Mystery

Listen. I’m not coming for your lifestyle, but I might be coming for how you think about your lifestyle.

I’ve been married for almost 12 years and I am STILL annoyed at how the evangelical church treats sexuality and marital status. Nobody is allowed to just be themselves. They have to always be working to fit into some very narrow lanes of what it looks like to follow Jesus in regards to your sexuality. If you’re single, that lane is literally just trying to get married. There’s not a lot of other purposes that you should be pursuing with fervor. If you’re married, you should be trying to have as many children as you can as soon as possible. The problem isn’t with marriage, children, or deeply desiring those things. It’s the place that the evangelical church has led us to give them in our lives.

And, as is often the case, I think that we’ve taken a good thing, marriage and family, and turned it into an ultimate thing: the purpose and goal of our lives. And, so, we reject and refuse to accept anyone who doesn’t get into the right lane and stay there.

We use the Bible to back up our disdain for those who live together before marriage. We think that, in order to adhere to Biblical Christianity, we have to utterly disregard those who are outside of the specific letter of what is written in Scripture. We say that, not only can they not come to church, but they cannot follow Jesus at all. Because they have this one thing “wrong” with their lifestyle, we’ve pushed them to the outside.

Can I ask you a question? What are you doing that’s explicitly prohibited in the Bible? Lying? Stealing? Cheating? Extorting? Abusing others in one way or another?

What are you NOT doing that’s explicitly commanded in the Bible? Welcoming the lowest, the outcast, the least of these into your home? Feeding the hungry? Visiting prisoners? Honoring the dignity of all people and all of creation?

My point is, I hope, clear: nobody is doing this perfectly. Everyone is doing something they ought not to do. Everyone is not doing something that they ought to do. So, what is the deal with making such a big deal about our sexuality and lifestyle choice and ignoring so much else?

Identity.

Idolatry.

Ignorance.

For better or for worse, the evangelical church has placed undue emphasis on our sexualities. Purity culture did this and the mainstream culture retaliated by equally emphasizing sexualities that were not traditionally Biblical. So, through the leadership of the American evangelical church, the sexuality of an individual has become the loudest and most pronounced part of western identity. 

Inthe evangelical church, the only sexuality that is accepted is heterosexual. In that culture, if you want to be the “best” kind of Christian, then you should get married early and have children often. This is the idol: heterosexual marriages with no problems, quiet wives, and lots of children. Anyone else might be in the Kingdom of God, but they are certainly missing out. In the evangelical mind, there is nothing better than this expression of humanity. Those who have written the rules for the culture love their own lifestyle so much that they cannot see that it might not be for everyone. They are not ready to have a conversation about how God might not want it for everyone.

It’s really about control. If we all agree on a lifestyle, then it’s easier to police who is right and who is wrong, who is in and who is out. It’s easier to make rules around how we should live, handle problems, and treat everyone who doesn’t live like us.

And, listen, I get it. I love to know what the rules and expectations are at all times. I want to know what you want from me so that I can please you and avoid getting yelled at. I like to succeed and, generally, do what I’m supposed to do. Some of this is a personal problem. I deeply crave the approval of others because I wasn’t approved of as a child. However, I think that this is a more common sentiment than we may realize. If you follow all the rules and check all the boxes, then you know that you’re in. 

There’s no question about whether or not you’ll go to heaven.

There’s no doubt about whether or not God loves you.

There’s no way that you could be doing the wrong thing.

And there’s certainly no mystery, no room for wonder, no need for faith.

This is my really big problem with the emphasis, specifically, on sexuality and lifestyle choices within evangelicalism. If you’re just making up a list of rules so that you can feel good about your faith, then do you have faith at all? Don’t you just have another culture and society just like every other culture and society ever created by humanity with its own rules about who is in and who is out?

God is not a God of rules.

I’ll say it again for the white dude in the back who isn’t listening anyway: GOD IS NOT A GOD OF RULES.

God is a God of love, mystery, wonder. He doesn’t want slaves or automatons. He doesn’t want us all to be the same. If he did, he would have made us all the same, but he certainly didn’t do that. God wants us to trust him. That was the foundation of the world when it was created: trust between God and humanity because the world was good and God made the good world and put his very good people in it to live, move, and have their being. To trust him.

When you turn God into a God of rules and the Bible into a “road map for your life”, then you miss out on talking to God day in and day out and asking him where the good way is that you should walk in. You miss out on seeing him do things in unexpected ways and getting to love people who you wouldn’t think fit into his Kingdom at first glance. You miss the beauty, the wonder, the mystery, the stunning glory of it all. And you turn his living word into a textbook or tome to study and suss out all the “hidden” meaning. You can’t enjoy the pur poetry and raw humanity of the Psalms anymore because you’re too busy trying to figure out what they’re trying to teach you about your future spouse or how you should train your children.

So, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that having children is your highest calling. Don’t believe a preacher who tells you that your spouse is out there waiting if you just pray hard enough and keep yourself pure enough. Don’t buy into a culture of rules that questions the righteousness of another because they won’t follow the rules created by that culture.

God is not a God of rules. God is not a God of “us vs. them”. He’s a God of mystery. He’s a God of belonging. He made a freaking platypus. And supernovas. And trees that flower in the springtime. He loves beauty and laughter and rainbows and sun on the leaves. He loves you and me and the guy down the street without a home. And he wants us all, every last one, to trust him, not the rules.