it's been a while...

It’s been a while since I have posted and I wanted to rectify that. You see, a while back I wrote a post and my husband said, “don’t you think you need a little more background before launching in”?

I honestly thought, “nope”.

After all, we’ve been thinking together around the topic of gender for most of the spring. We talked about creation, specifically the creation of two sexually different beings. These two were created to walk and live in harmony with God their creator. He knew them, He walked with them daily, and He loved them. We also talked about how they decided to follow their own path instead of their creator’s, to knowingly choose against His leading for them.

I shared some of my conclusions from Genesis, and we began to talk terminology.

My desire is that we reason well from the scriptures, and form our conclusions based on God’s word. Then, out of that understanding, we move towards people in love.

But Shawn, my husband, rarely leads me astray. So I’ve been pondering. And through this month of pondering and praying, I’ve also been leading the teens from my church through a curriculum created to develop sexual integrity in youth entitled Christian Sexuality. It’s been awesome for discussion and content.

For the last three weeks, I’ve began and ended our times together with two big thoughts, two questions: 

“Who is your authority today?” and “Today, in your specific circumstance, do you believe that God is good?”

To me, these two questions either become our starting point in the discussion of our sexual and gender ethic. Or they get answered secondly when we form our ethics outside of them.

We are going to unpack these in the next two weeks, but I’d love for you to do some thinking for yourself prior to then!

How does authority work in your life? Would you say that you look to the authority of the Holy Spirit and to scripture before your own reasoning or scripture? What about when your reasoning is in conflict with scripture? Are you cognisant of submitting to an authority daily in your thoughts, attitudes, and actions?

How is God’s goodness seen through your lense? Think about hardship and pain in your own life or that of a loved one. What about societally in relationship to racial tension, politics, and injustice? Is God good, all of the time?

I believe that if we do not start the discussion firmly submitting to His authority ( in our lives, thoughts, and doctrines) and believing in His absolute goodness and good intentions towards us and those all around us, it will tremendously impact the conclusions that we form. It will impact our doctrine. It will impact the ways that we love people, and what we deem as loving.

Spend some time pondering and we will chat again next week!

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