The Eyes of a Tsunami Surfer
Seeing stories from God's perspective
A key ministry principle illustrated by Jesus is to always look for what God is doing in a person’s life (John 5:19). But our eyes can be blinded by assumptions and labels. This has application as we surf for victims of the Sexual Tsunami. But it also adds wisdom regarding the popular Side B perspective.
Last week a new thought struck me. I was listening to a sermon on marginalization, and as the preacher referred to the marginalization of Jesus, she referenced him as “the son of Mary,” as in “The son of that girl that got pregnant before silly Joseph married her.”
Without a doubt, this moniker was tossed about in that small town of Nazareth long before Jesus taught there in the synagogue:
They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary . . . ?” Mark 6:2, 3 NRSV (Italics mine.)
Label factories
Small towns can be label factories. Did you grow up in one? I did. Small church, too. And it was so very easy to get labels, especially of a sexual nature, stuck on my eyelids. Each time I remembered a fallen person, I would remember their worst moment in life. And those distortions continued to follow me into college and beyond.
Here are just a few:
· The classmates who disappeared from eleventh grade because they got pregnant.
· The girl who danced naked on a table at a party. (So I was told.)
· The college girl who slept around a lot.
· The frat guy who seduced women in his dorm room and recorded the audio on cassette tapes.
· The nearby pastor who blew up a church by having an affair with the choir director.
· The Christian leaders who tarnished their ministries and hindered Kingdom growth by their sexual addictions and indiscretions. (To read some thoughts about fallen Christian leaders, click here or here.)
Yep, that’s just a sampling.
Stating the obvious, we don’t ever think of Jesus as that illegitimate child from Nazareth. Our minds just don’t go there. We know the entire story from God’s perspective. Jesus is not the love child of a wayward teenager. Not in the least!
No less should this be true for every child of God who has been slapped with labels. We should see their entire story from God’s perspective. They are princes and princesses of the most high God!
Even David, despite adultery and murder, was referred to as “a man after God’s own heart.” That’s the entire story from God’s perspective.
Side B
On a side note, consider with me the Christian camp known as Side B. They insist upon the importance of wearing a label fashioned by the world. Buying into the notion that “once gay always gay,” they want to be called “gay Christians.” Though their motives may seem virtuous, they are simply affirming what the world has been trumpeting, that no change in attractions is possible. None. Not even incremental. And that to seek counseling to assist with same-sex attraction is homophobic and potentially harmful.
This is not only a refusal to see someone’s story from God’s perspective, it goes against the latest research. As my astute colleague Debra Baty states, the “science” which shows no change is possible is based upon faulty research:
In November 2023, Dr. Lisa Diamond, professor at the University of Utah who identifies as a lesbian, summarized her analysis of numerous large, long-term studies of people across the US who were asked about their sexual attractions - finding of all those who experience attractions to the same sex, only 20% of men and 5% of women do so exclusively across their lifetime.
Diamond added:
“So, the pattern that we have been using as the basis for all of the samples of research on sexual orientation, all of those samples were based on exclusively gay and lesbian individuals. We based an entire science of sexual orientation on the smallest and least representative slice of that population, which is not very scientific . . . . So plural attractions are the norm and not the exception. The vast majority of same gender attracted individuals have some capacity for attractions to the other gender as well.”
In short, there is a small minority of same-sex attracted individuals who are oriented exclusively toward the same sex with little hope for change. But most gays and lesbians experience some degree of fluidity in their attractions.
To be clear, any change in attractions is difficult. But for Side B Christians to insist upon wearing the label “gay” and to cry out against seeking help with attractions is misguided.
A final confession
Today while on a road trip, I stopped in a Wendy’s for a Frosty. The cashier taking my order was very obviously a young lady attempting to transition to a man. She simply looked like a woman with a horrible beard.
Inwardly, I recoiled. Didn’t say or do anything to communicate disdain, but it just kind of weirded me out. Once back in the car, I had to repent and pray for her. She is a victim of the craziness that has captured our culture.
The Apostle Paul wisely provides the proper perspective.
For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 2 Cor. 5:14-17 NIV
What should compel or drive us? The love of Christ.
How should we view those pummeled by the Tsunami? Not from a worldly point of view, but as people created in the image of God. As for the Christians who struggle, God sees them as new creations—daughters and sons whose old past has been replaced by the new.
As a contemporary of Jesus, Paul confesses to once viewing Christ from a worldly point of view. But no longer. Jesus was not a mere human, the suspicious result of a wayward teen mom. Rather he now saw from God’s perspective: Jesus, the Son of God, who died and rose again on Paul’s behalf.
Oh, for the grace of God to continue to replace our worldly goggles with his vision for the sexually broken! May his love drive us forward.
Dear Brother Mark. Thank you for your earthy, courageous, feet-on-the-ground reflection about the importance of seeing stories from God’s perspective. “Seeing” in that sense is more than mere metaphor, analogy, or imagination. Seeing with “the mind’s eye” is a real “seeing,” but “seeing from God’s perspective” is grounded in an experience of revelation in order to first of all see God from God’s perspective. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” When I see God from God’s perspective I begin to see myself from God’s perspective which, in turn, leads to seeing others from God’s perspective. This same dynamic is expressed in the two great commandments 1) to love God, and 2) to love my neighbor as myself. But, as stated above, this kind of seeing requires both revelation and the taking of every thought into captivity to Christ. I recently spent half an hour meditating on one single word – the word “our” from the “Our Father.” A war took place inside of me because I just was NOT experiencing the fullness of the word “our” when I prayed it. When I said, “our,” I really thought, “my” and I left out everyone else. To “see” the “Our” of the Our Father required confession of my sin of self-centeredness, laziness (sloth) - “being satisfied with the comfortable life.” And THAT required revelation, which happened. I began to actually pray the “our” of “Our Father” understanding and feeling the incredible breadth of the heavenly, earthly, historical, global implications and realities all packed into that one word, “Our.” Genuinely seeing the “OTHERS” included in the “Our” was seeing OTHERS from God’s perspective. Something changed inside of me . . . . and seemingly outside of me too. What a difference! And it stuck. I’m still “seeing” the “Our” in that same way. Praise God!