In a horrible mix-up, a US Southern Baptist pastor has had his picture linked with a list of Southern Baptist Convention sexual abusers by the local media station. The channel has since admitted its error and attempted to correct its mistake, but an SBC leader has highlighted the importance of holding both Church members and “the secular media” accountable.

Long-time serving pastor Charles Brown explains how in 3-minutes “80 years of my life and ministry went down the tubes” as a local National Broadcasting Corporation-affiliated station inaccurately linked his picture to a list of sex abusers.
“I don’t know how many people have heard [the incorrect news report], but at Government Street we have a private school and a very large day care program. My big hurt is … the effect it has on the church, me, the congregation, just the insinuation of it … and how parents of the children would be concerned.”
Thomas Wright, executive director of missions for Mobile Baptist Association, reflected:
“This false accusation is the worst-case scenario for publishing the list. Sexual predators must be held accountable and stopped from serial activity in one or more churches. Church members and the secular media must also be accountable to present accurate information.”
Read More
Related Posts:

Jesus, the Creator himself become one of us, the source and giver of all that is good, giving us intimacy with God and the promise of an indestructible, unending, glorious life in a recreated universe. Everything good in this life is but a dim hint of the eternal joy promised to us in Christ. And sex? Sex is just one of those dim hints of the life to come. What about the standards that define our sexuality? They are not mere restrictions, mere arbitrary deprivations to enforce an other-worldly mindedness. They are meant to cause sexuality to mirror and display our Savior’s faithful, covenantal, lavish, and costly love for us.

Harvest USA is a ministry focused on issues of sexuality and gender. It’s not surprising, then, that people often ask us for advice on how to respond to our current culture. How do I get beyond complaints and diatribes about non-Christian ideas in the world around us? Should I engage in political action? What must I do when my neighbors and colleagues push non-Christian views? How do I raise kids in this environment? How do we keep the Church from capitulating in the area of sexuality?
These are urgent and complicated questions. I believe the beginning of an answer to them is one of perspective: It’s not really about sex.
How we address those outside the Church
Throughout the Bible, concern for sexual morality is directed inward, to God’s people, not outward to the world. It is most often associated with expressing holiness, by which is meant being set apart to belong to the LORD. It is always assumed that the people and cultures of the world will be sexually immoral, and, even when that fact is mentioned, it is usually in the context of calling Christians to self-consciously differentiate themselves in that respect. So, for instance, the lists of sexuality rules in Leviticus are framed by, “You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes” (Leviticus 18:3). Sexuality was one significant area of application of the principal of having been set apart to belong to God: “You shall be holy to me, for I the LORD am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).
This is exactly the way sexual morality is framed in the New Testament as well, but with the added expectation that even while our beliefs and practices will be radically different from those outside the Church, we will be living and working in close association with them every day. Paul writes, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world…since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Corinthians 5:9, 10). Peter also says, “For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry” (1 Peter 4:3). Significantly, the Church is not told to go out and scold the world, or even to try to reform their practices. Instead, we are to focus on being distinctly different.
One implication of this is that we need to be soberly realistic about the sexual practices and views of the non-Christian world we live in. I suspect that we have spent too much time and emotional energy processing shock and disappointment at every major step of cultural decline into sexual license, but this should never surprise us. In fact, in the Scriptures, the reaction of surprise is expected from the other direction: “With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). It is the world that should be shocked at what we don’t do! If moral decline in the culture around us seems like our biggest concern, we need to ask ourselves what it is we are really hoping for—a world outside the Church that approximates godliness just enough that we can comfortably and respectably partake in its benefits? That is never promised to us by our Lord; it is a counterfeit gospel.
Am I suggesting that God’s rules for sex don’t apply to unbelievers? Of course not. But God has not given us the job of being his morality enforcers. “For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside” (1 Corinthians 5:12). And listen to how Peter continues: “…but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (1 Peter 4:5). Notice to whom they are to give account—“to him,” to Christ. They are not accountable to us, nor are we their judges.
Read More

The causes of gender dysphoria cannot arise from creation but instead must result from humanity’s fall. Gender dysphoria is not a natural state of consciousness God created us to experience. This isn’t to belittle in any way the genuine sense of gender identity discordance that the gender dysphoric person struggles with, but it is to say that in the case of biologically sexed individuals, the conscious state of gender dysphoria is a psychological phenomenon resulting from the fall rather than a physiological (involving the proper functioning of the human body and brain) or ethereal (involving the human soul) phenomenon that finds its origin at creation.

As typically defined, gender dysphoria is a state of consciousness that consists at its core of a qualitative feeling of a discordant “gender identity.” According to the common understanding, the individual has an “inner” self that has a gender or sex that’s different from what the body indicates, and hence the individual feels like—and in stronger cases believes him or herself to be—a woman trapped in a man’s body, or vice versa.
The cultural upheaval surrounding gender and sexuality presents many challenges for Christians and pastors. Have we done the theological reflection that’s necessary to respond carefully and pastorally? Do we have thoughtful theological responses to questions like, “Could God create someone whose inner self is one gender and place that individual in a body of the opposite gender?”
Answering thoughtfully will mean exploring our underlying assumptions about the human constitution. Are we purely physical bodies? Are we a combination of body and soul? Does our human constitution support the idea of a misgendered inner self? Let’s consider contemporary ways of answering these questions.
Materialism
Materialism (or physicalism) holds that people are simply and merely physical. We comprise no additional nonphysical or immaterial substances. Consequently, materialists affirm there’s nothing required for conscious mental properties like beliefs, desires, intentions, and feelings other than the occurrence of biophysical and neural states and processes in an individual’s brain and body. The most generous materialist might allow for a mental entity that constitutes the inner self, but he would see this “inner self” as made up solely of the body and its constituent parts, not of a wholly new, distinct, immaterial substance. 
When materialists explain the causes of gender dysphoria, they can only appeal to biophysical states, especially those involving neurology. Many turn to brain-sex theory. Simply put, the theory states that the brain of transgender individuals has “brain features that don’t fit the sex of their cells.” This leads to a situation where the biophysical and neural operations of the brain produce an “inner self” who experiences discordance in his or her gender identity. The current scientific consensus about brain-sex theory is it’s just that—a theory—and it remains unclear whether and to what extent neurobiological findings say anything meaningful about gender identity. More research is needed before scientists can draw definite conclusions.
Substance Dualism
Unlike materialism, substance dualism maintains there are two distinct mental and physical realms or substances—the mind/soul and the body. These together constitute the human person. Both soul and body are fundamental and not reducible to anything more basic. As distinct entities, body and soul are capable both of existing separately and of entering causal relationships with each other so that the soul can act directly upon the body and be acted upon by the body.
Under substance dualism, one’s inner self could be identified with one’s soul. However, such an identification opens the substance dualist to the charge from a gender-dysphoric person: God created my soul, and therefore my inner self, of a particular gender but mistakenly placed that soul in a body of the opposite gender.
Read More
Related Posts: