Archive for the ‘Sexuality’ Category

The Most Feminist Religion

Posted: March 9, 2017 in Apologetics, Culture & Politics, Ethics, gender, Islam, Misused Bible verses, Sexuality, Social Justice, Uncategorized
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True Feminism is not about special privileges for women, but about equal dignity, value and opportunity for all people, regardless of gender.

Last week it was claimed on national television that ‘Islam is the most feminist religion.’ Since that claim, many have been debating its accuracy.

Sometimes that best way to disprove a claim is not to show why it’s wrong, but simply to point out an alternative that clearly trumps it.

So, here’s a few things Biblical Christianity gives women:

  1. A knowledge that they are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). This means women and men may equally be representatives of God – ambassadors of His authority in ruling over creation, and communicators of His character in their love and care for other creatures and fellow human beings. No other religion contains the concept of ‘The Image of God,’ being applied to all people.
  2. As ‘Daughters of Eve,’ women have a wonderful and unique privilege of giving life in a way a man cannot. ‘The man called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.’ (Genesis 3:20). It’s significant to see that this statement is made immediately after the man is told that because of the curse of sin, he will labour and toil, and eventually die and return to the dust. As an act of faith, he knew that this was not a final word, since God would show His ongoing patience, care and love for humanity through Even and all her daughters; and ultimately in her descendant who would be the saviour of the world (Genesis 3:15).
  3. In Old Testament Israel, women were often given special protection under the law, in recognition of the fact that they were more likely to be the victims of violence from men (eg. Deuteronomy 22:25-29). To our modern 21st century western ears some of these laws seem patriarchal, however if we understand them in the cultural context of the time, they are laws that are pro-woman. These laws have provided some basis for the Western legal system that allows liberty, equality and protection for all citizens.
  4. Jesus welcomed, healed, taught, ate and drank with women, may of whom were considered outcasts by the culture of the time. (John 4:1-45) His confrontation of a gang of men about to stone a woman caught in adultery exposed their hypocrisy in assuming her guilt, and their moral superiority. (John 8:2-10) As far as Jesus is concerned, women and men are to be given equal opportunities to receive grace and forgiveness; as well as in the gracious call to repent and turn from a sinful lifestyle.
  5. In Christian gatherings men and women sit together. This may not sound significant to us today, but in the first century it was a radical departure from the Synagogue practice of separating men and women. Not only this, but women were active participants in the worship, both praying and prophesying in church – also a radical liberation of women (1 Corinthians 11:5-16 – The caveats in this passage about head coverings are to do with cultural sensitivities, as well as honouring the God-given distinctives between genders.)
  6. In Christ, women and men are ‘Joint heirs of the grace of life,’ (1 Peter 3:7) and ‘all one in Jesus Christ,’ (Galatians 3:28). Neither gender deserves grace any more or less than the other, since grace is not about deserving, but about God giving freely without partiality.
  7. The Christian hope for the New Creation is that many aspects of this world that give rise to discrimination, bigotry and oppression (not just between genders, but also between race, class, role, etc.) will pass away. ‘Heaven’ will not be populated by men served by virgins (Islam) or women as child-producers for new worlds (Mormonism); neither will it be populated by homogeneous, gender-neutral angels (A culturally popular idea, started by Swedenborgianism, the religion of Helen Keller). Rather, the New Heavens and Earth will be filled with the glory of God as Men and Women, both transformed into the image of Jesus, love and serve God and one another in full freedom and holiness. Adam’s words of Genesis 3:20 will be somewhat reflected in that this renewed humanity will be called ‘The Bride, the Wife of the Lamb’ (Revelation 21:9) An incredible dignity and honour will be bestowed on women by having attributes of their gender bestowed on this redeemed, eternal community.

So I wonder. Which religion is the most feminist?

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Believe in Love?

Posted: February 10, 2016 in Culture & Politics, Discipleship, Ethics, Love, Sexuality, Worship
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This is not a post about gay marriage (In fact that’s the only time I’ll mention it).

It’s about the absurdity of the statement, ‘Believe in Love.’ It was displayed at the recent Superbowl, which while an all-American event, seems inexplicable to capture the eyes of millions outside the US. There was even a gaggle of viewers watching it on the big screen at the new Flinders Uni Plaza; I happened to walk past just as the thousands of cards given to spectators were held up to display the message.

The statement is very telling in regard to our late-modern, post-Christian western culture. A few generations ago a large proportion of the western world would have affirmed Jesus’ call, ‘Believe in God’ (John 14:1) even if they weren’t so strong on what he said next, ‘…believe also in me.’

The values of our culture were built to a large degree on the acknowledgement of a Creator, on whom we are dependant for life, breath and pretty much everything. The source of human wisdom, progress and compassion was generally seen to be outside ourselves, in God (however people understood that title).

It seems like we then went through a shift, in which ‘God’ was gradually removed, and the call simply became ‘Just believe’. This nebulous mandate, perpetuated in popular culture by the music, movie and media industries, allowed us to jettison faith in God, but still retain the virtue of faith, and to choose whatever we wanted to believe in, as long as it enabled us to fulfill our dreams.

The 2016 Superbowl message simply confirms what was underlying the message of ‘Just believe,’ which is becoming more explicit. Now that we have chased God out of the public arena, as well as the cathedrals of our own hearts, there is only one thing left to believe in – yourself. Believe in your ability to love. Believe in and love yourself. Believe in your right to love whomever and whatever you please. Believe in the legitimacy of your self-love, no matter what the old fashioned religious people say. Believe that you can achieve what you dream and get what you want, even if it means others may have nothing.

Self-belief (set against faith in God) is at the heart of idolatry. It leads us to fashion our gods in our own image, so that our adamic narcissism can be masked by a facade of false piety and self sufficiency. Thinking we are free and wise and loving, we are in reality being enslaved by the idol of self, gutted of our true humanity as we dig our own graves with a smile on our faces, convinced that our individualistic, libertarian rights-focussed rhetoric will somehow save us.

Jesus’ message (the Gospel) tears down this facade by exposing our selfish sinfulness and calling us back to faith in the only one who can rescue us from ourselves. That’s why it’s so offensive, and so counter cultural. It claims that true love can only happen when our gaze is drawn away from our navels, and onto the man on the cross, the empty tomb, and the Son of Man coming in the clouds. Such a vision kills off any selfish pride, ambition and self love by declaring, ‘You are a great sinner – but Jesus is an even greater saviour. Believe in God; believe also in him.’

Why Do Christians Eat Prawns?

Posted: August 19, 2015 in Apologetics, Bible Study, Culture & Politics, God's Law and the Christian, Hermeneutics, Misused Bible verses, Sexuality, Uncategorized
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prawns?

Cherrypicking the Bible?

On face value, it can seem that Christians pick and choose which parts of the Bible they want to obey, and which parts they want to ignore. The issue has come to the fore because of the current debate over same sex marriage, in which Christians can be accused of hypocrisy in claiming the Bible is God’s inspired Word, but not obeying all of it, including the many ‘obscure’ laws in the Old Testament. We may be told that if we no longer observe food laws, we should also be willing to change on sexuality laws, which are in the same book.

So what is going on? Is it true that Christians choose to conveniently ignore these laws, while only holding to those that serve their own moral agenda? Sadly, that can be true.

However any Christian who does not seek to follow all the laws of the Old Testament needs to have a sound reason for doing so, especially if they are going to not only properly understand the Bible, but also explain their faith to those who question.

A simple answer to question of why Christians are allowed to eat shellfish even though it is prohibited in Leviticus 11:9-12 is the teaching of Jesus:

Again Jesus called the crowd to him and said, “Listen to me, everyone, and understand this. Nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them. Rather, it is what comes out of a person that defiles them.” After he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about this parable. “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a person from the outside can defile them? For it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body.” (In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.)’ He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defiles them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person. (Mark 7:14-23)

On what basis could Jesus seemingly overturn the Old Testament laws about clean and unclean foods, and turn it instead into an issue of what is going on in a person’t heart? Did he actually overturn them, or is there something else happening?

‘Abrogation’ vs. ‘fulfilment’

Abrogation is the idea that one idea or rule is overturned and replaced by another, newer idea or rule. In religious terms, it means that God says something new that replaces something He said previously, simply because it’s His prerogative as God to change His mind. Or, as some ‘progressives’ would say, our primitive and limited understanding of what God was saying in the past has been replaced by a fuller, more enlightened understanding; so we no longer need to take notice of things in the Bible that are outdated.

Abrogation is not a Biblical idea. The Biblical writers are clear that God does not change His mind like a human being does (Numbers 23:19). Jesus said that he did not come to abolish the law or what the prophets had said (Matthew 5:17). Paul says that the Gospel does not ‘nullify’ the law, but rather ‘upholds’ it (Romans 3:31).

So Jesus was not simply saying, ‘Times have changed, and so a new rule applies.’ Nor was he claiming some kind of divine ‘Son of God’ right to take away from or add to the Bible.

Fulfilment is the idea that earlier rules or ideas are given by God not as end in themselves, but in anticipation of something that is to come later. They point to, foreshadow and prepare people for what is textboxto come. (Something like the prompting message, ‘type to enter text’ in a word processing  textbox – it creates the space for the intended text to be entered.)

What that means is when the fulfilment comes, along with the new thing, the fulfilment doesn’t abolish the earlier rules and ideas, but actually affirms, honours and completes them. Fulfilment takes the principle behind the rule or idea, and gives it its fullest expression.

The Bible presents Jesus as the fulfilment of the law and the prophets – the rules and messages of the Old Testament. The Old Testament is full of patterns and structures that point to Jesus. Now that Jesus has come, those patterns and structures are ‘obsolete’ in the sense that anyone whose faith is in Jesus does not need to observe them literally, because their full meaning is found in a relationship with Jesus; however Christians do not remove them from the Bible because they stand there as a way to understand who Jesus is and what He did in a fuller, richer way.

All the laws about clean and unclean foods, practices, and even the seemingly obscures laws about clothing, haircuts and washing were all things that made the Israelites distinctly different to all the nations around them. They were also a constant reminder to them that the creation is not the way it is supposed to be – it has been tainted with sin and death and disease. While many of the laws had a practical use in terms of health and hygiene, they primarily existed to highlight the difference between the way the world (including us) is, and the way it was meant to be before human sin spoiled things.

So, these laws pointed to something beyond themselves: the promise of God that one day the world we live in – and we along with it – will be restored to its original creational design.

How to know what to keep

Why does this mean that Christians continue to uphold Leviticus 18:22 but not Leviticus 11:9-12? It’s because the law about eating shellfish was one of those rules that foreshadowed Jesus, whereas the law about homosexuality was based on a moral principle of sexual and marital purity, that Jesus repeatedly affirmed as still standing (along with the rest of the Ten Commandments – for example, see Matthew 5-7 and 19:18).

FulfilmentThe Ten Commandments were the moral code upon which the laws of Israel were built. All of the more than 600 laws on the Old Testament can be traced back to its foundation in one or more of the Ten Commandments. Now that structure has been removed by the coming of Jesus, the foundation still remains. So, instructions given to Christians in the New Testament are also built on this same moral code; the key difference being that Christians, through faith in Jesus, have been given a freedom to obey this moral code not from a fear of punishment, but as an expression of a restored relationship with God. So a Christian’s motivation for not practising homosexuality is not primarily because it is forbidden, but because they see that it is a distortion of something with is far better and life-giving. A Christian seeks to obey God’s design with a joyful heart rather than outward conformity.

The Real Tragedy of Same Sex Marriage

Posted: July 3, 2015 in Christology, Evangelism, Sexuality
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While there is no question that the domino-like falling of western cultures to the LGBTQ agenda will result in dysfunctional families, traumatised children, and general moral decline, those things are not the real tragedy of what’s happening.

Humanity is engaged in a hubris driven self-salvation project, which involves an active suppressing of the truth of God by our unrighteousness (Romans 1:18). I think what this means is that we will be constantly working to remove anything in our culture that reminds us of Him in order to build a wall between us and the truth. Marriage is one of those things.

Throughout Scripture, marriage is pointed to as a picture of the relationship of God with His people, and of the loving self-sacrifice of Christ to redeem His Church. This is why marriage was created in the first place (Ephesians 5:31-32). And it means that whenever a man and woman get married, or live faithfully in marriage, the glory of Christ is being magnified.

And rebellious humanity just can’t abide the glory of Christ.

As Todd Pruit recently said, the confusion of gender is

…the final assertion of the sovereign self over our Maker, so that everything that God has shown us – both in what we can observe clearly with our eyes, to what can only be seen in the highest amplification of the cells in our body – everything about us shouts our gender, and yet we are going to assert ourselves over that.

As true marriage is eroded and falls from view, one more avenue for communicating the Gospel to a world in desperate need will slip away. Whenever we point to Ezekiel 16, Hosea, Ephesians 5 or Revelation 21 as speaking of the wonderful love of God towards us, people will increasingly look at us with blank stares and shrugged shoulders. They just won’t get it.

This is the greater tragedy. Moral failure, psychological and social problems, and the decline of culture are merely temporal things. The Gospel deals with eternity. No wonder Christians are called not to social transformation or political action, but to prayer for a climate in which the Gospel can be spoken and heard:

…for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3 This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:2-4 ESV)