Thought Life
9Marks, working hand-in-glove with CBMW, just published a stunning testimony of God’s grace.
It’s by Jackie Hill Perry, renowned spoken-word artist for Humble Beast Records, and it tells her journey from lesbianism to complementarianism.
Here’s a selection:
He wanted to watch wrestling; I wanted to watch the Food Network.
As we both raced to grab the remote, in hopes of having first dibs on our entertainment for the evening, I lost the battle. … He was a man, and I was a woman. We were both human, yet very different in how we were built—and I HATED IT.
The “War of the Remote” is a trivial story, but it was for me a very new experience that sparked my journey to complementarianism.
Definitely read the whole thing. Two things come to mind in reading this:
1) This is the kind of story that reminds you of the restorative power of the gospel. It shows that we are not saved to be generic Christian blobs, but are instead redeemed men and redeemed women. The gospel saves us into a framework of discipleship. Men and women share a great deal in terms of the obligations of servanthood. But Christ’s light also opens our eyes to behold the beauty of our God-given bodies, of our God-created roles, of our God-formed callings as men and women.
Complementarity does not speak to joyless duty. It speaks, as Jackie captures, to joyful submission. The scales on our eyes fall off, and we see what our manhood and womanhood is for.
2) This testimony reminds us as well of the transformative power of the gospel. It does not necessarily lead us into marriage. This happened for Jackie; it does not happen for everyone. But as she makes crystal-clear, it causes us to break with our sinful pasts. There’s nothing of them that we hold onto. We walk into the light. We are made new. We are made whole.
The culture will say we can’t change, that it’s impossible, that our sexuality is our identity. Jackie Hill Perry and many, many others beg to differ. Christ is all, and in all.
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(Image: Humble Beast)
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