Deconstructing for Lack of Love
Observations about evangelicals abandoning biblical sexual ethics
A common experience as an elder millennial who grew up surrounded by fundamentalist Christian culture is watching your friends and family and people you grew up with or worked with slowly drift from orthodox views of sexuality toward progressive, more “inclusive” views. In a word, “deconstructing”; sometimes they stop at issues of sexuality and politics, sometimes they go all the way and abandon the faith altogether. But the trajectory roughly looks the same: moving from what they viewed as a strict, narrow-minded faith of their parents to a “liberating,” more expansive and loving faith (or non-faith) of themselves and the larger world. It always breaks my heart a little to see an old friend who has abandoned the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, posting on social media during Pride Month. But I think I understand the logic for some of them, as I’ve heard them speak and change over the past decade. And I share some of their concerns. You see, growing up in fundamentalist or strict evangelical cultures of the 80s and 90s, we were taught a very severe morality. We were raised on legalism. Purity culture (which was not entirely bad, in my opinion, but was excessive and often lacked grace), the Satanic Panic (I remember this), the demonization of “secular music,” the SBC Disney Boycott, and the impeachment of Bill Clinton (which I think was appropriate!) because of his sexual behavior in office all taught us that personal morality mattered, a lot. The World was a frightening place and we had to keep ourselves pure from immorality by holding to a higher standard. With the nomination of Donald Trump in July 2016, something radical started to shift for people I knew. Maybe this isn’t a statistically significant number of people. But there is a group of people I’ve witnessed who seem to have questioned, abandoned, or altered their faith because of the apparent hypocrisy of supporting Donald Trump for the highest office of the land.
This isn’t an article about all the ways Donald Trump is unfit for office or immoral. I’m not interested in making that case. Do your own research. All I’m observing is that for many people I know, something cracked over time as Trump cemented himself as leader not only of our country but also the political and cultural leader of choice for evangelicals. And it’s a simple story, really. When you’ve been told your whole life that character matters and all of a sudden your trusted leaders are promoting someone who lacks character, you lose trust in your leaders. And then you start to wonder if you have been hoodwinked. You start to question everything. You start to wonder if maybe what’s really important for them is actually power and not the love of Christ. Which is a fine question to ask, but who gets to define “love”?
Once you start questioning everything, then the World’s definition of “love” sounds awfully appealing: love is a deep desire in my innermost self which only I can judge unless I am causing some clear, non-consensual harm. The problem with this definition is that “harm” gets immediately defined as “measurable harm,” so anything immeasurable, like spiritual harm, is discounted right out of the gate. We live in a mechanical world where the only thing that counts is if you can measure it. So love is complete acceptance of everyone’s actions so long as science says it doesn’t hurt anyone. And the world becomes flattened down to a materialist, scientific world. Even then, what counts as material evidence of “harm” often gets filtered and judged according to our deepest emotions. But here’s the thing, that sounds comforting when the alternative seems to be an evangelicalism whose understanding of “love” allows them to support a leader who ruthlessly rounds up immigrants, who brazenly lies, and who mocks handicap people. The list could go on.
Hear me: I’m not saying this is a good reason to abandon a biblical view of sexuality. Nor am I saying that this is a good reason to vote Democrat. I have made my stance clear on this and I haven’t changed. I am saying that this logic is compelling to many people. They look at how love is practiced by Christians and they want to make sense of it. So they look for an alternative that appears to be more expansive, kinder, and more compassionate. They desire something that fits the Christian love they were raised with, and that looks more like progressive Christianity or even agnosticism than traditional Christianity.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. I’m not advocating for a squishy “Thirdwayism” that is soft on biblical morality for the sake of appeasing the World. But I am going to argue that our witness matters. Our love matters. Love has direct implications on our politics and our lives. And when our witness does not display God’s love for our neighbors, we should not be surprised when people wonder about the truths of Scripture. The answer is not to abandon Scriptural teachings on sexuality or other core doctrines, nor should it be that we abandon important political and cultural issues like abortion or immigration. But there are ways of advocating for these issues that are compassionate and persuasive and firm, and there are ways that are destructive and focused on power and domination.
In Josef Pieper’s account of love, the definition is, “How wonderful that you exist! How good that you are!” Here we affirm the existence of each person, made in the image of God, without affirming their lifestyle. In fact, we desire that they repent of their sin! That is true love. It requires that we say that some forms of desire—what the World calls “love”—are sinful. The presence of desire, even strong desire which we do not call up but comes from within us does not make it moral or licit. God’s will, manifested in his Word and creational design, makes something moral. So while we affirm the being of every person, we also, in love, invite every person to the joy of redemption in Jesus Christ which involves turning from their sins. Understood this way, Christian love is expansive, kind, and compassionate, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). Notice that in this verse in Peter that the desire is for repentance.
That should be our desire, not just for those outside the visible church, but for those inside the visible church—especially for those inside. Because some who walk as Christians lack love, some revel in the cruelty toward others (as modeled by the current administration). And in defence of this cruelty, they accuse men who show compassion of being “feminine.” Again, when such language is thrown about by professing Christians, is it any wonder that some evangelicals feel an attraction toward a belief system that will embrace them and support them for being compassionate?
So what are we do to? How are we to minister to those who abandon an orthodox view of biblical sexual ethics or Christianity in general? I think we begin not by compromising our faith, but by making a better case for biblical fidelity than many of us heard in the 80s and 90s. And that means not rabidly joining the culture wars, but focusing on those in spiritual need. I also think that regardless of how you vote for prudential reasons, it is important to judge the language and actions of the current administration rightly, opposing what is unjust and unloving and praising what is praiseworthy. In our hyper-partisan world, that will still be seen as supporting what is evil, but I think it is the best we can do. Probably the best thing you can do to help those who are considering leaving the faith or abandoning orthodox views on sexuality is living the truth out in simple, humble, kind, open lives, without condoning or approving the cruelty and evil of this World. It is in embodied relationships where people know you and can see you and love you that they will be witnesses to the love of Christ in your life and the goodness of God’s will. Ultimately, it is up to the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives to convict and bring them back to Christ. But we should be eager to live lives that invite them to seek Christ by walking in a manner worthy of the gospel.
On a totally different note!
Join me next Friday online at the Trinity Forum for a discussion of my book, To Live Well! For more information, see their website!
Look, I assent to a biblical sexual ethic in terms of heterosexual monogamy being the only licit context for sex, and I don't claim to be motivated in deconstruction by the hypocrisy of evangelicals when the real motive precedes that and has to do with both anxiety and desire to sin - so stating those givens, I think a big problem around all of this is that the vision of desire and beauty on a visceral and abstract and intrinsic level that the church presents seems to lack a compelling, satisfying picture of eternal fulfillment. You can't really set up an aesthetic contrast between the wholesome and the lascivious and then expect the argument that one is better, or that one is deadly, to remove the problem of what seems like eternal renunciation of something intangible yet very definitively not aesthetically fungible.
I can't quite explain how, which perhaps is an indication my thinking doesn't make sense, but this feels like a component of what leads inevitably, at least on an emotionally intuitive level to a sense that Christianity has to be either a turn or burn threat where one who recognizes their own unwillingness becomes hopeless in the face of their own choice, or it resolves into a kind of cruciform universalism where the willingness to turn toward God ultimately leads to all souls coming to an accurate perspective that sees how actually no joy is excluded or lost.