Succinct Wisdom

A "cut and paste" post

Fresh and original material. That’s what I aim for. I find it rather mundane to read a blog filled simply with parts scavenged from cadavers on the internet and pieced together in Frankenstein fashion. No offense to the big guy, but sometimes it just looks ugly.

So it is with a bit of embarrassment that I am simply sending you chunks of a book. In fact, from the very first two pages!

Today I began reading Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story by Christopher Yuan. Though I wanted to devour it all and send to you a well digested summary, I couldn’t get past the foreward. Written by Rosaria Butterfield, it is not only a credible summary of Yuan’s work, but an insightful analysis of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a world of sexual confusion and temptation.

Both Yuan and Butterfield were immersed in life as a gay and lesbian. But once they found Christ, their lives changed as well as their perspective.

Butterfield begins the foreward commenting upon how Yuan’s first book which had so deeply impacted her. Here’s what she said about Out of a Far Country, the bio he co-authored with his mother.

When this book was published, Christian culture routinely (and robotically) talked about being “delivered out of homosexuality.” In stark contrast, Out of a Far Country revealed that Christopher, like all true followers of Jesus Christ, was converted—not out of homosexuality but out of unbelief. Only because the gospel of Jesus Christ changed Christopher from the inside out, making him a new man in Christ, was he able to do what all converts do: kill our idols, including the idol of a sexual sin that has called our names from our earliest memories.

Yes, we often talk about how Jesus delivers a person from alcohol, drugs, or some other debilitating addiction. But orientation is different than addiction, and the very term “delivered” calls forth images of casting out demons, particularly a “demon of homosexuality,” which is something I would never do—nor would most trained caregivers.

That powerful memoir revealed that living like a Christ follower is not a moralistic hack job. It is dying to self so that you can live for Christ. In the very end of this faithful book, Christopher introduced the concept of “holy sexuality,” a concept that changed the paradigm of what it means to live out God’s best for us.

What is holy sexuality? Isn’t it better to be married than single (even though the Bible says just the opposite)? Isn’t it better to be heterosexual than homosexual (even though the Bible refuses to define personhood in Freudian terms)? Isn’t a Christian delivered out of homosexuality (even though the Bible makes clear that Christians will struggle against all manner of sin in this lifetime and that struggling with Christ’s power to mortify sin and repent of it gives glory to God)? In Holy Sexuality and the Gospel, Dr. Yuan, in his characteristic warm, engaging, theologically sound, and utterly practical way, offers guidance on these and many other matters.

Early on in Yuan’s book, he artfully describes the history behind what is so often thrown on the table as the trump card on biblical exegesis: “The word ‘homosexual’ didn’t even exist when the Bible was written! So how can you believe the Bible forbids it!” Indeed, but the label developed by Freud and others grew out of a worldview that runs counter to that of scripture, and its development was heavily influenced by the Romanticism of the 1800’s.

Since the fall of Adam, the human heart has set itself in defiance against God’s authority. This defiance has taken different forms throughout the ages. In the not-so-distant past, we blamed the devil for our sinful passions (“The devil made me do it”). With the onset of the theological negligence of neo-orthodoxy, we have created a generation of Christians who blame the Holy Spirit for their sinful desires (“God made me this way, and it’s a proof of good fruit when I act in accordance with my heart’s desires”). Thus, from the epoch of late modernity onward, the gospel is on a collision course with the idol of sexual freedom.

Her reference here to “fruit” is aimed at some popular writings by an author who has written to prove that the Bible doesn’t really mean what it seems to clearly mean. And again, that is a matter Yuan very clearly and carefully dismantles.

This is an issue not only for those who struggle with same-sex attractions or for those who love someone who identifies as LGBTQ. This is an issue for all of us. We all must wage holy war against the idols of our hearts. The idol of our historical epoch is this: your sexual desires define you, determine you, and should always delight you.

Love that last sentence. It so succinctly describes the issue before us: the idol of sexual fulfillment. No, it isn’t wrong to desire sexual fulfillment, but in this broken world, we are so often left wanting. To place any desire on a pedestal so that it defines us, determines us, and insists on always delighting us is contrary to the way of the cross.

So there you have it. Pieced together like Frankenstein. Much more friendly, however, and no bolts sticking out of its neck.

Other books by Butterfield and Yuan: