Self, Shame, and the Savior

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Christ, Christianity, Culture War, Family, Homosexuality, Joy, LGBTQ+, Love, Sexual Revolution, Society

CNN posted a tragedy recently, as part of their effort to promote the sexual revolution. The story is as instructive as it is appalling.

The article’s headline read: “I was married with 2 kids when I realized I’m gay.” Immediately following came the editor’s note, which stated with tragic predictability that “Melisa Raney is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Atlanta with her two children.”

What happened to the husband? Between title and editor’s note lay the story of a marriage destroyed by the sexual revolution. The article itself confirmed this. But what justification could be offered for this betrayal of marital vows? What could be more important than loving the man to whom this woman had united herself? What could trump the importance of providing a stable home and family life for their two children?

Finding herself. Self-acceptance.

For here was the problem, in the young woman’s mind: “there I was, at 36 years old, realizing I didn’t know myself at all.”

What explains this sense of lostness? What was missing from her life, that she had this sense of alienation and incompleteness of identity? “I had everything I thought made my life perfect. I was married to my best friend and we had two beautiful, healthy and hilarious children, with successful careers and a beautiful home.”

If that’s the description of what she thought would make her life complete, the diagnosis seems fairly clear. There is someone missing from the picture, but it’s not herself. The tragedy unfolds from her misdiagnosis of the problem. She bought the lie that desire is identity, and accepted the prescription of self-acceptance for salvation. “A part of myself wasn’t living. And by not letting that part live, I was slowly dying.”

It’s easy, then, to see why others had to be sacrificed. The gospel of self-acceptance quite naturally demands sacrifices, and one’s children and covenant partner are likely candidates for the altar. “My family was being shattered and I couldn’t stop it. I constantly had to remind myself, ‘You get one life. This is your life and no one else’s’” (italics hers).

The sacrifices were made, but ineffective. “I was finally figuring out who I was. Now I was ashamed by that answer.” Shame, the need to hide ourselves—first consequence of the open eyes in the primordial fall. How do we deal with the shame of true self-realization? Adam and Eve tried to cover up with fig leaves, but God showed them that something must die to cover their sin.

Self-acceptance is a fig leaf. No amount of supportive community and group therapy will make it adequate. The goal is an illusion: “We were on a path that feels impossible to navigate until one day, you can live your truth and be perfectly fine shaping a new life.” Truth is not a matter of personal subjectivity. Shaping a life to suit your own desires will never work out to joy, because you were made to shape your life around God and His desires.

That’s who was missing from her picture of the perfect life; and joy was missing too, because joy is His gift. Sacrifices to self-acceptance and sinful desire cannot bring what God alone possesses. So she ends with a mistaken moral for this heartbreaking tale: “I want people reading my story to know that it’s OK to be the person you’re meant to be—no matter what your age is when you finally get to know yourself and love who you are in the process.”

The real moral, of course, is that only Christ brings true life and meaning. There is a price to believing the lies of the sexual revolution, the especially heavy price of what those children have and will continue to suffer. The mask falls, and we see clearly how little the LGBTQ+ movement has to do with love. Broken homes and broken lives are its results.

Having a private, personal ‘truth’—my truth—sounds very useful indeed. It legitimates my desires and makes them utterly immune to criticism. But it is only a cloud of smoke, poisonous smoke; for the supreme tragedy is that personal ‘truth’ keeps us from finding Him who is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). And He is the only adequate covering for our sin and shame.  He is life, and He alone brings salvation.

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From the Heart

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1 Peter, Church, Faith, Love

One of the great tragedies of the history of Christianity is our division–within local churches, denominations, and the faith as a whole.  Truth matters, and we need to make a stand for the truth; yet divisions are hardly a good witness for the gospel.  After all, one of the repeated messages of the New Testament is the call for believers to love one another.

“Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart” (1 Peter 1:22, NIV).

Love for the family of faith comes from the gospel.  God’s sanctifying work, which we receive by faith, gives us that love for our brothers and sisters in Christ.  As usual, the apostle Peter takes this redemptive reality and shows the ethical force: God has given you love for the church, so love the church.

And this love is not simply a matter of outward appearance.  God cares not only about behavior, but about our hearts.  He desires to form in us a heart-holiness, a heart-love that we then live out.

Love is the ethic of faith, the sign and witness of the work of God.  It begins at home, with the family of faith.  Christians, love one another.

Before the Foundations

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1 Peter, Christ, Hope, Jesus Christ, Love

It is hard to grasp the wonderful privilege of receiving the gospel message.  Prophets in ages past were given the message in part, but couldn’t discern the fulness.  Who could have anticipated that God would send His Son to be the Savior of the world?

God anticipated it.  God planned it, before there was even a world of lost men to save.  The Savior was foreknown, fore-ordained; the apostle Peter, speaking of Christ, says, “He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake” (1 Pet. 1:20).

This may strike us at first as a rather strange passage; but think about what it says.  God planned our redemption from the beginning.  The wondrous work of Christ was in the mind of God before mankind’s fall from innocence.  God is so merciful and compassionate that He undertook this work of creation and redemption with full insight and knowledge.  Great is His love for us.

Because of Christ, chosen before the foundations of the earth, revealed now, we can know God (v.21).  Faith and hope are gifts that come to us in Christ, the gift of God to lost men and women.  If we only receive that gift, we may have this hope through all of life’s darkness and struggles, and know the God who loved us before He even brought us into being.

The Unseen Lord

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1 Peter, Faith, Jesus Christ, Joy, Love, Suffering

Faith is a strange thing.  Peter describes the Christian’s relationship with their Lord, the relationship of faith, in these words:

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Pet. 1:8-9).

Faith is about belief, trust, love for someone you have not seen.  Faith means that Jesus Christ, who you have never seen with your eyes, is dearest to you of all.  Faith is not unreasoning or unreasonable, but it requires something beyond what your senses can verify.  For whatever reason, this is what God particularly desires from us: not that we are talented or beautiful or brilliant or wealthy or powerful, but that we believe Him.  Come to Him; trust Him; obey Him; love Him.

That relationship of love, faith in the unseen Lord, has an astonishingly powerful influence over the rest of life.  The unseen Lord trumps all of the trials and terrors that can be seen, and joy results.  This is the story of the early church, of apostles who sang in prison chains and martyrs who boldly faced the Roman lions.

Faith can sustain you.  If you know the unseen Lord, believe Him, and love Him, you can know joy in the midst of suffering.

Loving God’s People

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Confession, Love

Daniel 9 includes a beautiful prayer the prophet offers in reflection on the end of Israel’s exile in Babylon.  He extols the greatness of God and contrasts the faithlessness of the people.  He reflects on the justice of God’s judgment.  He pleads for mercy and restoration.

One thing that struck me as I was reading was how Daniel identified himself with God’s people.  Of course, Daniel was one of God’s people, so why not?  Practically his whole life had been lived out in exile.  But in Daniel we see one of the most obedient followers of God in Scripture, a man of whom no failing is recorded–and Scripture does not shy from recalling the failures of even the greatest heroes of the faith.  If anyone shows obedience to God’s covenant and steadfast devotion to Him, it’s Daniel.

But the prophet prays, “We have been wicked and have rebelled” (5) “we have not obeyed the LORD our God” (10) “we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth” (13) “we have sinned, we have done wrong” (15), etc.  This is the heart of a man who loves the Lord: he loves God’s people and identifies with them.

We may call out wickedness in the church; that, too, is part of the prophet’s role.  But I hope we can learn to have a prophetic grief, rather than simply anger, and such a love for God’s people that we would be moved not only to conviction but to corporate confession.

But what if love meant telling the truth?

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Love, Transgenderism, Truth

I saw an episode of a tv show hard at work selling the narrative of the new sexual revolution–or, rather, what is fast becoming the new sexual despotism.  A young girl was dealing with gender dysphoria, convinced that she was really a boy.  But her mother would not affirm this desire that she be treated as a boy.  This caused a rupture in their relationship, until eventually her mother had an epiphany and realized that her daughter really was a boy.  The beautiful reunion came, and full of emotion the mother lied to her daughter, and affirmed her as a boy.

That’s one side of the narrative: affirmation of the claim that gender is separable and sometimes different from biology.  This is love.

But the story continued.  The mother could not really handle this change, and reacted by suddenly packing everything up and completely abandoning her daughter.

That’s the other side: people can’t offer this love and acceptance, and reject their child or friend.

Of course, an unbiased logician might look at this narrative and wonder if at least one option for how the situation should play out isn’t being ignored…suspiciously ignored.  And a Christian must insist that this neglected option is, in fact, the only option conducive to human flourishing.

What if we didn’t have to choose between truth and love?

What if the mother had stood firm on the truth, and refused to affirm her daughter’s conviction that she was really a boy?  And-shocking!-what if she had also refused to reject her daughter, but had continued to offer to her love and acceptance as her child?

This is the option that would be crippling to the message of the show for them to admit.  They are selling the story that rejection of transgenderism and hatred go hand-in-hand.  Loving refusal to affirm transgender identity doesn’t fit in their narrative.  And, as I said, it is the only option conducive to human flourishing.  For just as surely as the mother’s rejection of her daughter because of this struggle would be destructive to that daughter’s emotional well-being, likewise affirming the lie that her daughter was a boy would be destructive to that daughters emotional and spiritual well-being.  How could it not?  How could confirming someone in a lie lead to wholeness?

But whatever our struggles, Christ can make us whole if we come to Him and rely on Him to give us identity.  We must model this truth, and the love of Christ by which we come to know the truth.

 

Quieted by His Love

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Grace, Love, Mercy, Zephaniah

The prophets speak an interplay of judgment and mercy, sometimes moving from one to the other with startling suddenness.  In Zephaniah severe warning comes, for both Judah and her enemies.  But in the end the Lord gives His people a promise of grace in some of the warmest terms in Scripture.

“The LORD has taken away your punishment,” He says to Jerusalem (3:15).  What shall they expect of God now?  I think we expect that after punishment is done we’re in a stigmatized probationary status, or at best we’re on neutral footing.

The grace of God is extravagant.

Instead of shame His people are given security and the blessing of His presence and reign.  Far from neutral footing, neither favored nor unfavored by God, here is the image of His restoration:

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save.  He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

How often do we reckon with that richness of grace?  These words are spoken to Jerusalem, but the promise may be fairly apprehended by the people of God as His words of love for those He redeems.  When God reconciles a people with Himself they become the objects of His delight.  A prayer: that our restless souls would come to Him with every fear and care, and learn what it means to be quieted by His love.