Reader's Corner: "Talking Back to Purity Culture" by Rachel Joy Welcher

Single, Gay, Christian by Gregory Coles is a small, easy-to read book that packs a powerful punch. Coles is exceptionally articulate and does an excellent job of communicating his thoughts and feelings.  Coles wrote the book as if he is sharing his ponderings and experiences with you, a trusted friend. As you read, you feel as if you are his confidant, listening and learning as he processes his early experiences with attraction to men, his wrestling with God to make him straight, his examination of the Bible to make sense of his experience, and his choice to sit in the tension of longings that God hasn’t taken away.  I found this book particularly helpful to understanding one man’s experience of gay attractions while still clinging to the love of Jesus. So often, LGBT issues become a conversation to debate, missing the humanity of those about whose lives we deliberate. Greg invites us to zoom in on his experiences and share his tensions—up close and personal.  Reading this book, you can’t help but garner an affection for this young man. He is authentic, deep, caring, delightfully bright, funny, and sincere in his love for Jesus. Greg is honest about where he is still wrestling and doesn’t pretend to have the answers to many pressing questions, even as they overlap with his own experiences.  The title of the book brings forth the debate with which Greg’s name is sometimes associated. Can a follower of Jesus also claim the title “gay”? Aren’t the words “Christian” and “gay” mutually exclusive? Greg explains why he has chosen this adjective to describe himself rather than the commonly used evangelical description “same-sex attracted.” Whether or not you agree with his conclusions, he brings light to the complexity of the issue.  My only hesitation with this book is not what it contains, but what it lacks. There is a deeper layer yet to uncover. Single, Gay, Christian expresses Greg’s wrestling with his gayness mostly in light of the sinful behavior he is called to avoid. He explains that he will never get married because he is not attracted, and likely never will be, to women. I think there is more to it than that–not just for Greg, but for all of us. Following Christ is about more than surrendering our behavior. Additionally, we must examine how we have integrated the world’s system into our assumptions and reasoning. “Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). God not only wants to address the potential for sin in our lives, but also bring to light how we each have been influenced by the thought patterns of our culture. Without question, our western culture has increasingly given sexual desires and experiences an exaggerated voice in our identity and decisions. What’s more, we’ve learned to make life decisions about love and marriage largely based on felt attractions. Works like Nancy Pearcy’s Love Thy Body and Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self help us understand why our sexual desires and sense of “sexual” selves have become such central components of our identities. As Trueman writes, “In biblical times or in ancient Greece, sex was regarded as something that human beings did; today it is considered to be something vital to who human beings are.”These western assumptions confuse not only those who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, but also Christians who no longer feel love or attraction within their marriage.  If our sexual desires are such a determinant, what about the bi-sexual Christian? Or how about the woman who discovers, a decade into her marriage, that she is actually attracted to women? I wonder if much of our wrestling with Scripture is amplified by the assumptions of sexual desire, personal experience, and identity that are rooted in the world’s system of thought, which is passing away (See I John 2:17).  I would love to see Greg wrestle with questions like: To what extent have we bought into the lie that sexual experiences and desires must be part of my identity? Why do the Scriptures fail to identify people by adjectives like “single,” “heterosexual,” or “married” as identity markers?  And is it possible that entering into biblical marriage is more of a call to unique covenant relationships and potentially has little to do with sexual attraction?  From what I’ve already seen in Greg, it wouldn’t surprise me if these themes show up as he continues to mature in ministry and his personal journey.   

I recently read a very sad book, Pure by Linda Kay Klein. This book keeps popping up in my newsfeed, which tells me that people want to talk about it. The subtitle of the book hits precisely why this book caused my heart to ache: “Inside the evangelical movement that shamed a generation of young women and how I broke free.” Within the book, the author shares her journey of shame, confusion and turmoil around sexual issues resulting from the way she learned about sex from a conservative evangelical church. Her upbringing was much like mine. She describes moments in her teen years of passionately committing her life to the Lord and His work around the world. She would have been one of my good friends had we gone to the same church or youth group. But Linda’s faith journey was radically derailed because of harmful messages she heard about sexuality, sexual sin, sexual abuse and femininity. As I’ve said before, every sexual issue is ultimately a spiritual issue. When sex becomes confusing, God becomes confusing. Throughout the book Pure Linda shares the stories of dozens of women who experienced deep rooted shame and trauma related to their sexual choices and experiences and not fitting the evangelical stereotypes of a “pure woman.” The problem, as well as the solution, are summed up in the book's subtitle. The Church has mishandled sexuality and femininity. Freedom is found apart from the evangelical church. Both statements are heart-wrenching.   The Problem My heart literally ached as I read the words of women who have been damaged by insensitivity and harmful teaching. Women who were  blamed for a pastor’s sexual advances and those who felt shame not for having sex but simply for being sexual creatures with beautiful bodies. I read about women struggling with gender and same sex attraction who were shunned, sexual abuse victims who were minimized rather than offered help, and women with strong personalities and opinions who were told to conform or leave. Others told stories of extreme anxiety in the marriage bed because of consistently pairing sex with shame. What Linda Kay Klein has documented is real, pervasive and must not be ignored.  There is ample evidence that the way the church has addressed (or flat out ignored) sexual issues has caused harm for men, women and marriages. We must also note that while this problem is widespread, it certainly does not represent every Christian woman’s experience. Many within the evangelical churches have lovingly and truthfully guided young women through the challenges of adolescence, dating, romance and sexuality. However, by-in-large, Christians have not been beacons of hope offering truth and love within an area that is intrinsically tied to human worth and dignity. By distorting God’s truth on sexuality, we have unwittingly distorted the larger message of God’s love. Linda writes: My friends and I were told in one breath we were loved unconditionally, accepted just as we were, and headed for Heaven, and in the next we were warned of the evils of feminists, homosexuals, women who had sex outside of marriage, and other Hell-bound individuals. It didn’t even occur to me that some people in youth group might already see themselves as fitting into some of these categories that I wouldn’t see myself in for years, and how that must have felt to them then, but what did occur to me was this: The unconditional love that I had fallen for in my early days in the church? It was conditional.     The Solution  The second reason why the book Pure is so sad is the author’s conclusion that freedom from shame comes from walking away from God, or at least from the version of God that limits our sexual expression. Practically every woman interviewed for the book has resolved her conflict by distancing herself from the biblical teaching that sexual intimacy was created for the covenant of marriage between a man and woman. The tension of sexuality and God, according to Linda, disappears as we choose for ourselves a sexual ethic that feels right. If you also choose to hang onto God in the process, He is perfectly fine with your own personal sexual morality. We must make a distinction between God’s design for sexuality and the ways in which we have failed to appropriately teach it. Biblical teaching about sexuality is not a random form of morality but reflects how we were designed to thrive and function. Throwing off moral restraint does not bring freedom but ultimately leads to yet another form of bondage. Linda’s book, while compelling, is also very one-sided. I could compile an equally compelling book of women who wish that someone would have taught them to value themselves enough to say “no” to a dozen guys in high school. Women who wish they could turn back the clock to undo the abortions or reverse the effect of herpes. There are many more women who carry shame not because of what they learned in church but because they have gone from man to man to man, only to be discarded yet again.   Freedom will never be found in walking away from God but rather in running toward Him. The message that sexuality is shameful is not found within the pages of Scripture. God created us as sexual people. Our sexuality is a wonderful gift that teaches us about the nature of God’s passionate and faithful love. (Listen to our "Why God Created You to Be Sexual" podcast and read our "Why Does Sex Matter?" blog to learn more.) Because sexuality is so powerful and sacred, the Bible clearly teaches how our sexual passions are to be directed. The Bible, Old Testament and New Testament, emphatically tells us to avoid sexual immorality (this includes things like sex outside of marriage, pornography and same-sex activity). But here’s the key: Our “purity” has never been based on our sexual choices but upon our reliance on the finished work of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. We will not “go to Hell” because we had sex before marriage or slept with another woman. We go to Hell because we reject Jesus as Lord and Savior who has given His life to pay for our sin. This is the heart of the Gospel and must not be lost in the midst of our efforts to teach people about biblical sexuality. After all, God is not after our “sex lives,” He’s after our hearts.   As I interact with more and more women, I recognize that we must go beyond talking only about sexual morality, but we must also address sexual maturity. Following God’s design for our sexuality isn’t just about our behavior conforming to a certain moral code. Maturity means surrendering our wounds, our questions and our confusion to an unchanging, all-wise God who is able to bring healing and redemption. As our hearts change, so eventually will our behavior. We are all on this journey with a long way to go. That’s called discipleship.   Although I am grieved by her conclusion, I am grateful that Linda Kay Klein has sounded the alarm. We must do better in representing the heart of Jesus as we present God’s design for sexuality.