Clary writes with all the calm and clarity one should hope for in a trustworthy pastor. Because of this, Clary is sure to garner the approval of not a few evangelicals exhausted by the whiplash of late modernity. Unfortunately, this book also comes with some significant downsides.

Michael Clary, God’s Good Design: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Guide to Human Sexuality, Ann Arbor, MI: Reformation Zion Publishing, 2023.
In his recently published, God’s Good Design, D. Michael Clary speaks about the moral and emotional bankruptcy promised by the sexual revolution, and, by contrast, the beauty and goodness of the Christian sexual ethic. Clary’s book is not merely a diatribe against modern sexual madness; he posits a better story and revels in the beauty of God’s design in human gender and sexuality. “In this book,” Clary states up front, “we will demonstrate the truth, goodness, and beauty of God’s design for sexuality. We will show how God’s story of his covenant love for his people, ultimately revealed in the gospel, was a profound mystery, written into the created order from the beginning of time” (3). In this book, Clary neither engages in cowardly obfuscation nor boastful pugilism. Which is to say, the author refrains from virtue signaling, regardless of the audience. Instead, Clary writes with all the calm and clarity one should hope for in a trustworthy pastor. Because of this, Clary is sure to garner the approval of not a few evangelicals exhausted by the whiplash of late modernity. Unfortunately, this book also comes with some significant downsides.
Structurally, God’s Good Design does not necessarily hang together as a single, unbroken argument. Clary lays the foundation for what he intends to argue in the first three chapters, but for the rest of the book, he structures his chapters topically. While I think the book could have benefited from some rigorous editorial work to cut down repeated and redundant material, its topical arrangement (and repetitive content) means that it can serve fruitfully as a reference book of sorts.
Rather than offering a blow-by-blow summary of the book, I would like to commend three of its strengths (of which there are many more I could enumerate), before concluding with a reflection on three of its weaknesses (which, though far outnumbered by the many positive features of the book, are nevertheless significant and, unfortunately, quite costly).
First, in terms of the book’s strengths, Clary demonstrates a non-anxious confidence in the Christian vision of gender, sex, and sexuality. He understands that the blustering pearl-clutching of reactionaries (even of the conservative variety) is neither profitable nor becoming. The author opts instead to outshine the secular script with a story that is better, truer, and more beautiful than its secular alternative. Relatedly, Clary does marvelously at showing the mutual enrichment of men and women. The sexes, he shows convincingly, are made for one another (132).
Second, Clary attends carefully to both books of divine revelation: sacred Scripture and Nature. In this way, he shows how God’s specially revealed assigned gender roles in the home and in the church are not arbitrary; they cohere with the way in which he made man and woman. In other words, to submit to divine revelation regarding matters like headship and submission (in the home and in the church) is to go along with the grain of created reality. Clary concludes, along with the best of the Great Tradition’s reflections on natural theology, that the difference between men and women has everything to do with biological teleology: fatherhood and motherhood. In this way, Clary approaches his subject material from numerous vantage points to tie together again what should have never been torn asunder: marriage, sex, and procreation.
Third, Clary writes with a pastoral sensitivity that is desperately needed in today’s discourse. Clary is direct but not callused; tender but not cowardly. He is also careful to distinguish between what Scripture plainly teaches and requires, and what he thinks is a wise application of biblical truth. One can tell that Clary is a shepherd who has learned to take seriously the requirement to bind his flock’s consciences to what Scripture requires without overstepping the boundary of “teaching as commandments the teaching of men” (cf., Matt. 15:9).
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We must understand that “the talk” is never going to be enough. Rather, we need to engage in “the talking.” Helping kids navigate the sexualized culture is an ongoing activity rather than a once-and-done endeavor to simply check off our parenting list. And like anything else in life, the more we talk, the easier it becomes to keep on talking, and the more freedom our children will feel to come to us with their questions.

“I know where babies come from!” Those were the words my eight-year-old son blurted out in the midst of a conversational lull during a family dinner back in 1994. Before asking him what he had learned on the topic, I awkwardly swallowed my mouthful of food and asked him about where he had received his information. With genuine enthusiasm he answered, “Donnie told me. . . on the playground!”
I’ll spare you the details of Donnie’s not-even-close-to-accurate sex-ed lesson, but Donnie’s miseducation had dropped in our laps a golden parenting opportunity for beginning a series of conversations with our young children about God’s good and glorious design for His gift of sex and sexuality.
That conversation took place thirty years ago. Today, it isn’t just “Donnie” on the playground. Kids are receiving a dangerous miseducation on sex and sexuality that runs at high volume on a 24/7 loop through smartphones, social media, streaming television, and more. Truth be told, this ever-present narrative washes over our kids, misshaping them from preschool right into adulthood.
When I think about our culture’s obsession with sex, I can’t help but ponder the wise words of Proverbs 14:12:
There is a way that seems right to a man,but its end is the way to death.
As parents, we are called by God to use our words and our example to teach our children and teens God’s good design for sex and sexuality, offering correctives to help them find their way through the cultural narrative’s lies. Here are three essential elements to lead them into hearing, believing, and following God’s will and way about sex that is right for all of His image-bearers.
1. We Must Teach God’s Creational Design
If our sexualized culture is getting sex wrong, where do we go to get it right? We go to the Bible. God’s order and design for sexuality is clearly stated in the creation narrative (Gen. 1–2), reflected in the teachings of Jesus (Matt. 19:4–6), and maintained consistently throughout the Bible. God’s plan way back “in the beginning” (Gen. 1:1) reflects the way things are supposed to be. Because of humankind’s rebellion against God and fall into sin (Gen. 3), everything and everyone is broken. Because of sin, our default setting is to rebel against God’s good order and design for our sexuality. The cultural narrative is one of the great weapons of deception the enemy uses to steer our kids away from understanding God’s creational place and purpose for sex.
Our responsibility is to teach that God’s place for His good gift of sex is in marriage. God’s design and plan for marriage is that it is to be a committed, lifelong, monogamous, heterosexual, physical union between one man and one woman.
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No one, most especially his disciples, spent any time around Jesus without being made to feel uncomfortable. That’s a good test of whether we have encountered the Jesus of the Bible: Am I challenged and convicted, as well as loved and saved?

If ‘90s trends are truly back, it’s about time we dusted off the W.W.J.D. bracelets—the Evangelical craze that attempted to stamp into teenage minds the importance of imitating Jesus. What would Jesus do? Usually it turned out that He would bring His friends to youth group, and stay away from alcohol, sex, and drugs. By comparison, today it’s hard to imagine such a question could spark any substantive reflection or life change. After all, Jesus is my homeboy. He’s got my back. Jesus is there to pick me up when I get down. He’s got plans to prosper me, for my welfare, not my destruction. Jesus is always there for me. He never judges me. Jesus loves and accepts me.
The W.W.J.D. acronym for the ‘20s should be: “What Wouldn’t Jesus Do?” Is there anything that you can definitively cross off? Or is Jesus everyone’s favorite silly putty? He simply takes the shape most convenient to that person at that time, then afterward, he squishes right back into his neon eggshell.
It is in this way that the third commandment is most often trampled in our world. People invoke Jesus’ name to provide moral authority to all sorts of far-reaching, banal, and even horrific causes. As mentioned in my previous article, Christians have a history of getting God’s name and intentions wrong. Yet professing Christians no longer hold a monopoly here; people from a wide variety of beliefs hold that Jesus was, at the very least, moving the same direction they are.
Seven Worse Demons
The life and words of Jesus have seeped deep enough into Western culture that someone who has never opened a Bible has enough familiarity with popular “Jesus snapshots”, that they can readily construct cardboard caricatures of Jesus who play the appropriate roles, such as:

Jesus the non-judger
Jesus the religious reformer
Jesus the compassionate
Jesus the bringer of equality

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