In 2012, our church had a panel discussion addressing questions about marriage, dating, and sexuality from a biblical perspective.  Here are my answers.

QUESTION: Is dating without marriage in mind ok? What is the purpose of dating and marriage?

Let me answer the last questions first. Marriage is the joining of a husband and wife in the most intimate of human relationships, the ideal context for childrearing, and the ideal setting to depict the love, commitment, and affection of Christ for His church.

First of all, it’s worth noting that dating is not found anywhere in the Bible, in fact the norm there is for the parents to arrange the marriages of their children – which by the way I think is a brilliant idea – although my two teenage daughters might disagree. In all of scripture, the closest thing we find to dating is in the Samson account, and we all know how miserably that turned out!

Seriously though, dating is the reality in our culture. So what is the purpose of dating?
For those seeking to find a husband or wife, dating – or courtship – provides opportunities to learn about the character, personality, and interests of the other person, which are essential things to know when selecting a spouse.

So is dating without marriage in mind ok? Depends what you mean by dating. If it means going out on occasional dates as friends, fine. But I say dating is NOT OK in at least the following five circumstances:
• If it’s Recreational Dating, using the other person for your own immediate satisfaction.
• If it involves any kind of sexual intimacy.
• If it isolates the two of you from healthy interaction with family and friends.
• If having a boyfriend or girlfriend is merely a way to gain or retain social status.
• If it strings the other person along in an undefined, nebulous, pseudo-commitment.

QUESTION: What are some practical steps for living out a Biblical view of sexuality?

The only proper context for sexual expression is within marriage. This is God’s gracious design as a way for husbands and wives to experience great intimacy and mutual delight. Those who are married should make the pursuit of intimacy – including sexual intimacy — a priority in ways that bring mutual satisfaction. This is biblical. See 1 Cor 7.

Since sexual expression has no proper place outside of marriage, this creates a problem for those who aren’t married. What do Christ-following singles do with the reality that they have raging hormones and sexual desires, but don’t have marriage as a way to express them? This is an important question.

The first step is to bring these things to God. This doesn’t just apply to sexual appetites, we must do this with any illegitimate craving, temptation, anxiety, frustration, unmet expectation, or desire that can’t be righteously fulfilled – we must surrender them to God.

The second step is to make choices that will reduce our sexual appetites. Fred Stoeker uses the illustration of our sex drive being like a Sumo wrestler. If you feed the Sumo wrestler, it will conquer you. If you starve it, you will conquer it. So what can you do to reduce your sexual frustrations?

• Stop viewing pornography. Statistically speaking, hundreds of you struggle with this – guys mostly, but also girls. It doesn’t satisfy, it leaves you empty, it takes more and more to thrill you, but you feel less and less satisfied and more and more helpless. Porn gives you a false idea that sexuality is about taking and consuming, rather than giving and serving the way God designed sex in marriage. No women could ever live up to the expectation of porn. It’s all about you, but there’s nothing real about it. Enough is enough. How about getting victory over this starting today? 1. Secret sins never go away. 2. Tell me or someone who you can make yourself accountable to. 3. Read “Closing the Window” by Tim Chester.
• By the way, women, romance novels have been called emotional pornography. Are you meeting unfulfilled desires by living in a fantasy world of literature. Are you creating expectations and desires that no real man could live up to? Think about it.
• Entertainment. Our culture is sex saturated. What kind of sexual messages are you exposing yourself to through movies, tv, music, jokes with the boys. How about changing what you expose yourself to?
• Modest dress. Both guys and girls. Dress in a way that doesn’t feed someone else’s Sumo wrestler.

QUESTION. If someone has a very detailed sexual past, how do they fully move forward in Christ’s forgiveness and grace?

Sexual sin naturally produces much embarrassment, guilt and shame. Satan, the great “Accuser of the Brethren” in Rev 12:10, would want to keep us perpetually enslaved by this guilt and shame, sidelining us from abundant living. We wrongly think God must have lost His patience, resulting in a false sense of being alienated from Him. Ironically this perceived wall between us and God puts us in a much worse condition than the sexual sin itself. When such debilitating thoughts arise, keep in mind these scriptural truths:
• If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). Do you believe this? Will you accept His cleansing?
• While we were his enemies, Christ reconciled us to Himself (Rom 5:10). He loved you as an enemy. Couldn’t He love you despite sexual weaknesses? Yes!
• If he could forgive the blatant in-your-face sins of the soldiers who were nailing Him to the cross (Luke 23:34), then couldn’t he forgive you for your sexual sins? Yes!
• Nothing can separate you from the love of God (Rom 8:38-39).
• If God can remove your sins as far away as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12) why do you keep them near at hand?
• If you were dead in your trespasses and sins before God’s grace rescued you (Eph 2:1-10) why not divert your attention away from your deadness and trust Him to make you “alive in Christ” now?
• Are you living in the Room of Good Intentions or in the Room of Grace?

On our Winter Retreat this weekend, our teaching theme presented the “Sacred Pathways” described in the book by the same name by Gary Thomas. I’m going to summarize the book here so others will know what we talked about–I think every believer would benefit spiritually by learning the insights presented in this book.
So here’s a quick overview to clue you in. Gary Thomas is one of my very favorite authors. He is, a marvelous church historian who gleans spiritual gems from the forefathers of our faith and puts them in easy to understand language. In his historical research, he has identified nine spiritual “temperaments” or ways that people are wired to best love and connect with God. Knowing how you’re wired to worship helps you experience God in more meaningful ways. The nine pathways are

• The NATURALIST — worships God through experiencing God’s creation
• The SENSATE— worships God through the five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, & taste)
• The ENTHUSIAST — worships God expressively through joyful passion and expectation.
• The INTELLECTUAL— worships God by studying Truth and establishing firm beliefs.
• The TRADITIONALIST— worships God by enjoying historic practices of the church, symbols, creeds, or hymns.
• The ASCETIC— worships God by living a life of simplicity, solitude, and self-denial.
• The CONTEMPLATIVE— worships God by meditating on an intimate, loving, personal relationship with Him.
• The CAREGIVER — worships God by loving and serving others.
• The ACTIVIST— worships God by making efforts to change the world.

All the “pathways” are valid and necessary in the church. We’ll each have several that are dominant–and knowing that helps us to avoid judging others’ ways of worshiping. It also helps to know that it’s ok for me to worship in a way that may be different from others. It’s also useful to try other pathways to expereince God in new ways. During the retreat after presenting each pathway in detail we had a time to experience each one (nature prayer walks, contemplation, prayer for each other, packaging meals for Kids Against Hunger, etc.)

Everyone received a copy of Sacred Pathways. I’d recommend eveyone get a copy and take the assessment. I have a case of books if anyone’s interested in purchasing one for $10.
By the way, in case you’re wondering about my pathway mix–I’m an Ascetic, Contemplative, Intellectual, who’s becoming more and more of a Traditionalist!

Last Sunday was the series finale for LOST and before too much time goes by I want to write my reflections about it.  I must admit that I have been a Lost addict for the past two years, when a friend loaned me the first two seasons on DVD.  After that we Forstroms (minus Cindy) found ourselves utterly captivated.

We don’t have tv service so we’ve watched seasons 3-6 on abc.com.  It became our Wednesday-night-after-youth-group tradition and the girls and I had great times together watching it together.  We enjoyed trying to figure out the unexplained mysteries and found the character development extremely interesting.  There seemed to be a lot of religious and mythological symbolism, which made us curious about where the show was heading.

THINGS I’M GLAD ABOUT.

• Experiencing this with my girls.  It was like a weekly “Daddy Date” and it gave us a lot of time together and ongoing conversations about where the storyline was going.  I’ll never regret the time spent with them.  We’d stay up as late as we needed to to have our weekly LOST experience together.  Homework always took a back seat to LOST!
• I was captivated by the complexity of the storytelling, the beautiful scenery, the haunting musical score, the compelling characters, and the intrigue of the mysterious storyline. 
• I thoroughly enjoyed having conversations about it with other friends and co-workers who were likewise addicted to the show.  It was a lot of fun trying to figure out what this-or-that meant or where that came from, or what ever happened to so-and-so. 
• There was so much to remember and try to unwravel.  Right to the end we kept wondering who were the good guys and who were the bad guys and who was behind it all. That made it especially intriguing and fun.

THE FINALE

Part of the weekly enjoyment of the mystery was my assumption that — in the end — the mysteries would be explainable and have meaning.  I was somewhat disappointed to find that the finale left many of the questions unanswered (which I somewhat expected, since there were so many loose ends).  But my real disappointment was to discover that many of the show’s unexplained mysteries were irrelevant in the end anyways.  It didn’t really matter who the good and bad guys were.  It didn’t really matter who died, who’s name was on the wall, who took over Jacob’s job as the “island keeper”, who travelled through time, who destroyed the submarine, who escaped on the airplane, who stayed behind, whether the island sank or time-shifted, who lived-together or died-alone, who pushed a button every 108 minutes, who bought a fried chicken franchise, who rode in a wheelchair, etc.   Not much of what happened during the 121 episodes seemed to matter much in the end.  At the end of the finale all the characters mysteriously converged together in some alternate-reality in an ecumenical churchlike building and they were all at peace.  In the end the only relevant thing seemed to be how they had bonded with each other during their experiences.   This existentialist ending left me feeling strung along or duped.  I felt unsatisfied.

The ending also made me wonder about some things.

THINGS I’M QUESTIONING. 

• Whether I would have watched the show had I known the mysteries were going to be largely unanswered and irrelevant anyways.
• If spending 100 hours watching Lost was good stewardship of my time.  
• If I became desensitized to the depictions of sin in the show (language, immorality, torture, murder, etc.), justifying them because I thought the show would end with a beneficial “moral to the story.”
• Whether my passion for LOST was at times greater than my passion for God.  Beyond the 100 hours of the show I certainly spend many more hours contemplating Lost’s mysteries and talking about it.
• What is it about LOST that appealed to me so much and kept me so hooked?  Was it the quest for the mysteries’ answers (which mostly never came anyways)?  Was it the character development (which actually worked backwards so that in the end everyone’s characters melded into emotionless melancholy in some alternate-reality world)?
• If I’d have known the ending at the beginning would I have been so captivated by it?

Will I spend another hundred hours and watch the whole series again?  This one I can answer:  No.

Recently, our church staff has being encouraged to improve our fitness. As an incentive in January, we were challenged to try to increase our fitness times over the previous month, with a contest thrown in — a prize going to the person with the most minutes logged!

Since I’ve fallen in love with fitness again over the past 15 months this was an extra excuse to do what comes naturally. Call me crazy, but there are few things I enjoy more than going to the rec center and running 13 miles or climbing 80 flights of stairs. Maybe it’s a “runner’s high” or something, but cardio fitness has definitely become my drug of choice.

And New Covenant’s fitness contest came at a perfect time — January wasn’t as busy as other months and physically I’ve rarely felt healthier. Each day I logged my fitness minutes and at the end of the month I discovered to my delight that I had logged a whopping total of 1,120 minutes! I had run the equivalent of almost 5 marathons during January! I figured out that it totaled 36 minutes a day average.

I was feeling pretty smug about my accomplishment as well as my chances for winning “the prize” until it suddenly occurred to me how comparatively little time I had spent with God over that same time period. My excitement about and commitment for fitness had far exceeded my excitement and commitment for the Lord. Compared to the 36 minutes a day I spent working out, I wondered how many actual minutes per day I had spent alone with God in prayer and Bible reading. Was it even 10? Not likely.

I was convicted. Isn’t this idolatry? Isn’t this a violation of the first of the Ten Commandments? Isn’t this the sin of the Church in Ephesus in Revelation 2:4 when they left their “first love?” Wouldn’t it be considered a cosmic insult to be bounding out of bed early in the morning to run 6 miles while leaving my Bible on my bedstand? Yes on all accounts.

Because of this realization, I’ve made some immediate changes.

Apologize to God for my neglect of Him last month.

Stop obsessing over physical fitness. It’s good and important, but not THAT important. Certainly the quality of my personal relationship with God is WAY more important than the shape or condition of my body.

Let the contest be for those who really do need incentive for working out. I obviously don’t.

Start logging my quiet time minutes — not to make my walk with God a legalistic chore, but rather to give me a point of comparison between my physical and spiritual fitness. That way I’ll have an objective measurement of how much of my life was devoted to each. Then I will be able to honestly evaluate how I’m doing at putting first things first.

One of our Sr. High girls, Rebekah, called me last night to ask what we should do about Fred Phelps coming to town today (Friday). It was the first I’d heard about it, and I was so glad she called. That phone call has catapulted me into action (and I’m not normally an activist!)

Most of you know that Fred Phelps is the pastor of Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS. He is known for his protests and hateful signs aimed at gays in particular, but also anything related to America, patriotism, or the military. “God hates fags” is his famous slogan.

According to his website, his group is planning on protesting here in Cedar Rapids later today, Jan 15th at 6:45 pm! It will happen at Theatre Cedar Rapids to protest the opening performance of “The Laramie Project,” a play about local reactions to the 1998 Matthew Shephard murder. (Shephard was gay and his death was nationally considered to be a “hate crime.”)

According to this girl and another teen I talked to last night, students at school have been talking about the upcoming protest with disgust toward Phelps in particular (as they should), but also toward Christianity in general (which deeply saddens me).

Part of me is sad about it, but the bigger part of me is mad. Because he labels himself a “Christian” and throws out-of-context Bible verses around as weapons, Phelps’ antics work against all that we’re trying to do to reach our community, i.e. Prayer, Care, Share. He does not represent authentic Christianity — he draws attention to himself by condemning others, making a spectacle of himself before the hungry media, and garnering lots of attention in the process.

In contrast, we Christians are called to love people unconditionally, sacrificially, and with humility, offering grace, kindness, forgiveness, and blessing to all — even our enemies. Rather than approach people who are different than us with condemnation, we are to first introduce them to Jesus and then allow Him to change whatever may need changing. That’s the biblical pattern we see with Zaccheaus, Paul, Peter, Matthew, the woman at the well, etc.

WHAT TO DO? So back to this teen’s question — what should we do about the upcoming Fred Phelps protest circus? What I wish we’d all do is just ignore him entirely. Taking away the counter-protests and the subsequent media attention would be quickest way to take the wind out of his sails and end these ridiculous protests of his. But such blatant hate is so hard to ignore and it’s clear that it’s not going to happen in this case. The “counter protesters” [which likely includes agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers, gay supporters, concerned citizens, etc] are planning a peaceful “Wall of Angels” protest to show their disdain for Westboro’s hateful actions. My friend Andy The Atheist just Facebooked me saying he expects hundreds of such protesters to show up.

What about Christians specifically? What ought we do? Something or nothing? Let’s think this through.

NOTHING: This is the easy option. But what if only non-Christian “counter protesters” show up to demonstrate their opposition? What would we be communicating to them and to the watching world if true Christians remained completely silent about Fred Phelps? Might they think we agree with him and his tactics? Yes. I think that to do nothing communicates that we’re ok with Fred misrepresenting the Christianity that we hold so dear — it would say that his distortion doesn’t really bother us all that much.

SOMETHING: This option is not the easy one. What if a respectable number of Christians would come and stand side by side with our “fellow protesting” friends to show our shared disapproval of Westboro’s hate. What would that communicate? They’ll learn that true Christians are quick to take a stand against hate and who knows, perhaps we’ll even have opportunities for some great conversations with others who are there. I know some would fear that by doing so we’ll be perceived as sharing all the values of the other protesters. It’s a valid concern — communicating what Christianity really is is the issue here after all. So to make our intentions clear I’m suggesting that we Christians who have been mis-portrayed could all hold signs that simply say “GOD IS LOVE 1 John 4:8” to set the record straight.

CLOSING THOUGHT. The issue here is not about the right- or wrong-ness of homosexuality. People may have different opinions on that topic. The issue at stake tonight is the good name of Christianity and how Christians should treat people. By standing in opposition to Fred Phelps, we go on record that we oppose his posture of hate. That’s the issue here.

THE INVITATION. I’m inviting you to join me in joining the “Wall of Angels” tonight. The time is 6:45-7:30 pm on the sidewalk by the Theatre Cedar Rapids temporary building by Lindale Mall (the 1st Ave side across from Home Depot). Note: the mall won’t let us stand on the mall grounds so we’ll have to stay on the sidewalk along 1st Ave.

Let’s plan to meet as a group in the Home Depot parking lot at 6:30. I’ll have my bright orange striped van there as a landmark meeting spot so everyone can find our group. I’ll also have some “God is Love – 1 John 4:8” signs, but bring your own if you can. Invite your families, friends, people from other churches, etc. I’m hoping we’ll have a respectable turnout! We should be done at 7:30 and again my bright orange striped van can be a meeting spot for people getting rides.

Time is short, so please spread the word if this sounds good to you!

THE REPORT.

I was pleased that about 75 Christians showed up at the rally holding signs saying “God is Love – 1 John 4:8.” The total crowd was approximately 400 (my guess) so I’d say we had a respectable turnout. (Especially when you consider that my blog post’s “call to action” only went out 12 hours before the event. The other protesters started theirs 2 full days ahead of time.)

Fred Phelps and his crew didn’t show up to our disappointment, but it really didn’t matter because we weren’t there to attempt to address him personally, we were there to stand up against what he represents — hate towards others. It is also worth noting that there was not even one person holding up Phelpsy signs, indicating that such hateful actions haven’t pervaded our community.

There was an interesting feeling of unity and camaraderie as we mingled amongst the protesters. My friend, Andy the Atheist made it a point to come over and greet our group of Christ-followers, glad we were there. Fred Phelps, even in his absence, brought together atheists, agnostics, liberals, gay rights folks, and conservative, evangelical Christians. How often does that happen!

In hindsight, I think it speaks well that so many of us evangelicals were involved in this historic event. From now on we’ll be able to proudly say that churches including ours were right there on the front lines in opposition to the Fred Phelps ideology (we even had four of our pastors there!) I trust that this will open doors of communication with spiritual seekers. From now on, when Fred Phelps makes the national news our community will say, “Thank goodness, our local churches are not like that!”

We removed a barrier to the gospel last night and I’m glad to have been a part of it.

disclaimer: like every post on my blog, the views expressed here do not represent those of ncbc or my role as the youth pastor. They represent my views alone.

At the “sponsor hunt at the mall” just before New Year’s I wore an outlandish disguise which included a flashy silver-and-black gangster-looking sleeveless hoodie. One of the girls in the youth group liked it and asked to buy it afterward.

This past Sunday I thought it would be funny to wear this hoodie to church and then give it to the girl afterward. My family didn’t think it was so funny, but I persisted and wore it anyways as we sat in the front row. When it came time for the offering I suddenly remembered that I had agreed to fill in as an usher and so I began to stand up to do my duty. Realizing I had the silly hoodie on and that I was in the front row I found myself in an awkward situation. My family was justifiably mortified and tried to get me to take it off quickly, but I resisted, concluding that it would draw more attention to it if I proceeded to take it off than just to leave it on and pretend nothing was wrong.

My family’s adverse reaction bothered me at first — until I began to look inward. This week it has made me reflect on the things that I do and my motivation in doing them. At that moment in the pew maybe my motivation was sincerely to draw less attention to my wardrobe malfunction. Or maybe I was just being stubborn — not wanting to admit to an error in my judgment. Or maybe I wanted the extra attention that I inwardly knew would result from wearing such a getup while passing the plate. I suspect the latter is the closest to the truth.

This internal conversation with myself has also made me think about other things I do to draw attention to myself. I enjoy highlighting my extremeness, resilience, creativity, outlandishness, asceticism, etc. These are not necessarily bad things — in fact most are admirable qualities — but it’s my craving to be known as such that is the issue here.

I’ve concluded that the word for this particular sin of mine is Pride. It’s one of the hidden sins that no one can see but is one that scripture casts as being among the worst. Satan fell because of it. Israel was exiled because of it. Peter was humiliated by it before the cock crowed. “God opposes the proud.” “Pride goes before the fall.” etc.

The antidote to pride is humility. Which is why I needed to post this confession. And ask for prayer to get victory over the sin of pride in my life. And invite you to call me on it when you observe pride in me.