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Fifty Shades Today. . . A Plea To Christian Parents & Youth Workers

movie ticketAnd so it arrives. It’s already proclaimed a blockbuster and judging from the predictions of those who seem to know about these things, it will most likely bring in about $90 million over its first three days, an opening which will rival the record-setting opening of American Sniper. That’s not at all surprising since the books have sold over 100 million copies and there will be much-anticipated sequels to this first film in the series.

Now. . . the big question. . . Are you going? Seriously. Are you going? Or, are you planning on viewing the film sometime in the future, perhaps in the comfort of your own home?

These are necessary questions for us to answer as parents, youth workers, and most importantly, followers of Jesus Christ.

If our hearts are truly in line with the way and will of our Creator and our desire is to flourish in our humanity by honoring His borders and boundaries for His great and glorious gift of our sexuality, well. . . the answer should be clear.

Sadly, based on what I’m hearing, the answer’s not so clear. Just as I heard with the books, a large number of Christian women, young and old alike, mothers and grandmothers, singles and marrieds, are eagerly anticipating and can’t wait for their trip to the movies this weekend. Many are giddy with excitement. And, we can expect that some Christian men will be there as well. . . some brought by their wives. . . both of them expecting the film to spice it up for them a little over the Valentine’s Day weekend.

The reality is that there’s not one of us who doesn’t have to deal with our own sexual brokenness and the temptations that come with that. There’s not one of us who hasn’t stepped out of the will of God and into sexual sin in thought, word, and deed. But to knowingly invite, entertain, and indulge sexual temptation while making a clear decision to step into sexual sin. . . well. . . that’s where we need to be stepping up and calling each other out with a good dose of Biblical accountability.

God’s design for His grand and glorious gift of sex is this. . . that sex is a gift to be indulged by one man and one woman within the context of an exclusive, monogamous, covenantal, life-long marriage. That’s it, plain and simple. Sex is something God made, gave to us, and enthusiastically declared “Good!” But with everything else, we go and mess it up. And when the Bible commands us to “flee from sexual immorality,” the word that it uses is porneia, which means “to practice prostitution, sexual immorality, or fornication.” In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul frequently used the word in reference to any kind of sinful and illegitimate sexual activity. Porneia is, in fact, the very thing from which followers of Jesus are commanded to “flee!” (I Corinthians 6:18).

And so tomorrow, millions of folks will pay to settle down in dark theaters to be entertained by, get lost in, and be provoked to enter their own little world of sexual fantasizing by watching a young man with a penchant for BDSM systematically and intentionally stalk, seduce, and deflower a young virgin. This is not a film where non-gratuitous depictions of sexuality are truthful in nature, adding to the story. In this case, sexual fantasies and BDSM are the story and they are the draw. In other words, millions will pay to sit in a dark theater and indulge in pornography. . . a practice that is not only sinful, but highly destructive and addictive.

Yes, pornography! And if you are considering indulging in Fifty Shades of Grey, please take a minute to consider these definitions of pornography that I’ve found to be particularly helpful. . .

  •  From my friends at HarvestUSA: “Pornography is anything that the heart uses to find sexual expression outside of God’s intended design for relational intimacy. It is anything that tempts or corrupts the human heart into desiring sexual pleasure in sinful ways.”
  • From the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Pornography consists in removing real or simulated sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the conjugal act, the intimate giving of spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense. Civil authorities should prevent the production and distribution of pornographic materials.” 

Still undecided? Consider the fact that Fifty Shades of Grey has indeed been fairly labeled as “mommy porn.” Then let me ask you to consider these questions as you ponder your decision. . .

  • Is “It’s just a movie!” a reasonable justification for sin? Couldn’t we also be saying, “Come on, it’s just a magazine, or a DVD, or an on-demand movie, or an adult-bookstore, or a free website!”
  • Have you considered the fact that when you view pornography you are complicit in sexual trafficking? Yes, whether the individuals depicted are actors or real people, or if they are appearing willingly or by coercion, your presence, attention, and payment all combine to make you a willing consumer and market expander of the ever-growing and always exploitative pornography industry.
  • If you are a young mother, an older mother, or grandmother, how would you feel if it was your precious children on that screen in that darkened theater. . . again, willingly or coerced? Would you want your son to, in real life, become a Christian Grey? Or, would you want your daughter, in real life, to be pursued and seduced like Anastasia Steele?
  • What kind of model does God call us to present to your watching and growing children? Are they learning about the joy of healthy, biblical sexuality? Or if they watch you will they be learning something else?
  • Do you really believe that in a day and age when sexual assault and violence are pervasive, that we should actually be choosing to celebrate depictions of such on the big screen?
  • Do you really believe in a day and age where women are objectified and stripped of their dignity by men who see them as nothing but objects to be used, that it is a positive thing to carve out time and eagerly indulge in viewing a film which does the same?
  • Do you realize that pornography doesn’t spice up and improve the marriage bed or marriage, but rather, it drains the life out of and destroys a marriage?
  • And finally, are you willing to take something that God has given you that is amazingly good, and twist it in a way that does not bring glory to God, but instead brings glory to the kingdom of the world, the flesh, and the devil? Or simply stated, are you willing to willingly go your way rather than God’s? Remember, that’s what got us human beings in trouble in the first place.

I’m not so sure that the biggest problem here is the book  or the film Fifty Shades of Grey. This kind of stuff has always existed. And in a broken world, sadly, it will continue to exist. Our greater concern should be the widespread appeal, the ready acceptance, and even the willingness to engage in secretly reading the books or sneaking off to the film. . . an indication that we know that there’s something that’s just not right about what we’re doing. We’re now talking about mainstream stuff. This isn’t some dark corner or fringe. And as one who studies youth culture I wonder. . . . what will middle school-aged kids do with this one it’s on DVD and Netflix? Or, what will this stuff do to middle school-aged kids. The most pressing issue is the heart that’s drawn to and shaped by this stuff.

Perhaps today is a great day. . . THE day. . . to leverage all the attention our culture is giving this film and sit down to talk with our kids. . . openly, frankly, seriously, and honestly. . . about the very real pull, power, and dangers related to pornography use.  .  . to talk about what it will do to us and what God is calling us to do with it. (Click here for a resource you can use to get the discussion started)

The great Reformer Martin Luther once famously said, “You can’t stop the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from making a nest in your hair.” That’s a clear and powerful picture of the difference between the temptations we face and the sins we choose. I pray that this weekend, none of us will have allowed pornography to nest on or in our heads.

Because of my own brokenness, I’ve learned to constantly remind myself that every time I make a choice, I’m choosing sides.

Which side will it be this weekend? The Gospel offers so much more!

To learn about helpful resources on pornography and sexual integrity from CPYU, click here

To read a helpful article, “Sexual Sanity for Women in a World Gone Mad,” click here.

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Fifty Shades of Grey. . . Almost Here. . .

Some of the most frightening words in the Bible are these words from the Apostle Paul to the Corinthians: “Flee from sexual immorality” (I Corinthians 6:18). I remember talking to a room full of curious middle school students in the mid-1980’s. Our little middle school youth group had gathered and I was speaking openly and honestly to them about things they were all feeling, discovering, and wondering about as they were experiencing the dawn of one of the most incredible, good, and glorious gifts God has given to humanity.

But like all other human beings, they were living in a world that encouraged them to indulge the good gift of their sexuality without borders and boundaries. My job was to communicate the words of a different voice as clearly as possible. . . specifically the Designer’s plan for how to indulge their sexuality to His glory. I also knew that every adult in that room could attest to the goodness of that plan, especially as we communicated that our knowledge of that goodness came not only from knowing the plan’s Source, but from the ways each of us had strayed from that plan – in thought, word, and deed – over the course of our own lives. And so, we talked about Paul’s command to “flee,” likening the sin of indulging our sexuality without borders or boundaries to eagerly seeking and choosing to stay in a burning building. I’m not sure it’s the best metaphor, but it was the best we could muster at the time.

fifty shades1My newspaper, television, the Internet, and that book store display I saw the other day in the airport are all telling me that over the course of the coming days, we will all have the opportunity to choose to walk into a burning building. The long anticipated film, Fifty Shades of Grey, is set to release. Yes, there will be plenty of men who willingly venture into the flames. But the largest draw by far, will be for the women. . . young and old alike. . . who will go to see the film.

I don’t think that we should be at all surprised that Fifty Shades of Grey will be dubbed “blockbuster” after it’s first few days of release. After all, all those voices I was warning those impressionable young middle schoolers about thirty years ago have been convincing. But for the Christian, the one who has chosen the costly life of following Jesus, making the choice to read or watch the story is flat-out foolishness and compromise. Still, the power of those cultural voices and the choices to which they have and will lead (choosing a movie and at least some level of life style), is already clear from the fact that the debate over the movie among Christian women has gone public, especially in the blogosphere. We’re hearing of more and more Christian women who are eagerly and almost girlishly giggling with eager anticipation over the film’s release. Is there no desire, sense, or wisdom to even consider Paul’s loving warning to “flee from sexual immorality?”

Over the coming days, I hope to offer some thoughts that I hope will serve to add to the conversation for the simple reason that the decisions we make on this matter. For today, I thought I would re-post the words from my first blog on Fifty Shades of Grey. . . a post from almost three years ago. Here’s that post. . .

The conversation was between me and two of the women in my life. . . my wife and one of my adult daughters. We were driving from church to Costco. The conversation began with some comments and questions about Fifty Shades of Grey, the first book in E.L. James’ best-selling fiction trilogy. The books are all over the New York Times’ Bestseller List and it seems like women everywhere are devouring them.

I listened as the ladies discussed the literary phenomena. None of us have read the books. But like everyone else, we’ve heard about them. During our short drive and conversation we talked about the content. We talked about the plot. And we talked how curious and disturbing it is that so many women are immersing themselves with reckless abandon in a work of erotic fiction that sounds like a Harlequin romance novel on steroids.In case you haven’t heard, Fifty Shades of Grey is about the exploits of a young college graduate and a businessman. The story is summarized on Wikipedia this way: “The plot traces the relationship between recent college graduate Anastasia Steele and manipulative billionaire Christian Grey. Steele is required by Grey to sign a contract allowing him complete control over her life. As she gets to know him she learns that his sexual tastes involve bondage, domination and sadism, and that childhood abuse left him a deeply damaged individual. In order to be his partner she agrees to experiment with bondage/discipline/sadism/masochism, but struggles to reconcile who she is (a virgin who has never previously had a boyfriend) with whom Christian wants her to be: his submissive, to-do-with-as-he-pleases partner in his ‘Red Room of Pain.'”  

As we discussed this current cultural trend, I wondered out loud about doing what I always think is the responsible thing when it comes to evaluating and commenting on a cultural artifact. In this case, the responsible thing is to read the book. The response from my wife and daughter was immediate and direct. . . and I’m glad it was. They told me I didn’t need to go there. I was reminded of what I tell youth workers all the time. . . “Don’t cross the line. . . and you know where the line is for you.” Sometimes we need others to remind us of where our lines should be. I know that the directive of these two ladies was good advice. I’m not going to read this book. . . . for the simple reason that I don’t need to look at pornography to know what it’s about. And from everything I hear, Fifty Shades of Grey is literary pornography.

Upon arriving at Costco, I bee-lined to my favorite place in the store. . . the book table. It’s a regular habit. As always, the book table was surrounded by browsers. The browsing was particularly dense on one side of the table. It was dense with women. What they were looking at and loading up on was a fast-diminishing pile of books. . . which happened to be the E.L. James trilogy. I eaves-dropped and quickly realized that everything I had been hearing and everything we had been talking about in our car was true.

One conversation in particular rattled me. A younger woman was holding the book and pondering the purchase. She had an inquisitive and slightly guilty look on her face. An older women standing nearby happened to see the same inquisitive and guilty look and decided to engage the younger lady in conversation. . . . a conversation that pushed the latter to a tipping point. “Thinking about reading it?”, the older woman asked. “Yes, but I hear it’s a little dirty,” the younger woman replied. At that point, the young woman’s husband appeared behind her with their cart. Noticing her husband was now privy to the conversation, the young woman turned a little red and muttered something about her husband showing up. . . as if the conversation needed to come to an end. She looked like a guilty kid who had been caught with her hand in the cookie jar. The older woman. . . probably in her mid-60s by my estimation. . . looked at her, gave her a little wink, and said, “It’s ten dollars well spent.” With that, the young woman placed the book in her cart. . . . and I watched her exchange a sly little smile with her husband. That was an interesting mentoring moment that says a lot about who we are and what we’re becoming as a culture.

I’ve mentioned before that research shows that on any given Sunday, our church pews in evangelical churches hold people who struggle with pornography. That research says that 50% of the men and 20% of the women in those pews are addicted to pornography. My friends at Harvest USA define pornography as “anything the heart uses to find sexual expression outside of God’s intended design for relational intimacy. It is anything that tempts and corrupts the human heart into desiring sensual pleasure in sinful ways.” (It’s well worth your time to read the full article that this definition comes from). In general, men are drawn to visual pornography. And in general, women are engaging with literary pornography. Fifty Shades of Grey seems to fit the bill.

And so we seek it out, we read it, we love it. . . and we don’t see much wrong with doing any of those things. We’re in trouble folks. Al Qaeda might as well just sit back and wait. . . we’re doing a fine job of taking ourselves down. Anyone else hear Paul Simon quietly singing “Slip Slidin’ Away”?

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Pornography and Sexual Trafficking… One and the Same…

Since we began researching and talking about the issue of pornography, we’ve seen the value of telling the truth about the connection between pornography and sexual trafficking. This is a truth that our kids need to hear. We must connect the dots for them. Sexual trafficking is an issue that the emerging generations care deeply about. Still, pornography use is pervasive among this very group, shaping them (more accurately misshaping them) in powerful ways. Not only must we seek justice in response to sexual trafficking, but we must seek justice by seeing how pornography use makes us complicit in sexual trafficking. If we seek to fight sexual trafficking yet engage in it ourselves, we are divided, dis-integrated selves. We are doing wrong.

This great little video is something you can use to spark discussion and a thoughtful response to these issues. . .

 

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When A Child Comes Out. . . And Dies. . .

For many years, I subscribed to Entertainment Weekly magazine. It was part of my regular culture-watching routine in those pre-Internet-glut-of-information years. Twenty years ago, in December of 1994, the magazine published their annual “Faces of AIDS” tribute to those in the entertainment industry who had died of AIDS during the previous twelve months. I remember sitting in my basement office (pre-being-able-to-afford-a-real-office years) and thumbing through the magazine tribute. Up to that point in my life, I was not aware of anyone that I knew who had died of AIDS. As I glanced through the article, the face and reality of AIDS suddenly became very personal for me. There, looking at me from the page, was the face and name of “Mark Carson,” a fellow Geneva College student who had graduated two years ahead of me. Since Geneva was a very small private college, Mark was someone I knew. I also knew his younger siblings who attended Geneva. . . something that was not at all surprising since their father, Norman Carson, was an English professor at the school. He too, was someone I knew as I had sat in many of his lectures over the years. Suddenly, AIDS had a face and a family.

In many ways, I was stunned. At that point in my life, remnants of the horribly naive belief that “these things don’t happen to Christians. . . certainly not to Christians that I know” surfaced, a reality that served as a much-needed gut-check of my theology, both regarding our tendency to make sinful choices, and the fact that the rain does indeed fall on both the just and the unjust. Seriously, I thought I had long-since moved beyond that point, but the reality is that the fact that this disease and this death visited this family convinced me that I was still not where I should be in regards to my understanding of pain, suffering, and the sovereignty of God.

precious sonTwo nights ago, I drove down to our church for a meeting. While I was waiting for the meeting to start, I wandered into the darkened church library, turned on the lights, and surveyed the books on the “new books” table. One particular book caught my eye: Precious Son: The Impact of AIDS on an Evangelical Christian Family, by Norman Carson. I picked it up, signed it out, and brought it home. . . reading it before I went to bed.

This was not a story. . . but a story about people I knew. I didn’t need pictures other than the memories in my head. The other night, I read this book differently than I would have twenty or thirty years ago. I read as one who has been on a deliberate and targeted journey for the last two years to understand homosexuality and the Christian faith. I read as one who knows, thankfully, that life isn’t as black and white or ridiculously simple as I once believed. I read as a parent who has seen deep brokenness in himself and in his family. . . a parent who wonders how to best understand and respond to brokenness and suffering in ways that are biblically faithful and that bring honor and glory to God. I read as one who because of his vocation, has deep and difficult conversations with a growing parade of people he meets as he fulfills his calling in life.

Today, as I can’t stop thinking about Mark Carson’s story and the father who has told it so well, I am grateful for Norman and Beverly Carson’s vulnerability and candor. Our Geneva College world was one where a certain unhealthy breed of theological dogmatism, fundamentalism, legalism, and judgmentalism could easily take root and breed more of the same if we weren’t open to understanding the full counsel of God. At times, I must admit, this is the kind of shameful thing that I chose to allow happen to me. To be honest, it still happens. But in the midst of that Geneva environment, we were also taught a rich theology of God’s sovereignty, providence, and grace. Fact is, it usually takes the difficult journey through suffering to get us to realize just how sovereign, providential, and graceful God is. In this way, suffering is a gift.

As I read Precious Son, I thanked God for the Carson’s vulnerability and willingness to share their story. . . a story which, I know, is shared by an ever-growing host of broken parents who struggle to raise broken kids. It’s all of us really, isn’t it?

I love these words that Norman Carson penned in the book’s Afterword: “When we look back to that August morning in 1994 we remember vividly how the death of our firstborn caused both of us enormous suffering and long-term grief. We must testify, however, that through God’s grace he eventually brought joy back into our lives. . Still, as we look back at those first dark months we ask ourselves how and why did this happen to us? Furthermore, we have often asked, how did God prepare us for this overwhelming tragedy? Believing in the God of providence, we came to believe that he had been preparing us for this event through the circumstances of many prior years. 

As evangelical Christians, we take the injunctions of Scripture seriously, and so we found ourselves, inevitably, bearing the shame of having a son who had chosen to practice homosexuality. More devastating, however, was the crushing question of his final destiny, for he had gone to the grave , as far as we knew, still rejecting the Christian faith. We never tired of sharing with each other our sorrow, comforting and encouraging one another and reminding ourselves of God’s promises. We had to learn to live without our son and to overcome our guilt, for we thought we had surely failed him. It was difficult to understand that God was working in and through us. We prayed for the balm of healing so that we could go on with our lives serving God in the Kingdom. . . We never turned our face away from God. . .  We can truly say that God has been good to us though we still live with earthly sorrows that we cannot understand. . . We have come to believe that the two realities – of grief and of joy – can be shared in our life.”

And then this. . . “Now a word to Christian parents, remember this: no matter how hard you try to bring your children to God; no matter how faithful you may be in the nurture of your children, the choice ultimately must be your child’s. And remember this well: although we are not perfect, your Lord is. If we are obedient to his commands, faithfully teaching our children about him, hope remains for us and for our children. In God’s providence, our children can turn to him, even on their death-bed, because, because we have not neglected to teach them the truth.”

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Common Sense and the Culture of Sexual Assault. . . Things to Talk About With the Kids. . .

Columnist Nicholas Kristof asks some provocative questions and makes some very good points in his recent editorial, “Bill Cosby, UVA, and Rape.” Kristof reminds us that we shouldn’t be surprised when we see the news saturated with stories about Bill Cosby, or the Rolling Stone Magazine article on the culture of rape at the University of Virginia. . . which, by the way, isn’t at all limited to that campus in Charlottesville. After all, we live in a culture that actually promotes it.

Everywhere we turn these days, sexual assault is being talked about. And so it should be. It’s pervasive.

But I wonder if there are some sacred cultural cows feeding this beast that we’re either too blind to see or too frightened to address?

Kristof offers a powerful example of this when he writes, “Too often boys are socialized to see women and girls as baubles, as playthings. The upshot is that rapists can be stunningly clueless, somehow unaware that they have committed a crime or even a faux pas. The Rolling Stone article describes how the rape victim at the University of Virginia, two weeks after the incident, ran into her principal assailant. ‘Are you ignoring me?’ he blithely asked. ‘I wanted to thank you for the other night. I had a great time.’ Likewise, a university student shared with me a letter her ex-boyfriend wrote her after brutally raping her in her dorm room. He apologized for overpowering her, suggested that she should be flattered and proposed that they get back together. Huh?”

There are a few threads in the tapestry of this culture of sexual assault that I think we need to recognize, call out, and then address with our kids. These certainly don’t comprise all the threads that we need to be concerned about, and no one individual thread should be cited as THE reason this culture of sexual assault exists. What are they?

uva rapeFirst, the thread of narcissism feeds a growing sense of entitlement that has infiltrated, informed, and distorted all of life, including our sexuality. We are selfish people. We covet, desire, and feel like we deserve anything and everything whenever and wherever we decide we want it. If we are willing to push and shove our way into trying to satisfy our retail cravings on Black Friday, we shouldn’t be surprised that we selfishly push and shove our way into sexual encounters, all in an attempt to satisfy the lusty sexual desires that have come to rule our lives. So strong are these desires that nowadays that we don’t stop to get the other person’s name, pause to consider the purpose and place of sex, or think about how our time with our pants off could affect multiple lives for a lifetime after our pants are back on. Our kids need to hear that sex is a good and wonderful gift from God for one man and one woman to experience together within the context of a life-long, monogamous, covenantal marriage.

Second, our entertainers continue to create and peddle “art” that glorifies aggressive, no-holds-barred sexuality. Once again, I can’t help but think about vulnerable and curious little boys and little girls who grow up watching, listening to, and learning from things like Adam Levine and Maroon 5’s visual and lyrical depiction of how to live out your sexuality in their video “Animals.” Or how about what they see and hear from Nicki Minaj in her song “Anaconda?” Or DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “Turn Down for What?” Or. . . .? Why can’t or don’t we speak up about these things, showing and telling our kids the difference between right and wrong? Our kids need to see and hear depictions of sexuality that are good, true, right, and honorable. And they should easily recognize and cringe at those which aren’t.

And third, we need to establish borders and boundaries from an early age. Things like. . . this is how you treat another human being with respect and dignity. . . this is how you should and should not dress . . . there is where you should and should not go, etc. Our kids need to treat sexuality as the sacred trust that it is. This will evidence itself in how they treat one another, in a modest appearance, and in reminding their little hands and feet to be careful about where they go.

In his book The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis invites readers into the head of the enemy, with some words that clearly reflect our tendency to take God’s good things and totally distort, misuse, and destroy them. . . which in the end, winds up destroying both ourselves and others. What he writes applies to the good gift of our sexuality: “To decide what the best use of it is, you must ask what use the Enemy want to make of it, and then do the opposite.”

Seems like it might be working.

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Music, Kids, and Sexuality. . .Thoughts Prompted by “The Voice”

Today, I’m grieving the continued loss of sexual joy and sanity in our culture. Not surprisingly, the understandings that are prompting my grief will most likely be seen by most in today’s world as silly, hopelessly old-fashioned, and largely unfamiliar in an “are-you-kidding-me?!?” kind of way.

My grief this morning has been prompted by a series of reminders, encounters, and even conflicts that have piled up over the last forty-some hours. . . all of which stand in marked contrast and opposition to a biblical view of sexuality.

It began with watching one of my favorite TV shows, The Voice, two nights ago. This fall, I’ve been especially impressed with the chemistry and demeanor of the judges. Blake Shelton, Adam Levine, Gwen Stefani, and Pharrell have been fun to watch as they interact with each other and the show’s singers. On several occasions, Lisa and I have commented on how truly nice each of them seems to be. But always sitting in the back of my mind is what I know of how some of them are mapping life for listeners and fans as they promote ways of looking at and living in the world through their music. Their niceness actually serves as a doorway into accepting without question the worldviews they promote in their music. One example is Blake Shelton’s recent commitment to getting down and dirty by focusing more and more on “bro-country” themes in his music.

Music is a map and mirror. As a map, it teaches us about life. . . what to believe and how to behave. As a mirror, it clearly reflects back to us widely-held and/or emerging cultural values. In other words, it tells us who we should be along with showing us who we are. Music. . . and all media. . . is powerful.

sex edI explained these realities yesterday morning to a group of house-parents at the Milton Hershey School here in Pennsylvania. The group I was with yesterday are parenting middle-schoolers. . . impressionable young kids who are developmentally locked-into a search for identity as their worldviews are being shaped in significant ways. We talked specifically about the map and mirror of music, along with strategies for helping kids thoughtfully and critically evaluate and engage with every message they see and hear. It’s an important task, as music and media are primary shapers of our hearts and minds. One of the media themes that we discussed is that of sexuality. Being the God-made sexual beings that we are, it’s not surprising that we are extremely curious about and susceptible too messages that define and shape our sexuality.

And that’s where the grief comes in. . . knowing that we long for and need sexual guidance. . . and then encountering that guidance as it comes to us through the culture. So, Tuesday night on The Voice, Adam Levine performed the Maroon 5 song “Animals.” Pharrell performed his song “Hunter.” Here’s the video for “Animals,” and a video of Pharrell’s performance of “Hunter” . . . and I encourage you to sit still, give them a watch, and check out  the lyrics to “Animals” and “Hunter.”

I’m thinking as well about nice-guy Pharrell’s part he played in Robin Thicke’s misogynistic and blatantly pornographic “song of the summer” of 2013, “Blurred Lines,” the video of which is available in both a “clean” version, and a version in which the females are fully undressed.

As I’ve been processing Tuesday night’s edition of “The Voice” and the performances I saw, I couldn’t help but think about our culture’s sexual schizophrenia. On the one hand, we promote and perform an understanding of sexuality that reduces our God-given sex drive to nothing but an appetite that we should satisfy without borders or boundaries. If we want it, we hunt it. . . we stalk it. . . and we treat people as objects that are nothing more than prey, animals, or pieces of meat. And then when these ideas and beliefs give birth to the behaviors they promote, then we need the “No More” PSA campaign to step in to tell us that the rising tide of sexual assault is wrong.

 

Why can’t we see that we have wound up in a situation where we must constantly be telling ourselves not to do the very things we are constantly telling ourselves to do? We are truly duplicitous and conflicted. We lack integrity.

Sex is on the minds of our kids. Not at all surprising, first and foremost because God has made them – like us – to be sexual beings. But how are we socializing and nurturing them into thinking about and engaging with their sexuality? The biblical worldview is celebratory about sex. Sex is a good thing, given to us as a gift by God. But when the cultural messages map and mirror something else, our hearts should break.

This morning, I read Scotty Smith’s “A Prayer About Seduceability” in his book, Everyday PrayersThe Scripture verse at the top of the page was taken from Proverbs 7:21-27, a passage that warns us about how easily we can be drawn beyond the borders and boundaries of God’s good gift of sex and what happens when we are. While the passage speaks specifically about lure and consequences of adultery, it applies to all sexual sin. It reads:

With much seductive speech she persuades him;
    with her smooth talk she compels him.
 All at once he follows her,
    as an ox goes to the slaughter,
or as a stag is caught fast
    till an arrow pierces its liver;
as a bird rushes into a snare;
    he does not know that it will cost him his life.

 And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth.

 Let not your heart turn aside to her ways;
    do not stray into her paths,
 for many a victim has she laid low,
    and all her slain are a mighty throng.
 Her house is the way to Sheol,
    going down to the chambers of death.

Broken sexuality hunts us as dehumanized animals. And when we choose to be hunted, it will cost us everything. That’s not the message our kids are getting from the culture. But it is the liberating message we need to be communicating without apology or pause.

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Lessons on Pornography. . .

Last week Lisa and I traveled to the beautiful Berkshire hills in Western Massachusetts. We made a short getaway together out of an invitation to have a heart-to-heart conversation about the dangers and brokenness of pornography with a group of 200 high school kids and their leaders who had gathered for a week of summer camp. This wonderful, Christ-loving, grace-filled and evangelical Catholic camp has been running for 31 years.

The theme of this year’s camp was “Wonder.” In an email to me prior to my arrival, one of the camp’s directors, Maureen, wrote these words: “If there is anything that can destroy the wonder of what God has created for people, it’s pornography.”

freedomMy ongoing work with CPYU. . . and our Digital Kids Initiative specifically. . . continues to convince me that this horribly broken and exploitive expression of God’s good and wonderful gift of sexuality is one of the most insidious and destructive forces in both youth culture and the culture-at-large today. And once again, as I stood before this group to talk about this destroyer of God’s wonder and beauty, the faces I looked at revealed a clear knowledge of pornography’s presence, reality, and danger. I think we had a good morning together.

As I was thinking through my remarks to the students last week, I ran across a great little blog post from James Tarring Cordrey. Posted on the Covenant Eyes site, Cordrey writes from his own experience as a pornography addict. His post – Break Porn Addiction: 5 Lessons I Learned Along the Way – is worth your time. It’s also worth sharing and talking about with the kids you know and love. And maybe, it will be helpful to you as well.

Cordrey list these 5 lessons in his post. . .

1. I had been lied to. My culture, influenced by pornography, had told me all sorts of lies about how normal it was to indulge sexual lust.

2. Real change is really possible. The pattern throughout Scripture is one in which people leave behind their former way of life and cling to the hope and promise of being made new and clean in Christ.

3. But you will have to fight for it. And, freedom is worth fighting for.

4. You must engage in spiritual warfare. I have learned how to pray against the work of the Evil One and break the strongholds I have allowed him to build in my life.

5. It really is a matter of life and death. Sin brings death. God brings freedom and life.

I want to encourage you to read James Tarring Cordrey’s full blog post. . . and then talk about it. Thanks be to God that there is hope!

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Same-Sex Issues. . . Some Reading Suggestions. . . Part 3. . . .

grace and truthOver the course of the last eighteen months and my focused reading on the same-sex issues that have been at the forefront in our culture and the church, my prayer has been that God’s Spirit would guide me into a Biblically-faithful and grace-filled understanding of these complex issues, along with a clear and growing sense of how to best respond individually and corporately. . . again, with a faithfulness to the Scriptures and a posture of grace. I’ve learned that beneath the surface of these same-sex discussions and disagreements are some even more foundational issues related to our view of Scripture, how we do exegesis, and interpretation (hermeneutics).

My first two blogs in this little three-part series addressed books that have helped me frame a biblical understanding of the issue, and then books by same-sex attracted folks who have wrestled to follow Christ as one who is same-sex attracted. Today, I want to mention three books that have helped me in my quest to frame a personal and corporate response. In other words, who must I be and who must we be as the church as we live, move, and breath in today’s world? yes, there are more helpful books than these. . . I know that. But these are three I have already read. Others will be mentioned in coming months as I work through the remaining stack on my desk.

The oldest of these three books was written by one of my church history professors at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Dr. Richard Lovelace. A great professor with a deep passion for Christ, people, and the church, Lovelace was active and involved in the Presbyterian Church USA, the denomination of my youth and one where I served as a youth pastor post-seminary. My dad was a pastor in this mainline denomination. Many people know that the PCUSA just voted in the last few weeks to ordain practicing homosexuals, and move that has continued to cause division and flight from the denomination. My experience was in conservative/evangelical PCUSA churches. What most people don’t realize is that back in the 1960s and 1970s there were debates raging in the PCUSA over homosexuality. Lovelace was a minority opinion member of the United Presbyterian Task Force of Homosexuality. In 1978, he wrote Homosexuality and the Church, a book that I pulled off my father’s shelf a few years ago and just read earlier this year. Now out of print but still obtainable, the book offers a well constructed look at the church’s traditional stance through history, new approaches to homosexuality, and evaluation of the theological arguments, a look at the biblical data, and some very helpful guidelines for the church as it ministers to homosexuals. I wish I had discovered this book much earlier in my ministry. It’s almost prophetic in nature. Still, it speaks clearly to us today and is one of the most helpful books I’ve read. I’ll be re-reading it again soon.

Second, there’s John Stott’s little 1998 book, Same-Sex Partnerships: A Christian Perspective. Stott is one of my go-to theological mentors who I’ve come to trust in terms of his view of Scripture, his hermeneutic, and his thoroughness. Stott effectively and concisely argues that marriage is to be between one man and one woman, while at the same time offering a clear and necessary reminder (one we all need to hear) that every kind of sexual activity and relationship that deviates from God’s order and design is displeasing to Him.

Finally, there’s a brand new book by Peter Hubbard that speaks so clearly and practically to our times. Love Into the Light: The Gospel, The Homosexual, and The Church, is a biblically-sound and pastorally-driven book that can serve as a guidebook for us as individuals and as the church. Hubbard has found that sweet spot where grace and truth come together in a way that I believe brings great honor and glory to God. Hubbard writes, “Partial truths, no matter how beautiful they sound, act as a poison to the Christian community. The freedom of grace, for example, is cancerous if it does not generate purity. And the call to holiness is malignant if it is not embedded in God’s empowering love.”

Those words from Hubbard are good and necessary words. It’s my prayer that this delicate balance between grace and truth would be struck in my life, in our youth ministry world, and in our churches.

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Same-Sex Issues. . . Some Reading Suggestions. . . Part 2. . . .

Yesterday I posted a list of three books that I’ve recently read that have been most helpful in framing a Biblical response to the issue of same-sex attraction. . . a topic that’s led to much debate of late  in the culture and the church. I’m a firm believer in working hard to frame God-honoring and biblically-faithful answers/approaches to these complex issues that, to be honest, we in the church have simplified, ignored, and not dealt with very well over the years.

gay marriage logoToday, as promised, I want to mention five books that I think are worth your time. Each one has been written in the first-person by an individual who has had to come to terms with their own bent towards same-sex attraction. In fairness, I’ve worked to read widely. . . not just going to those books that end up in a place that leaves me feeling comfortable. Each of these books is about struggle. Each is written well with deep, deep passion. Each book has forced me to look more deeply at myself in an effort to come to terms with my own sin (sexual and otherwise), and to reevaluate my own approach (riddled with failure) to those who deal with same-sex attraction. If I was to put this list together in a week, I’d be sure to include a book that I just started reading yesterday, Jeff Chu’s Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. But since I’m only a couple of chapters in, that will have to wait until later.

Regarding the books on my list. . . I’ve sensed two distinct approaches among those writers I’m mentioning today. Some have decided to deal with their same-sex attraction by filtering and then submitting their experiences to the authority of God’s Word. Others, while professing a high view of Scripture, have clearly approached their struggle from the perspective of filtering Scripture through their experiences, and then interpreting Scripture in a manner that justifies and approves their experiences. I’m fully aware that many of you who will read this will take issue with what I’ve just said. Yes, I know that we all read Scripture through the lens of our own experiences and cultural biases. But ultimately, we need to recognize this fact and then endeavor. . . no matter how difficult and constricting we might think that endeavor might be. . . to submit our conform our future experiences and lifestyle to the authority of God’s Word. I’m afraid that this will be a point of great tension in our struggles with each other, with differing exegetical methods and hermeneutics leading us to different conclusions.

That said, here’s today’s list. . .

Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality was the first book that I read over a year ago. Hill teaches New Testament at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry. With a high view of Scripture and a desire to be faithful and obedient to his Lord, Hill studies the scriptures  and came to the conclusion that he is called to a life of celibacy as he struggles to remain faithful to Christ in midst of his sexual brokenness. This book is exemplary in the sense that Hill offers all readers a framework for self-examination, and the submission of one’s sinful will to God’s plan for our lives, no matter what the sin is that grips us. Hill is doing the church a huge favor by exploring the role of “spiritual friendship” as an alternative to political activism and reparative therapies. His new website, spiritualfriendship.org, offers believers a new approach to homosexuality.

I followed up Wes Hill’s Washed and Waiting by reading Justin Lee’s Torn:Rescuing the Gospel from The Gay-vs.-Christians DebateLike Hill, Justin Lee has wrestled to figure out how to come to terms with his same-sex attraction as a follower of Jesus Christ. Lee’s book is emotionally gripping, something that I picked up on right away. Rather than starting with the scriptures, Lee shares his own struggle. In fact, even though I’m a reader who has strong opinions on where a story like Lee’s should end up in terms of his conclusions, I found it tempting to root for Lee. While reading, I realized that Lee’s book will play well with younger readers who desire the church to be more affirming. Lee comes to the conclusion (through what I believe are some very sketchy exegetical and hermeneutical gymnastics) that the Scriptures allow for him to be in a monogamous, same-sex union. Lee’s interpretation (more accurately “reinterpretation” that flies in the face of historical orthodoxy) of the classical biblical passages on homosexuality is one that I’ve seen repeated over and over by writers who seek to justify same-sex monogamy. In my opinion, Torn is a very dangerous book in that its emotional tone is gripping, a fact which could easily lead readers to jettison the balance we need between truth and grace, leading to a forsaking of truth in favor of grace. To learn more about Justin Lee and his approach, you can check out the organization he founded, the Gay Christian Network.

Perhaps the most gripping, refreshing, and amazing of all the books is Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: One English Professor’s Journey Into Christian FaithI blogged on this book over a year ago. Butterfield was a women’s studies prof at Syracuse and a radical lesbian who was doing research on the religious right. Through a series of amazing circumstances that could have only been ordained by God, Butterfield was befriended by a pastor and his wife who simply engaged her in conversation, showed her hospitality, and became her friend. After a couple of years, Butterfield was converted and left her lesbian lifestyle. God changed her to the core and she is now a pastor’s wife and mother. Butterfield reminds us that we all have “that sin” in our lives that will grip us and that we must give up if we are to truly follow Christ. Simply stated. . . an amazing book. You can watch a compelling interview with Butterfield here.

A book that I stumbled upon but have rarely heard mentioned is Melinda Selmys’ Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and CatholicismSelmys is a bright young Catholic woman who writes with passion in an in-your-face manner. Her life has been raw and her writing while very good, is raw as well. This book does not hold back and it is very good. Selmys has endeavored to integrate her faith into her sexuality, a task each of us should struggle and endeavor to accomplish. She knows the world is broken and she knows that we must seek shalom. Her story is compelling. Her conclusions clear. Consider this line about her quest to discover “real” sex: ” The depth of meaning expressed through conjugal love between a man and woman simply is not possible in any other scenario. The mouth is not the body’s ‘holy of holies’ – it is the organ by which you consume and digest things. The anus is the organ by which you excrete waste. On purely symbolic, archetypal grounds, oral and anal sex are a mess – and the beauty of these acts, considered objectively, is quite elusive.”

Finally, the last book I read and finished a couple of weeks ago is Matthew Vines’ recent God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. This book is probably one of the most discouraging books I’ve read in recent years. I say this not because of Vines’ conclusions, but the route and methodology he employs to get there. Vines is a young man from an evangelical background who, it seems, set out on a mission to convince his parents and his church that being gay is ok. In the end, Vines would stand with Justin Lee, believing that a committed, monogamous same-sex relationship can be ordained and blessed by God. Like Lee, Vines tackles the  long-held understanding of the classical homosexuality passages in the Bible. Vines concludes that “Christians who affirm the full authority of Scripture can also affirm committed, monogamous same-sex relationships.” While there are no doubt several aspects of Vines book that trouble me (hermeneutical, exegetical, etc.), it was the book’s beginning that really left me scratching my head. The first chapter, “A Tree and It’s Fruit,” dangerously makes Jesus’s words in Matthew 7:15-20 a kind of standard for judging truth. In other words, Vines justifies an affirming posture as a posture that bears good fruit. But can we be nice and seemingly fruitful while also in error? And, can we speak the truth while being less than kind, generous, and fruitful? I would say “yes” to both. What Vines does is emphasize grace at the expense of truth, when there needs to be a tension-filled balance between the two.

As I stated yesterday, I believe we need to read widely. We need to dialogue both with those with whom we would agree, and with those who come to different conclusions.

Have I missed any other books here?

In the last installment of this blog series, I’ll look at some books that I believe can help correct and set the course the church must take in response to the same-sex issue.

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Same-Sex Issues. . . Some Reading Suggestions. . . Part 1. . . .

A few months ago a youth ministry friend asked me to blog on what I’ve been reading in response to my desire to sort out the same-sex issues that have been so prominent in culture in recent months. “I need a list of things to read,” he said. Well, that was back in February. I decided that I would pass on my suggestions over the course of the next few days. I know that some of you are still looking for some summer reading suggestions, so I hope that you will find this helpful.

same sex attraction (640x435)Before I start passing on some titles, I thought I would offer a little bit of context to give you a sense of where I’m coming from in all of this, what it is that motivates me, and where I hope to wind up. It’s no secret that the many issues related to same-sex attraction (homosexuality, transgenderism, same-sex marriage, etc.) have taken a front seat in the public square and are unavoidable. I can’t remember any issue that’s morphed so quickly in so many places and in so many ways. I also believe that for far too long the church (of which I am a part) has done a horrible job of understanding and responding to these issues and the people for whom they are very real. I don’t think we’ve glorified God or shown much grace in our understandings and responses. I put myself in the front of that line. I’ve realized that I need to deepen my understanding of both Word and world when it comes to the issue of same-sex attraction. And, I hope that my response is one marked by a faithful and absolute love for God and neighbor. Consequently, my journey to learn is one that I pray will yield a faithfulness to the way that God intends things to be. Above all, I want my response to the world to be shaped by the Word. Then, I want to be able to have meaningful discussions with people of all ages, particularly young people, who need guidance and nurture in how to best respond in ways that bring honor and glory to God and His intent for our lives.

Since starting this journey in a more deliberate manner about 16 months ago, I’ve read all kinds of books. My starting point, however, has been where it always is when approaching any matter of life. . . with God’s revealed will in His Word. I do believe that God created the world and has a divine design that we, in our sin, have distorted. While things are not the way they are supposed to be, our calling is to understand “Shalom” (God’s intended, creational flourishing. . . the way things are supposed to be!) and seek it for our selves and our world. So today, I want to pass on three titles that have been most helpful to me in getting to the heart of God’s Shalom for our sexuality, particularly as that relates to our current cultural discussion of same-sex attraction. Here they are in no special order. . .

First, Robert Gagnon’s The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics is what many have come to recognize as the standard-bearer on the topic. Gagnon’s book is thick, well-researched, and exhaustive. This is one that you’ll have to work your way through. It’s not an easy read. Several of my friends read this book about the same time that I did, and all of them found it to be very helpful. Gagnon concludes that “same-sex intercourse is strongly and unequivocally rejected by the revelation of Scripture. . . . Scripture rejects homosexual behavior because it is a violation of the gendered existence of male and female ordained by God at Creation.” While many might conclude that Gagnon is horribly insensitive to those in our midst who deal with same-sex attraction, he is not. He cares deeply for the same-sex attracted. He writes, “The practicing homosexual’s own relationship with the Creator will be put in jeopardy (when they engage in same-sex intercourse). If we are to believe the Scripture, the failure of the church to help the homosexual make the transition out of homosexual  practice and into sexual wholeness will make the church an accomplice to the very form of behavior that God finds detestable.”

Second, there’s Mark Yarhouse’s Homosexuality and the Christian: A Guide for Parents, Pastors, and Friends. Yarhouse and his work is gaining some traction in our youth ministry community, and this is one book that deserves your attention. I love that Yarhouse begin’s with God’s Word. His first chapter is titled “What does God think about homosexuality?”  He walks readers through the flow of creation, fall, and redemption and how the unfolding flow of Biblical/redemptive history has distorted God’s sexual shalom. The book then takes readers on a practical, grace-filled journey into how to best respond as individuals and churches to those we know and love.

Finally, I am a big fan of ethicist Dennis Hollinger’s The Meaning of Sex: Christian Ethics and the Moral Life. This is a book that’s about so much more than same-sex attraction. Parents, pastors, and youth workers will find The Meaning of Sex to function as a strong foundation from which to teach, preach, and talk about sex with people of all ages.

These three books have served me well as a good starting point. Each is marked by a deep love for God and neighbor, a commitment to good Biblical exegesis and interpretation, and practical outcomes.

Tomorrow, I’ll blog on five books which have each been written by a person who has had to deal with same-sex attraction in their own lives. These are the stories and struggles that we need to read and understand if we hope to develop a deep sensitivity on this issue.

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Sexuality, Cultural Change, and How We Read Scripture. . . .

Every now and then I have a day that’s marked by thought-provoking and anything-but-coincidental convergence. You know. . . you hear something, see something, read something . . . and it all seems to come together to spark thoughts on things that matter. Yesterday was one of those days.

I ventured out on a walk while thinking about today’s “Day of Silence” and what that means for our kids, our culture, and the church. I’m still processing thoughts that I blogged the other day. Specifically, I was thinking about the complex issues related to same-sex attraction and how our views on such are emerging, morphing, and changing in both the culture and the church. I was thinking about the temptation we all face to change with the times, which leads us to believe that somehow all cultural change is a mark of progression that should be celebrated and affirmed. This creates very real tensions for those of us who follow Christ.

I reminded myself of the principles of faithful and careful Biblical interpretation and exegesis that I’ve learned over the years, particularly during my time at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. We begin not by asking “What does this mean to me?”, but “What did this mean at the time it was written?”. Once we’ve done our interpretive exegetical work, then. . . and only then. . . can we work to make applications to our culture and our own personal lives.

While cultural change might tempt us to jettison those interpretive principles, we must always go back to our need to faithfully and responsibly interpret Scripture. . . with Scripture as our starting point for all matters of faith and life. While it’s becoming more and more commonplace for Christians to view and interpret Scripture through the eyes of our culture, we need to be doing the opposite as we view, interpret, and respond to culture through the eyes of Scripture.

During my walk, I stumbled upon a podcast that I had never been aware of before, thanks to my handy TuneIn Radio app. “Issues, Etc.” is a production of Lutheran Public Radio. I scrolled through some options and settled on an interview with Shane Rosenthal on “Me-Centered Bible Interpretation.”  It’s worth listening to. Having talked for years about how narcissism and the postmodern ethos have combined to create a way of interpreting the Bible that is more about eisogesis than exegesis, I was thrilled to hear Rosenthal’s remarks. It wasn’t difficult at all to connect that dots between reading the Scriptures incorrectly, and how we apply an incorrect understanding of Scripture in ways that support and encourage changing moral standards when, in fact, they should be challenged.

Then, my day continued with some reading on a flight to Wichita. I finally got around to reading a Rolling Stone magazine piece on changing sexual standards. “Tales From the Millennials’ Sexual Revolution” serves as a reminder of just how much our moral standards have morphed in recent years. I found myself asking, “Will the church process and address these changing standards through the lens of Scripture? Or, will the church adjust Scripture to accommodate these changing sexual standards?”

Finally, I pulled John Stott’s Balanced Christianity out of my bag and began reading. I find in Stott a balanced wisdom and maturity that is lacking in so many corners of the church today. His teaching and writing have served to shape me and keep me anchored, especially as it relates to the relationship between faith, Scripture, and culture. The fact that this book was first penned in 1975 might put some younger folks off.  After all, Stott was writing in a different time and culture. Could what he wrote then be even remotely relevant to us today? Without a doubt, yes.

I thought I would pass on some of the more provocative words from Stott’s chapter on “Conservative and Radical.” Stott defines “conservative” in this case as “people who are determined to conserve of preserve the past and are therefore resistant to change.” “Radicals” are “people who are in rebellion against what is inherited from the past and therefore are agitating for change.” Stott argues that every balanced Christian “should have a foot in both camps.”

Some random, thought-provoking words from Stott. . . .

“Every Christian should be conservative because the whole church is called by God to conserve his revelation, to ‘guard the deposit’ . . . The church’s task is not to keep inventing new gospels, new theologies, new moralities and new Christianities, but rather to be a faithful guardian of the on and only eternal Gospel. . . . The self-revelation of God is. . . . changeless in truth and authority.”

“Jesus refused to be bound by human custom; his mind and conscience were bound by God’s Word alone. Thus, Jesus was a unique combination of conservative and the radical, conservative toward Scripture and radical in his scrutiny (his biblical scrutiny) of everything else.”

“Culture changes from age to age, and from place to place. Moreover, we Christians, who say we desire to live under the authority of God’s Word, should subject our own contemporary culture to continuous biblical scrutiny. Far from resenting or resisting cultural change, we should be in the forefront of those who propose and work for its progressive modification in order to make it more truly expressive of the dignity of humanity and more pleasing to the God who created us.”

“The greater danger (at least among evangelicals) is to mistake culture for Scripture, to be too conservative and traditionalist, to be blind to those things in church and society which displease God and should therefore displease us, to dig our heels and our toes deep into the status quo and to resist firmly that most uncomfortable of all experiences, change.

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Sexual Abuse Dynamics, Youth Ministry, And Discovering The Truth. . . .

A few weeks ago I was walking through the hallway at a youth ministry conference when I spotted a local church youth pastor who is a long-time friend in the distance. I greeted him with a hearty “Hey Mike! How are you doing?!?” With a deer-in-headlights expression that indicated Mike was there. . .  but not there. . .  he looked back at me and hestitatingly answered, “Uhhh . . . . I’m OK.”

Knowing something somewhere in his life was amiss, I asked him what was up.

Mike proceeded to tell an all-too-common-these-days story that had unfolded over the course of the few days prior to our standing thee face-to-face. A young teenage girl in his youth group had pulled back the curtain and taken the very brave, courageous, and frightening step of telling a peer that she was being sexually abused by an adult. Mike’s story intensified when he told me that the abuser was not only the father of the teenage girl, but one of Mike’s long-time youth ministry volunteer leaders. If that’s not bad enough, the abuse was perpetrated on another of the man’s teenage daughters as well. The man admitted everything.

Once again, a bomb had been carefully constructed over a long, long period of time. A perpetrator groomed and violated victims. Now, the bomb had detonated publicly and the smoke and shrapnel was covering a wounded family, a wounded youth ministry, and a wounded church. . . . and that’s just the beginning of the story and its’ damage, we can be sure.

We’re hearing and seeing this same ugly story work itself out in a variety of nuanced yet similar ways all over our culture, our churches, and our youth ministry world. It is epidemic. And, what was once kept silent (wrongly and regrettably) is now bursting out into the open, leaving all of us with the responsibility to understand sexual abuse and the common threads that are emerging in so many of the stories.

Last week, one of those dynamics took center stage when The Today Show’s Matt Lauer sat down for an interview with the wife of convicted abuser, Jerry Sandusky. What struck me most about the interview was how we want to believe the best about those we know and love. We’re all that way, aren’t we? In fact, even in spite of convincing evidence, spouses, family members, and close friends of perpetrators refuse to believe that the person could have ever or did ever do such a thing. Dottie Sandusky certainly falls into that category. In fact, there are cases where even family and friends who witness a perpetrator’s first-hand confession of guilt still refuse to accept the facts.

I was reminded of this again this morning when I read a compelling op-ed in our local paper on how perpetrators manipulate and groom not only their young victims, but their family members and friends as well. Written by Angela Trout, and advocacy coordinator at the Lancaster YWCA, the op-ed piece is titled, “Dottie Sandusky Was Also Groomed.” It’s powerful and worth five minutes of your time.

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My Hopes, Homosexuality, and God’s Word. . . .

This morning I ran across and posted this thought-provoking quote from J.I. Packer: “Our business is to present the Christian faith clothed in modern terms, not to propagate modern thought clothed in Christian terms. . . . Confusion here is fatal.”

I’m sure that all of us are guilty here on something. It’s just that most of us don’t know it. . . which is, by the way, the reason we should engage in ongoing, never-ending, deep introspection of every nook and cranny of our lives. . . all conducted under the illumination of God’s Word.

I was hit by this reality again the other night while spending more time in James K.A. Smith’s Everyday Discipleship, the chapter entitled “Can Hope Be Wrong?” in particular. Smith offers up his critique of the “New Universalism” . . . the kind of universalism propagated by Rob Bell in his book Love Wins. This new brand of universalism is what Smith calls a “christocentric” or “evangelical” universalism. In other words, all human beings will be saved in Christ. Smith says that what drives this increasingly popular belief is not a close reading of the Bible’s claims about eternity, but an understanding of the nature of God that leaves people saying things like “I can’t imagine a God who would send a person to hell” and “I hope that God doesn’t send people to hell.”

Smith goes on to ask this question: “Are these hopes and imaginings sufficiently warranted to overturn the received, orthodox doctrines concerning final judgment and eternal damnation?” Then, he critiques each. When he critiques the hermeneutic of hope, he wonders if our hopes can ever be wrong. His example is personal. He loves his wife and he can’t even begin to imagine a life without being husband and wife forever. But then he reads the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:30. . . words that clearly say that at the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Now, the dilemma for Smith when he asks, “Should I nonetheless hope that marriage endures in eternity? Should I profess that I can’t know this (since Scripture seems to suggest otherwise), but nonetheless claim that somehow hoping it might be true is still faithful? Or should I submit even my hopes to discipline by the authority of Scripture?”

Wow. Read that last question again. Those are powerful and timely words that apply to so much more than who gets to go to Heaven and whether or not we will be married in eternity. Smith reminds us that when “what I hope for” eclipses a more theocentric approach to these and other issues, we are in trouble. And that’s what I think J.I. Packer is driving at as well.

While I was reading all of this, I rewound to the evening about thirty-five years ago when one of my best friends sat me down to tell me that he was gay and that he was embracing his homosexuality. When he asked me for my response, a battle began to rage inside of me. I wanted more than anything else to tell him that there was nothing at all wrong with his decision, his leanings, and his embracing this kind of sexuality. I wanted to love, affirm, and accept my friend. I hoped that his same-sex behaviors wouldn’t matter. But on the other side was my need to submit my hopes (some, which if I’m honest, still hold true today on a whole plethora of issues) to someone bigger than myself. And so the battle continues between my hopes. . . driven by my belief that I might just have all of this (and everything else) figured out better than the One whose will and way I must submit myself and my hopes to. . . and my need to have those hopes disciplined.

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The Latest on Pornography. . . .

This morning, someone connected me with an interesting visual blog entry from the folks at Covenant Eyes, an organization committed to helping us understand and deal with the personal and corporate scourge of pornography. The blog is about “10 Surprising Pornography Stats.”

If you are a parent or youth worker, I want to encourage you to not only take a minute to read and ponder these “10 Surprising Pornography Stats,” but I want you to snoop around a bit on the Covenant Eyes website as there are loads of helpful resources that I’m sure you can utilize.

In addition, I want to point you to our Digital Kids Initiative here at CPYU. While we’re looking at a variety of issues related to kids and emerging technologies, you will find the information on pornography particularly helpful. We’ve put together a handout (free pdf download) that you can pass on to parents. It’s called “A Parents’ Primer on Internet Pornography.”

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Insights For Those Struggling with Same-Sex Attraction, the Same-Sex Attracted, and Faith. . . .

Yesterday I had a brief conversation with my dad about what’s been called “Christian television.” We receive about five or six of these networks through our cable service. I usually avoid them all. Over the course of our vacation I did some extended flipping around and decided to settle in on some of  these networks just to see what the programming’s like these days. My overall impression was one of embarrassment. I sincerely hope that my friends who don’t share my faith don’t see me in the unpleasant light that many of these broadcasts cast so broadly. 

I told my dad that one of the religious networks that I have come to appreciate more and more is EWTN, the television arm of the Catholic Church here in the United States. While I don’t share many of the core theological beliefs of Catholicism, I do appreciate their commitment to providing some very thoughtful and theologically deep programming on EWTN. I actually watch from time to time, and have especially enjoyed the show Catholicism on Campus and the shows featuring conversations with Scott Hahn.
This is a big step for me as I’ve had to overco, me some of the biases and even misunderstandings I’ve held about Catholicism for most of my life. I’ve come to appreciate the deep, evangelical faith of many of the Catholics who have tapped into our work here at CPYU. They are among the most earnest and grace-understanding people I know. We’ve had some great discussions. And, I’ve been especially thankful for many of the deep insights the Catholic Church has provided in terms of a theology of sexuality. There’s a richness there. 
Earlier this morning, I finished reading another in my growing pile of books on faith and homosexuality as part of my quest to not only understand the issue, but to better be able to discern and then speak Biblical truth into this extremely sensitive and divisive issue that is boiling over not only in the culture-at-large, but in the church. This time, the book was by Melinda Selmys, an engaging, gifted, and thoughtful young Catholic writer. Melinda doesn’t write about homosexuality as an observer, pundit, or social critic. Rather, she’s been there. She’s done that. . . and a whole lot more. Her book, Sexual Authenticity: An Intimate Reflection on Homosexuality and Catholicism, reflects what happens in life when we take our attitudes, actions, habits, sins (whatever they may be) and we lay them at the foot of the cross while choosing to live out the Gospel. Selmys writes with a blunt sensibility and honesty. While I’ve never met her, I would guess that if I did I would quickly come to the conclusion that she is one of the most strong-willed human beings I know. . . a trait that led her to embrace atheism. Let’s just say that she’s very thorough and resistant in her thinking. . . something that makes her story all the more compelling. 
As the debates on faith and same-sex attraction continue, I want to offer the last five paragraphs of Selmys’ book for your consideration. Hopefully, they will challenge your thinking and whet your appetite to read the 233 pages that come before. . . 
“When the life of God is embraced, is lived, it transforms the rest of reality into a foretaste of heaven. The entire project of human living comes into its own, develops its meaning. The light of God shines through life as though through a photographic negative. At last, so much that seems like meaningless and chaos resolves into order, into significance. The trials and sufferings and pains of life cease to be an engine, stopped in the sky and become the chiaroscuro etchings of a portrait so beautiful it is almost impossible to believe that this is oneself, perfected – as one appeared in the beginning, in the mind of God, before all the broken chemistry of a fallen womb or the first breath of hospital-scented air.

It is for this that I gave up homosexuality. I could feel the light creeping under the doorways of my heart, and I understood that is might reveal a future without lesbianism – I understood it with all the terrible clarity of Christ looking at the cup of suffering offered to Him at Gethsemane. There were absolutely no illusions, no possibility of turning and twisting Scripture until is said what I wanted it to say. I had told God clearly what I wanted; then I said, ‘Thy will be done.’

So it was that I ended up kneeling in the chapel at Queen’s University, some three months after I had first started praying to an unknown deity, a formless ‘Thou who art.’ I started to pray as I usually did, offering up a general thanksgiving, and informal expressions of my own joy in the world that I had been invited to inhabit. It was not long before prayers from my childhood began rising up in my mind, and I voiced them, as naturally as I had then. ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven. . . ‘ The Hail Mary was new to me, but I had learned it in some quiet moment in the library, when I had first recognized the Lady in the Moon as the Virgin Mother of God. I prayed it as well. Finally, when I had exhausted all of the more innocent prayers, and sung the Christian hymns that I remembered, I realized that I desperately wanted to pray something more. There was something further, unexpressed. Almost without realizing what I was doing I began to whisper, ‘I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. And I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, Our Lord. . . ‘

The creed ended in silence. And in that silence, I could feel God there, waiting. A question hovered in the air between us: ‘What are you doing?’ It was not reproachful, and I understood immediately what it meant; why was I saying that I believed these things and yet refusing to acknowledge them in my life, outside of this little space that I set aside for prayer? Why had I spoken with my lips what I had not professed in my heart? I could see, with absolute clarity, that I stood at a crossroads. That either I would reiterate that prayer of belief, and make it real, entirely, with the rest of my life, or else I would turn away and never pray again. I had asked to know God, and to know God’s will, and now I did. 

I went home, dialed the phone, and said, ‘Michelle, I’m becoming a Catholic. That means that we can’t be together anymore – not as lovers.’ It was the end of a relationship that had lasted nearly seven years. It was the beginning of a life more beautiful than I could have asked for or imagined.”
 
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Gay Marriage. . . What Hangs in the Balance? . . .

With the Supreme Court set to rule on Gay Marriage issues today, my head is spinning. Gay marriage, homosexuality, same-sex attraction. . . these are difficult, complex, and confusing issues. They are also very recent social issues, which means that we really haven’t had that much time to process and think about them. And, as the issues unfold at seemingly breakneck speed in both the culture and the lives of real people – people we know and love – we can hardly keep up. Just when you think you’re getting your head and hands around things, you once again feel like you’re having to catch up as new developments emerge.

I know that these are timely and extremely important things that matter deeply. My Christian faith dictates that I wrestle through the issues, all the while prayerfully seeking not “my will” on the matters, but “Thy will.” Things get even more confused as within the body of Christ “thy will” gets interpreted and understood in so many different ways. I’ve been reading like crazy in an effort to solidify my thinking. Still, it’s so complex and confusing.

This morning, I decided to “regroup” in anticipation of whatever news comes from the Supreme Court today. I decided to blog a few thoughts on the “this I knows” . . . conclusions that I have reached at this point. This is not exhaustive or complete in any way, shape, or form. I could – and probably should – add much more in terms of explanation. But here goes. . .

First, no matter what decision the Supreme Court makes, one thing will remain unchanged: God is in control of all of this. The Sovereign God of the Universe is still the Sovereign God of the Universe. The world is horribly broken and filled with horribly broken people and institutions. Nobody and nothing is the way it’s supposed to be. Consequently, nothing should be surprising. God is working out His divine will and plan and in that I can rest.

Second, perhaps the biggest thing at stake in this debate for followers of Christ is the way in which we choose to follow Christ. Our divisions in the church and the paths we choose to follow in our efforts to discover God’s will says much about who we are and the authority on which we choose to build our lives. For me, I want to endeavor to put all my personal opinions and biases aside as best as I can, and then humbly seek God’s will and way in His word. I want to have a responsible hermeneutic, engage in good exegesis, and seek the wisdom of the saints throughout church history. I don’t want to pigeon-hole God into my biases, opinions, and desires. I know that will always happen to some extent, but that’s no excuse for not reckoning with one’s own biases.

Third, I believe that we need to subject our own personal feelings and experiences to Scripture, rather than vice-versa. The latter practice is not only increasingly widespread, but it will destroy us. In my reading I’ve read three books by professing Christians who have had to deal personally with same-sex attraction and it’s been interesting to see how they engage with Scripture and emotions. Wesley Hill (Washed and Waiting) and Rosaria Butterfield (The Secret Thoughts of An Unlikely Convert) view their emotions and experience through the lens of Scripture and come to the conclusion that their same-sex attraction is a result of the brokenness in the world and it’s their cross to bear in faithful obedience to Christ. It is not the way it’s supposed to be. Justin Lee (Torn) views the Scripture through the lens of his emotions and experience. His story is compelling and his argument will play well in today’s world. He concludes that he is the way he’s supposed to be and he opts for a monogamous faithful relationship. We can either reconcile our lives to the Scriptures, or we can reconcile the Scriptures to our lives.

Fourth, we cannot eliminate the first three chapters of Genesis from our discussions. In fact, they are foundational. They are at the root of God’s shalom. They are at the root of the way things are supposed to be. They establish and define marriage. They are at the foundation of Christ’s understanding of marriage. The one-man one-woman order and design is what is established by God and assumed throughout the Scriptures. Go ahead and read the aforementioned books. You’ll see that the inclusion of the Genesis narratives shapes conclusions. . . as does the omission.

Finally, we need to love. We need to love God and we need to love our neighbor. I fear, however, that those who endeavor to do both responsibly and well with the purest of motivations will be labeled as “intolerant” or “homophobic.” Both of those terms are highly charged and horribly misused. A phobia is a fear. I don’t fear same-sex attraction. I don’t fear homosexuals.

This will be an interesting day.

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Teen Sexual Activity vs. Teen Sexual Integrity. . . .

A couple of weeks ago a youth worker was talking to me about his experience reading my book Engaging The Soul of Youth Culture when he was a college student. As we talked about the parts of the book that were most helpful, he mentioned a three-word phrase that he said has stuck with him: “familiarity breeds acceptance.” He says that as a youth worker, he’s committed to knowing cultural forces that have become familiar to kids. Why? Because even those things that are wrong become normalized and accepted if they become mainstream in culture. Then, he knows what he needs to address from a biblical perspective. You see, few of us are really aware of our own worldview and how it shapes what we think and what we do. Rather, we believe that this is the way the world is and that other people see it this way as well. Familiarity does breed normalcy and acceptance.

I was thinking about how familiarity breeds acceptance as I pondered cultural changes that have occurred since George Michael took his song “I Want Your Sex” to the top of the charts 25 years ago (can you believe it’s been that long?!?). I remember talking about that song to my own youth group kids and their parents as we discussed cultural standards and biblical standards for sex. That was back in 1987. Now that those kids are parents themselves, Michael’s quarter-century-old lyrics describe the mainstream assumptions of the generation of kids those “kids” are now raising. 
Take a look at the lyrics (below). The words aren’t instructive or suggestive as they once were. They’ve become familiar and accepted. Now, they are descriptive. . . 
It’s natural
It’s chemical (let’s do it)
It’s logical
Habitual (can we do it?)
It’s sensual
But most of all…..
Sex is something that we should do
Sex is something for me and you

Sex is natural – sex is good
Not everybody does it
But everybody should
Sex is natural – sex is fun
Sex is best when it’s….one on one
One on one


Sadly, those last two lines might even indicate that George Michael’s sexual understanding is a bit old-fashioned in terms of present day understandings about the purpose, place, and practice of sex. 
This morning I was reading a passage from Acts, chapter 2. As Peter addressed  the crowd during his sermon at Pentecost, he called them to turn themselves around and embrace Christ. In verse 40 he tells them to “save yourselves from this crooked generation.” As we think about what those words mean for us today, we’re not talking about just one generation, but a crookedness and corruptness that has grabbed us all. . . weaving itself through every nook and cranny of every life. We need to identify with Jesus and his cause with every square inch and moment of our lives. This includes our sexuality. With the culture sending so many familiar sexual messages (it’s become ambient noise that’s hardly noticeable anymore) that breed acceptance, there’s another sexual script that must be taught, told, and lived. Take for example the mainstream Trojan Condom broadcast ad that I’ve posted below. What assumptions does it make about sex and sexuality? And, do you realize that those assumptions exist without question in today’s youth culture?
Here at CPYU, we want to see all people (including ourselves) embrace God’s life-giving and liberating will and way for all things. . . including our sexuality. We want to know the truth so well that those lies which have become so familiar will become clear to young and old alike.
If you’d like to know more about how to help the young people you know and love embrace God’s grand design and big “Yes!” for their sexuality, consider joining us for tomorrow’s 1-hour webinar with Jason Soucinek, the Director of our new Sexual Integrity Initiative here at CPYU. The webinar – “Raising Up Youth Who Believe in Sexual Integrity” – begins at 1pm (Eastern Time) on Tuesday, May 14.  You can get more information and register here. We invite parents, youth workers, and pastors to join us. 
 
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Same-Sex Attraction and Stereotypes. . . How Do We Break Through? . . .

When it comes to the issue of homosexuality, I’ve been guilty of stereotyping. When I read Justin Lee’s Torn, and the blog post that’s gone viral this week – “An Open Letter to the Church from My Generation”  – I read about a church that’s been less than gracious to homosexuals. A good portion of what was said in each assessment was dead-on accurate. so much so, that I had to stop several times to engage in some introspection and remembrances regarding my own history. I’ve realized that I have been guilty over the course of my life, perhaps not so much of being aggressive and outspoken on these matters in inflammatory or confrontational ways in public, but of at the very least being gracelessly indifferent.

At the same time, I fear that the accusations were thrown as a blanket over the entire church, or at least it sounded that way in both Lee’s book and the “Open Letter.” While I am aware of my hidden thoughts and biases, I can only go so far as to say “I know that’s a part of me and a part of the church, but it’s not all of me or all of the church.” In other words, that’s not who we desire to be, it’s not who we are all of the time, and it is in fact something that we work hard not to be as we find ourselves desiring to be conformed to the image of Christ. What I see when I look at the church is a group of people who are endeavoring to follow their Lord into this issue, to be obedient to Christ, and to glorify God through what they think and how they live on the issue and in relationship to their homosexual family members, friends, and neighbors. That’s who I want to be. Overall, I think these written assessments of our individual and collective lack of grace were somewhat lacking in grace themselves.  . . even a bit stereotypical in their caricatures. . . of me and the church.

Last night I sat in on something that Justin Lee and other’s like him might find surprising. Pleasant, in fact. I went in expecting to see and hear a discussion that looked and sounded nothing like the stereotypes that many have regarding Christians and the homosexuality issue. I wasn’t disappointed, nor was I surprised. There were no hostile words. There was no Bible-thumping. There were no angry anti-gay diatribes. In fact, those who do that sort of thing were clearly reprimanded. Instead, any admonishments or directives I heard were directed not at homosexuals, but at the people in that room. That’s something that’s needed.

It was the middle and high school youth group meeting at my church. . . a very traditional and conservative church here where I live. Our youth pastor had informed me that he was starting a four-week series on same-sex attraction. I asked Troy if he would mind if I sat in. I wanted to hear what Troy had to say along with how the students were responding. It was the first of four meetings and the topic was carefully chosen to set the table for everything that will follow over the course of the next three weeks. He set the table well. Troy spoke openly and frankly, and I was very encouraged by what I heard. In very simple and straightforward terms, Troy walked us through the Scriptures to show us the following:

  • Christ makes us the kind of people who truly love and are true friends to those who struggle with same-sex attraction.
  • The church needs to be a safe place for the homosexual.
  • People are not problems to be solved. They are people to be loved.
  • Christ makes us into the kind of people who will break the stereotypes people have.
  • We represent Christ. . . and Christ was a friend of sinners.
  • What does it look like to be a friend of sinners? We need to be like Christ. . . full of grace and full of truth (John 1:14).
  • By showing the grace of Jesus, people will come to sense that we love them.
  • My sin is no different than anyone else’s sin. My sin is deep and deadly.
  • The only hope that any of us have is God’s amazing grace.
  • Grace has no room for pride.
  • Each of us must begin with a deep awareness of our own sin and our own need for grace. 
  • We need to humbly come to know and embody God’s truth. 
  • Arrogance is when we try to tailor the truth to our own preferences and biases. 
As Troy stood to speak, it wasn’t just a bunch of emotionless bullet points that fell out of his mouth. There was a humble conviction and a deep passion. It was not about them. It was about us. 
Thanks Troy.
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“Gay Christians, Born This Way, and Other Things We Need to Understand. . . “

Over the course of the last few months I’ve from time to time thought-out-loud and weighed in on the timely high-profile topic of homosexuality as it has taken center stage as an issue in our culture. I’ve had conversations with young people who have assimilated and adopted now-widely-held viewpoints and assumptions thoughtlessly, simply as a result of swimming in the soup of today’s youth culture. I’ve also had conversations with people on the polar opposite side of the issue. Because these folks tend to be older, they assume they’ve been much more thoughtful about their conclusions. Many of their viewpoints and assumptions have – in all honesty – been assimilated with an equal lack of thought as a result of swimming in the soup of today’s fundamentalist church culture. To be honest, I have to humbly confess that some of my leanings have been toward the latter.

Because we need to address this issue with conviction and clarity. . . and because we are followers of the Christ who created us with minds, we need to be thinking, praying, and discussing with greater determination, care and depth. My meager attempts to do so at the best levels I can are resulting in some blog posts. . . including today’s.

Once again, I want to make clear that I have a high view of the Scriptures that I am unwilling to compromise that foundation. I want to submit my life, thoughts, and opinions to the Lordship of the One who has revealed Himself in the Bible. I am unwilling to adjust or shift this foundation to accommodate cultural attitudes. I believe that homosexuality and same-sex attraction are not what God has intended for our sexuality. Homosexual behavior is wrong. Beyond what I believe, I also want to submit my actions and my interactions on these issues – with those who may agree or disagree with me – to those same Biblical convictions. I want to honor Christ in my doing. That’s one reason why I’m valuing the dialogue I’m having as result of thinking out loud on this blog.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting at my computer answering a question from a woman who wanted to know about the use of the term “Gay Christian.” I had used that term in the title and body of my blog on Wesley Hill’s book, Washed and Waiting. She spoke of a young teenage boy she knows who is struggling with these very same issues as a Christian. His fear, she says, is that if he would admit to others that he is gay then he would be expecting the fact that he was born to be gay, and would live the life style. I understand how that’s such an easy conclusion for a kid to come to. . . after all, Lady Gaga both maps and mirrors this cultural attitude in her song “Born This Way.” It’s a foundational naturalistic assumption. . . you were born gay, God (or whoever) made you this way, so go ahead and celebrate and indulge your homosexuality.

I encountered this type of thinking in a book I’m currently reading. It’s Rosaria Champagne Butterfield’s, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith.  It’s a book worth reading. Butterfield is a pastor’s wife and a woman of deep convictions and faith. Her deep convictions were formerly directed towards her outspoken defense of radical feminism as a lesbian and professor at Syracuse University. (Perhaps you’ve seen the little article on Butterfield that appeared recently in Christianity Today). In her book, Butterfield relates this encounter as she was beginning to wrestle with the Christian faith and the claims of the Gospel: “During this time of struggle, others tried to help. A Methodist pastor and Dean of the Chapel at Syracuse University believed that I did not have to give up everything to honor God. Indeed, he told me, since God made me a lesbian, I gave God honor by living an honorable lesbian life. He told me that I could have Jesus and my lesbian lover. This was a very appealing prospect. But I had been reading and rereading scripture and there are no such marks of postmodern ‘both/and’ in the Bible.”

Without diligence and a willingness to be nurtured in the faith, it’s easy for so many to default to a cultural foundation that reshapes Biblical truth to the point where it’s no longer true and no longer anything close to Biblical. It’s especially easy for our kids.

In my answer to the woman’s question I passed on these words: “Have you read Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill? He is a young Christian who is gay and who loves Christ and the Gospel. He is choosing to live in obedience to Christ knowing full well that his homosexuality may never be miraculously lifted off. . . he says it may be something he will struggle to deal with obediently for the rest of his life. I highly recommend his book. He actually addresses the issue which you are asking about – Here’s what he writes: ‘I’ve taken care always to make ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ the adjective. , and never the noun, in a longer phrase, such as ‘gay Christian’ or ‘homosexual person.’ In this way, I hope to send a subtle linguistic signal that being gay isn’t the most important thing about my or any other gay person’s identity. I am a Christian before I am anything else. My homosexuality is a part of my makeup, a facet of my personality. One day, I believe, whether in this life or in the resurrection  it will fade away. But my identity as a Christian – someone incorporated into Christ’s body by his Spirit – will remain.'”

As I closed out the window after sending my response, another message simultaneously came in from a trusted and respected Christian friend who has been and is thinking deeply about this issue. He says that homosexuality and the same-sex issue is “the most tender, the most complex and the most volatile conversation that we have in the years of the early 21st-century.” Wise words. . . which means that we have to foster wisdom and choose our words and the way we say them wisely.

Last evening, another trusted and respected Pastor-friend posted this comment in response to my last blog: “There is one thing that needs to be learned within the Christian community….and it is this. There is no such thing as a Gay Christian. There are Gay-identified Christians but not Gay Christians. God doesn’t create people who are gay or lesbian. That means there are no ex-gays….only people who have had same-sex attraction, identified themselves as being gay and then chose to lead more toward heterosexuality (how they were born) or celibacy. When we say someone is a Gay Christian it gives the idea that is how someone was born.”

While I appreciate that perspective and continue to weigh it, I’m wondering if a healthy biblical doctrine of sin and the fall allows for the brokenness of shalom to extend to the development of sexuality from the time of conception through development in the womb? I believe that we have to consider this seriously. There are certainly all matters of biological/physiological types of defects which occur in the womb. Could homosexual orientation/disposition be one? And, if that’s the case, could Wesley Hill’s description of his personal reality and choice of descriptive terms be legitimate? And if so, can we offer careful clarification of term “Gay Christian” in ways that clearly distinguish between usage of the term that justifies indulgence and usage of the term that recognizes human fallenness and a call to Godly flourishing? While we must recognize that many in our culture – maybe even the majority – consciously choose a homosexual identity and engagement in homosexual behavior, is it at all possible that there are some who are indeed, born this way? And if so, what does that mean for the Christian who desperately desires and prays for change, but the change never comes?

Thoughts?


 

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Wrestling With Homosexuality. . . Reflections From a Gay Christian. . .

Conversations, emails, interactions over past blog posts, and some very targeted reading all combined over the weekend to increase a sense of personal interest, urgency, and deep need that I didn’t imagine could intensify beyond the level it had already reached by the end of last week. I know I’m not alone in this.

The dialogue over the issue of homosexuality, same-sex attraction, and gay marriage is intensifying. Whether we know it or not, all of us already believe something on this. We come down somewhere. And whether we have consciously or unconsciously come to our conclusions, the time has arrived where we will need to address these issues with depth and integrity as we discuss them amongst ourselves, with the homosexuals we know and those we know that we don’t know that we know, with a watching culture, and with the kids we know and love. Failure to study, pray, think deeply, and discuss through these issues will be failure. . . plain and simple.

As I continue to pursue those tasks I do so knowing that I have to start somewhere. The foundation. . . the starting point for me. . . is on the will of God as revealed in the Scriptures. This is the foundation on which I’ve built my entire Christian life. It is a foundation dependent on God, not on me. It’s my desire to faithfully look at all of culture and life through the lens of Scripture, rather than looking at Scripture through the lens of my culture and life. It is my hope and prayer that I would faithfully pursue this task along with the great cloud of witnesses and community of faith – both living and dead – who have built their lives on the foundation of historical, orthodox Christianity. I humbly say these things because I’m afraid that the current cultural climate can too easily steer the ship of our faith in directions that are not faithful to that foundation. Instead of conforming our lives to God’s will and way, we too easily conform God’s will and way to our lives. I want to know what to believe and how to live to the glory of God. I can’t jettison this foundation and these commitments because it’s culturally convenient. I can’t.

And so I continued in my quest to read about homosexuality and the Christian. I devoured a short yet profound book by Wesley Hill, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulness and Homosexuality. Wes Hill is a young thirty-something scholar who is passionate about his faith. . . the historical and orthodox Christian faith. Wes Hill thinks deeply and with theological intentionality. He is passionate about the foundation, even though that foundation doesn’t mesh with cultural norms regarding how to best live out what he feels every minute of every day. You see, Wes Hill is also gay, a reality that he describes as “a steady, strong, unremitting, exclusive sexual attraction to persons of the same sex.” As he has struggled with the sexual realities of his life, he has also struggled to live faithfully as a follower of Jesus Christ. And that’s what’s so refreshing about Wes Hill’s story.

In Washed and Waiting, Wes Hill peels back the curtain to a world many of us have never experienced as he takes us into his battle with shame and loneliness. He unpacks what the Gospel demands of homosexual Christians. . . and how the Gospel actually enables the homosexual Christian to not act on his/her homosexual desires. It’s a book about understanding what it means to be washed by God’s son and waiting with faith for Christ to make all things. . . including one’s broken sexuality. . . new. This is a book about how, “practically, a nonpracticing but still-desiring homosexual Christian can ‘prove, live out, and celebrate’ the grace of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit in homosexual terms.”

In many ways, this was not a book solely about the homosexual’s struggle with brokenness. It’s a book about my unique brokenness. . . sexual and otherwise. . . the sinful bents and inclinations that I struggle with. . . the crosses I bear. . . the broken parts of my life that I need to submit to the Gospel and battle with for the rest of my life as I see my life as not temporary or my own, but as a part of God’s unfolding bigger story. What I read in Washed and Waiting meshed perfectly with what I’ve been reading over the last couple of weeks in N.T. Wright’s After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters. You see, God calls us to live virtuous lives that are marked by growth as we embrace and practice virtue. It’s a process that’s not only difficult, but that takes a lifetime.

A young man named Wes Hill spoke to me this weekend. . . with a depth of spiritual maturity that has challenged me to go deeper not only in my understanding of homosexuality, but in my own faith. After all, “the Christian’s struggle with homosexuality is unique in many ways but not completely so. The dynamics of human sinfulness and divine mercy and grace are the same for all of us, regardless of the particular temptations or weaknesses we face.” While many in our culture would hastily conclude that Wes Hill has gone against his nature to lock himself in some kind of unrealistic and out-dated moral prison, there is an amazing freedom that oozes out of his story as he has intentionally allowed himself to be swept up into God’s bigger story.

I’m liking this journey. . . and I’m interested to see where God is taking me.

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