A massive snowstorm is heading our way, setting us up for a postcard perfect Christmas. Regardless, I’d like to invite you to join me in an imaginative exercise that will take you far from the snow that may be piling up outside your window right now.
Imagine that you are sitting on a beautiful beach, watching seagulls flit noisily across a blue sky. Tufts of beach grass sway lazily in the breeze. It’s mid-summer and the waves are big enough to surf.
From behind you, a suntanned man with a surfboard beneath his arm approaches and beckons you into the surf with him. But you have no board, so you decline. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You do have a board. It’s the Holy Spirit.”
Only then do you recognize who this is. It’s Jesus—the one who’s good at walking on water. You join him and before long you’re not just watching him surf but welcoming him onto your own board. Curiously, anyone watching from the beach would see only one figure happily riding the winds and high waves because the images of you and Jesus have merged.
That’s a picture of how we can learn to navigate not only the turbulence of our culture but the storms that often blow through our own lives. Union with Jesus will help us keep our footing whenever the winds and waves are surging and whipping.
What’s true for us as individuals is also true for church leaders who are trying hard on our behalf to navigate the times in which we’re living.
Let me offer a case in point.
The town I live in has been shaped by the religious and cultural heritage of the Dutch people who settled here, many of them in the nineteenth century. A stalwart people with a strong work ethic, they brought their reformed theology with them when they came, forming their own denomination. But like many other churches, they are facing significant headwinds. Predictably, the polarizing issue of the day concerns sexual ethics.
This year, in the face of an impending decision on human sexuality, the denomination encouraged local churches to conduct “Listening Sessions” in which church members could gather and listen to each other’s personal stories and perspectives. Despite all the listening, after the denomination handed down its ruling, several local churches are considering splitting from the denomination and some congregants are leaving their churches.
In such circumstances, how can local churches surf the culture, maintaining their balance so they don’t fall into moral relativism on the one hand or loveless legalism on the other?
Remember Jesus’ high priestly prayer in John 17? The night before he died, Jesus petitioned his Father, saying, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17: 20-23) Remarkably, that prayer for Christian unity, uttered by the perfect Son of God, hasn’t yet been answered, at least not fully. Why not?
There may be many reasons but perhaps a clue can be found in the words Jesus spoke just prior to his prayer for unity: “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” (John 17: 15-17)
Maybe one key to Christian unity is to get the order of these verses right.
Notice that Jesus first prayed for his followers to be sanctified in the truth, that is, he wanted them to live in accordance with the truth. After that he prayed that they would be one with God and each other just as he and the Father are one. Jesus’ vision of unity is simultaneously breathtaking and daunting, because in the context of his prayer, truth is two things--a prerequisite for unity and, depending on how we respond, a stumbling block to attaining it.
What does this have to do with our case in point? Simply this--when churches are dealing with polarization over sexual ethics, they must start with what God has revealed about how he wants us to live. Then they must hold their own “listening sessions” with the Holy Spirit to determine how best to guide the church.
Throughout history, Christianity has always upheld a countercultural sexual ethic. In contrast to their pagan neighbors, early believers forbade abortion while affirming monogamous marriage and celibacy for the unmarried as the standards by which Christians should live. Their belief that human life is sacred and that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit made them outliers in the Roman world, where homosexuality, pederasty, promiscuity, and abortion were considered normal, to the detriment of women and children.
Over centuries the Christian sexual ethic, though far from perfectly practiced, became normative in much of the world. But as modern culture became increasingly detached from its Christian past in favor of a consumer-driven, individualistic way of life, it has revolted against restraints of many kinds, especially sexual restraints.
Eager to fit in to a changing world, some denominations have affirmed behaviors that the church has always considered gravely disordered. In such churches, trends in the social sciences often take precedence over Scripture and Christian orthodoxy. One of these has to do with the way identity is defined. As a result of embracing theories from soft sciences like psychology and sociology, these Christians have accepted an approach to human identity that has become unmoored from its original foundation in family relationships.
As was common in traditional societies, the Bible frequently identifies people in terms of who their father was, as in “Jonah son of Amittai” or “Anna, the daughter of Penuel.”
The central identity of Jesus as the Messiah is that he is related to the Father as his beloved Son. Therefore, he’s called the Son of God. Because we are Jesus followers, we have been adopted into the divine family. Our fundamental identity is not that we are black or brown, male, female, or anything else. It’s that we are children of God. Our relationship with Jesus is what determines who we are. Other aspects of our lives may be of great importance, but they are neither foundational nor determinant, and should not be treated as such.
In our individualistic and increasingly atomistic society, modern attempts to redefine identity are hardly a coincidence. Untethered from the principle of relationship, identity is something we are urged to design for ourselves. Markers like skin color, ethnicity, or gender can guide us, but biological and spiritual realities may have little to do with it. Because the framework for identity is fluid, we may identify as LGBTQQIP2SAA today but need additional letters to define ourselves tomorrow. Essentially, we are urged to ignore how we have been created in order to become “little creators” of our selves. No wonder so many people feel confused and insecure. No wonder anxiety, depression, and loneliness are all on the rise.
Many Christians have embraced these fractured and false notions of identity. Some because they are caught up in the world of identity politics and others because they are concerned about the wellbeing and social status of loved ones who identify as gay or transgender. They know that both society and the church have a history of harshness toward those who don’t easily fit into binary categories. Their reasonable fear for family and friends pushes them to redefine the truth about sexual ethics. But this is the wrong way to solve the problem of our failure as Christians to welcome everyone with love and respect.
Those who still look to the Bible for a level of guidance often point to alternate interpretations of Scripture that appear to allow homosexuality between consenting adults. I would breathe a sigh of relief if this were true, because it could help to resolve the profound tensions we are facing. But the difficulty with this approach is that one needs the agility of a Cirque du Soleil performer to embrace every twist and turn of these alternate arguments.
With the exception of the Catholic Church, most churches have long ago given way on divorce. The question is, will they also give way on abortion, LGBTQ issues, and whatever else the culture may throw at them in the future?
Many of today’s leaders are afraid of bucking the prevailing winds even though they hold to a traditional ethic. They deal with the human wreckage of sexual brokenness behind closed doors. Of course, people need to be counseled in private, but the whole church needs pastoral guidance lest their views be shaped by the culture. It’s a mistake to keep quiet and tread softly for fear that people will leave the church. Aren’t Jesus and the Holy Spirit up to dealing with the chips as they fall? Why do leaders think the job of keeping people in the pews should rest on their shoulders?
The problem with all these approaches is that timidity toward or accommodation to the world’s views on sexual ethics will never produce real unity, because unity isn’t attained merely on a horizontal plane. It has a vertical dimension—marking the relationship between God and his people. That dimension is damaged whenever we reject or dilute the truths of Scripture that God has already revealed and that have been affirmed by Christians across the centuries.
But will standing firm on sexual ethics be enough to help us navigate the times? You probably know that it won’t. We need the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to lead us into the future, helping us to embrace all the large truths that inform our orthodoxy. Truths like the one about human identity—that every single person is made in the image of God and must be treated as such. Truths about brokenness—that we are all sinners in need of mercy. Truths about salvation—that none of us can be saved by thinking right or by doing right but only by the grace of God. And this grand truth about God—that he waits for us with a wide-open heart because he is love itself.
As the church loses cultural power, perhaps it is time to hasten our descent into God’s arms by embracing the very characteristics our culture despises-- humility, smallness, vulnerability, and the willingness to suffer. Didn’t the whole Christian enterprise start with such things? A baby born in a manger to poor parents in a backwater region of the world in a town that was too crowded to find room for them.
Being sanctified in the truth, it would seem, is a joyful, humbling experience that places us all on even ground as we gather around the crib of our newborn King, the one who even now is praying that we will become one with God and each other just as he and the Father are one.
Yes, and you said it well. We need the Holy Spirit to help us stand with both love and truth.
Thank you Ann for a most timely reminder. I feel surrounded by sinking sand but at least I'm standing on the Rock. Help us Jesus.