statistically speaking...

Seventeen percent of evangelical women between the ages of 15 and 44 have had sex with another woman. 

This sentence opened the short article that I read in the recent Christianity Today magazine. They cited recent data gathered by the CDC and analyzed by a sociology professor at Grove City College.

The article goes on to share other fairly dismal statistics, but none that should be surprising to us if we have at all taken a gander at the cultural landscape.

How have we gotten to the place where 55% of women and 45% of men under age forty five, and identifying as evangelical Christians, are affirming of same sex sexual relationships?

I would like to humbly assert a couple reasons I see fueling these stats.

First, we have failed to articulate good, sound, and lifegiving doctrine in a way that invites people into a relationship with God. We’ve been the church of the “no”, “don’t do that”, “God doesn’t condone that”. This is not consistent with the way that God communicates in the scriptures. Jesus was often conveying hard truth to people, but somehow managed to still draw them towards Himself. Think about the woman at the well. She runs away proclaiming that Jesus had told her “everything” about herself- and a lot of it wasn’t that attractive. Yet she runs to tell the whole town. The same town that she was avoiding by coming to the well in the heat of the midday sun.

We must see, understand, and articulate winsomely the story of the King who wants a relationship with us. The King who wants to marry us as His bride and who sacrifices everything to pay a costly price in order to make a way.

We must do this work. Then we must train those coming after us. 

Live our lives like it is really the crazy good news!

Alongside our failure to understand and articulate doctrine well, we have failed to understand people. We all long for intimacy, relational intimacy. Ultimately this longing will only be fulfilled in eternity with Christ, but He gives us people here to give us a taste of that depth.

Satan also recognizes that we desperately long for relationships, close attachment, and belonging. And like the liar that he is, he offers a counterfeit around every corner. It’s certainly not accidental that pornographic images surround us and even the most benign products are sold by sexualizing them. We’ve held up marriage as the solution for loneliness and connection, and then become angry when our culture finds their needs met in same sex relationships. 

Instead of connecting these legitimate needs for community and for intimacy to our need for a relationship with the Father, we condemn the actions and barely scratch the surface of understanding what is fueling them.

I would love to see us return humbly to the Father and ask Him to reveal His beautiful plan for marriage, for relationships, for connection. That He would help us see His design echoed throughout the entirety of the Bible. Marriage here on earth is a signpost pointing us to the eventual eternal marriage of the church with Christ.

I would love to see us acknowledge the normal needs, God created desires, in the folks around us. Then to be able to share how those needs reveal our need for a Savior, for a Father, for the eternal.

I look around and see teens and young adults crying out.

I pray for a fleet of adults equipped to love them well and offer real hope.

The world has copious counterfeits, but we have the real deal.

Drop me a note if any of this resonates with you- let’s grab a soda and walk together in the growing!