As Christians in a world full of sexual rebellion both inside and outside the church, we have a lot to reflect on.
1. Maybe we have shriveled marriage, forgetting to be amazed by the profound mystery in which God makes a man and a woman into one new person by means of their public vows and physical consummation, for the purposes of companionship, raising children, and enacting the ultimate Marriage. Maybe we have shriveled it into a personalized, silly, public expression of warm romantic feelings in whatever form the couple may choose. It is no wonder that everyone with warm romantic feelings wants to know why they can't play too.
2. Maybe we have communicated that God only cares about the inside, and not the outside of a person. We have not clearly and joyfully rejoiced in and talked about the goodness of created stuff and the hope of the resurrection of the body. We forget that the Bible has commands for our hands as well as our hearts. We close our eyes tight when we feel a spiritual wind blowing, and try to block out the world in which Jesus took on flesh. It is no wonder that a man who feels like a woman on the inside should try to force his outside into that mold.
3. Maybe we have failed to stand in happy wonder at the reality of the Trinity. We have chosen to talk to and about Jesus as though he is the only member of the Godhead, and so we have failed to communicate the inherent beauty of unity and diversity together in perfect harmony. We have failed to talk about the glory of the reality that the center of all things is a God who is three totally distinct persons, perfectly united together in love as one God. It is no wonder that people forget to glory in the diversity and unity of men and women making up marriage.
4. Maybe we got embarrassed about the truth that men are made to be manly and women are made to be womanly. Maybe we started hedging on hard boundaries between them, feeling like it was mean or unfair to rejoice in different roles given to each of them. We decided that whether someone is a man or a woman has no bearing on whether they should lead a family or a church. It is no wonder we now can't tell whether it has any bearing on whether they should be married.
5. Maybe gaggles of 'evangelical' husbands have long been spiritual versions of Bruce Jenner, failing to be the leading men God called them to be, instead treating their wives like their mothers to whom they go for permission and instruction. It is no wonder men in our world don't want to be men, and women lose interest.
6. Maybe we stopped talking about the beginning, and how God made everything according to its kind and for its purpose. Maybe we got embarrassed about creation as we bowed before our priests in white lab-robes. Maybe we started asking if Adam and Eve are even real people. And so maybe we stopped talking about the beauty of the way people are created by God and forgot that marriage is not a human construct but a divine pattern and gift. It is no wonder that people think marriage, gender, and family are things we invented and therefore things we are fully free to re-invent.
7. Maybe we have not really been experiencing and talking about the offer of reconciliation and salvation for everyone in Christ. Maybe it got easier to just try to be really nice or really cool and hope people stumble to conversion on their own. It is no wonder that people are looking everywhere they can to find something to satisfy, something to make their life make sense, something to save them.
Since increasing sexual immorality and confusion are an element of the judgment of God upon a people, our first instinct should be repentance. This is not to say we shouldn't speak hard truths in love to our homosexual and transgendered friends. The whole point is that we haven't been speaking or delighting in the truth sufficiently. Repentance from that looks like speaking and loving the truth on a whole host of related issues, recognizing that if the room is dark, there may be something wrong with the light. And when we speak, we should make sure we speak out of bold love rather than fear, insecurity about our world, or as a smokescreen for our own failings in these regards. My life has contained sexual rebellion and confusion. It is because of this that I delight in sexual truth and in Christ who redeems sinners and shows us a more excellent way. May God be merciful to us.
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