a foreign language...

I had the incredible blessing of visiting NW China a while back. An area not prone to tourists, I was visiting long time friends and spending a week doing their ‘normal life’.

Part of living in China meant that they could not host foreign guests. So that meant time for me spent in a local hostel. For someone who sees most of life as a ‘field trip’, this was incredible!

People from all around the globe, some speaking some English, but often not. 

One of the young women that I shared a dorm style room with did not speak much English. We gestured, used simple words, drew pictures, and learned bits and pieces about each other during the week that we became roommates!

I had randomly brought a packable game called Spot It, which involved competing to match like pictures. It was perfect! We needed zero words, but could communicate and enjoy each other’s company! And those pictures also lent to more understanding of each other. I left  her with the game so she could invite other “English speakers” to play!

The easy path would have been to nod and smile politely once we realized that we spoke no common language. It took work to learn that she was interviewing at a local secondary school and hoped to gain admittance. My friends taught me a couple words in the local language that helped as well. But deciding that it was worth the work to communicate was a good, and I believe Christ imitating, decision on my part.

Yesterday, Easter, is a day we celebrate Christ’s rising from the dead, defeating death and the grave. But there would be nothing to celebrate if He had not made the choice to ‘move into our neighborhood’, to come and live among us, to speak the local language.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about the need for us to come to understand and be able to use some of the current gender terminology.  I’ve had the chance to sit since writing that with several friends and discuss thoughts. There are good reasons to think carefully about the words that we use to describe ourselves and others.

My husband is always careful to remind me that words have meaning and that I was to choose carefully what I am agreeing to in a given conversation. What I’m ‘yoking up with’. Gender and sexuality language can be like that. We can often feel like if we use current cultural language we are giving implicit approval to how someone is describing themselves.

I don’t see it that way.

Just like the pictures in the Spot It game, the various words people use today as descriptors are pictures. Pictures of how they see themselves. For some, this picture is the largest way they would describe themselves, for others it’s just a piece of who they are.

For some, as followers of Christ, it’s a shorthand way of describing their experience of their gender and/or sexuality. For others, it’s a word loaded with personal identity. And a host of thoughts in between.

In reading Mark Yarhouse’s new book, Emerging Gender Identities, he offers a cool description of this language that I thought was worth quoting. 

“What does it mean to learn the foreign language of emerging gender identities?

What does it mean to function as a translator of this language in the church?

What does it look like to become a student of culture without internalizing every current cultural narrative as absolute truth?

We are not suggesting that the newly developed language is “correct” or that you should adopt a new doctrinal position in response to changing language. Rather, we suggest that you become familiar with the relevant language so that you can be conversant with the people with whom you engage.”

Loving others is the goal. Jesus gives us only two goals: Love God and love others. 

For me, part of loving those around me has been to understand and become more fluent in the language that they speak.

It’s also been crucial to know truth well, and speak it in relevant ways.

If you’ve read much of what I’ve written, you’ve heard me say ‘we need a fleet of believing adults equipped to walk alongside teens navigating significant questions in their lives- especially questions of gender and sexuality’. 

Perhaps you are not called to be among that fleet of Jesus loving adults- we are all called differently.

We are in the midst of a cultural moment where lies about gender, creation, and God’s intent for people are swaying multitudes of youth people. Culture has a ready answer for them. My prayer is that the  church- the ‘Big C’ church as well as my home church- will rise up with truth. I so long to see us engage in this moment, to see us speaking intelligibly, lovingly, winsomely, attractively, about God’s beautiful plan for gender and sexuality. 

Currently- we aren’t doing a stellar job, in my opinion, which hopefully comes from a humble place. It will take work, determination, and  decision to act.

Wherever you land on what language you believe is good to use, remember that loving people is the goal. Beloved, image bearing people. Many of them need a guide that will walk alongside them the next decade as they pray and sort through their feelings. Language is not essential for communication as I learned in the hostel in China. But it is an easy tool to create the space to build relationships. 

Jesus repeatedly sought out, pursued, and entered into relationships with those who had been discarded by the society around Him. We must imitate Him in this.

I do not think that I can completely comprehend what was going through the disciples minds’ when they came upon Jesus conversing with The Woman at the Well. He was breaking all their cultural and religious norms. It had to completely stun them. But perhaps they were used to His outrageous behavior with people that others’ didn’t consider worth their time.

I want that. I want to imitate Him in that. However that works in each unique situation. 

Carefully listening to the Holy Spirit, while moving towards people.

I also want this posture for the church- a leaning in.

A moving towards. 

Taking the first step towards.

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