DBMW

Foreword – A look at Sex and the Single Christian

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

“This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were [single] as I myself am.” 1 Corinthians 7:7

The Single Christian

John Piper writes the foreword to our main text (yes, we have two prefaces and a foreword.) Here he writes a series of arguments, mostly quoting single folk, about why being single is not actually a bad thing. When writing a book that focuses primarily on the dynamics of men and women, husbands and wives, there is a need to establish where single people fit into your dichotomy. Piper believes that male leadership is not just a personal thing between married folk, but extends into society and into workplaces, so this does not mean that single women escape this paradigm either. However, he does lay out, I think, some very good defenses of single lifestyles, especially among ministers/missionaries/church folk.

I. Marriage, as we know it in this age, is not the final destiny of any human.

            Piper opens with the most obvious defense of singleness in Christianity. Christ is clear that marriage does not exist in Heaven or in the world to come. Christ says in the resurrection people, “neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels.”[1] Piper draws from his own experience of having a mother who died in 1974 and a step-mother some time later. If marriage is only an aspect of this life, then expecting it to be mandatory of any person is strange. Love, especially romantic love, is perfected in the resurrection such that we transcend the current bounds, expectations, and limitations which earthly life put upon us. Piper, I believe correctly, states that a single person is therefore, “[made] a candidate for greater capacities for love in the age to come.” Because they have trained to live sacrificially in a way married folk do not.

            I am married, and I love my wife more than just about anything. We are good friends, partners, and coconspirators in life. We embody the idea of becoming “one flesh,” in that we are always trying to help each other, even if we do so imperfectly. I cannot imagine at this point in my life what eternity will look like, when marriage is abolished and we evolve to some deeper love of each other and of the world and people around us. In the resurrection, where we are no longer husband and wife, what can that possibly be like?

            I do not know. Yet, I think it is an important consideration as part of our discussion of human sexuality and gender relations. All aspects of this life are transient, and someday in perfection even the categories taken for granted in this book will no longer exist. Piper quotes missionary Trevor Douglas as he closes this section, “The social cost of not fitting in a couple’s world will be exchanged for socializing with Jesus around his throne.” Douglas sees every part of his earthly life which he gives up as being enhanced through Christ somehow. He does not have a wife, but he has fathers and mothers in this world. He does not have children, but he has spiritual children, et cetera. There is, therefore, a strong Christian argument for singleness.

II. Jesus Christ, the most fully human person who ever lived, was not married.

            Piper opens this section by discussing his disbelief in “safe sex,” and his opposition to advertisements for condoms in the midst of the AIDs crisis. This is a good time for me, the writer of this blog, to say that I am not in a good position to talk about LGBT issues. I am a cis, white, straight man. I will do my best to point things out when they come up, but I will mostly focus on my main wheelhouse of heterosexual, cis, relationships throughout this critique. That being said, I feel like starting an argument about how Christ’s singleness is a sign of the legitimacy of singleness in our lives with a bad take on public health is a strange starting point.

            Piper brings this up, from his perspective to highlight his argument that “extra-marital sex and homosexual activity are destructive to personhood, to relationships, and to the honor of God…” Objectively, however, I believe he brings this up only to provide the quote from a letter he received in response to his article. “… we think a life of slavery to virginity,” the letter said, “would mean being only half human.” From this, Piper gets to his actual thesis, “The most fully human person who has ever lived, or ever will live, is Jesus Christ, and he never once had sexual intercourse.”

            We will have time to talk about Piper’s argument about “destructive,” sexual behaviors elsewhere in this book, so I will not tackle that just yet. I want to focus on the issues regarding sexuality as an aspect of human nature for now.

            What part did sexuality have in Jesus’s ministry? Christ was fully human, so he had the same hormones and neurotransmitters we did. Christ had the same capacity for sexual desire and conduct that we do and yet we are presented with a, seemingly, sexless messiah. It makes sense on one hand – how can an infinite God, placed into a human body, possibly experience desire for anything in the world which he had created? On the other hand, if Christ truly faced all temptation and was truly human, there must have been something in his mortal frame that desired touch, connection, intimacy.

            The exact make-up of Christ’s human will is unknowable to us. We do know, however, that Christ’s humanity was perfect – therefore he could live as we will only live in the resurrection. Christ’s perfect love transcends marriage, sex, friendship, into something else. Piper is right to point to this as a justification of singleness, because to live as Christ lived must naturally make us more like Christ. Quoting Cheryl Forbes he completes this section, “Jesus is the example to follow. He was single. He was born to serve…”

III. The Bible celebrates celibacy because it gives extraordinary opportunity for single-=minded investment in ministry for Christ.

            These subject headings are too long…

            Building off of 1 Corinthians 7, Piper argues that singleness is a great advantage to ministry. When you are single, you do not have to worry about how your family will react to your ministry work or how to balance their needs and the needs of a ministry. Anyone who is actively in a relationship and in ministry knows this is a hard balance to strike. How many nights can I miss bedtime in a week and still let my son know I am there for him? How many weekends can you plan a ministry event before you deprive your kids of time with you away from work?

            Risk is also a factor. You cannot be involved in advocacy, or in ministry in dangerous situations in the same way as a married person (especially with children,) that you could as a single person. Quoting Rhena Taylor, “Being single has given me freedom… And this freedom has brought to me moments that I would not trade for anything else this side of eternity.”

            Piper ends this section with the additional note that single persons still need boundaries in their life. “This thinking [that singles are “expected” to do constant work for ministry,] can turn into an abusive situation.” It is easy to put eternal significance on work in and for the Church, and Piper is right to highlight the way churches will take any availability a person has and run them into the ground with it. Burnout is not just for clergy, but for anyone who volunteers for a position in the Church and finds they are then expected to do it till they die… And preferably after if they can work it into their schedule.

IV. The Apostle Paul and a lot of great missionaries after him have renounced marriage for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

            I do not feel the need to comment on this section or to add to it. The argument is simply that there have been many missionaries who choose singleness for the sake of the Kingdom. I think that is just a reiteration of the previous point, with more stories about folks who have followed through on it.

V. The Apostle Paul calls singleness a gift from God.

Piper’s explanation of singleness as a gift of God begins with praise of a specific kind of fortitude that chaste singleness develops. Firstly, he quotes two separate people who highlight how they have not lost anything by lacking sexual contact with others. The first (Margaret Clarkson,) specifically describes themselves as losing a desire for sex precisely because they abstain from it. Appetites are developed as much as they are innate and so, the argument goes, if someone does not feed into a desire for sexual contact, that appetite will weaken over time. The second testimony (Ada Lum,) is less enthusiastic about the celibacy, but nonetheless agrees that they are empowered to fulfill this role through God’s help.

This section then goes on to counter opposition to singleness. Specifically, it pushes against the notion that Genesis 2:18 demands for people to find partners (“It is not good that man should be alone.”) Piper answers this by raising the possibility that, if humanity had not fallen, we all might have had perfect matches for each other. Without sin, all humans could be with their help-mate and all would be well. In a world of sin and the potential for bad matches, however, singleness can be preferable to a bad relationship. Secondly, Piper points out that marriage does not ensure a lack of loneliness. Many married people are miserable, and so marriage does not automatically fix this problem.

I do not know if there would be a better place to answer those criticisms of singleness, but I think this is a strange section to highlight the potential pitfalls of marriage. “Singleness is a gift,” seemingly because it avoids the potential troubles of marriage. I tend to understand a blessing of God as cultivating virtue more often than it avoids trouble. A thing is good because it promotes growth and goodness in an individual, not just prevents them from experiencing difficulties. This section argues, however, that the primary blessing God confers in singleness is avoidance of trouble that comes from marriage… That seems strange to me.

VI. Jesus promises that forsaking family for the sake of the kingdom will be repaid with a new family, the Church.

This section begins with a very poorly worded response to the Jesus’s words in Mark 10:29-30:

“I tell you the truth, no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mothers or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields-and with them persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” (The parenthetical is seemingly added by Piper.)

“Many singles have discovered these hundreds of family members [promised by Christ,] in the body of Christ [the Church.] It is often not their fault when they haven’t. But many have.”

I am not offering a substantive critique here but look at that. “Many people benefit from this promise… Not everyone… And who could blame them if they don’t? But a lot do, nonetheless.” If I was an editor here, I would ask John to maybe take another pass at that one.

Piper lifts up Bonhoeffer as an example of a single Christian who, “knew the needs of single people for family, and was moved, in large measure for this reason, to write his little book, Life Together.” Bonhoeffer, firstly, was single for a good chunk of his life… But he did get engaged before his imprisonment and execution. Life Together, is written within the same context of many of his other books, namely the Nazi Regime. I think it would be accurate to say that Life Together is influenced by Bonhoeffer being single at the time of its writing, but I think the primary cause for it being written was to rebuke Nazi ideology and popular theology of the time, not to instruct the Church in its conduct toward single people.

Ellisabeth Elliot is the second voice called upon to speak for the blessings of a church family. Elliot, the widow of Missionary Martyr Jim Elliot, is one of the strongest pillars of Biblical Womanhood. Her book Passion and Purity, is the inspiration for I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and so has indirectly touched many a millennial Christian in ways they probably never knew. We will read some work directly from her later.

She is asked how a single woman can become a mother if she is single. “She may be a spiritual mother,” answers Elliot. Why a woman must have the experience of motherhood is not elaborated on here, but we will grapple with this as we go. Piper, generally, is advocating for us to understand that relationships can exist, meaningfully, outside of our expectations of romantic relationships. That is true, even if poorly argued here.

VII. God is sovereign over who gets married and who doesn’t. And He can be trusted to do what is good for those who hope in Him.

This section is more quotes and affirmations of the kind of thing expressed above. It does not try to answer who God chooses to marry or not marry. The people quoted are toward the end of life, so I believe it is meant to be an affirmation that they do not feel that singleness has been a bad life. However, this is a section that asserts its title and then is written assuming you agree with that assertion.

VIII. Mature manhood and womanhood are not dependent on being married

“Man does not become man by being married. Woman does not become woman by getting married.” This statement from Piper summarizes this section and is a succinct way of understanding the gender essentialism of the Biblical Manhood and Womanhood movement. A man is always in a position of authority over women, but how that manifests is dependent upon his relationship to her. A woman is always in a position of affirmation of male leadership, but that is dependent upon her relationship to him. Quoting Paul Jewett, Piper affirms that “At the human level there is no “I and thou” per se, but only the “I” who is male or female confronting the “thou,” the “other,” who is also male or female.”

This section also sees the first use of the term “sexuality,” as a term to mean “our whole personhood as man or woman.” (Ada Lum.) This will be used in tandem with “sexuality,” as a term for sexual attraction, so do not take this to mean every time I or anyone I quote uses the term “sexuality,” they are using this definition, but it does mean we will have to police our terminology a little closer to be sure what is meant where.

The idea that manhood and womanhood are essential, defined conditions of the self, expressed in specific ways is the philosophic root of all that this movement discusses and seeks to be. Chapter 1 attempts to define this paradigm to a certain extent, but it is taken for granted here. Women, regardless of marriage status, are to be “homemak[ers]”  and curators of beauty. (Cheryl Forbes) Cooking, cleaning, gardening, warmth and comfort are all the things that women are expected to create in their lives and the lives of others. Men are to discuss, “masculine things in masculine ways.” They are to be leaders in any group that they are in, especially if they are given the opportunity to lead women.

Piper is deeply concerned at what he sees as a denial of the “reality,” of gender differences in the face of secular society’s “impersonal competencies and gender-blind personality traits.” This book, as will be said again and again, is meant to firmly educate the reader that there are differences between men and women, that they are essential to their character, and they must be taught, encouraged, and, ultimately, enforced to properly produce human flourishing.

Conclusions on Singleness

            It is hard to address many of Piper’s assertions here, because he has not laid out his argument for his central thesis yet – namely that men exist to lead and women to follow. Until he lays out that argument, I can only respond in my own terms to it, which would not be fully fruitful without knowing his particular arguments. I can, however, say that I support the spirit of this foreword, insomuch as it supports the legitimacy of single life.

            In life, singleness is often seen as a curse. In the Church especially, where marriage and family is often emphasized to the point of obsession, it can be debilitating for a person to see themselves stay single for very long. Many have rushed into relationships, marriages, children, and subsequent divorce because they felt compelled to be part of the family that was sold to them by the Church. It is good to affirm that you do not need to be in a family with 2.5 children to live a full life.

            However, Piper fails to make this argument really work given his framework. Unless you are a missionary or a minister, being in a relationship is the most natural way to fall into a specific gender role. If you have this sort of essentialism at the root of your ideology, then the only way you can talk about the positives of singleness is in terms of chastity and avoiding the negative aspects of marriage. Fundamentally, that is just not a compelling argument for singleness. In summary, I like the theological reflections on mission and Christ-likeness among single persons, it falls apart once you talk about gender performance and the single person.

[1] Matthew 22:30

A Tale of two Prefaces

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

“Why children, if you have woman’s rights, give it to her and you will feel better. You will have your own rights, and they won’t be so much trouble.” – Sojourner Truth

Two prefaces are provided in modern editions of RBMW, the first from 1991 and the second from 2006. They reflect the difference that fifteen years can make in the world, but also fundamentally play upon the same concepts, almost perfectly in step with one another. We will discuss each in turn before evaluating them together.

1991

            Four years before I was born, the first preface was written. It highlights the usual plight of the authors. Men and women are being treated as equal in society. The preface cites the “rejection of a unique leadership role for men in marriage and in the church,” as the cause of significant controversy in Christendom. This arises from “new interpretations,” (emphasis theirs,) of Biblical texts. The preface highlights that “selfishness, irresponsibility, passivity, and abuse,” have made the traditional stance unpalatable to many. This is, we are told, a widespread issue.

            Here, we come to one of the most confusing aspects of this kind of writing. We are told, “the vast majority of evangelicals have not endorsed the evangelical feminist position.” Within conservative texts, you will often find that the problems they address are described simultaneously as having taken over the world because they are more appealing than tradition, and also that most people reject them because of some concept of “common sense.” Both are held up as true. Men and women, it is argued, know that it is wrong to be social equals, and yet they also rush to embrace egalitarianism. I think a lot of writing about issues does this, but in traditionalist literature, the need to be winning because of the common people and also being crushed by liberalism are often paired as simultaneous realities.

            The 1991 preface takes time to highlight that it is not written to simply bash feminism, it is meant to be a critique of the movement toward egalitarianism while also acknowledging that evangelical feminists have shown the ways traditional gender roles hurt women. From this the term “complementarity,” is coined – a vision to “correct the previous mistakes and avoid the opposite mistakes that come from the feminist blurring of God-given sexual distinctions.”

            The preface is clear that it wants an audience of both men and women. That women need to know they are “fully equal to men in status before God, and in importance to family and the church.” They also wish for them to see in complementarianism a route toward, “wholehearted affirmation to Biblically balances male leadership in the home and the church.” This is similar to the desire that men know, “women are fully equal to men in personhood, in importance, and in status before God,” but with an additional note. The authors wish for men to support women’s ministry, “without feeling that this will jeopardize his own unique leadership role as given by God.”

            This highlights another element of this movement. While men are treated as being naturally lifted up as leaders, the sacredness of their leadership, and more specifically its violation, is described in terms of “offense.” A woman ought not to “offend,” a man’s sense of leadership. This will pop up throughout our analysis, but it has always struck me as strange that a man’s feeling of being threatened by women in power is often given as evidence that there is an “unbiblical,” balance of power. We will address this more when the arguments are actually presented regarding this matter.

            The 1991 preface ends with the main authors (John Piper and Wayne Grudem,) thanking their wives.

2006

A portrait of doom is revealed in the opening pages of the 2006 preface. “A conservative backlash against radical feminism has reverberated through pop culture during the last twenty years; simultaneously, egalitarianism is now the cultural norm.” The movement for complementarianism is more popular than it ever was, but also losing its battle on every front.

This 2006 preface spends more time pointing to churches as the cause of the decay in “biblically defined roles in marriage, family and the church.” Ministers have embraced egalitarianism, and no one believes or teaches what the bible says men and women are meant to do. “Increasing numbers of men entering the ministry have little or no formal training, so they lack a thorough grasp of biblical teaching…”

The main audience of this text as moderate or conservative evangelicals is highlighted in the image of a minister presented in these opening pages. The leaders of the church have erred in believing the main purpose of the church is to “empower women to serve more broadly and visibly,” so long as they are not pastors or elders (administrators,) in the church. This violates the God given tasks of men and women, but so does compromise of any kind which only results in “a repackaging of egalitarianism.”

The “new generation,” must be told that complementarianism is the true and proper way to live their lives. “When male and female live and work together as God intended, there is nothing more beautiful, satisfying, delightful, and God-glorifying.” The fault of egalitarianism is that it fails to address “God’s creation design and redemptive calling of women.” I am curious at the outset what this “redemptive calling,” might be, but if I had a guess it has to do with 1 Timothy 2:15:

“Women, however, will be saved through childbearing, if they continue in faith, love, and holiness, with self-control.”

The shift in the culture since the 1991 publishing is reflected in the additional notes this preface gives on what must be done in the church. “we must promote healthy, heterosexual, monogamous marriages.” As Meatloaf said, “two out of three ain’t bad,” and I can stand by two of those endorsements personally. The important thing about this addition is that it suggests a slippery slope is created through endorsing egalitarianism. Later in the same paragraph we read, “egalitarianism is part of the disintegration of marriage in our culture…”

In general, this preface seems less evenhanded in who it wishes to reach. We are told that the church “must also lead Christian women toward a joyous embrace of godly, male leadership as we simultaneously direct their men toward a self-denying, other-serving embrace of the leadership role.” While this maintains the critique of men abusing their power, it is focusing much more on catechizing women into this worldview. They must be taught that they are meant to submit, is a lot different language than “we want them to give thanks they are a woman.”

The authors of this preface highlight that “until about 1970,” the culture was still largely Christian – in content if not in faith. The problem arose that “pagan worldview[s]” entered in. This is cited as being part of a compromise with post-modernism and secular mindsets. If the Church ordains women, if it erases distinctions between men and women, then, the argument goes, they will soon do away with essential doctrines of the faith. “The church has been called to counter and bless the culture, not to copy and baptize it.”

The preface continues in saying that opposing complementarianism naturally leads to a disbelief in biblical authority. Here we find the main issue we will have on this matter. Christians do not, on the whole, disagree about biblical authority – but they do disagree on interpretation. Complementarianism, and indeed most biblical interpretation frameworks, see themself as the “correct,” interpretation, and so to deviate from their teachings is to deny the word of God. “If we can wrest egalitarianism from the Bible, we can pervert it to say anything we wish.”

The argument goes on to say that egalitarianism is based, not so much in scripture, as it is based in “church history or elsewhere.” This external study is seen as an attack on scripture, as it requires that we learn from archaeology, history, and ancient texts outside the corpus of scripture to understand what the scriptures say. I would argue that if it is an attack on scripture to learn about its context, then no amount of biblical archaeology should be permitted, let alone heeded. If leaning on history, culture, and language pollute our interpretation, then we ought to only keep the Novum Testamentum Graece beside out bed and only use the Masoretic text for study of the Hebrew Scriptures. Translation is interpretation, archaeology is interpretation, if we are to be people who view scripture as needing no context – we must be fully consistent in that view.

The preface asserts complementarians stay in the fight for the culture in order to preserve the faith and especially the scriptures. This is the only way they can “raise masculine sons and feminine daughters.” The preface ends with an endorsement of the book itself, that it is still relevant, and with one final wish that people might see “God’s design for men and women.” This preface was written by J. Ligon Duncan and Randy Stinson.

A Tale of Two Prefaces

The content of these two prefaces is largely the same, but the tone is quite different. The language of the 1991 preface is that of people who earnestly believe that they have something to offer people that will improve their life. Whether they are correct in that assumption is secondary to the point that they are writing in a voice that say, “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and that they can thrive in a world where they acknowledge that.” The tone of 2006 reflects the shifting culture around these kind of views. “We believe God made men and women to have unique roles and if we do not enforce them we will be destroyed.”

I do not wish to imply that some of this thinking was not present when the 1991 preface was written. As we go into the actual text of this book, we will find plenty of doomsaying and hand wringing. What I do wish to make clear is that, post 9/11, our way of talking about the left and right in the Church, in society, in the world – changes. Language becomes harsher, the need to strike out against dangerous new ideas becomes more urgent. In the eyes of many, the September 11th attacks were the result of America’s failings to be the people of God. Whether that is through unjustified military actions in the middle east or egalitarianism and homosexuality depends on your political slant, but the attacks made whatever distinctions we had between us sharper than ever.

The argument of 2006 is closer to the fights we see today. Slippery slopes are everywhere, or at least so we are told. “If we embrace trans folks, then everyone will think they’re animals next!” Just like in 2006 it was common to hear people say that if gay folk could get married they would be marrying animals next. In terms of men and women the slope we are given is, “If men and women are fully equal in society, then you might as well throw away all the Bible!”

Personally, I do not see a need to throw away the Bible over egalitarian issues. The scripture is the bedrock of my faith, and I am honest about when something I believe is not drawn purely from them. I am a Methodist, I went to a Pentecostal Church for a while, I’ve been in non-denoms and I listen to Catholic Radio. Every one of those influences mixes together to make something that is not always 1:1 with scripture, but I do my best to make it so. The worst thing we can do as Christians is baptize our own views as infallible, because then we make ourselves sole arbiters of God’s words. We all have baggage, assumptions, and preferences that shape how we read scripture, admitting that is the first step to living a life like Christ.

I should also say that I see little of Christ in these prefaces. Christ makes one statement about gender dynamics, and that is in reference to men divorcing their wives without cause. Outside of that, we see his ministry involving men and women, and while I think it would be a stretch to call those early assemblies “egalitarian,” they were definitely more like that than they weren’t. In the letters of Paul, we see indications that both liberation and constraint existed in the early church regarding the role of women, as did abolition and the continuance of slavery. The New Testament, the Church, has always had a messy job of relating the incarnate God to the world we live in. However, just because it is messy does not mean that we should not attempt it.

The prefaces largely speak for themselves in terms of their goals, but it is in the actual chapters that we will be able to engage more directly with ideas. I hope you stick along with me as we dig deeper into RBMW and hopefully find something we can use in our discourse around these topics, nearly forty years after these texts first began to come together.

Stay safe, stay sane, and tell someone you love them.

Introduction

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

“There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28

This is perhaps my most ill-advised project, and yet one that I have wanted to tackle for a while.

In my final years of seminary, I became fixated on understanding the current landscape of Christian theological discourse. In particular, the way that the Church discusses gender and sexuality seems to be self-defeating to the point that something must be fundamentally flawed at the root of these discussions. Conservative ideology clashes with progressivism, and very little productive biblical interpretation is embarked upon to find any sort of reconciliation point for Christian Ethics.

Even now, prominent voices in the Evangelical movement such as Ed Stetzer have come forward to say that views on LGBTQ rights in the Church are not subject to debate. This comes from a foundational belief that, “creation accounts [in scripture,] set the theological foundation for understanding God’s purposes for gender, marriage, and sexuality.”[1] Indeed, arguments regarding traditional views of human sexuality, and by extension gender and marriage, tend to focus upon three pillars. Firstly, the natural and God ordained institute of heterosexual, monogamous, marriage. Secondly, the inerrancy of scripture. Thirdly, the cultural practice of masculinity and femininity as cross cultural, yet culturally distinct.

Entire books are written to address each of these topics on their own. Yet, as I have taken it upon myself to read conservative theology texts (when I think they sound interesting,) I notice that there is very little in them (or in progressive texts,) that is even trying to address the opposite viewpoint at their own level. Perhaps we have an inherent understanding that the ground between us has grown too large, that the chances of finding any sort of reconciliation that does not deny the rights and dignity of queer folk on one side and the desires for orthodoxy on the other are very slim… More optimistically, however, I think we just have a very vague understanding of the theological foundations that bring folks to one conclusion or the other.

It is with this in mind that I launch this new project. Decoding Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Complementarianism is designed to go, chapter by chapter, through the foundational text of the modern complementarian movement, Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood: A Response to Evangelical Feminism. As a staunch advocate for Egalitarianism, I am one such “evangelical feminist,” as is referred to in the title. I am, likewise, a person committed to orthodoxy, even as I advocate for LGTBQ inclusion and all sorts of other liberal positions. According to this book, that second statement makes the first one a lie, but this book says a lot of things I do not agree with, so I’m not going to let that stop me.

My goal with this project is not to be mean-spirited or libelous, but to honestly evaluate each chapter as I read them. Where I see thoughts worth entertaining, I shall entertain them, and where I see something born of Hell and Capital I will treat it as such. I do not promise perfect analysis, I do not promise to be above my own convictions and biases, but I do aspire to be thoughtful and honest at every turn.

This project is going to take a while, and I am not constraining myself to any timeline. This book is long and takes strange turns. At one point John Piper takes a long time talking about how muscular women are sinful, but also that he finds them incredibly attractive (I will talk about that at length when we get there.) I will release articles when they’re done, and not a moment sooner. In the short term, I will be writing an analysis of the Preface to the 2016 edition in the very near future.

Till then, be well, be safe, and tell someone you love them.

[1] Ed Stetzer. “Can Faithful Christians Agree To Disagree on Sexuality?” available at: https://churchleaders.com/voices/512232-agree-to-disagree-christian-sexuality-gender.html