The Fantasy Fallacy (a 50 Shades of Grey response) by Shannon Ethridge

This is a pretty unique book. Based partly on the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon but mostly on a prophetic picture Shannon Ethridge received, it’s a review of what sexual fantasy is, what it does, and whether it is (or can be) good or bad.

First things first. Although the front cover of this book claims it to be ‘A response to the 50 Shades of Grey phenomenon’, it definitely isn’t. If you’re looking for something that takes the series and essentially concludes on whether to read it or not, you won’t find that here; Ethridge clearly dislikes it but doesn’t go so far as to say ‘don’t read it’, and barely talks about it (there’s probably no more than a couple of pages on it in the entire book).

So that’s misleading, but the book isn’t really about that. It’s about the fact that almost everyone has sexual fantasies, and what we should do with them. She’s careful not to be judgmental yet at the same time not to ‘allow’ it, and I think does a reasonably good job of talking about something that the Church simply doesn’t talk about. She’s particularly strong on understanding why we have particular fantasies, how we ought to respond to them, and how they can be redeemed for the good of our marriages and for the glory of God. I thought the chapter on pornography was one of the strongest I’ve read.

That said, I didn’t love this book. In her desire to not be too left-wing or right-wing I found her at times to sit on the fence and simply not communicate; at one point she seems to suggest that someone who fantasizes about violently raping a child should tone down the fantasy by increasing the age of the child and by imagining that the child enjoys it rather than getting pleasure from another’s pain. To a certain extent I can see where she’s going (one step at a time seeing our fantasies becoming those of us loving our spouse better) but I felt that she stopped short of saying that clearly enough, which left me thinking a reader could justify their fantasies. I also felt that she wasn’t as strong as I’d hoped when talking about fantasies regarding incest or homosexuality.

If you’re really squeamish or are feeling offended by some of the content of this review, this book probably isn’t for you. At points the book goes into perhaps a touch too much detail which is appropriate within the context but to my mind would restrict this book to married couples.

Overall, if you want a good, honest, biblical look at sexual fantasy you can’t really go wrong with this one. It wasn’t outstanding so I’d normally go for four stars but the fact that the Shades books were barely mentioned and the minor frustrations I had with it I’m having to go three stars this time.

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com. I’m not required to give a positive review.

Get over it, Stonewall

The other day I’m pretty sure I saw three different buses drive past me with the same advert on the side. You might have seen, or at least heard about, the big red banner with simple words on it:

SOME PEOPLE ARE GAY. GET OVER IT.

Obviously they’re trying to communicate with people who say that no-one is ‘born this way’ but that being gay is a choice. But allow me to quickly break down the ad.

Who is the audience? Telling people to ‘get over it’ is just about as effective as telling a stressy person to ‘take a chill pill’. I’m certain that not one single person of the target audience for this banner has changed their mind about the whole ‘born this way’ debate so it would seem to be the worst-designed campaign in history. All it’s going to achieve is increase friction between the two ends of the debate…which seems to be a bad result.

Who is losing credibility? In a debate between conflicting views, when one side says, ‘Well, I’m right and you’re wrong. Get over it,’ it’s pretty certain that that side is the one with the least credible argument. An independent witness to the debate would probably see that banner and think, ‘Wow, they’re resorting to that?’

Who has the burden of proof? This is the killer question. The statement on the bus is presenting a ‘fact’ without any reasoning and expecting their audience to roll over unless they can bring evidence to disprove the statement…which surely asks the question whether evidence is required more to prove that gay people are born that way, or whether it’s a choice.

So here’s a little something for Stonewall to consider. If homosexuality were a purely natural trait (born this way) then identical twins would either both be gay, or both be straight, agreed? The Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University performed a study of 784 pairs of twins and discovered that of the twins in which one said they were gay, only 6% of the other twins said they were also gay. The full paper’s here.

So, Stonewall, it would seem that those ‘some people’ that are gay are not gay because of their genetics. Get over it. In love and acceptance.

And just a bit of clarity because I know this is a tough subject to discuss. Although homosexuality is clearly not a direct result of your genetics I think it’s pretty clear that people don’t choose to be gay. There are enough testimonies of that to convince a skeptic. And to me there’s only one explanation for that: we live in a fallen world.

The world has been affected by sin, so the temptations we face come thick and fast. God promises never to allow us to face more temptation than we can handle; as a straight guy it would seem that God knows that I couldn’t face the temptation of homosexuality without giving in to it.

So if you’re gay it’s important that you know that those Christians who write you off as hell-bound haven’t understood the mercy Jesus has given to them; come to him as you are – he knows what you’re going through and will never let you down.

Homosexuality is about people

Adam and Eve (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Christian’s life is overwhelmingly filled with fun, freedom, life and love. The vast majority of Christians have that experience of Christianity, yet that’s not what tends to get reported.

The typical non-Christian’s view of Christianity is that Christians are judgmental and foolish. Christians disbelieve in scientifically-proven theories (a contradictory statement but we’ll leave it for today), and they just hate anyone who drinks alcohol, has sex, or goes to a mosque.

Of course that view is fundamentally wrong for every Christian I know, but the Christian’s judgmentalism when it comes to homosexuality is one of the most often-reported factors of Christianity.

So I’m really grateful that Andrew Wilson has addressed it in a bit of a different way by using real people’s stories, rather than talking about it abstractly (which I’ve attempted to). Here’s a great quote from his article:

Following Jesus can be very, very costly for gay people: it can cost people not just sex, but also family, relationships, friends and social identity. In fact, I think gay people, along with Muslim converts and cross-cultural missionaries, understand the cost of discipleship much better than straight people. They often understand much more clearly than middle class, straight, happily married white people what Jesus meant when he talked about giving up everything to follow him.

Seriously, take the time to go read the whole thing.

Judging and discerning

Portal of the Church of Pilgrims, in Washington, DC, with a LGBT banner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Having an opinionated blog like this one really opens you up to other people’s strong opinions when they disagree with you. It’s all part of the fun really.

In particular because of the content, which often touches sensitive topics like abortion, pornography and homosexuality, people can, and have, ended up feeling like this is a soapbox for judgmentalism.

And perhaps it is.

But perhaps there’s a fine line between judgmentalism and discernment, and the real challenge is to determine where that line sits.

A while ago now I posted one of my most visited posts about homosexuality. I probably communicated there better than on other occasions how it’s important to say when sin is sin while at the same time accepting people as they are and offering infinite grace to people who actively embrace sin.

So judging in the form of discernment is important and good, but judging in the form of judgmentalism is bad, and a sign of deep-rooted pride. So, without feeling judged, why not ask yourself the following questions which I’m plagiarising from Chris Simpson to see if you’re more judgmental than discerning:

1. Do you find it difficult to forgive others quickly?
2. Are you quick to judge others but slow to take criticism yourself?
3. Do you tend to blame others more than you take responsibility yourself?
4. Do you often feel judged by others?

If they made you feel more condemned than convicted, here’s a lovely summary of the difference between judgmentalism and discernment from a self-proclaimed Reformed Baptist:

Without love it’s only a hair’s width.

Thank God it’s all of grace.

Don’t pay homophobes

Image by Abode of Chaos via Flickr

A recent story caught my eye: David Cameron has said that the Government is considering withholding aid from countries in which homosexuality is illegal. Fair enough, it’s the Government’s job to steward their own money. Just don’t mention the expenses scandal.

In particular, he said that:

British aid should have more strings attached.

Now, can we get one thing clear? If the UK Government is handing out money to countries who follow a set of rules, that’s not ‘aid’. That’s a wage. Aid, according to the fountain of knowledge Wikipedia, is ‘a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another, given at least partly with the objective of benefiting the recipient country’.

Cameron clearly sees his comments as fair and good but there’s a touch of irony in them. I’m not for a second going to say that I side with countries who are intolerant of minority sexualities, but there’s certainly no way I can agree with Cameron on this, because I think he’s guilty of exactly the same.

Here’s Cameron’s issue with the countries in question: they’re intolerant of people who are not straight. Of course, this attitude towards sexuality is one which came from Britain in the first place – the BBC gets it right when they say:

Some 41 nations within the 54-member Commonwealth have laws banning homosexuality. Many of these laws are a legacy of British Empire laws.

…and the British Empire laws were generally founded on an understanding of Christian morals. Don’t worry, I’m getting to the point. Many have claimed that religion is just a way of controlling the masses: ‘If you practice homosexulity you’ll suffer for all eternity.’ But the attitude of the Government I think goes one step worse: ‘If you practice these laws bannning homosexuality I will make you suffer right now.’ Who’s more intolerant? The intolerant one, or the one who’s intolerant of intolerance?

In effect, our secular, humanist Government is doing exactly the same as hated organised religion, it’s just that the role of God has been taken away from an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God, and into the hands of an imperfect group of people.

Thank God he’s really in control.

What proportion of the population is gay?

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve heard on many occasions that around 10% of the human race is gay. I’d always sort of accepted that as plain fact but it turns out that this figure was a guess which was proven wrong decades ago.

I don’t want to open up the whole ‘what I think about homosexuality’ topic (that’s been dealt with over here), but an article in USA Today (here) brings I think a good observation.

Gay pride advocates applaud the courage of those who “come out,” discovering their true nature as homosexual after many years of heterosexual experience. But enlightened opinion denies a similar possibility of change in the other direction, deriding anyone who claims straight orientation after even the briefest interlude of homosexual behavior and insisting they are phony and self-deluding. By this logic, heterosexual orientation among those with past gay relationships is always the product of repression and denial, but homosexual commitment after a straight background is invariably natural and healthy. In fact, numbers show huge majorities of those who “ever had same sex sexual contact” do not identify long-term as gay. Among women 18-44, for instance, 12.5% report some form of same sex contact at some point in their lives, but among the older segment of that group (35-44), only 0.7% identify as homosexual and 1.1% as bisexual.

In other words, for the minority who may have experimented with gay relationships at some juncture in their lives, well over 80% explicitly renounced homosexual (or even bisexual) self-identification by age of 35. For the clear majority of males (as well as women) who report gay encounters, homosexual activity appears to represent a passing phase, or even a fleeting episode, rather than an unshakable, genetically pre-determined orientation.

I think the article as a whole could come across as quite judgmental so apologies for that, but it raises some good points.

A Conversation With God by Alton Gansky

This book is a collection of 55 questions asked to God, and an account of what His response would be based on the Bible. The questions are separated into various categories, such as God, the Bible, pain and suffering, and today’s world.

 

When I first received this book I was excited; the book naturally fell open at a chapter on whether or not God loves gay people, and I liked the answer. A couple of pages earlier was a chapter on abortion, and again I liked the answer. I decided I’d behave myself and read it from the beginning.

 

Unfortunately, my experience then changed. To say that the title of this book is ‘a conversation with God’, this is a bit of a weird conversation. Each chapter begins with the same question asked three times: first in one sentence, then in a couple of paragraphs, and then in the form of several questions at once. The answers are then not provided by God, but by an entire cast of characters, including Judas, Micah, Asaph, Urbanus, and Matthias. So the format, if anything, is simply confusing. This book is not a conversation with God.

 

On top of this I didn’t find the answers particularly helpful, particularly at the ‘foundational level’ questions. For example, the opening question (in it’s short form) is ‘God, who are You? What are You?’ to which God responds with ‘I’m unique in all creation.’ I agree that God is unique, but ‘in all creation’? Surely God is outside of creation? The answer then continues by describing His characteristics, one of which is His jealousy, which Gansky defines as ‘the fear of losing what you have [in the same way that a husband] worries that he might be losing [his wife].’ I disagree. God is not afraid, and He is not worried.

 

In this entire opening chapter the Holy Spirit is never mentioned, nor is the existence of the Trinity – a major oversight when the question is ‘God, who are you?’. When the Holy Spirit finally pipes up (in chapter seven, after the section of God is finished), He is called simply ‘holy spirit’, as if He is some impersonal force rather than a Person in the Godhead. In the ‘cast list’ in the introduction (which contains a spelling error), the Holy Spirit is not even mentioned. God and Jesus are both named as if they are separate people (I can only assume that Gansky means ‘the Father’ each time he references God), and overall the understanding of God just seems to be a bit clumsy.

 

It seems a shame that silly things like this have slipped through despite the apparent input from a whole host of people (none of whom are named, by the way). The most frustrating of these silly things must be that the introduction seems to disagree so much with the actual book contents. In particular we’re told that the combined efforts have intended ‘to do away with what is often called Christianese‘. Great! But it takes hardly any time for Jesus to start talking about forgiven sin and ‘disciples, who became apostles and established the church to spread the message of salvation.’ What are disciples? Or apostles? And what’s this sin, forgiveness, church, or salvation?

 

At times the specific questions aren’t even answered, the response is simply a general talk about a related topic! For example question two is specific: ‘God, how can we believe that You created us?’ but the answer is summed up early on: ‘The key to seeing creation is the willingness to look…there is no lack of evidence, only lack of belief.’ Well, I agree with the statement, but the answer’s not right – ‘how can we believe?’ ‘You just need to believe.’

 

So in summary I’m not the biggest fan of this book, which is a shame. The idea’s an interesting one, and some questions are dealt with well, but the content of the book just doesn’t live up to the title or the introduction.

 

I got this book for free from BookSneeze.com. I’m not required to give a positive review.

What the statistics show

I posted a couple of days ago about homosexuality and had more hits on that article within 24 hours than you’d normally expect. It’s clear that a title containing the words ‘Bible’ and ‘homosexuality’ seems to generate more interest than usual…I’m wondering why! Is it:

• people are confused about what the Bible says about homosexuality so click to get an answer?
• Christians already hold views about it and want to argue with other Christians about it?
• non-Christians have preconceived notions around Christians’ view of homosexuality and are actively looking to find a Christian who actually thinks that ‘God hates fags’?

If you tend not to click on my blog posts but did for that one I’d be genuinely interested why – there’s clearly something in humanity desperate to hear God’s truth around sexuality, I’m just not sure what angle that takes…

Difficult Bible Bits: Homosexuality

I recently wrote this article and have made some people happy and some people angry. Thought I might stick it here too for your joy:

***

Wow. Here’s a way to guarantee that you’re going to get hated by somebody. Probably better to just ignore it, and hope it goes away…or sit on the fence and hope Jesus understands…well, Jesus tells us that being lukewarm is pretty much the worst sin (Revelation 3:16), so we need to know what we believe about homosexuality, and not be ashamed to say it. There are a number of points to consider on this, and if we lose even one of these we’ll be preaching our own message rather than God’s, so see this out to the end.

Old Testament commandments

There are commands in the Old Testament not to practice homosexuality (like Leviticus 18:22), but these are often put in the same passage as commands not to do other things like eat shellfish, eat fruit from trees we planted less than five years ago, or shave. Using Old Testament commandments to instruct us how to live simply won’t cut it.

New Testament commandments

New Testament commandments are a bit easier to run with. God is pretty explicit in terms of what his plan for homosexuality is: ‘Do not be deceived…men who practice homosexuality [will not] inherit the kingdom of God.’ (1 Corinthians 6:9-10). In 1 Timothy 1 men who practice homosexuality are described as ‘lawless and disobedient’ along with murderers, liars, and ‘those who strike their fathers and mothers’. Let’s not pretend this isn’t clear: Practicing homosexuality is a sin, end of story.

So gay people are sinners?

Ah, wait. That’s not quite it. The sin is never described as ‘being gay’, it’s always the action that’s condemned. So, anyone who says ‘gay people are born gay, how could God possibly create them to be something they shouldn’t be’ as if being gay is a spiritual disability is actually half right. Being born gay (whether or not you agree with that phrase) isn’t condemned by the Bible as a sin in itself, providing the gay person is not actively practicing homosexuality.

So gay people aren’t sinners?

Well, the Bible doesn’t say that either. Jesus was pretty hard-line when he told his heterosexual crowd that even looking at a woman lustfully was considered adultery (Matthew 5:28), but in so doing he was effectively telling us that we’re all sinners by nature and by choice. Whether you are naturally attracted to men, women, animals, children, or anything else for that matter, we have allsinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).

So do gay people go to an eternity with Jesus, or to hell?

Our society has made us look at the wrong thing. Culture tells us to stare at our navel and become who God really wants us to be, to grab hold of God’s best for you, to discover who you truly are…but that’s not the Bible’s focus. God would tell us to take our eyes off ourselves, and fix them on Jesus. If you repent of your sin and receive Jesus’ forgiveness through his completed death and resurrection we will be with him forever!

Conclusion

Listen. Everyone struggles with some form of sin. For a gay person that might be that they’re attracted to their own sex, but the only difference between them and a straight person is that a straight person might end up getting married. Society has blown sex up to be this enormous, life-defining activity, but it’s really not! We should love people who are gay, we should preach the gospel of grace to them, and we should accept them into the church as they are. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone – I find it disturbing that churches around the world are accepting of someone with an addiction to gambling, porn, alcohol, or pride providing they’re straight, but that a gay person is immediately cast out.

Let’s be like Jesus and aim to be ridiculed for the fact that we will eat with sinners. Let’s take a radical stance in bringing people to repentance, but never look to point out the speck in others’ eyes before removing our own plank.

The perception of Christianity

Has anyone noticed that the world’s perception of Christianity is pretty much the opposite of what the Bible says? Probably not – I didn’t, until the other day.

Think about it – ask most non-Christians what they think of Christians they know and they’ll likely say that Christians are:

• judgmental
• unwilling to listen to viewpoints they disagree with
• almost schizophrenic in their belief that they know and can talk to this person they can’t see, hear, or touch
• old-fashioned in their views on homosexuality and women

But all of these are simply not true! Christians can’t be judgmental – we recognise that we’re all sinners and have received God’s forgiveness by grace, so by definition we can’t take the higher moral ground. We’re not unwilling to listen to others because we’ve not been Christians our entire lives, in order for us to be converted in the first place we must have not only listened to those we disagree with, but been radically changed by them! And if Christians are displaying symptoms of schizophrenia that’s probably because they are schizophrenic – a Christian absolutely sees, hears, and touches God, but the understanding of that is perhaps not in a physical way. When it comes to Christians’ ‘old-fashioned’ views, give me a break! Views conflicting with the Bible have been around for a long time, and non-Christians refuse to listen to Christians’ actual viewpoints on these slightly controversial topics so are led down their own rabbit holes in terms of what Christians believe.

So what does this mean? Well, non-Christians aren’t getting this from nowhere, you probably actually know people in your church who fit one or more of the descriptions above. The challenge is for Christians to live lives consistent with our beliefs. Let’s not just ‘act like Christians’ on a Sunday, and maybe at prayer meetings or whatever. Let’s act like proper Christians all the time, and let’s show the world what Christianity really looks like.