conveyed sat in the pit of my stomach for months. Was this what standing up for the truth should feel like? All the while, I couldn’t stop thinking of his challenge to me when I told him that I only care about the truth: “I know it can be [scary], but don't you owe your God that pursuit of truth?”
I’m peering through one of the thin crenellations of my tower’s battlements, my gaze lost in the hazy horizon. A disconcerting rumble vibrates through my feet, shaking me from my daydreaming. Am I imagining things? That couldn’t have been real. I clear my throat and relax my shoulders. All is well.
An asexual friend heard all I had to say about how sexual desires outside of heterosexual sex went against the created order, being disordered and, therefore, sinful. In my own curious context as a furry, purity meant staying away from things as seemingly disconnected from biblical sexual ethics as, say, commissioning fantasy art of my fursona looking — dare I say — rather handsome. I told my friend it wasn’t enough to only stay away from pornographic art, but even appearing sinful — anything that could lead to my becoming a stumbling block. I had to be above reproach because righteousness is a ceaseless calling, and I assumed (like most people) that Jesus said any kind of sexual desire in the imagination is sin outside of marriage, even though he was specifically talking about adultery. My indirect exposure to the demands of purity culture meant that being or creating anything that aroused an inkling of erotic attraction — whether for myself or others — was evil in itself; I’d be responsible for the person who gave in to temptation and fostered lust. This is how compromise led to the slippery slope. Concession played with fire. Either gave Satan a foothold. Who was to say I wouldn’t go off the deep end? All of this applied to Christians revoking any association with LGBT labels and lifestyles, too, which are very common to furry culture and art.
“You might be a bit hard on yourself and underestimating your own ability to control yourself,” my friend said. “It's hard to know if it's a mistake or not until you try.”
Laconic and unbothered as ever, my friend casually disarmed the general point of my theologically dense diatribe. He didn’t get angry or tell me I was wrong. Rather, he posited whether I was being realistic and fair with regard to nuance in expressing sexuality, mainly for myself. He made me realize the slippery slope argument is often a fallacy born out of fear. Never take risks and silence dissent; reject nuance, regardless of godly motives or merit. But the Preacher modeled how trial and error is a crucial part of discerning morality when God doesn’t give us all the answers because, ultimately, that’s not how we should look at biblical laws. When taken altogether in their patently observable edits and evolution across the biblical canon, laws are not timeless, immovable statutes but culturally and temporally situated glimpses into God’s eternal values. Christians miss the forest for the trees when they only look at the Bible’s rules literally and in isolation. This commitment to black-and-white morality stems from a deep anxiety toward critical thinking amid moral ambiguity and responsibility with potential exceptions to the rule.
The structure lurches downward, bringing me onto my knees. I yelp as a loud crash from below echoes throughout the valley like a clap of thunder. Adrenaline pumps through my veins as I go rigid. I can hear the tower groaning as it slowly and precariously wobbles in place. I hold my breath in suspense, hoping it will settle back into the stability it has always provided.
A lesbian friend invited me to her wedding. I loved her and her partner, but I couldn’t tacitly endorse their sinful union. So, I didn’t go, using my lack of finances to travel as a cover (which was partly true, to be fair). Being gay was one thing, but her partner was non-binary, too. This gender identity madness was a whole other level of delusion leading to destruction … right? That’s what my Christian peers were saying; that’s what my favorite theologians were teaching; that’s the kind of thing republicans were railing against with marriage and bathrooms. Even still, I wanted to feel happy for them but knew this must be how Satan works to normalize sin. I had to remember that their happiness and love was actually rebellion and hate. I told myself I couldn’t be deceived. No matter how much my soul’s torture magnified, I was magnifying God.
The tower subtly circles in indecision, soon committing to its freefall forward. Lost for words, I scramble to the wooden hatch in the floor. It had locked behind me. Instead, I rush to the parapet opposite to the tower’s trajectory, searching for purchase along the crenellations just as I start sliding backward on the steepening slope of the floor.
It was the fifth time I caught feelings for a man over the last few years. Just like the others, I was positively electric with a fluttering heart when I talked to him. Before, I had brushed off these feelings as deep platonic love, but by this point, I was pathetically fooling myself. I was in love. Yet I couldn’t even entertain the notion of asking out my latest crush. Just as I had before, I cried tears of joy thinking about caring for and committing my life to someone so wonderful and kind. Then, I beat my soul into submission. This is evil. I let the confusion, loneliness, anger, and sorrow roll over me, sobbing myself dog-tired before bottling it all up again. This romance was broken and depraved. I needed to trust God, just like Job. My feelings and convictions weren’t aligned with God. I’d never had romantic or sexual feelings for women, but I had to pray for them if I desired marriage. Pray for contentment in celibacy. Pray for faith. Trust and obey, for there’s no other way.
The momentum of the fall increases by the moment. Before long, I’m hanging rather than bracing myself against the protective wall. I’m losing my grip and start to scream. This is the apocalypse — my world is crumbling.
An asexual friend in the furry community is a big theological nerd like me who grew up in the reformed evangelical tradition — a rare kindred spirit in our shared sexual orientation and commitment to traditional sexual ethics. Then, he told me he was dating a man “without the sexual element.” Because his partner was not asexual, I said that was, quite frankly, a ludicrous ploy to imagine a world where God would condone what he called a “celibate partnership.” I held him accountable. “We agreed on all that last year,” I said, “so I don't know what happened to provoke a 180 in major ways with your views — let alone how your family and church leaders have seemingly sanctioned this.” I was a brother in Christ standing firm on the rock, reaching out my hand to pull him back where we belonged. Instead, he turned the other cheek and let go, fading into what I saw as sinking sand. We didn’t speak for months.
I’m thrown downward like a ragdoll as the tower slams into the ground. My skull cracks and the wind is knocked out of me. In the abject horror of a split second, I watch what once made me feel safe and superior now crush and bury me. Darkness envelops me as I’m pinned beneath the rubble — a weight and shadow of unspeakable pain that squeezes the life out of my body. My consciousness fades. I feel my soul slipping away ….
Do you remember what I said about God always surprising Christians in how he humbles them? There’s this thing about Christians being born again into new life, and they often think this is a one-time event. It’s not only a limited view of what Jesus meant, but also related to these humbling moments.
We die thousands of deaths in this life, but I think we live thousands of resurrections, too. Salvation is just the beginning of this lifelong process for Christians. You can call it sanctification, but there are particularly profound instances of Christians being brought into newer life in their new lives. For me, the breaking apart of my faith at the hands of unlikely people was all part of a drawn-out beginning of God doing something new in my life, where he made a way out of no way.
I come to with a sharp inhale. My eyelids stagger open, and I notice a silhouette standing over me. A hand reaches through an opening in the rubble, waiting for me to take hold. I hesitate but tentatively accept it, yelping at the strong grip that pulls me upward with inhuman force. Before I know it, I’m on my feet, nearly stumbling over the rubble from the momentum. As I gain my bearings and turn around to thank my rescuer, I see that I’m alone.
I have a splitting headache. I’m sore and bruised all over. There’s a dense fog and pouring rain.
I fall to my knees, bringing my hands to the sides of my head as I remember what happened. Before I start descending into a panic, I bring my hands out in front of me as a miraculous fact becomes clear: I’m alive.
What am I supposed to do now?
To be continued.
(Sound effects for the voiceover pulled from freesound.org.)