“God, I marvel that You want anything to do with us, we are so stupid and sucky.”

I picked the title for this post from the session-opening prayer by Jocelyn Wallace, director of Vision of Hope Residential Treatment Center here in Lafayette, because it reflects a refreshing attitude in contrast to our self-esteem culture.

Mrs. Wallace works with young women from age 14-28 who struggle with a wide range of problems. She taught a workshop called "Counseling Those Struggling with Their Sexual Identity." I chose this topic for today's post because those of us who belong to the generation doing the parenting and counseling of young people are largely ignorant that those very young people are immersed in a sexually explicit and sexually confused culture.

The challenge is to both teach a biblical view of sexuality as well as model it. If we do not respond we are pushing the problem off on the next generation of Christian parents and teachers. We tend to fear a number of things:

1. Falling into the immorality we are fighting in the culture
2. Becoming exposed because we have become absorbed in our own forms of immorality
3. Having to provide an example in our own homes of how a marriage ought to run
4. Having to overcome our laziness and inattentiveness in failing to teach our children how to biblically define family, sexuality and marriage

Jocelyn pointed out that we should resist calling people "gay" or "lesbian" because that is a subtle indication that we accept those terms as the identity of those people. In truth, these are people who have been caught up in sexual sin, but their identity is not wrapped up in their behavior. For example, you do not become "country" or "goth" just by dressing that way. The confusion over gender roles may be reflected in the unisex dress of our world, but the real issue is the attitude of the heart. Many (most) young people have grown up thinking we get to decide what we are and do not know what it means to be masculine or feminine.

Rather than cave in to the culture, the Church needs to communicate that the greatest pleasure in this world is to to find our identity in the way God made us and to delight in the boundaries He has established for our good and His glory.

Should We Give Sinners Proof Texts or Unfold a Bigger Picture?

It is difficult when people reject the truth. You deliver God's word as clearly as you can and still people persist in their rebellion. You wonder if you used the right texts or presented them in the right way. This believer is frustrated because he is trying to biblically admonish a friend who is planning to marry an unbeliever and is not responding to the confrontation. His statement reveals his dilemma: "I have already taken him to several places in the Bible that have something to say about this, to no avail. I'm wondering if I'm missing something that I should be reminding him of."

Guido:

Thank you for taking on this ministry. This is the way things are supposed to work: people in the church counseling other people and repentance hopefully happening privately before the matter ever has to be spoken to someone else or brought before the church. Sadly, I already know the situation and know that your friend is not a church member. Our hands are somewhat tied.

My job is to equip you and others to do just what you are doing, so please do not hesitate to ask questions.

I will give you an Old Testament command and a narrative that both underlie the New Testament commands not to become yoked to unbelievers:

When the Lord your God brings you into the land that you are entering to take possession of it, and clears away many nations before you, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations more numerous and mightier than yourselves, and when the Lord your God gives them over to you, and you defeat them, then you must devote them to complete destruction. You shall make no covenant with them and show no mercy to them. You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons, for they would turn away your sons from following me, to serve other gods. Then the anger of the Lord would be kindled against you, and he would destroy you quickly. Deut. 7:1-4 (ESV)

Now King Solomon loved many foreign women, along with the daughter of Pharaoh: Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women, f rom the nations concerning which the Lord had said to the people of Israel, "You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods." Solomon clung to these in love. He had 700 wives, princesses, and 300 concubines. And his wives turned away his heart. For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and did not wholly follow the Lord, as David his father had done. Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. And so he did for all his foreign wives, who made offerings and sacrificed to their gods. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods. But he did not keep what the Lord commanded. Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, "Since this has been your practice and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes that I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. However, I will not tear away all the kingdom, but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem that I have chosen." 1 Kings 11:1-13 (ESV)

See also the life of Samson. The big issue, however, is not specific “proof texts,” but where your friend’s desires lie. This is less a matter of following biblical commands than it is a matter of a having a heart wants to follow biblical commands. What does he think he must have?

• A life that loves and glorifies the Savior?
• A trophy girl on his arm?
• A good time?
• Female attention?
• Sexual gratification?
  

Answer those questions and you will see the altar at which he worships. Why would a believer want to date an unbeliever? What fellowship does light have with darkness? Can he glorify God in the relationship? Assuming he understands that romantic male-female relationships lead to (pardon my bluntness) either married or unmarried sexual relationships, there are only a few options on this road:

• He is going to marry someone who absolutely cannot be God’s kind of wife and invite much long-term misery.
• He is going to become sexually immoral and invite much long-term misery.
• He is going to stir sexual feelings in a woman and in himself that cannot be satisfied in a holy way. He will then be stealing (“defrauding”) what belongs to God and her future husband.
  

Which one is he going to choose? Proverbs 13:15 says, “The way of the transgressor is hard.” Your friend is already miserable if he is a believer. Ask him why. Point out that the happiness he is seeking is only found in one place (and that place is not finding a girl).

Let me encourage you not to be afraid of making him angry. Love him enough to call him on his inconsistent claim to worship Jesus Christ and yet live apart from accountability to his church and obedience to his word. He needs to make a choice.

If he chooses to reject biblical counsel, you have fulfilled your responsibility. As much as it hurts to see people reject God’s word, it hurts far more to avoid confrontation and have an uneasy conscience because you did not give someone God’s word. Leave the door open, but make sure he knows that he cannot wean himself off of idols and onto Jesus. You have to cut idols down and run to Jesus for mercy.

Keep me posted.

Can You Be a Virgin and Have a Promiscuous Heart?

Dear Boris:

I have been brewing on the sexual abstinence rally at our local high school. I do not wish to take away from what was a needed and well-presented challenge, so I will not address the rally in particular.

My thinking relates more to our long-term strategy for challenging teens, particularly those who follow Christ, to remain sexually pure. The standard reason we are given from well-meaning evangelicals for remaining pure is that we are valuable. The biblical teaching is that we should remain pure because ­he is valuable. There is a radical difference between the two.

Christian teenagers need to hear that the very reason for their existence is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. You cannot adopt that worldview if your greatest pleasure in God is that he makes much of you. He created us to find pleasure in making much of him. Is it possible that we have youth-grouped a generation of children into theological ignorance?

It is a man-centered theology which says that Jesus came and died because we are so special. This is error. Jesus came to please his Father and to rescue people who had no worth apart from him. You do not have to learn to love yourself in order to love others. The Bible says we very naturally love ourselves.

Our selfish generation must come to terms with the truth that we must be holy --different, entirely "other"-- not because we are valuable but because our Savior is valuable. We are called to be holy because he is holy. We are called to be holy because he is our greatest treasure. When he is not that treasure, young people are in bed in their hearts long before they violate their abstinence pledges.

How does this look in shoe leather for ministry to teens? For the promiscuous girl coming to our Crisis Pregnancy Center for a pregnancy test it means that her counselor points her to a Savior who is all about his own glory rather than about filling her emptiness. The picture to be painted is not of a pale, anemic Jesus waiting outside the door of her heart to be let in along with all her other gods (Revelation 3:20 is about a group of believers, not a sinner’s heart). The accurate picture is of a condemned sinner on the outside of the only ark of safety with a flood on the way. Sinners who repent do so because they recognize the worth of Jesus and their own corruption, not a Jesus who came to bring people personal fulfillment.

Can that message be delivered in the context of love? It has to be. For the abstinence instructor, giving the earthly “acceptable in public school” reasons for abstinence (avoiding STD’s, unwed pregnancies and disrespect) is helpful for public health. It is a good start at neighbor loving. Let’s do that, but not stop there. A God-centered theology demands that we present a Jesus who is glorified by those who give up the lusting that leads to fornication and the anger that leads to murder. We do our community a favor by promoting outward abstinence. We do our community an eternal favor by promoting a Savior who enables inward transformation.