Sexuality

Review: The Way of Hope

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the way of hope

The Way of Hope, Melissa Fisher. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2017.

Summary: Through a narrative of her own experiences, the author proposes ways in which the church might offer hope to LGBT persons without condemning or condoning.

“I used to want to be a boy.

Seriously, literally, have the surgery. Change the name. Live from the new identity. Be a boy, not a girl. That’s what I wanted.

It seemed to make sense with how I felt on the inside. At that point in my life, my feelings had been all over the map. After all, I grew up in the church, left the church, dated boys, then left the guy scene and ended up in the same-sex lifestyle, and a same-sex marriage. Somewhere, in the midst of all of that, I contemplated becoming a boy.”

This is Melissa Fisher’s introduction to her life journey. It is one that begins with a response to shame of perfectionism–“pretty is as pretty does.” She learns to keep secrets, about witnessing her mom’s affair, about sexual abuse both as a child and as an adult, about the pain of her parents divorce, about discovering pornography, and more. She describes the “monster” of dating guys and then falling in live with one of her girlfriends, the struggle to deny her attraction to women, her attempts to medicate herself against her struggles, and her surrender to them. She marries a woman, has what seems an ideal life as an athletic coach, and then comes to an end of herself when she loses it all in an impulsive affair. On a car trip near the Arkansas border, she stops in tears and comes to the realization that even though she doesn’t want God or church in her life, she does.

She describes her struggle to even show up at church, and eventually a small group, which is important for any church to understand that is committed to ministering with LGBT persons. She finds one, Gateway Church in Austin, a church that was committed to a ministry that neither condemned nor condoned around issues of sexuality, but loved people and allowed them the space to struggle and take steps at their own pace toward God. They offered community to the isolated. She narrates her steps to believe that first one woman, Karin, really wanted a friendship with her, and then that she could be part of a community of PBM’s (Pottery Barn Moms).

Later chapters chronicle the further work of coming to terms with her past, her perfectionism, her secrets and shame, and all her strategies of dealing with these, including her drive to perform could be laid aside as she learned to behold and believe in Christ, and allow him to shape the way she lived. She writes, “if I never felt safe enough to be a girl, I would never feel safe enough to do the more work needed to become a healthy woman.” Yet as she did so, she found herself opening up to the possibility of being with a man (although she is careful to not make herself a norm or example for others). Like several other LGBT writers like Greg Cole or Wesley Hill, she talks about all this in day by day terms of trusting God in this day.

The epilogue is fascinating because it includes interviews with her mother, her father, and her former spouse, Kristi. Life isn’t all put together in any of these situations, but there was really healing, and real reconciliation. What is striking throughout the narrative of this book is Melissa’s honesty about herself, whether she was exulting in a same sex marriage with Kristi, or struggling to put life together. Equally striking was the church she found and the loving way they cared for people like Melissa, neither condoning their choices nor condemning them, but loving them, and providing a space where they could encounter and behold Christ, where they could be as honest as they were ready to be, and where change was something that was not enforced from on high or by social pressure, but allowed to occur from within if and when the person was ready.

Others who identify as LGBT may not struggle with their orientation or identity and may be critical of Fisher’s narrative, and may contend that she is self-deceived. Perhaps the practice of a kind of golden rule here may help in honoring the narratives of others as you would have them honor yours. She joins a growing number who tell a similar story, and of churches that have made a safe and good place for them. Perhaps rather than arguing with them, we might learn from them, whether we agree or not.  Perhaps even this may be a first step on the way of hope…

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Single, Gay, Christian

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single gay christian

Single, Gay, Christian, Gregory Coles. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017 (forthcoming August 22, 2017).

Summary: An autobiographical narrative of a young Christian who becomes aware of his attraction to other men, his struggles against this within a Christian context, his experiences of “coming out,” and how he has decided to follow Christ through all of this.

This book had me at the first page. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t quote so extensively, but I know nothing better to give you a sense of Gregory Cole’s story, and of his exquisite writing:

“Let’s make a deal, you and me. Let’s make promises to each other.

I promise to tell you my story. The whole story. I’ll tell you about a boy in love with Jesus who, at the fateful onset of puberty, realized his sexual attractions were persistently and exclusively for other guys. I’ll tell you how I lay on my bed in the middle of the night and whispered to myself the words I’ve whispered a thousand times since:

“I’m gay.”

I’ll show you the world through my eyes. I’ll tell you what it’s like to belong nowhere. To know that much of my Christian family will forever consider me unnatural, dangerous, because of something that feels as involuntary as my eye color. And to know that much of the LGBTQ community that shares my experience as a sexual minority will disagree with the way I’ve chosen to interpret the call of Jesus, believing I’ve bought into a tragic, archaic ritual of self-hatred.

But I promise my story won’t all be sadness and loneliness and struggle. I’ll tell you good things too, hopeful things, funny things, like the time I accidentally came out to my best friend during his bachelor party. I’ll tell you what it felt like the first time someone looked me in the eyes and said, “You are not a mistake.” I’ll tell you that joy and sorrow are not opposites, that my life has never been more beautiful than when it was most brokenhearted.

If you’ll listen, I promise I’ll tell you everything, and you can decide for yourself what you want to believe about me.”

In succeeding chapters, Coles unfolds, often in a self-deprecating yet not self-hating fashion, his growing awareness that he was gay, his silence and attempts to cover this up by dating girls and even of trying to awaken heterosexual desires through them. He describes the scary and wonderful moment he comes out to his pastor, who listens, and loves, and keeps on loving.

We trace with him his journey to reconcile his faith, his orientation, his understanding of biblical teaching, weighing but rejecting “affirming” interpretations, which precludes for him acting on his gay attractions by pursuing intimacy with another man, and what it means for him to believe that God has nevertheless made him good.

He helps us hear what is often said in churches that affirm a “traditional” view from the perspective of a gay person. I cringed here as I read things I’ve said. He also leads us into a broader conversation about sexuality and how the fall has affected it for all of us, gay or straight.

He speaks about his choice to live single, both the heartache, and the joy. He raises the question of views of discipleship that never involve suffering or self-denial. He casts a vision for a life that is full, and has a unique capacity for relationships because of who he is as a gay man. Where the church often sees LGBTQ persons as a threat, Greg helps us see persons like himself as a tremendous gift.

Coles speaks with a voice of conviction without dogmatism. He speaks for himself and his own journey, allowing that others might conclude differently. As he writes in his introduction, he tells us the truth about himself, and lets us decide.  He doesn’t see himself as any kind of role model but simply as a “half-written story.”

I deeply resonated with his comments about encountering the “are you side A or side B?” question. He writes, “I didn’t want to be reduced to a simple yes or no. I wanted a new side.” I find myself deeply in sympathy with him. And perhaps this book might take us a step closer to that new side.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through Netgalley. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Sensitive Preaching to the Sexually Hurting

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sensitive-preaching

Sensitive Preaching to the Sexually Hurting, Dr. Sam Serio. Grand Rapids: Kregel Ministry, 2016.

Summary: Explores the different kinds of issues that arise around sexuality in our post-sexual revolution society, and how pastors and others extending pastoral care might counsel and preach with sensitivity that may open the door to the healing of sexual wounds.

Sam Serio proposes that pastors are often out of touch with the issues around sexuality of the people sitting before them each Sunday. Married couples who have not had sex in the recent past. Someone who is struggling with same-sex attraction. A daughter who “checks out” of the Father’s Day sermon because of her past history of being molested by a father. The wife who has discovered sexual abuse between her husband and one of her children. The pro-lifer trying to atone for the abortion she had in her youth. The college student who is a date-rape survivor.

Serio begins the book with a list that includes these and many other instances of woundedness around sexuality that people in our congregations or parishes may be struggling with. He contends that often we preach and speak in such a way to preclude most of those who struggle from ever coming to us for help. He writes:

    “Most ministry leaders usually do one of two things when it comes to this kind of delicate preaching on these most difficult topics–we are either negligent or negative. We either say nothing or we say mean things. We ignore, or we abhor. There is rarely a happy medium….Do you have that rare biblical balance? Do you preach truth and grace? Do you preach love and law? Facts and feelings? Proclamation and consolation? When is the last time you actually smiled as you preached about sex and offered hope and restoration, healing and wholeness, forgiveness and transformation?”

Serio recognizes that many really don’t know what this looks like. After helping pastors assess their own and their church’s readiness for this ministry, and a brief chapter on the Bible and sexuality pointing out its frankness about the things we often are reticent to discuss, the next chapters address the different kinds of issues pastors may need to address in preaching and pastoral care. First he opens with a chapter titled, “How You Can Preach About Sex, and Still Keep Your Job.” His subsequent chapters discuss pastoral considerations that help one enter sensitively into sexual wounds of members and then gives texts and language he has used to preach on each of the following topics:

  • Casual Sex
  • Abortion
  • Sexual Assault and Rape
  • Childhood Sexual Abuse and Molestation
  • Pornography
  • Same sex attraction and homosexuality
  • Sexless marriage

The facts and sensitive counsel he gives under each of these topics was, I thought quite helpful. It may just be me, but his own distinctive voice in the language sections just felt different from mine and sometimes the connections to the passages felt exegetically forced. However, the example of candor and charity that invites people to healing conversations was refreshing. I would have liked more focus on sexual and physical abuse between partners, which also must be named and is startlingly prevalent in our congregations. The concluding challenges to churches are one a church leadership board should consider as well as every pastor. One I found particularly striking was to ask about sexual history and behavior in any counseling situation. The extent of woundedness in our post-sexual revolution culture warrants this and often is a significant contributing factor in many of the issues we confront.

As Serio says, it is far too often that we ignore or abhor. Instead we need to sensitively care for and pastorally restore the sexually hurting. This book helpfully connects preaching and pastoral care for those ready for this ministry.

This book was the winner of the 2016 The Gospel Coalition Book Awards in the Ministry category.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

 

The Month in Reviews: December 2015

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I finished the year reading a variety of well-written books from Beowulf to the fiction of Ann Patchett to my son’s new techno-thriller. I worked my way through John Frame’s magisterial treatment of western philosophy and theology, as well as two very different but thoughtfully written books on sex.  I read a collection of essays on the greatness and the goodness of God, and a description of the wonder of the human body from an evolutionary perspective that left God out of the picture. I read two books with very contrasting perspectives on the state of the American academy and mind. It seemed a month, at least in some cases, where my books argued with each other and I was the richer for it. So here are the books I reviewed in December with links to the full reviews:

Bel CantoBel Canto, Ann Patchett. New York: Harper Perennial, 2005. An international group gathered in a South American country for a dinner party to celebrate a Japanese industrialist’s birthday are taken hostage in a failed attempt by a revolutionary group to seize the country’s president. When months pass without a resolution a strange, an oddly wonderful community develops among hostages, and captors, one strangely forgetful of the inevitabilities of a hostage situation.

Spirit of the DisciplinesThe Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988. Dallas Willard’s classic work explaining why and how spiritual disciplines are vital for transformation into the character of Christ as his disciples.

State of the American MindThe State of the American Mind, Mark Bauerlein and Adam Bellow eds. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2015. The contributors in this volume chart the factors contributing to and consequences of what they see as a declining intellectual life in the United States.

God is Great, God is GoodGod is Great, God is Good, William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, eds. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2009. This collection of essays provides thoughtfully reasoned responses to the leading challenges to Christianity posed by the New Atheism.

FrameA History of Western Philosophy and Theology, John Frame. Phillipsburg, NJ: Puritan and Reformed Publishing Company, 2015. A survey and critique of the major philosophers and theologians of the West beginning with the Greek philosophers and early church fathers up to the present day, written from a reformed perspective.

LiberalWhat’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts?, Michael Bérubé. New York: Norton, 2006. This is a spirited defense of liberalism and the liberal idea by a literature professor against accusations of “liberal bias”. The argument includes extensive description of the author’s own classroom practice.

SurrealitySurreality, Ben Trube. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015. The murder of Franklin Haines in virtual reality is paralleled with the real theft of $80 million from him. A prostitute is missing, a deadly gang that operates in both cyberspace and the real world threaten murder and mayhem, and Detective Dan Keenan, his real world and virtual world partners and a penguin named Tux work together to find the real criminal behind this web of crime. [Ben Trube is my son.]

Redeeming SexRedeeming Sex, Debra Hirsch. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015. Hirsch explores how the church ought engage society around issues of sexuality, discussing the connection of spirituality and sexuality, the nature of gender, orientation and our sexuality, and how the church holds in tension the image of God in people and the ethics of various sexual expressions.

church for the fatherlessChurch for the Fatherless, Mark E. Strong. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2012. Mark Strong chronicles both the crisis of fatherlessness in our society and the vital role the church can play in equipping fathers and caring for the fatherless.

beowulfBeowulf, unknown, Seamus Heaney (translator). New York: W.W. Norton, 2000. Seamus Heaney’s translation of this Old English poem, the heroic narrative of Beowulf’s confrontations with three deadly foes.

divine sexDivine Sex, Jonathan Grant. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015. Jonathan Grant argues that a powerful “social imaginary” shapes sexual expression even within the Christian community and only communities that live and articulate a “thick” alternative vision can hope to have a formative influence on the lives of Christian disciples.

incredible unlikeliness of beingThe Incredible Unlikeliness of Being, Alice Roberts. New York: Heron Books, 2014. An evolutionary account of human embryological development from even before conception through birth  and of human anatomy and its evolutionary antecedents.

Best book of the month: Beowulf gets the nod just barely over Bel Canto. I was captured by the power of Seamus Heaney’s translation as well as the profound richness of the story itself.

Best quote of the month: Again, I am going to go with Beowulf. Hrothgar’s warning to Beowulf is one all of us do well to heed:

“O flower of warriors, beware of that trap.
Choose, dear Beowulf, the better part,
eternal rewards. do not give way to pride.
For a brief while your strength is in bloom
but it fades quickly; and soon there will follow
illness or the sword to lay you low,
or a sudden fire or surge of water
or jabbing blade or javelin from the air
or repellent age. Your piercing eye
will dim and darken; and death will arrive,
dear warrior, to sweep you away.

On the TBR pile: Among the books I’m reading or anticipate reviewing in the coming month are Wallace Stegner’s fictional biography of Joe Hill, an early labor organizer, John Walton’s book on Genesis 2 and 3, R.C. Sproul’s book on Matthew 24, an account of the eruption of Mt. St Helens and a memoir of theologian Tom Oden and Jon Meacham’s biography of George H.W. Bush.

Thanks again for following the blog in 2015 and, if you get a chance, let me know about something good that you have read!

 

Review: Divine Sex

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divine sexDivine Sex, Jonathan Grant. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2015.

Summary: Jonathan Grant argues that a powerful “social imaginary” shapes sexual expression even within the Christian community and only communities that live and articulate a “thick” alternative vision can hope to have a formative influence on the lives of Christian disciples.

Often, when I talk with various people in leadership in the Christian community about issues related to sexuality, there is a sense of not knowing what “hit us” and not necessarily liking the result nor knowing how to address it. What I think this important book by Jonathan Grant does is parse out the cultural revolution that has occurred that forms the sexual desires of all of us, and articulates a path forward for the church that goes much farther than the negative messages of “what not to do, when not to do it, and who not to do it with” that has often summarized teaching around sexuality within the church.

Grant draws heavily on the ideas of Charles Taylor and James K. A. Smith. He argues that there is a secular “social imaginary”, a vision of reality, that fundamentally shapes our sexual attitudes, whether we are Christians or not. In particular, and he draws on Smith here, we are desiring creatures, and this social imaginary shapes both what we desire and how we think those desires may be fulfilled. He develops a cultural analysis of this social imaginary in the first part of the book. Its leading characteristic is an expressive individualism committed to radical authenticity in relationships. With regard to sexuality, there is both the longing to find one’s “soul mate” and yet preserve one’s own sense of autonomous individuality. It results in  a ‘definitely maybe’ culture where people long for intimacy but struggle with commitment.

He explores the surprising reality that increasing numbers are deciding to “go solo”, living alone, while either engaging in a series of casual relationships, or substituting cyber-porn for real relationships. This leads to a focus on the consumeristic aspect of modern sexuality, where media has created a feminine (and perhaps masculine) ideal, and where, through online dating, there is this myth of infinite choice, where one is always wondering if there is someone more perfect than the one you are with. He chillingly chronicles the rise of cyber-pornography and how it rewires the brain and renders its users less capable of engaging in real relationships that fail to conform to video fantasies. All this leads to a hyper-sexualized self, where, as one person interviewed put it, “sex has no mystery.”

The second half of the book begins to look at what the author thinks the church must do, drawing on his own parish experience. He believes in the development of a Christian social imaginary, a compelling vision of sexuality within the life of a Christian disciple. It is a vision that is eschatological, understanding ourselves as the betrothed of Christ preparing for our union as the Church with him. This situates sexual desire within the framework of being a sign of something so much larger and really good for which we were made. It is a vision that is metaphysical, recognizing that it is as male and female we image God. We do not complete each other, and so singleness can be honored and fulfilling, but the marriage union does image something of the Creator. It is a vision that is formational and missional. It emphasizes faithfulness and service of fulfillment and the autonomous self. All of this focuses around shaping our desire for God, recognizing that our longing for intimacy is met most deeply in God and all other intimacies point us toward, and are meant to reflect that intimacy.

So much of this can happen only in a community that is living out the story of a gospel that calls us into redeemed relationships marked by commitment, service, and self-giving love. Desire is shaped by examples, as friends, singles, and couples, model a new way of living and desiring that spans generations. He concludes with thoughts about various formational practices of such a community including embodied worship, that celebrates our physicality and churches that are courting communities, not in the sense of the singles “meat market” but as a place where men and women can serve and work together and have the chance to explore who the other is in the context of a supportive community.

The book is an elegantly written and thoughtful cultural analysis that avoids the easy nostrums of so many books while putting forth a rich vision of sexuality as both gift of God and harbinger of so much more. He speaks into a culture that has made sexualty little more than a pleasure function, even while so many who have been caught up in the secular social imaginary find themselves asking, “is that all there is?” Grant points the way to a different vision that would suggest that indeed there is so much more.

Recently, this book was named one of Christianity Today’s Books of the Year in the category of Christian Living/Discipleship.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Review: Redeeming Sex

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Redeeming SexRedeeming Sex, Debra Hirsch. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015

Summary: Hirsch explores how the church ought engage society around issues of sexuality, discussing the connection of spirituality and sexuality, the nature of gender, orientation and our sexuality, and how the church holds in tension the image of God in people and the ethics of various sexual expressions.

We are in a paradoxical place where sexuality is both one of the easiest and hardest things to talk about, particularly in the church. There is lots of conversation, even argument, and yet often we struggle to talk deeply and thoughtfully and redemptively about one of the most basic aspects of what it means to be human. Debra Hirsch writes this book out of a life of dealing with these questions stretching back to her own experiences with lesbian relationships before coming to faith, to her work in pastoral ministry with her husband, caring for people with sexual histories, varying orientations and gender identities.

The book consists of three parts. The first explores the connection between sexuality and spirituality, and particularly our deep and basic longing for relationship. She opens this section asking provocatively, “Imagine if heaven was like endless orgasm” (p. 22). She goes on to explore how our sexuality is actually a signpost of how we were made for deep, intimate relationship with God. She sets out a distinction between genital sexuality and social sexuality–between physical sexual expression and the broader expression of our sexuality in all our relationships. She explores our fearfulness to talk about this basic and powerful part of our humanness and concludes this section by exploring the sexuality of the incarnate Jesus.

The second section explores the nature of our sexuality and what we are learning about orientation and gender identity. She deals honestly with the struggles we have to integrate following Christ and dealing with sexual desire (quoting, for example, one young man who asked, “I have accepted Jesus into my heart but how do I get him into my penis?”[p. 71]). She particularly observes that orientation and gender identity are not binary entities but much more of a continuum and discusses with stark candor the journeys of LGBT people who come to faith and whose orientation and identity do not “change”. She works through the biblical issues around sexuality, respecting those who reach various conclusions while affirming what would for many be a traditional understanding, with a non-traditional approach of “leading with embrace rather than theology”.

The third part of the book begins from this point and lays out an approach to meeting people in ministry that focuses first on the image of God in all persons and only secondarily around issues of sinfulness, that seeks to center on following and moving closer to Jesus, and builds communities that seeking to be welcoming and mutually transforming (rather than affirming). She believes that we need to welcome people in all their wholeness but that no community can affirm all the things people are or do. Rather, a community committed to growing closer to Christ together is mutually transformative.

Such community is messy. Where some may want to focus immediately on issues of orientation and identity, it may be that growing closer to Christ might entail other things first. Likewise, others may object that some choose celibacy or even embrace a heterosexual relationship after having identified as same sex attracted. What Hirsch contends for is that the redemption of our sexuality can only come with the redemption of our spiritual relationship as we experience the rich and costly grace of Christ. For that reason, she articulates an approach that leads with grace, embrace and affirmation of the image of God in all people, and that believes in the power of Jesus to lead people into all he intends for them. At the close of the book she comments on this observation by her husband:

” ‘You really are pushing grace to just about as far as you can take it.’ Which of course raises the question, How far does grace go? And at the end of the day that really is one of the fundamental questions we are all wrestling with” (p 208).

Whether you agree or not with how far Hirsch pushes grace, you will find that this book poses the questions and deals frankly the realities we must all wrestle with if we, as the church, are not to “duck and cover” in addressing the matters of spirituality and sexuality in our day.