A little less than a year ago, the word “deepfake” was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. The term surged to popularity as deepfake videos and technology were reportedly threatening to manipulate elections. If you aren’t familiar with deepfakes, the dictionary defines a deepfake as “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.”
Thanks to a host of new and developing technologies that can replace faces, manipulate expressions, and generally morph anyone into anything, deepfakes are no longer created only at the hands of computer and technology wizards, but even our kids are getting into the game. Be aware, because this will be happening more and more.
Of course, our main concern is that these technologies will be misused in ways that promote lying, deception, and what the Bible calls “bearing false witness”. . . a sinful act that God detests along with all other sin.
As we’ve thought about the youth culture concerns related to deep fakes, two come immediately to mind. First, deepfakers can lift anyone’s photo off social media. . . photos of adults, teens, and even the smallest of children. . . and turn them into pornography. Second, deepfakes can be used to bully, threaten, and even blackmail innocent parties.
Today, this we ran this piece on deepfakes on our 1-minute daily Youth Culture Today podcast. . .
As you consider where this might all lead, read the words of Proverbs 6:16-19 : “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.”
Parents, this should give us pause regarding our incessant posting of our children’s photos online. We also need to be warning our kids to be careful about what they post, while also warning them about becoming deepfake perpetrators. This also reminds us that those who now recommend a no-smartphone policy for kids until they are 16 are actually offering sound advice.
And just in case you missed it, a story broke at the beginning of the week which offers a peek into the devious ways even parents are now using deepfakes. . .
A few years ago a friend told me that in the coming days we would, as leaders in ministry, be challenged in new ways by questions about sexuality and gender. He described what was coming as an issue that was going to be very sensitive, for the simple reason that it will involve ministry to and with divine image-bearers wrestling with questions about sex and gender in light of the fast-emerging cultural narrative. His prediction was correct. Perhaps no issue has been more pressing in our youth ministry world and ministry world in general over the last couple of years. Much has changed.
As with all cultural realities that emerge with the advance of the course of this world and the spirit of the times, Christians are called not to adapt the Word to the cultural moment, but to see, understand, and respond to the cultural moment under the light of God’s Word. Why? Because it is the unchanging authority which serves as a set of corrective lenses, helping us to see how to best love and respond to real flesh-and-blood human beings with grace and truth.
Our current CPYU Faith and Culture cohort took a month to read, watch, discuss, and reflect on our current transgender realities. We watched a compelling and very helpful seminar – “Transgenderism – The Reshaping Of Reality In Our Culture” – that brought together Dr. Kevin DeYoung, a pastoral counselor, and a transitioned/de-transitioned woman who gives deep insights into the personal and cultural issues of the day. We also read a very helpful free download from our friend Peter Lynas in the U.K. – “Transformed: Understanding Transgender In A Changing Culture”.
As I’ve done following all of our cohort discussions, I asked members of the cohort – all youth workers – to scribble some thoughts that I can post for others to see. I hope you will find these helpful. . .
While I thought that DeYoung’s argument was very good, I had one quibble about his second point, Repression is oppression. I think there is an important distinction between repression and suppression, whereas repression has taken on a more technical nuance to mean a subconscious flight from unwanted impulses / desires / memories, suppression is a conscious decision to reject, turn away from, repent of those impulses, desires, etc. I think Christians can affirm repression as a problem which needs counseling, but suppression as a healthy way of fighting against indwelling sin. When we make that distinction, we can help our non-Christian friends to a) see that we all suppress things that don’t fit with our telos (desserts / gluten / violence) and b) can affirm the importance of therapy for a very real problem of repressed memories, etc. It’s a good apologetic move to notice that distinction.
Being Human by Barrs and Macaulay was my first introduction to the mind/body dichotomy. On that note, again, having a good anthropology (that we are a spirit-body nexus) helps us to see that Death in the fall is any severing of all levels of that nexus – the spirit departing the body in physical death is the antitype for the male mind rejecting the anatomically male body (or female, etc). In other words, in our therapeutic culture, having the ability to speak to the psychological disorientation students feel through the lens of the fall is helpful.
I thought this line was dynamite: “You have to convince yourself that this [transgender] is something that you are, not what you feel, because if it is who you are it isn’t a decision.” Kids really need their peculiarities to be who they are. In a world where you can be anything and everything you want (Absolute Autonomy), it is fascinating that, like any good idolatry, choice and decisions are incredibly scary. Keep worshipping at that altar and it will rob every choice from you. – Matthew Beham
As we’ve been having these conversastions about transgendrism as a cohort, I’ve been thinking through broader ministry to families and the conversations we should be pushing parents to have with their children, well before their teen years. We talked about the narrative of Scripture (Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration) and how an understanding of God working through history frames how we respond to issues today. Are we equipping our parents to lead their children in these conversations? And are we having these conversations with students in our ministry? As a dad of an almost 2 year old, it is easy to fear what cultural pressures she’ll face as she grows up. How can I prepare her? I think the story of God and His people has to be the most important thing. If she understands the gospel as more than a one-time response she makes as a child, but as a daily repentance and surrendering, maybe she’ll be well equipped later in life.
It can seem like it’s too late to help teens understand this sometimes, like culture has already shaped them. But we can’t give up. They’ll be parents in a few years shaping the next generation of teenagers. Obviously we need to engage the practical conversations on gender and identity etc…but the gospel is the greatest news of all time and informs all of these discussions. – Jeff Travis
Some thoughts regarding the transgender topic. Page 17 of the Transformed document touches on the need to have policies in place in advance. When I participated in the Symposium On Traditional Biblical Sexuality last year (at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), this was perhaps one of my biggest takeaways. If it hasn’t happened already, it’s only a matter of time until situations such as transgender bathroom use, accommodations on a retreat/summer camp, baptism or participating in other sacraments come into play in your ministry settings. Taking the time now, ahead of time, to write out official policy statements at the church level (yes, senior pastors will need to get on board!) that address these types of topics (some may have to be at a larger umbrella level… we can’t necessarily predict each situation) with biblical truth will serve us well in the future. It allows us to write out well-reasoned and grace-filled responses based on Scripture that we can point to when needed. I actually think this approach to the “ideology” helps us show proper grace to the individuals when the time comes. We don’t have to spend our efforts running around scrambling to figure out how to address the particular situation, we can fall back to our official policies and spend time ministering appropriately.
How this looks in each of your ministry settings will look different. Some denominations already have some guidance in place, some policies may be “internal” documents, rather than published documents, they do not all need to look the same. Regardless, I urge you to consider doing the work to write one sooner, rather than later. -Chris Wagner
The book Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey is a great apologetics book covering topics related to sexuality and beyond. Highly recommend.
That I can remember, Parenting with Words of Grace by William P Smith is one of the best books I can think of related to the topic of having healthy grace-filled relationships & conversations with children/teens – conversations where we point them to truth while also listening well, pointing them to grace, and inviting them to a deeper relationship. So I thought of this book because it fits this theme of listening well and creating safe space for students to speak up that has been consistent in our last few cohort conversations. Obviously this book approaches the subject from the perspective of parenting, but the principles are more broadly applicable to our relationships with teens as youth leaders. It’d be a great book to get in the hands of volunteers and parents, too.
One possible “first principle” that occurred to me is our need for authority in our lives. I’ve found that the students who struggle the most to accept the Bible’s teaching on some of the topics we’ve been discussing are students who have adversarial or broken relationships with authority figures in their lives and are thus less likely to trust what they hear from adults, an institution like the church, etc. – Linda Oliver
Thinking through the conversation surrounding not just transsexualism, but also the larger narrative of LGBTQ+ can seem to be overwhelming for many. The reality is that many students are facing much of this conversation head on as they seek to navigate the culture as it happens. The question we as leaders, volunteers, and parents must understand is “how do we lead well and point our student to Jesus?”
Reflecting on this conversation and the sensitive nature of it, it is important to remember that Christ calls us to love others even as we share truth. That doesn’t mean we water down our truth to share love, nor does it mean we simply state truth without thinking about how it could affect someone. Instead we should understand that “there is no dichotomy between truth and love. For the Christian truth is love and love is truth. If you are not being truthful, you are not being loving. And if you are not loving – you are not truthful (Preston Sprinkle).”
As we think through our conversations surrounding this topic, it is so important to go back to the beginning and how God created humankind – male and female. And in going back to the beginning of Scripture it is also important to remember that each person has their own story and have experienced various feelings, leanings, and struggles. As a result, we should always be willing to hear and walk with people who are struggling with this and love them as we point them to Scripture. Relational equity is huge in these conversations because it shows your heart and your conviction to God’s Word in a way that is more helpful. We should be willing to hear someone’s story, point them to God’s design, engage in authentic conversation, and walk with them as they seek to have God’s plan worked out in their life. –Nick Mance
As we discussed this together, I was struck by the need to have a nuanced approach in response to transgenderism. We must be able to separate the agenda from the people. As pastors, we have to labor to understand and call out the lies of an agenda that is driven by telling people to attempt to change their biology in a way that is often harmful and detrimental. We must understand why this has such a powerful appeal in our culture and how the hope of the gospel speaks a better word than the hope of a transformed gender. And we need to train our students to understand how to respond to these lies. At the same time, we must approach individual people who are struggling with great compassion. We need to appreciate the fact that every person’s story is different. This requires us to have a listening, learning, and humble posture to anyone who may share with us that they are struggling with their gender. It’s all to easy for us as pastors to seek to give the “right answers” without listening, asking questions, and first of all understanding the struggle of the individual before us. Our response needs to be guided by both great wisdom and great compassion. – Kyle Kauffman
It is interesting how quickly our culture is changing around the topics of sexuality and gender. This has opened up many opportunities for parents and youth workers to respond by educating and equipping students to think about these topics through the lens of a biblical worldview. One way we can do this is by reminding students that our ultimate authority is God’s Word. Students need to know what God has said and how it applies to their lives. This can allow students to understand the foundational beliefs of Christianity and how they can live out what God has for them in their schools, with their families, and while being with their peers. – Kyle Hoffsmith
Chances are, few of our kids knew the name Addison Rae Easterling just 19 months ago. But now, less than two years later, anyone with any youth culture awareness at all knows that this 20-year-old TikTok celebrity with 70 million followers and counting, along with 5 billion views, is now an influencer and popular role model for children and teens.
A competitive dancer who started uploading her dance videos to the short-form TikTok video app back in the summer of 2019, she soon dropped out of college as her following grew and she decided to focus full-time on growing her cross-platform social media presence. Now, she’s making millions of dollars through endorsement deals and merchandising. Just last month, she graced the cover of Glamour magazine, and now her acting career is taking off.
Today’s social media-saturated world has made it possible for any kid – or adult – with a smartphone to devote time and energy to the pursuit of online celebrity status. More and more chase the dream of becoming the next Addison Rae. But they don’t realize that once one “successfully” grabs the brass-ring of a following, fame, and fortune, the empty God-shaped hole they thought such status would fill never fills up at all.
A recent Addison Rae interview with yahoo!life features this headline, “Addison Rae reveals mental toll of having 70 million TikTok followers: ‘A lot of it has to do with body image.’” While celebrity-inspiring kids might ignore or write off the disturbing realities that occasioned the headline, we should all – young and old alike – be paying attention. Read further in the interview and you’ll find that Addison Rae has sought the help of a therapist to help her navigate her own continued issues with body image, identity, comparison, and self-worth. It seems like her gnawing emptiness isn’t going away.
Among other issues raised by Addison Rae’s “success”, we need to be thinking and talking about how technology and social media are controlling and shaping (mis-shaping) us. . . and what we can do to appropriately use the good gifts of technology. In effect, how we can take control of social media rather than giving it permission to take control of us?
Perhaps one of the greatest battles we and our kids face each and every day of our lives is the battle over where to place and find our identity. And while we dabble endlessly in trying on identity after identity in an effort to emerge from the “fitting room” and be embraced by affirming/accepting eyes, there is, ultimately, only one place to find that for which we were created. It’s through a relationship with Jesus Christ, the only One who can fill the God-shaped vacuum.
In Paul Tripp’s devotional book, New Morning Mercies, I found this little poem that’s simply titled, “Identity.” I encourage you to read it, ponder it, and have your kids do the same.
No need to search for myself. No need to grasp for meaning for my life or purpose for what I do. No need to hope for inner peace, that sense of well-being for which every heart longs. No need to hope that someone or something will make me happy or give me joy. I no longer need any of these things because grace has connected me to you and you have named me your child.
One of the most basic tasks of human beings is finding an answer to the question, “Who am I?” If you read books, watch TV, or engage with film you see the how the struggle to find an answer to this question works out in our lives. . . sometimes for the duration of our lives.
Those of us who work with kids and study adolescent development know that identity formation – finding an answer to the “Who am I?” question – is one of the most basic developmental tasks. It’s fundamental to our humanity and really ramps up during the teenage years.
Answers to the question abound. Culture offers up all kinds of options and answers, many that wax and wane with the times, leading kids to follow the answer du jour. In today’s world, it seems that the great majority of “answers” coming from the culture fall into the category of “self-determination.” In other words, you are at the center of the world. And since your life is all about you, it’s up to you to determine your identity. Of course, even our best shots miss the bullseye. . . which has resulted in a kind of “fluidity” when it comes to our identities. We choose and choose and choose again, morphing and changing in search of the satisfaction we can only find when we find and fulfill our true created purpose in the world.
Os Guinness, in his book Impossible People, states it well, “People are always becoming, but they never become anything for long.”
This morning I ran across these words on identity from the great theologian, J.I. Packer. In response to the identity question asked by the Psalmist in Psalm 8:4 – “What is man?” – Packer gives clarity as to the location of the identity bullseye. . .
“I am a man; what, then, am I? Not, as philosophers and gnostic ancient and modern would tell me, a soul that would do better without a body, but a complex psycho-physical organism, a personal unit describable as an ensouled body no less than an embodied soul. I am at once the highest of animals, sin no other animal shares my kind of mental life, and the lowest of rational creatures, for no angel is bounded by physical limitations as I am. Yet I, as a man, can enjoy the richest life of all God’s creatures. Mental and physical awareness meet and blend in me fearfully, wonderfully, and fascinatingly. My task is not to dizzy myself by introspecting or speculating to find (if I can) what lies at the outer reaches of consciousness, nor to pursue endless, exquisite stimulation in hope of new, exotic ecstasies. It is, rather, to know and keep my place in God’s cosmic hierarchy, and in that place to spend my strength in serving God and man.”
When you’ve been in the world of youth ministry as long as I have, it’s easy to look into the rearview mirror and notice that there are several things you’d do the same way all over again, and then there are those ministry efforts that you’d probably do a bit differently. . . perhaps QUITE a bit differently. That’s certainly the case for me. And to be clear, whichever of these two categories my evaluative hindsight would drop all those ministry efforts into, I can tell you that the one common thread among them all was good intentions.
For those of us who were meeting regularly back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s with a group of kids we dearly loved, we most likely spent time praying that they would be spared from all the growing fallout from the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Our kids were coming of age in a culture that sent strong sexual messages. They were being encouraged to embrace a sexual ethic where you could do whatever, wherever, however, whenever, and with whomever.
We wanted to see our kids live counter-culturally when it came to their sexuality. We desired to see them embrace God’s order and design for their sexuality. So, we talked, taught, and talked some more. We made use of a host of youth ministry resources that were being churned out to help us points kids in the right sexual direction. There were books, movies, music, magazines, seminars, conferences, and all kinds of special events which we had our fingertips as youth ministry “ammo” we could use to steer kids in the right direction. It all became collectively known as “The Purity Movement.” I would emphasize again that our push for sexual purity was rooted in good intentions. We utilized these resources, again, all with a deep, deep desire to love and lead these precious young image-bearers into God’s order and design for sex and sexuality.
A few decades have passed since then. And when we look back in the rearview mirror, we have the benefit of evaluating our purity message “input” back then with the “output” of long-term results that we see now. Here at CPYU, our online Sexual Integrity Initiative uses “Initiative” rather than “Purity” for reasons that are described in this helpful handout for parents. And that’s what we discussed on this latest episode of our Youth Culture Matters podcast. Our guest was Rachel Joy Welcher, author of Taking Back Purity Culture: Rediscovering Faithful Christian Sexuality. Rachel looks at the good things that have come out of those early efforts, while helping us see how doing things differently moving forward will only help our kids live out God’s glorious design to His glory! If you want to revisit your own youth group experiences with purity culture. . . and learn how to effectively lead today’s kids into God’s order and design, you can listen here.
Do you know what the gnawing questions are that your students are asking about their identity? And, if you know the questions, are you equipped to guide them into understanding biblically-based answers to those questions?
Two of the most pressing questions kids are asking from birth up until adulthood are these. . . 1) Who am I?, and 2) What do I believe? In fact, both of these questions are at the foundation of two of the most pressing developmental tasks kids are engaged in. . . 1) Identity formation, and 2) Worldview formation.
As I’ve studied youth culture trends and traveled to spend time with youth workers, parents, and students over the last few years, I’ve come to believe that one of the most pressing issues of our times is the question of identity. Our kids are growing up in a world where the compelling and pervasive cultural-narrative mis-leads them into faulty and destructive identity beliefs which they will most likely hold onto for the rest of their lives. More and more kids base their identity on what they look like and what others think of them. Others are rooting their identity in sexual and gender preferences. But we know that we are called to lead them to find their identity in Christ and who they are as image-bearers of God.
We want to help equip you to lead your students into finding their identity in Christ. It’s to that end that I’ve personally vetted and curated a little identity resource packet that will guide and shape your biblically-based teaching with both students and their parents. I’ve chosen four accessible books which will complement each other as they resource you to address the identity issue in a God-honoring way.
Here’s what’s included:
What Do You Think of Me? Why Do I Care?: Answers To The Big Questions Of Life is a book by Ed Welch that will help your students answer the “Who Am I?” question in ways that will release them from living to impress others, while living within the freedom of living for Christ. This book will not only serve to give you material you can teach, but it is designed to be read by students and even used in a small group setting.
Face Time: Your Identity In A Selfie World is written by Kristen Hatton, a mom who had to deal with the identity issue when her own daughter’s seemingly picture perfect life came apart at the seams when she sought acceptance and worth in all the wrong places and things. While the book is designed to be read by teenaged girls, I’m telling youth workers that they can teach the book’s material to both girls and guys. Kristen’s theology of identity is worth the price of the book alone, and it can serve as valuable teaching content.
Will You Be My Facebook Friend: Social Media and The Gospel is a helpful little book from Tim Chester that pastorally and biblically addresses some of the danger zones with social media, particularly as it relates to identity. Again, this is one from which you can teach.
And finally, Gender: A Conversation Guide For Parents And Pastors is a little book for those who want to teach the Bible faithfully regarding matters of gender identity. . . which is a huge topic of conversation among our kids in today’s youth culture. It’s also one that will help your parents discuss these issues in age and stage appropriate ways.
We appreciate you and what you’re doing to help kids flourish and experience their full humanity by leading them to find their identity in who they in Jesus Christ.
Editor’s note: This post is reprinted from the lead article in our January 2021 CPYU Parent Page. . . a monthly subscription resource available for youth workers to distribute to parents. To learn more about the CPYU Parent Page and to subscribe, click here.
Don’t like what you see in the mirror? You’re not alone. It’s not surprising that the top two New Year’s resolutions have everything to do with what we see in the mirror: exercise more, and lose weight. While it is important that we teach our kids to take care of their God-given bodies, they are growing up in a culture where we are obsessed with our outward appearances. Our obsession is less a matter of balanced stewardship, and more a matter of all-consuming idolatry. What we look like has become the foundation on which so many build their identity. I recently read that as of 2017, the “wellness” industry was a $4.2 trillion market, which was up from $3.7 trillion in 2015.
While these messages educate our kids from the moment they emerge from the womb, the time when these messages exercise their greatest persuasive power is when our kids hit puberty. . . which in today’s world starts for many when they are still in elementary school.
Do you remember what it was you were feeling and experiencing when your body was transitioning from childhood to adulthood with what seemed like breakneck speed? It happened for me during my Junior High years and I was consumed with two questions: What is happening to me? And, what do I do with what is happening to me? I can’t imagine what it’s like to navigate puberty in today’s world. Television, film, and social media is pounding them with thousands of images and messages daily, each one contributing to a set of appearance standards that become the benchmark for being normal, acceptable, likeable, and lovable. Parents can and must help kids navigate this confusing new transition of rapid physical growth by playing the following roles:
Be sensitive and affirming as your teen’s body changes. Our children need parents who will openly explain and discuss what is happening to their bodies. Most of these changes occur during the middle school years, when group acceptance is of the utmost importance and when peers – because of their own impulsivity and insecurities – tend to be most cruel and insensitive. A loving and sensitive parent can serve as a buffer in the midst of the type of ridicule that could scar a child’s self-image for life. While dealing with these pressures will still be difficult for your child, your positive input will serve to build resiliency into your teen.
Offer your teen a godly perspective on the changes that are taking place. In addition to modeling the unconditional love and acceptance of Christ during the physically awkward years, Mom and Dad should temper the social pressure to be preoccupied with outward appearance. Take the time to teach your children about the inward qualities of godliness. Be sure you provide an example void of obsession over your own appearance. It’s important to be about the business of developing your own inward character in a Godly direction. You too, are who you are, not what you look like.
Understand the sexual temptation your teen faces. In centuries past, when puberty arrived at a later age and marriages took place when children were younger, pre-marital sexual temptation was present but not as intense. Kids were able to answer the pressure with some resilience thanks to a commonly-held understanding of sexual parameters, right and wrong, and the expectations of society-at-large. The ever-widening gap between sexual maturity and age of marriage has made it difficult for our kids. We must live and promote a Biblical sexual ethic so that they might experience the God-given gift of sexuality in all of its glorious and enjoyable fullness, in the context of a monogamous, life-long, heterosexual marriage.
Ongoing open communication with your kids about their new bodies will not only temper the culture’s message with Scriptural truth, but it will strengthen your relationship with your child.
If it doesn’t happen, who is going to be more disappointed? You? Or your kids?
That question haunted me in a personal way as I rode past a high school football stadium during the last week of July. Coaches and players were assembled on the field for workouts in preparation for a season that might or might not happen due to our current pandemic. I rewound 17 years to my own son, and I began to wonder how he would have responded if his last year of high school football had been shut down. Then, I began to wonder how I would have responded as his dad. Truth be told, I don’t know that it would have been easy for me to take it all in stride. . . which I’m afraid reveals an aspect of my character that’s not very attractive.
The reality is that just about every extra-curricular activity in which our kids engage is in jeopardy. Sports, concerts, clubs, academic competitions, and other areas where our kids have a chance to shine might not happen. And what that means is that our parental opportunity to shine through our kids and their talents might disappear as well. I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.
In his book Parenting: Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family, Dr. Paul Tripp includes a chapter on the topic of “Identity.” Dr. Tripp states the “Identity Principle” this way: “If you are not resting as a parent in your identity in Christ, you will look for identity in your children.” While expecting our children to be successful and do their best is not a bad thing, far too many of us are harboring parental hearts that are more focused on our children achieving the kind of success that makes us look good, rather than on the child who is required to deliver it. The result is that we crush and embitter our children through the weight of our pressures and expectations. When that happens, God bless our sons and daughters.
The remedy to this is to rest in our identity in Jesus Christ. If we are not finding our identity in Christ, we will to find our identity in something in the creation. . . possessions, vocation, accomplishments, and even our children. Simply stated, this is idolatry. As Dr. Tripp remind us, only Christ is able to give us the identity, peace, and meaning that our hearts seek.
So, how can you know if you are living to find your identity through your children rather than in Jesus Christ? What are the signs that your parenting is driven more by what you need from your children rather than by what God wants to do through you in your children? Dr. Tripp shares these five “sure indications”:
Too much focus on success. You want your children to succeed because you need them to succeed.
Too much concern about reputation. You rely on your children and their performance to polish your reputation as a parent.
Too great desire for control. You control situations and people to make sure your children succeed and enhance your reputation.
Too much emphasis on doing rather than being. You focus on your child’s physical, social, and educational accomplishments rather than on their heart.
Too much temptation to make it personal. You focus not on how their behavior is viewed by God, but on how their behavior affects you.
Parents, take stock of how you’re parenting. Are you putting undue, spirit-crushing pressure on your kids, or are you seeking to find your identity in Christ?
Two of social media’s most negative effects are 1) How it can become a time waster for both those who post and those who are consumed with reading posts, and 2) how social media is uniquely suited as a playground to indulge our sinful natures in impulsive “speak-before-thinking” ways that lead to all kinds of trouble. . . including glorification of self rather than glorification of God.
In Proverbs we read these wise words: “Do you see a man who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Proverbs 29:20) and “When words are many, sin is not absent, but he who holds his tongue is wise” (Proverbs 10:19).
While I am far from consistently hitting the mark, I endeavor to follow the wisdom of Proverbs whenever I’m using social media. Here are some steps that you might find helpful as you take a purposeful pause” before hitting “send”, “post”, “tweet”, or “reply.” Share these steps with parents, kids, and your church staff as a way to promote healthy social media use as an act of worship. . .
As a post-grad, I spent a couple of years in cubicle world working at an insurance agency. My first position there was as their front desk receptionist, and it was my job to transfer calls and manage the mail room. One day, while putting together the Second Day Air UPS envelopes, I missed inserting the address sleeve into the clear plastic cover of one of the packages. A few days later, an agent in our office asked me to track that particular package, and the blood drained from my face when I realized that the shipping barcode had never been generated. Come to find out, it was extremely precious cargo. Inside the destination-less envelope was an annuity check for six figures. Without a timely arrival, the agent lost the client and the hefty commission on the account. To this day, I still feel a hint of that pit in my stomach when I think about that mistake that didn’t just affect me, but someone else’s livelihood!
I say all this because I think that a lot of dating relationships resemble that envelope. You’ve been dating for a little while, but no actual intention has been established. And yet, the more time you spend together, the more the physical side of the relationship escalates. In essence, the plane has taken off before the flight path has been confirmed. I think most Christians would agree that boyfriends don’t get marriage privileges (at least in theory), but I submit to you that friends and dates shouldn’t get boyfriend privileges, either.
True pursuit acknowledges the preciousness of what’s being pursued and is careful to match the pace of a relationship with the definitions. Are you friends who happen to like each other? Great! Don’t let your “friend” treat you like a girlfriend until he’s made that public commitment. Are you dating and “figuring things out”? Awesome! Don’t be pressured to give in to any kind of intimacy that doesn’t belong in that stage. You run the risk of being strung along in a relationship that begins to resemble a cardboard container that doesn’t value its contents.
Now, here’s where gray areas emerge and you need help from the Holy Spirit. What are good physical boundaries for dating? I can’t decide that for you. And I can’t do justice to the subject in a short blog post. But, I will say that it shouldn’t be anything you’d regret if the relationship doesn’t end up going anywhere, and it needs to be firmly established with accountability long before Mr. Potential shows up. Don’t decide as you go, because I guarantee that you will underestimate the power of the cloudy, smoky rave that parties in your frontal cortex at the onset of a blossoming relationship.
Some of you ladies have already sensed the truth in what I’m about to say through personal experience. One of the most devastating realizations for a woman is when she knows she’s being pursued more for her body than for her heart. Because deep down, all anyone wants is to be fully known and then fully loved. And if someone simply doesn’t see the value in pursuing what’s on the inside, we feel reduced to any other cheap envelope without a unique tracking number. I have friends who are pre-marital counselors and they have said that 90% of the time, when couples come to them with relational difficulties, it always stems from pushing the physical boundaries too far early on in their relationship.
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Disclaimer:God’s grace covers past relationships and even ones you are currently in. It’s never too late to stand up for your value and set new boundaries. If your lines force an exit, good riddance! He’s not where he needs to be to pursue you in love and protect you in truth. If you feel like, after setting those boundaries, he’s always looking for ways to cross them, you need to think and pray seriously about your next steps. I believe that each stage in any relationship is a training ground for the next. And respect is a muscle. If he doesn’t flex it now, how will that lack of cardio show up in future situations when the stakes are higher?
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At the end of the day, you, my friend, are a daughter of the King of the Universe. You were bought with a price much greater than 6 figures- the price of His Son, Jesus. And you are clothed in His righteousness so that you won’t step back in the mud but instead, see clearly the path of real, God-honoring, Kingdom work. I truly believe that if you recognize your worth as His image-bearer and your position in his reign, you wouldn’t need to read this article or learn from the tough pill of regret. You would have everything you need to make wise dating decisions.
Love,
R
A version of this post originally appeared on Not Singled Out on December 16, 2018. Used by permission.
Rachelle Windham – I am a redeemed follower of Jesus Christ, and I desire to spend my time on earth using any gifts, passions, strengths, and even weaknesses to serve Him. I am especially passionate about Biblical singleness, discipling younger women, seeing God’s power and creativity in studying His world, and approaching each new season of life with Christ in a sense of ADVENTURE! You can find more of her writing at: www.notsingledout.com.
Church can be a tough place for single people. Most Christians don’t realize it, unless they’re single, but if you step back and look at our Christian culture, you’ll see that we elevate marriage. In some cases, we idolize it. We see a beautiful girl and we say, “What a catch!” We see a handsome man and say, “He’ll sure make a wonderful spouse someday.”
If they’re still not married by the age of 30, we think something’s wrong, or perhaps they’re too picky. “Why aren’t they married yet?” This is code for: Something must be wrong with you. If you were living out your full potential and making all the right choices, you’d be married by now.
Parents especially can put undue (and unbiblical) pressure on their kids if they don’t get married and have kids. You have to wonder whether parents are actually thinking about what’s best for their kids, or just wanting what’s best for themselves—i.e. grandkids.
Singleness is rarely viewed in positive light in American Christianity, even though it’s extolled in the New Testament.
Singleness in the Bible
In the Old Testament, most people got married, had kids and passed on their inheritance to their children, who in turn passed it on to their children. Laws were even set up to ensure that one’s family name was passed on through a male heir (Deuteronomy 25:5-10, Ruth 4:7). It was assumed that people would get married and start a family. It wasn’t a sin not to. But it was sort of expected.
Things changed in the New Testament, however. Jesus reconfigured the Old Testament’s emphasis on family when he recognized all Christians as brothers and sisters: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asked. “Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33, 35; Matthew 12:48-50). After Peter praises himself for leaving everything, Jesus responds:
Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and bothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands. (Mark 10:29-30)
Discipleship might cost you your family. Yet becoming a disciple means you gain a new family of believers who are your brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers in Christ.
Jesus considers all believers—not just married folk—to be family. We’re not kind of like a family. We are family.
The apostle Paul almost downplays marriage in light of the beautiful prospect of singleness. “If you do marry, you have not sinned … Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that” (1 Corinthians 7:28). Marriage isn’t wrong, but Paul clearly preferred the single life. “He who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better” (1 Corinthians 7:38).
And, of course, John the Baptist and Jesus were unmarried men of marital age—a shocking sight to a first-century Jewish world. Perhaps they were just picky. If they could just pray a little harder, God would bless them with a fine woman.
Singleness in the American Evangelical Church
I wonder if the American evangelical church has it all backward. Instead of viewing singleness as a pitiful stage to get through on your way to married life, we should elevate and honor the single people in our midst as those who, in Paul’s words, “will do even better.”
Much of this anti-singleness message saturates the air of our churches, sometimes with words, other times with actions. The message is usually it is subtle and unintended. But single people hear it loud and clear: You’re incomplete until you get married and have at least two kids. (But if you have more than four, then people think you’re weird again.)
Just ask any post-college single person at your church how they feel. Ask them if they feel like they are valued, honored, respected, loved and invited into the lives and homes of other families of the church. Ask them if they are ever made to feel incomplete by off-handed comments (“Why aren’t you married yet?”) or sermon illustrations that always draw from parenting. Ask them how they felt on the weekend that the church was away at Family Camp.
The fact is, marriage is a small blip in our existence. We’re all born single and called to steward our singleness for the first 20-30 years of our life. Many people will be called out of singleness and into marriage and then called to steward their marriage to the glory of God. But us married folks will be single again, in this life, whether through divorce or death of our spouse. And then we’ll spend eternity with God as single persons once again.
But we won’t actually be single. We’ll be one with our Creator; married, if you will, to God.
Some Christians have bought into the cultural narrative that you can’t really thrive unless you’re married and having lots and lots of sex. But Christianity doesn’t teach this. Christians can live without sex, but we can’t live without love and intimacy. And there’s a difference. Human flourishing doesn’t depend on marriage and it certainly doesn’t depend on sex.
Marriage brings with it its own temptations and trials, frustration and other problems that married people don’t often admit. To think that marriage will end your loneliness and take care of your sexual frustrations is a myth. Many married people wish they weren’t and the “majority of people struggling with sexual addictions and compulsive online habits are married men.”
The fact is that we are relationally and sexually messed up. And only Jesus, not marriage, can fix that. Jesus—the one who was single and the embodiment of human flourishing and joy.
Dr. Preston Sprinkle has authored several books, including the New York Times bestselling Erasing Hell(with Francis Chan; 2011), Fight; A Christian Case for Nonviolence(David C. Cook, 2013), Paul and Judaism Revisited(IVP, 2013), Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us(David C. Cook, 2014), and the recently released People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue(Zondervan, 2015), and the newest Grace//Truth 1.0: Five Conversations Every Thoughtful Christian Should Have About Faith, Sexuality & Gender (2017). Dr. Sprinkle also hosts a daily radio program titled: “Theology in the Raw?” and frequently speaks at various venues including college chapels, churches, music festivals, youth camps, family camps, and anywhere else where people desire to hear relevant Bible teaching. Preston has been married to Chrissy for 15 years and together they have 4 children.
I often get asked, “what’s the next discussion that Christians need to have about sexuality and gender?” My immediate answer is: “polyamory,” though the morality of sex with robotsis a close second.
Polyamory is often confused with polygamy, but they are actually quite different. For one, polygamy is a type of marriagewhile polyamory is not necessarily marital. Also, Polygamy almost always entails a man taking more than one wife, while polyamory is much more egalitarian. “Polyamory is open to any mixture of numbers and genders so it is just as common for a man to be in a relationship with several women as it is for a woman to be in lovewith several men,” writes Mike Hatcher.
Polyamory is also different from swinging or open relationships, though these do overlap. Open relationships are polyamorous, but not every polyamorous relationship is an open relationship. Sex and relationship therapist Renee Divine says: “An open relationship is one where one or both partners have a desire for sexualrelationships outside of each other, and polyamory is about having intimate, lovingrelationships with multiple people.” And that’s the key. Polyamory is not just about sex. It includes love, romance, and emotional commitment between more than 2 people.
For some Christians, polyamory seems so extreme and rare that there’s no need to talk about it. It’s wrong. It’s ridiculous. No need to defend why it’s wrong or think through pro-poly arguments. Just quote Genesis 2 and move on. But hopefully we’ve learned the hard way from our rather “late-to-the-discussion” approach with LGBTQ questions that it’s better to get ahead of the game and constructa view rather than just fall back into frantic reactive mode when the issue is in full bloom.
For other Christians, polyamory is only considered when being used in a “slippery slope” argument against same-sex relations—if we allow gay relationships, why not poly relationships? While I agree that the ethical logic used to defend same-sex relations cannot exclude poly relationships, merely using polyamory as a slippery slope argument is inadequate. We actually need to think through plural love, as it’s sometimes called, and do so in a gracious, thoughtful, and biblical manner.
Polyamory is much more common than some people think. According to one estimate“as many as 5 percent of Americans are currently in relationships involving consensual nonmonogamy” which is about the same as those who identify as LGBTQ. Another recent study, published in a peer reviewed journal, found that 1 in 5 Americans have been in a consensual non-monogamous relationship at least some point in their life. Another survey showed that nearly 70% of non-religious Americans between the ages of 24-35 believe that consensual polyamory is okay—even if it’s not theircup of tea. What about church going folks of the same age? Roughly 24% said they were fine (Regnerus, Cheap Sex, 186).
Why would anyone engage in polyamory? Doesn’t it foster jealousy? Can these relationships really last? Aren’t children who grow up in poly families bound to face relational harm? These are all valid questions, ones which have been addressedby advocates of polyamory. At least one argument says that people pursue polyamorous relationships because it’s their sexual orientation. They really have no other valid option, they say. They’re not monogamously oriented. They’re poly.
I’ll never forget watching Dan Savage, a well-known sex columnist, swat the hornet’s nest when he made the audacious claim that “poly is not an orientation.” Savage is no bastion for conservative ideals, and he himself admitsto having 9 different extra-marital affairs with his husband’s consent. This is why it was fascinating to see him get chastised for making such an outlandish statement—that polyamory is not a sexual orientation.
Is there any merit to the claim that polyamory is a sexual orientation? It all depends on our understanding of sexual orientation. How do you define it? Measure it? Prove it? Disprove it? What exactly issexual orientation? (Stay tuned for a later blog on this.) It’s not as if we take a blood sample to determine whether somebody is gay, straight, or poly. Sexual orientation is much, much messier than most people realize.
Celebrities, of course, have suggested that polyamory is an orientation when they talk about monogamy being “unnatural,” or that some people are just wired for more love than one partner can provide. Pop culture isn’t the only advocate, though. Scholars are also starting to argue that polyamory should be considered a sexual orientation. As early as 2011, Ann Tweedy, Assistant Professor at Hamline University School of Law, wrote a lengthy 50-page articlein a peer reviewed journal where she argued that polyamory should be considered a sexual orientation. Tweedy writes: “polyamory shares some of the important attributes of sexual orientation as traditionally understood, so it makes conceptual sense for polyamory to be viewed as part of sexual orientation” (“Polyamory as a Sexual Orientation,” 1514).
The logic is familiar: Those who pursue polyamorous relationships can’t help it. It’s who they are. It’s how God has created them. And it would be wrong to pursue a relationship, like a monogamous one, that goes against their orientation.No, I’m not retorting to the age-old slippery slope argument (e.g. this is where gay relationships will lead). I’m simply summarizing a growing opinion expressed in both pop culture and academia.
Polyamory might be, as a Newsweek article suggested 10 years ago, “The Next Sexual Revolution.”And several of my pastor friends tell me that it’s becoming more common to have people who identify as poly asking about the church’s view on the matter and if they will be accepted and affirmed. These are not abstract questions, and yet the discussion is still young enough so that Christian pastors and leaders have some time to construct a robust, compassionate, thoughtful response to the question—“what’s your church’s stance on people who are poly?” Put more positively, we have time to construct a truly Christian vision for monogamy, if indeed that is the only truly Christian vision.
My purpose of this blog is to put this topic on your radar, not to answer all the questions that you might have. With that in view, here are a few more questions that Christian leaders should wrestle with:
What are the relevant biblical passages and themes that mandate monogamy for those who are called to marriage?
How would you respond to someone who says that Genesis 2, Matthew 19, Ephesians 5 and others are just a few “clobber passages” that are used to beat down poly people?
How do you know that “one man, one woman” statements in the Bible apply to contemporary poly relationships? Perhaps they only prohibit abusive, misogynistic polygamous relationships.
If God’s love for us is plural, and our love for (a Triune) God is plural, then why can’t human love for each other be plural?
Is polyamory a sexual orientation? Why, or why not?
And what is sexual orientation, and should it play a role in determining (or at least shaping) our sexual ethic?
Is it helpful to talk about poly people or should we talk about poly relationships? (And can you pinpoint the important difference?)
Since the Bible doesn’t explicitly condemn plural marriages that are polygamous (or does it?), could we say that monogamy is the ideal while still allowing for polyamorous relationships as less than ideal but still accepted in the church? Why, or why not?
If sexual expression is only permitted if it is faithful, consensual, and marital (which is what most Christians would say), then why can’t it be plural? That is, what is the moral logic that drives your view that monogamy is the only way? Is it just “God says so? Or is there some rationale why plural love is immoral?
Dr. Preston Sprinkle has authored several books, including the New York Times bestselling Erasing Hell(with Francis Chan; 2011), Fight; A Christian Case for Nonviolence(David C. Cook, 2013), Paul and Judaism Revisited(IVP, 2013), Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us(David C. Cook, 2014), and the recently released People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue(Zondervan, 2015), and the newest Grace//Truth 1.0: Five Conversations Every Thoughtful Christian Should Have About Faith, Sexuality & Gender (2017). Dr. Sprinkle also hosts a daily radio program titled: “Theology in the Raw?” and frequently speaks at various venues including college chapels, churches, music festivals, youth camps, family camps, and anywhere else where people desire to hear relevant Bible teaching. Preston has been married to Chrissy for 15 years and together they have 4 children.
This is Part Two in Nathaniel Arroyo’s blog series, “Love, Love.” Read part one here.
When God created man, He said, “It is not good for man to be alone,” and every non-married single person in the Church resounded with, “Have you forgotten about me, God?”
Being single and Christian can summon a kaleidoscope of emotions, thoughts, and various responses (did I just hear an amen?). In this cultural moment, our craving for intimacy is posted publicly in our status updates and Instagram posts. Could it be that we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that intimacy is best found in romantic and sexual relationships? While I can elaborate more on how we’ve developed a false binary scheme of the two, I really want to tackle singleness in the next 700 words. Our cultural understanding of singleness has led to a sense of loneliness that is only remedied in the communion of Christ.
Men and women are experiencing their first marriage, on average, between ages 27-30; this proves to be a significant departure from the median age for marriage in previous generations, when individuals would wed between the ages of 20-24. This fact alone may explain why your grandmother has been asking for great grandchildren. Christians are no exception, as this median age applies to those within the Church as well. For this reason, we have far more singles in the Church than at any other time in history. And while I don’t think it’s safe to call the rise of this median age a problem, I do think it proposes a different challenge for Christian singles. Love is harder to find today, and it begs the question worth answering:
Is “true love” available for singles?
Whether you’re single, dating, married, celibate, or “it’s complicated,” I hope you find solace and Christ in the following words.
Singleness isn’t a curse.
In fact, it’s a gift to receive joyfully. As reluctant I was to write the previous sentence, I can’t help but trust that it is true. Many grow up with the notion that marriage is the epitome of the Christian lifestyle; it’s the Creme Brûlée of Christian delicacies. I did not grow up in a Christian household, yet, growing up, there was an agreed notion in the air that marriage was one most substantial relationships to enter into. To find “the one” was to live your best life. Ideally, the dream would play out like this: the two of us would get married, teasingly argue about the number of kids we were to have and what their names would be, and drive off into every sunset we could find. This would be the relationship in which true love is found. This is where love would be enough. All I needed to do was endure my singleness.
How I wish that I understood sooner that singleness is a gift. There is real intimacy available to us singles that brings lasting joy and satisfaction; and it’s found in Jesus. Yes, the classic Sunday School answer is the remedy to loneliness (notice how I didn’t say singleness), but it’s far more in-depth than proclaiming Jesus as your boyfriend at your local Galentines. When I say Jesus is the pathway to intimacy, we need to understand what it means to bravely enter into a relationship with Him and what He offers.
When we enter into a relationship with Jesus, we enter into a relationship with True Love. God is love. Jesus is God. The logic follows. Yet, despite having a theological understanding of who God is and how He relates to us, we still find ourselves wrestling with loneliness. Our craving for intimacy still feels starved when we don’t experience physical acts of love. Tim Keller exposes our desire for intimacy in his book, “The Meaning Of Marriage:”
“To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.”
Trusting Keller’s wisdom, then, means being fully knownand truly lovedis already a reality because Jesus created you and He died for you.
I love how David, the Psalmist, puts it, “For it was You who created my inward parts; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” God knows you. Your hands, feet, the curvature of your nose, the roundness of your shoulders, the hue of your iris — He knitted you together in your mother’s womb. You are fully known, and His love extends just as deep. John, one of Jesus’s apostles, records Jesus’s words as His imminent death is around the corner, and Jesus says this, “…Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that someone would lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus laid down His life for you. In bringing to fulfillment the redemption story, Jesus valued His relationship with you to the extent that He would do anything to make that relationship permanent… even if it meant giving up His own life.
There is nothing that can separate you from His love. Jesus is committed to you. He was purposefully single because of you. Jesus, our Bridegroom, looks at His bride, we the Church, and He marvels at her because He is the perfect husband. He did not commit to an earthly wife during His ministry. He sought union with us. He invited us to be one in Him just like in marriage when two flesh become one. His lack of an earthly marital status hinged upon His covenant relationship with His Bride.
Whether you like it or not, Christian, you have a husband, companion, helper, redeemer, lover, and savior in Jesus. There will be a day when you face your Bridegroom face-to-face. You are looking forward to, yet, mysteriously already in, the most intimate relationship you will ever experience.
Nathaniel Arroyo is a poet, photographer, and coffee aficionado located in Spokane, Washington. Being from Chicago, IL, he has a passion for the Church’s engagement with culture through mediums of art, community, and rich theology. He attended Moody Bible Institute – Spokane and studied Biblical Exposition.
We’re becoming a digital culture. Maybe we’re already there. I’m not sure. But I am sure this presents unique challenges. The digital shift is neither good nor bad. It just is. And we must learn to navigate this shift, not use it as a scapegoat.
The problems we face today are as old as Eve. Does social media amplify them? Probably. Make them more visible? Certainly. But are they unique to our generation? Not hardly.
If you google “average time spent on social media” you will find varying answers, anywhere from 60 minutes to 9 hours a day. While these numbers are alarming – nine hours a day on social media, really? – they’re merely symptoms.
The real problems rests underneath the surface. And if we’re serious about addressing them, we must dig deeper. Social media can have an equally negative effect on the soccer mom and the college student, the one-hour-a-day user and the nine-hour-a-day user.
Using time spent as a metric is little more than a quick answer to a deeper problem. Instead, we should look at habits, behaviors and perceptions. The negative effects of social media breed particular problems.
Here are a few. If any of the following points resonate, you probably spend too much time on social media.
1. You have a nagging sense that your life is “average,” and that’s not okay.
Sensing your life is average, that’s not the toxic part. When you think “my average life is not okay” you have the origins of something toxic.
In college, several of my professors graded on a curve. This curve says a few people fall in a percentile lower than their shoe size (5 or less), a few more in a percentile higher than their oldest living relative (95 or greater), and every one else fall in the middle.
Statisticians call those in the lowest and highest percentiles “outliers.” Because outliers skew results, they normally aren’t considered in analysis.
Social media, however, is built on outliers. The worst of the worst and the best of the best are most likely to show up on your timeline. A few weeks ago, for example, my Twitter and Facebook feeds were littered with articles about some dude who killed his girlfriend, stole her car and was now at large. I remember thinking during all this that social media gives someone with evil intentions an easy way to gain international fame.
We now have a celebrity as President. Earth can’t complete a full rotation on its axis without a new story about President Trump.
If you have a nagging sense that your life isn’t special because you haven’t committed a heinous crime or received the final rose on TheBachelor, you might be spending too much time on social media.
If you have a nagging sense that your life isn’t special because you haven’t committed a heinous crime or received the final rose on TheBachelor, you might be spending too much time on social media.
Almost everyone, 99% or more, lives in the middle. And that’s quite okay.
2. You have a lot of “friends,” but you still feel lonely.
A meaningful life needs a few necessary ingredients. Human connection is one. These connections are tiered based on intimacy. Spouse being the most intimate, then family, close friends, co-workers, and Spot, the dog who isn’t a human but is.
You don’t need every tier, but the fewer you have, the more incomplete you will feel.
If you’re doing it right, social media will undergird and strengthen relationships, from the top down. If you’re not doing it wrong, social media will amplify disconnection and loneliness.
Social media friends are mostly padding for your ego.
Social media profiles don’t determine how many friends or followers you have. Those are just numbers, mostly padding for the ego. If you find yourself struggling with loneliness, ask yourself how many intimate relationships you have.
3. You can’t commit to anything because you’re afraid of missing something better.
Several years ago, this behavior was dubbed FOMO (fear of missing out). Today, I think it’s called normal. The source of its rise? Social media.
Jill is kickin’ it on the beach. Timmy is posing with the crew on a mission trip in Africa (#blessed). Everyone seems to be killin’ this life thing but you, so says social media.
Without some inner work, constantly checking your heart and aligning your decisions with your values, you end up playing the game. Rather than embracing the life in front of you, you hold out, waiting for the next experience so you can one-up Jill and Timmy.
This game is competitive yet it has no winner. You can’t compete with your timeline, mostly because what you see is a facade.
If making decisions brings anxiety, you might spend too much time on social media.
4. You often say or do things you later regret.
One of my favorite books of all time is Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he says this, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
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I would let Frankl elaborate, but he’s dead. So I’ll give it a try. Regardless of situation, you have the power to choose your response. You can’t necessarily choose the circumstances (or stimulus). But you can always choose your response. The space between a situation and a response is where growth and freedom live.
Social media decreases this space, leading to high levels of sensitivity and low levels of emotional resilience.
5. You have a low tolerance for people who don’t think like you.
Social media platforms want you to spend more time on their site, so they give you more of what you like. These platforms filter your feed based on previous likes, clicks, etc. In other words, social media pads your ego by strengthening your confirmation bias.
If you’re hardline conservative, for example, chances are your feed won’t include posts about Black Lives Matter or knocks against President Trump. If you lean left (I hate labeling people this way, but it gets the point across, so…), you won’t see posts supporting traditional marriage or travel bans on refugees.
And both sides said, “Amen.”
Yeah, except this doesn’t promote much tolerance, compassion or humility. Especially if you’re a Christian, this is bad. This is one of the greatest challenges facing our generation.
How do we find common ground and come to the table with people who think different from us?
6. You have no boundaries between personal and private moments.
I see Christians post pics about alone time with God. While I’m not judging, I wonder about the motivation behind this? Some moments are too intimate for a timeline, too powerful to be contained in 140 characters (or less).
I fear we irreparably harm our peace and joy when every moment becomes shareworthy. Whether it’s lunch with a good friend, date night with your spouse or intimate time with God, we can’t fully embrace a moment while simultaneously trying to capture it. We also can’t embrace a moment when it’s interrupted with chirps and rings.
One of the greatest gifts you can give any one is your full attention. I suspect the most grateful, content among us understand this.
It’s your turn.
What are some signs someone spends too much time on social media?
A version of this post originally appeared on Bayside Blog on March 25, 2017. Used by permission.
Frank is a freelance writer and speaker living in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three kids. His goal is to challenge status quo Christianity and push everyone (Christian or not) to see God with fresh eyes.
His content has been featured on sites like Relevant, ChurchLeaders, Catalyst, Thought Catalog, Mogul, and FaithIt. Be sure to check out his work on the Bayside Church blog at: blog.baysideonline.com.
My 7-year-old daughter had just come home from her time at summer camp, and we were processing a situation that came up involving a couple girls that just didn’t want to be her friend. She had tried talking to them, complimenting them, sitting with them, and involving them in what she was doing.
But every attempt was failing. They would move away, ask her to mind her own business, and blatantly ignore her throughout the day.
“I know!! Maybe I’ll make them friendship bracelets, so that they’ll like me. I am just determined to make them my friend!”
Her persistence gives you a look into the type of girl she is – she doesn’t quit and she doesn’t give up easily. But in this case, it was time to give up. My best advice to my sweet daughter was, “child…it’s time to let go. People like this are not worth your time.”
It was interesting processing this situation with her, because as a parent – I saw the situation so clearly. She was giving, investing, trying…and getting nothing in return. She was trying so hard to make this relationship work, because she wanted to succeed! She wanted to be liked!
But in the end, she was investing so much energy into a relationship that would eventually get nowhere. A one-way relationship, where she would be doing all the work, and getting little to nothing in return.
Sometimes, I need that lesson myself.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Because it’s a problem that we all face at different points in our lives with the many relationships we engage in.
Getting Over The Need To Be Liked
We want to be liked so badly, that sometimes we allow ourselves to be in relationships where we’re doing all the work.
We value being liked by others over loving and respecting ourselves.
And that’s exactly where it has to start. In order for us to move away from these type of relationships, we’ve got to begin by recognizing our value and worth standing alone.
We’re not valued because of the people who like us, we’re valued by the One who created us.
And that truth, when it’s finally sunk deep, deep down, has completely revolutionized my life. Over the past decade, I’ve been learning this lesson in many ways, shapes, and forms. From friendships where I had to set major boundaries, to dealing with misunderstanding without feeling the need to defend myself.
One crash course in particular came with my becoming a writer and teacher in the public domain. On an almost daily basis, I had to deal with some kind of critique, disagreement, negative comment, scathing hate mail, or hateful review.
One of those hateful reviews actually came from a “friend” in ministry, who in an anonymous review (well, she thought it was anonymous – but it really wasn’t, yikes!) publicly wrote that I had nothing of value to add to this conversation and add to that – my personal love story was so ridiculous that it made her nauseous. Gee, thanks, “friend”.
Welcome to the reality that no matter who you are or what you do, you can’t get everyone to like you…and to the more important reality that you SHOULDN’T EVEN TRY. STOP TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO LIKE YOU.
Part of becoming a healthy person is learning to recognize early on which relationships are worth investing in, and which aren’t. I get that every now and again someone will be so good at pretending that they’re a good friend, that you won’t recognize the wolf in sheep’s clothing right away. But to be honest, those times are more rare than not. Usually the signs are there, we just aren’t willing to look for them, or when we see them, we’re not ready to let the relationship go until we end up hurt, drained, and betrayed.
Overcoming The Need to Be Liked
I feel like I’m finally at a place where I have gotten over my need to be liked. Part of this has come in realizing that I only have so much emotional margin. I only have so much room to invest in relationships, and so I want to (no, NEED TO) save my emotional energy for friendships and relationships in which I am valued, loved, and respected. Relationships in which I’m giving as much as I’m taking. Relationships in which I am not doing all the work.
If you listened to the most recent episode of my new Love + Relationships Podcast (if you haven’t listened, go give this episode a listen right now!!), you heard me tell our caller who was struggling in one-sided relationships:
“You attract the type of relationship you think you deserve.” – (Tweet it!)
I said that to my daughter a few days ago, I say it to myself on a regular basis, and I say it to you today.
It’s time to get over your need to be liked, believe in what you deserve, and free yourself from relationships that are holding you back. Because oftentimes, by closing your heart to the wrong relationships, you open your heart to the right ones.
Why is it that we love love? This isn’t necessarily a new trend to romanticize the idea of falling in love nor is it a cultural phenomenon.
We’ve always been infatuated with love throughout history. The passion. The scandal. The warmth.
For example…
As a child, I was introduced to the transformational power of love in Beauty and the Beast. In 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated from the English Monarch in order to marry the woman of his dreams. In 1813, the world was introduced to Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett’s tug-and-pull of a relationship in the novel Pride and Prejudice. In the early 12th Century, Lancelot betrayed his dear friend, King Arthur, to pursue a passionate romance with his wife, Guinevere, in Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart. And even farther than that, in the Bible, we have numerous of love stories such as Ruth and Boaz, Jacob and Rachel, the bride and groom from the Song of Songs, and, probably the most memorable, Adam and Eve.
Love has always been loved, not simply by the dominant culture, but by humanity as a whole.
Understanding that love is a timeless force that currents through all human beings will teach us about the character of God. Or, maybe more adeptly put, learning about the character of God will teach us more about love, Himself.
John, one of Jesus’s closest friends and disciple, writes, “God is love.” [1]
Wait, what? God is love.
This is not mere theological poetry, but a transformative truth meant to remind humanity of its image.
If we trust the book of Genesis, we immediately learn humanity was made in the image of God. The Imago Dei. We were created as his children. Sons and Daughters of the King, the Mighty Lover. And, with this intent in Creation, we are honored with the responsibility to care for the earth and cultivate community in intimacy. Our image is the very imprint of love because of the source of love. We were created to love.
Love is embedded into the fabric of our DNA.
Yet, when we think about love, do notions of God occupy our mind? Often times love is accompanied by illusive bytes of flirtation, concertos of heart-fluttering butterflies, and passionate fogged up windows. Don’t get me wrong, I have no qualms about romance or healthy sexual expression. One of the first commands God gives humanity is to have sex. And God doesn’t make mistakes, therefore the pleasure that comes from sex is, both, natural and good. It’s a gift. But let us not confuse the gift with the Gift-Giver.
As the Church, our job is not to worship an emotion and to elevate deed over deity. Romance will not comfort us when we lose a loved one to a fatal disease. Romance will not grow holiness from a sinful carcass. Romance will not personify itself to ransom a captive prisoner. What I really want to say is, our pursuit of romance may seem gloriously vain because it is short of our pursuit of Jesus.
Jesus is love.
But he is not love in the sense that we most commonly use the term. Often times when we converse with our community, we use this term love in ambiguous modes. The popular examples are:
I love pizza
I love my wife/husband.
I love quality time
I love the outdoors.
It becomes pretty clear that this term love, most commonly carrying a romantic sentiment, has been the mediator for any and all relationships we may describe.
Romantic love is not the destination in which our souls will find their satisfaction, for it is just one side of a multi-faceted diamond, Love himself. – (tweet this)
Love is the tethering Spirit that binds relationship. Love is carrying the burden of a dear friend. You can hear love in the laughter of community and in the tears of mourning. Love is available in the loneliness of singleness and in the everyday of marriage.
Maybe love has been obscured by a negative experience. Maybe love and delight seem like antonyms with a tragic backstory. Maybe you are like me, wondering if you are considered to be worthy of love, insecure of your value and purpose, all the while love has only been issued to the privileged. Forgive me if this is all seems too theoretical or abstract, but, I believe, love is available to you right now. You were not created to be starved of intimacy.
Maybe our pursuit of love has been wooing us to true intimacy.
Here is my prayer for you:
I pray you find Jesus in your definition of love. I pray that your relationships are not solely intent on building romance as much as they should be to cultivate community. I pray you find yourself worthy of love despite any harm you’ve experienced. I pray your delight and passion are found in Jesus.
[1] 1 John 4:8[2] C.S. Lewis – Mere Christianity
Nathaniel Arroyo is a poet, photographer, and coffee aficionado located in Spokane, Washington. Being from Chicago, IL, he has a passion for the Church’s engagement with culture through mediums of art, community, and rich theology. He attended Moody Bible Institute – Spokane and studied Biblical Exposition.
Q: In your book, True Love Dates, you recommended a “season of friendship” before dating. If I am interested in a woman who I normally have very limited opportunity to interact with, how do I pursue her as a just a friend when it is quite obvious I am interested in more given how far out of my way I am going to spend time with her?
A: First of all, to you who asked this question: dude, you score some major brownie points for referencing my book!You would be the kind of guy that sits in the very front row of one of my seminars or lectures….so I already like you for that! And let me just take a moment here as an opportunity to shamelessly plug my book, True Love Dates, because to be honest, it was what got me blogging about relationships in the first place!! We owe this entire blog to that little book, because in it are all the foundational concepts that I believe give you the outline you need to engage in a killer dating relationship and in turn, an incredible marriage.
And people, you may not know this but due to the publishing contract I have with Zondervan, I am not allowed to publish more than 8% of the contents of my book on this blog. That means even those of you who have read EVERY SINGLE article on this blog are missing my most PROFOUND (ahem, yes, I said “profound” – especially the seasons of a relationship concepts!) principles about dating!! So don’t be cheap and go purchase a copy for yourself….right now…seriously. It’s like one long dating therapy session. And who doesn’t need that?
Secondly, I love this question because it shows a guy with a genuine desire to do dating well. I love that. For those of you out there (especially the ladies I hear from) who email me whining and complaining that there are no more good men out there, let me just tell you right here and right now – that’s so NOT true. They are everywhere. I meet many of them right here on this blog. And maybe you will too. hint hint
Thirdly, apparently I’m in rambling mode this morning, so let’s go ahead and dig into this important question: how on earth can you be just friends with someone you’re totally interested in? I’ll be the first to admit that every relationship looks a little different, but for this question, I’m going to site my relationship with John, my hubby.
When John and I met back in 2005, we met at a conference up in Boston. I was living in Virginia at the time, so clearly, there had to be some sort of “interest” shown for us to even continue our friendship after that conference. So to make a long story short, he asked for my number to keep in touch, and then we actually kept in touch. The next 5 months of our “long-distance friendship” consisted of phone calls, visits, texts and emails.
If you keep up with my writing, you know full well that I’m a HUGE advocate of being friends first.
There are SO many benefits to the stage of friendship before dating.
And for those of you who are confused about the title of this article, I don’t mean the benefits of hooking up, making out, or getting physical. On the contrary, the BENEFITS of being friends first are that you get to know each other in a truly meaningful way before you commit to dating – with no strings attached. There are SO many things you can learn about a person during the time of friendship. (If you want to learn more about all that, check out this in-depth article from the TLD premium content library.)
We were both interested in each other, but we never actually discussed dating until we had known each other for a while, namely, like I mentioned, 5 months. So how did we grow our friendship during that time without crossing over into dating?
Here’s what we did:
We took advantage of community: Looking back, John and I spent around 75% of our time together in a group setting, with our friends and family. We had a lot of friends and family in common, so yes, that definitely made it a little easier – but even where we didn’t have friends in common, it gave us an opportunity to meet one another’s community.
That meant inviting him to my cousin’s huge “fantasy football” weekend, (even though for him that meant catching a flight – remember, we were long distance). That meant me going up to Boston to stay with a girl friend of mine and all of us spending the week doing group activities (which, of course, included him). That meant him visiting a friend in the area where I was living, and swinging by to grab dinner with my friends and I. All that to say, we spent a lot of time with a lot of people. And it really gave us a good glimpse into one another’s respective worlds. You can learn a lot about a person that way.
Friends with Benefits Don’t Get Physical:
When people think friends with benefits, the physical aspect is what usually comes to mind. But the greatest benefits actually come when you keep your physical interactions in check throughout the stage of friendship. If I’m totally honest, I remember a couple of times during our friendship stage, especially as my interest in him began to grow, where I genuinely wanted to grab his hand, or lean over and give him a big kiss. And now I know he felt the same way about me. So it’s not like the desires weren’t there, it’s just that we didn’t follow through on those desires. We each chose to control our desires and in doing so, we forged something deep – a genuine and authentic friendship. We didn’t want the temporary pleasure of physical connection to mess with us, because we still weren’t totally sure where our friendship was headed.
Friends With Benefits Are Careful with Conversation:
I have to give credit to John for this one. Most of the guys I interacted with in the past were extremely flirtatious with their words (ironically, their actions never followed suit). But our friendship stayed a genuine friendship partially because we kept our words in check and had emotional boundaries. We didn’t talk about the future, we didn’t use flirtatious lingo, we didn’t have any kind of romantic conversations, and we didn’t “define the relationship” right away (there’s a time and place for that conversation, but don’t rush it). We kept our conversations just as we would with any other friend: we asked questions, we got to know each other, we told funny stories, and we used our words to learn about one another. Words are powerful, so in any relationship, you have to use them wisely.
So at the end of the day, it’s absolutely possible to show be friends with benefits the right way – even with someone you are interested in. It just takes being deliberate and practicing self-control. Which is a GREAT quality to have upon entering a dating relationship…and even into marriage. At least, that’s what happened for us!
A version of this post originally appeared on True Love Dates on February 22, 2018. Used by permission.
True Love Dates, is the book that world-renown #1 New York Times best-selling authors and relationship experts Drs. Les & Leslie Parrot have claimed to be exactly what “your love life needs”.
Debra Fileta is a Professional Counselor, national speaker, relationship expert, and author of True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life, where she writes candidly about dating, relationships, and how to find true love. Her newest book, Choosing Marriage, is set to be released in the Summer of 2018! You may also recognize her voice from her 200+ articles at Relevant Magazine, Crosswalk.com, and all over the web! She’s the creator of this True Love Dates Blog, reaching over 4 million people with the message that healthy people make healthy relationships! Connect with her on Facebook or Twitter or book a session with her today!
I feel like I should start this post with a slight apology.
You see, when I was single I absolutely hated getting advice on being single from married people. It was just the worst –as a happy married person they had no right giving me, an embittered single person, advice. Most of this hate was channeled into unpublished blog posts, because after reading them I realized they could never see the light of day. Thank god.
So yes, this post is a little advice for single people, but it’s also for people engaged or married (and me being married for five months means I can mostly provide advice on how not to write wedding gift thank-you notes, and that is to actually write all of them and not stop when there are ten left because your brain cannot handle anymore wedding-related activities).In fact, I wouldn’t even say this is advice. Rather, it’s some observations that I offer to you, whatever life stage you are in.
And to the married people I resented before for trying to tell me how to live my life, my bad. You were only trying to help because you were once there too, and it turns out that just because you’re married you don’t know everything either (which you also probably know).
So here are some thoughts, observations, and advice for those single, engaged, or married:
Marriage will not fix your problems. Instead, marriage will do two things: you will simply find yourself now with different, married-people problems, and hopefully your problems, both old and new, will feel a little more bearable because someone has your back forever.
Just because you are a Christian and this really nice person you are dating is a Christian doesn’t mean you have to get married to them. Seriously. This is a confusing one, I know.
Breaking up is not a sign of spiritual immaturity. In fact, it might be just the opposite.
Please stop feeling this pressure to get married immediately after becoming engaged. Being engaged is different than dating, and it’s different than being married. It’s unique, special, and refining. And it can (and should) reveal the realities of what you’re getting into with marriage – good and bad. Sit with those realities before marriage, together.
I fully reject the lie that sex is inevitable if you wait a long time to get married. You’d be surprised how resilient people are.
You are allowed to feel numerous ways about one thing, or person, or relationship.
Confidence is attractive and will probably get you a date or relationship, but if you’re in it for the long haul this person is eventually going to see all of your really ugly, unconfident bits.
It’s okay to be selective about who you take dating or marriage advice from. Everyone single person has had a different experience than you, somehow.
He didn’t make me feel like I needed to earn his love or attention, which I’m still baffled by to this day that someone can love me like this, especially when I have a dramatic mid-life crisis about once a month.
I don’t really know if God tells us to marry a certain person, but I do know that there is no such thing as one destined, perfect person for us all.
Even for us married people, it will never not be obnoxious when people excessively post sappy things about their spouse.
The first few months of marriage have only been hard when one of us has been selfish. Period. Other than that, marriage is pretty spectacular and I think we need to stop telling people that the first year of marriage is always so scary and tough.
If you’re single and need to unfollow people on social media whose lives appear to throw your singleness into sharp, painful perspective, unfollow them. Do it. Do it now. Take care of your heart.
It’s funny, because in the end advice or thoughts or observations from others only resonate so much in our own lives. I have found that one of the most incredible and frustrating things about love is that no matter how much you “know” it will probably not be enough, and you will have to learn for yourself and through your own actions and choices how to do all this well (or at least try your best).
But I think that’s what’s going on with this blog when it all comes down to it – it’s all just offerings. Offerings for both myself and for you. I really like that.
– XO
Julia writes about relationships, faith and identity at hellosoulblog.com.
Yes, we want our kids to ask questions about God’s good gift of sex, gender, and sexuality. We might not be well-prepared to answer their questions, but as many parents have said to me, “It’s easier for my kids to bring up the questions rather than me!” But there’s one question that always seems to generate a period of hemming and hawing that can go on and on and on. That’s the question of masturbation.
Let’s be honest here. . . my informal surveys of an entire older generation of boys reveals they either a) indulged in auto-eroticism without borders or boundaries (“Ninety-five percent of all teenage boys say they masturbate. . . and the other five percent are liars!” . . . remember that?), b) never discussed the issue with their parents beyond hearing a one-sided “Don’t do it!”, or c) lived their lives in fear and trembling believing that they were going to go blind by the age of 19.
In today’s hyper-sexualized culture, the questions are rarely even being asked. And when a young person (or an old person) seeking to develop a healthy God-honoring approach to His good gift of sex and sexuality starts to ask questions about masturbation, most adults either go blank or have no idea how to answer. I’m fully aware that in the world of theology, and specifically youth ministry, there are a variety of perspectives on how to best answer the question.
Like all questions about sex, sexuality, and gender, this is a question that can only be answered in the context of the story in which we choose to live. If we choose to live in the cultural narrative, it’s not even a question. But for those who have been called into the biblical narrative, we need to listen diligently to that story as we faithfully ponder what God’s answer is. . . even if we don’t feel like His answer is the easiest one to accept and enlist.
Yesterday, I spotted a post on “Solo Sex and the Christian” from my friend David White at Harvest USA. I’ve spent years trying to think through the best way to hear the Scriptures speak and how to communicate those answers to the kids (and adults) I encounter who ask. David’s article is, without a doubt, the most thoughtful practical theology of masturbation I’ve ever seen. It is worth a few minutes of your time. . . and perhaps you will find it as helpful as I do.
We are all sexual strugglers at some level. . . all of us. Here’s what David writes about the struggle with masturbation. . .
One of the frequently asked questions at a Harvest USA seminar is whether masturbation is a sin. There has been a lot of debate on this issue in Christian circles, largely because it’s a behavior without a condemning, biblical proof text. Although I can’t point you to a specific chapter and verse forbidding this behavior, God’s design for sexuality makes it clear that there is no room for masturbation in the life of a Christian.
As I’ve written elsewhere, there is theological significance to our sexuality. Two things are crucial to have at the forefront when considering solo sex. First, in the Bible sexual activity is always reserved for marriage. It is designed to be inherently relational, a deep knowing of and intimacy with another. Second, the goal of sex is selfless service, the pleasuring of another. This latter point is particularly clear from 1 Corinthians 7:1-5, the only “how to” passage in the Bible prescribing sexual activity.
God designed sexuality to be like every other aspect of the Christian life: a turning away from selfish desires to honor God with my body and use it to serve others. Sex in Christian marriage should reflect the New Testament’s ethic in general. Describing discipleship, Jesus said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). This is much more than a proof text for the atonement; it is the culmination of Jesus’ teaching on what it means to be his disciple.
As a solitary activity, masturbation is not rooted in relationship with another. There is no opportunity for deepening intimacy and knowing of another. Further, far from selfless service, masturbation is a picture of incarnate selfishness. To engage in this behavior is to say. . . (to keep reading, click here).
Sex and the iWorld by Dale Kuehne is one of our favorites here at the Sexual Integrity Initiative, and when author Preston Sprinkle wrote an insightful summary on his blog, we thought we’d share it with you!
I just finished Dale Kuehne’s book Sex and the iWorld: Rethinking Relationships Beyond an Age of Individualismand it was a fantastic and compelling read. Dr. Kuhne (Ph.D. Georgetown University) is a professor of Ethics, Economics, and the Common Good at St. Anselm college and has been a pastor for the Evangelical Covenant Church of America. I’ve known about Kuehne’s work for about a year now and recently enjoyed a very friendly conversation with him over Skype. I learned so many things about culture, ethics, and sexuality from Kuehne’s book—too many things to reveal in this blog. I want to keep this review to a single post, so let me jump right in and summarize the book and highlight a few key take aways.
Summary
Kuehne (pronounced “Keen”) examines three different types of societies, which he labels the tWorld (t = traditional), iWorld (i = individual), and rWorld (r = relational). Specifically, he looks at how these three different worlds understand sexuality, along with related topics like anthropology, identity, relationships, and morality as a whole. In short:
The tWorld views sexual morality in traditional terms. Its primary founders were Plato, Aristotle, and the early church fathers. Sex belongs within the context of marriage between a man and women for the purpose of procreation and strengthening the marital bond between two partners. Most relations in the tWorld are given not selected—you are born into a relational matrix of family, community, and even though marriage is a choice, it becomes a relationship of obligation once you commit to it. “Hence in the tWorld the key to relational fulfillment was not to find the people with whom we most wished to relate, but to love and engage with those we had been given” (p. 37).
The iWorld represents the world we now live in (esp. in the West). Friedrich Nitzsche and the influence of the sexual revolution are the primary founders. “The iWorld makes individual freedom its non-negotiable value” (p. 67). “Freedom of individual choice…is the highest ideal of the iWorld” (p. 72). The iWorld “is predicated on the foundational belief that the expansion of individual rights will leader to increased happiness and fulfillment (p. 67). The only guidelines—Kuehne calls them “taboos”—are: (1) “One may not criticize someone else’s life choices or behaviors,” (2) “One may not behave in a manner that coerces or causes harm to others,” and (3) “one may not engage in a sexual relationship with someone without his or her consent” (p. 71 and throughout).
The rWorld is shaped by a Christian worldview and believes that intimacy and love are found in relationships—both relationships of choice and in relationships of obligation—regardless of whether these relationships are sexual. “The abundant life is a product of having an intimate love relationship with God and others, and sex has very little to do with it” (p. 161). In the rWorld, sex is a significant component of a marriage relationship, but a marriage relationship isn’t essential for human flourishing. The rWorld believes that “the sexual revolution” and the iWorld has “become so focused on finding happiness in sexuality and sensual or sensory experience that” it has missed “the love and intimacy for which our soul craves” (p. 163). “Unfettered sexual freedom can inhibit our ability to cultivate and enjoy love and intimacy” (p. 163). “In the rWorld, life is not spent searching for people to make us happy but is instead spent cultivating the relationships we already have” (p. 180).
Kuehne makes clear that the tWorld is not the same as the rWorld, even though there is some overlap. While the tWorld has many good things about it, it also devalued women, cultivated patriarchal marriages, and fostered societal systems of inequality. While Kuehne is very critical of the iWorld, he does admit some progress it has brought to society including equality among people and healthy tolerance for diverse cultures to exist together.
However, the rWorld is the best path for human flourishing and yet it stands diametrically opposed to theiWorld. “The aims of the two worlds are mutually exclusive” (p. 203). You cannot turn individual humans loose and expect this to produce a society where humans will mutually flourish.
Highlights
There were so many thoughtful points made throughout the book—way too many to highlight. Here are two of the most salient ones that gave my highlighter a run for its money.
Sex and Human Flourishing
As stated above, even though the ethics of the iWorld assumes that sex and sexual fulfillment is essential to human flourishing, Kuehne argues that this is simply untrue. We’ve been conditioned to think and feel this way; the propaganda of our hypersexualized age is overwhelming and it would be the pinnacle of ignorance to think that human desires are unaffected by our cultural narrative. Like a fish that doesn’t know what “wet” feels like, we swim through a sea of sexual propaganda unaware of how profoundly our cultural narrative shapes our desires. (This, of course, was a major point in Jonathan Grant’s book Divine Sex.) The iWorld is telling us that a person who’s not having sex is not a fulfilled person.
As this reasoning goes, if sex is an essential aspect of human fulfillment, then if Christians, or anyone else, are missing out on sex, and if God wishes us to have the most fulfilling life possible, then that which stands in the way of this fulfillment—divorce, remarriage, or cohabitation—must not be wrong after all. (p. 160).
We’ve actually lost sight of ancient wisdom. “The notion that sex was an essential part of human happiness was not in the consciousness of people in that time and place. Sex was considered to be a drive, an appetite, and a necessary means of procreation” (p. 162). But sex wasn’t seen as essential to intimate relationships or human flourishing. Sex is an important aspect of marriage. It “will sometimes produce children” and “provide a bond for the marriage that is useful in holding a married couple together. But sex in itself will not be the catalyst for happiness or fulfillment because that is not its innate purpose” (p. 162). Therefore, the hypersexualizing of our culture actually prevents us from finding and experiencing true, lasting, love and intimacy.
Unfortunately, the evangelical church has bought into the cultural narrative unknowingly. “Contrary to some contemporary popular evangelical theology, the two great commandments are not to get married and have sex” (p. 162). The idolatry of marriage (and therefore sex) in evangelicalism is actually hindering human flourishing, especially for those who are made to feel like unfulfilled second class citizens in God’s kingdom because they aren’t married.
Discovering our True Identity
The second salient point of Kuehne’s book is scattered throughout but comes to fruition in the final chapter. It has to do with discovering our true identity. Kuehne argues that the iWorld has wrongly searched for human identity by looking within ourselves rather than outside ourselves. Instead of asking the question, “Who are we” the iWorld asks the question “Who am I” and gives the individual the keys to discovering who they are by looking within. “Self-discovery and authenticity, not birth and nature, become the new source of human identity” (p. 209). Instead of seeing human identity as “something we derive from a common nature”—we are humans created in God’s image and designed to live according to His will—we view it as “an individual’s quest for self-understanding” where “people are encouraged to look within to find their true self and live lives that authentically reflect who they discover themselves to be” (p. 209).
This is where the iWorld and rWorld fundamentally disagree.
The iWorld sees the formation of self-understanding as primarily an individualistic enterprise…The rWorld, however, believes that we come to know who we are only by first coming to know our true human nature through relating with god and other persons. Then we can make sense of our individual characteristics (p. 212).
After the individual comes to discover who they are by looking within, morality is dictated by living out who they really are. But this confuses the “is” and the “ought.” Even if you can discover who you are by looking within, this doesn’t in itself sanction the morality of living according to who you are, as David Hume used to say “You cannot derive an ought from an is!” (p. 160). Even if we rely on science to tell us who we are—common in the sexuality and gender debates—“Science can tell us what is, but it cannot tell us how we ought to act” (p. 52).
Conclusion
One of the most helpful points made in the book is that we are still living in a transition between the tWorld and iWorld (p. 45, cf. 207, 213-14). That is, even from a purely, secular perspective, no one knows whether the iWorld’s promises of human flourishing are empirically true. Does sexual freedom lead to societal flourishing? Does letting individuals discover and determine their own identity and morality lead to human flourishing? Do biblical guidelines about sexuality and gender hinder human flourishing or promote it? Does the iWorld’s expanded definition of marriage lead to greater societal flourishing or does it lead to more long-term harmful effects on families, children, and society as a whole? Should sex be separated from marriage and procreation? Does consensual divorce enhance human happiness?
Empirically, we cannot answer any of these questions yet, because we haven’t lived in the iWorld’s way of doing things long enough. All the iWorld offer at this point is some individuals who say “it works for me” or “I’m happy” or “I’m flourishing.” But it cannot say we are flourishing. And since the iWorld doesn’t possess a moral code outside the individual, it has no way to measure whether its way of living is actually good for the human community. Not yet, at least. We have to wait several generations to see if the iWorld’s way of doing things will lead to greater, lasting happiness among humans.
So far, the trajectory is not looking so good. If you look at where things are going—depression and suicide rates, loneliness and anxiety, addictions, sexual dysfunctions, children born out of wedlock, lack of sexual and relational fulfillment, the global destruction of pornography—things aren’t faring too well for the iWorld’s ability to deliver what it’s promised, even by its own standards.
Perhaps the Christian vision for human flourishing might be on to something.
A version of this post originally appeared on Preston’s Blog on December 16, 2016. Used by permission.
Dr. Preston Sprinkle has authored several books, including the New York Times bestselling Erasing Hell (with Francis Chan; 2011), Fight; A Christian Case for Nonviolence (David C. Cook, 2013), Paul and Judaism Revisited (IVP, 2013), Charis: God’s Scandalous Grace for Us (David C. Cook, 2014), and the recently released People to Be Loved: Why Homosexuality is Not Just an Issue (Zondervan, 2015), and the newest Grace//Truth 1.0: Five Conversations Every Thoughtful Christian Should Have About Faith, Sexuality & Gender (2017). Dr. Sprinkle also hosts a daily radio program titled: “Theology in the Raw?” and frequently speaks at various venues including college chapels, churches, music festivals, youth camps, family camps, and anywhere else where people desire to hear relevant Bible teaching. Preston has been married to Chrissy for 15 years and together they have 4 children.
