“Jesus was this loving individual, he didn’t exclude people because they’re different…”

Sometimes, people will appeal to the silence of Jesus on a sexual issue as proof of his approval. The argument is made that Jesus must be for something unless he clearly states otherwise. But, Jesus’ apparent silence on all kinds of sexual sin including rape, incest, or pedophilia does not make him a proponent of those things. It simply confirms those issues were settled among the Jewish people. Jesus was no coward when it came to speaking up in order to rattle conventional thinking and effect change. He was even crucified for not recanting of things he’d said. If he was silent, it was because he saw no need to challenge the position his listeners already held because it was well established. What Jesus taught was in alignment with Old Testament teaching on sexuality. It is clear that this consistent message continued past Jesus throughout the rest of the New Testament in blunt passages like Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10. Particularly interesting are 2 Peter 2:6-10 and Jude 7.  The first was penned by Peter, close friend of Jesus and the leader of his inner circle of followers. The second was written by Jude the brother of Jesus.

The Bible is a collection of writings that Christians have historically held to be uniquely inspired by God. We believe that God has spoken in these specific writings and given them an eternal value that transcends the circumstances in which they were written and passed down. Simply put, the Bible is not an old book that is outdated but rather a timeless book that is always timely. We are not to change the Bible. The Bible is meant to change us. Christians believe that we will at times disagree with what it says, and when we do we are in error. At the bedrock, Christianity is about submitting to an authority outside of oneself. This is a radical move in a culture that does not submit to any authority beyond the self.

We believe that when the Bible speaks it is actually God perfectly and authoritatively speaking through human authors. And because we accept the Bible as our authority on sexuality, and every other area of life, we strive to act on what it says. It is not surprising that we rely so consistently on the book. Our goal is to wholeheartedly live according to its truths. We do not read it as if it contains a secret that no one else can figure out. We believe that its message is plain for all honest readers. We also do not read it ignorant of the trends of our society and values of our neighbors. Instead we ask, “What did it mean back then—and what does it say to us now?

The opening pages of the Bible say that at creation God made everything “very good”. The Bible also says that while God made humanity upright, we have gone crooked chasing many schemes (Ecclesiastes 7:29). When God was done, everything was good, not bad. There was only life, not death. Then sin entered the world, with the result that everyone and everything was infected and affected. Nothing is the way it is supposed to be. What is now normal is in fact abnormal.

The average non-Christian assumes the world can get brighter, but the average Christian assumes the world can only get darker. The non-Christian view of the world is that things are normative and improving. The Christian view is that things are abnormal and declining. We do not believe that the world is the way that it is supposed to be. We do not hold that the world is getting better. We believe that the world stands opposed to God in a state of rebellion. All of us at the core of who we are reflect the glory of God’s handiwork but the brokenness that happened when Adam and Eve willfully sinned and all of humankind gleefully followed.