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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How can we say that man has inherent dignity (the image of God) and yet at the same time he is a terrible sinner—worthless (total depravity)? Isn’t he either the former or the latter? The answer to this false dilemma is simply “yes.” We are both. Man is far above all other creatures (Ps. 8:5); he is “wonderful” (Ps. 139:14) and “beautiful” (Prov. 20:29). No other creature has the honor of being created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). But he has also fallen very far. 

I was sitting in a college history class many years ago. My professor asked for a show of hands: “How many of you believe man is basically good?” Most people raised their hands. “How many of you believe man is basically bad?” Two or three people raised their hands, including me. I looked around somewhat perplexed; my Calvinist upbringing put me at odds with almost everyone. Yet when I look back, something was wrong.
More recently, a young man who attended a Bible study I was leading asked me a question. During one study, I mentioned that God considered human beings valuable enough to save; otherwise, He wouldn’t have sent His Son to die for people. I said we have inherent dignity; there’s a worthwhileness about us. This young man came up to me after the study, confused. He quoted Romans 3:12:
All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;no one does good,not even one.
He respectfully asked how I could say that humans are worthwhile if the Bible tells us we’re worthless. I was thrown off guard, because I could see how I appeared to be directly contradicting Scripture. A plain, surface-level reading of Romans 3:12 led him to believe that men and women are worthless. God saved dirty rags (Isa. 64:6), trash (1 Sam. 2:8), worms (Job 25:6; Ps. 22:6). Who are we to think of ourselves as worthwhile at all?
I realized in reflecting afterward that I had found myself caught on the horns of a false dilemma, but to understand the dilemma, we need to think about our historical context.
Total Depravity
It’s our inheritance as Protestants to think of ourselves as sinners, incapable of willing spiritual good. This was the underlying logic of Martin Luther’s despair as he went through the repetitious cycle of the Roman Catholic sacramental system. He realized he would never measure up; he would never stop sinning in this life; his sin went so deep that he could never confess or do enough to merit salvation. He had a sober understanding of who he was before God, and this led him to be awed by the grace made apparent in the revelation of God’s righteousness (Rom. 1:17). He realized that God’s saving righteousness was Jesus Christ, and God stoops to save sinners. Therefore, when we throw ourselves on the mercy of God exhibited in the infinite grace freely given to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, then we experience the joy of salvation—by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It’s no wonder that Protestants sing “Amazing Grace” with gusto.
Luther, however, lived in an age permeated by Christian thought. Protestants and Roman Catholics didn’t argue that we were made in the image of God. That was a given; the question was: How far did we fall? Did we simply lose a certain grace that was divinely imparted to us so that we now stand in a somewhat neutral position before God (as Roman Catholic doctrine asserts)? Or did we fall so far that now we’re unable to will true spiritual good apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (as classical Protestantism asserts)?
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Sunday, October 13, 2024
 I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ. Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.

If part of recovering from our discipleship doldrums is to embed habits—and I think it is—then we will need to do something beyond thinking individually and thinking about the worship of the church. The church’s worship should be our starting point, and then the church should have a wider habitual life—as they all do, this is what a pattern of prayer meetings is for example—that serves the formation of Christian character.
The trickiest element, that I’m going to try and tease out in this post without having clear answers, is the potential for habitual life in the space between individuals and churches. We could go ‘beyond’ churches and think about cities and nations, and I think that could have some value but is entirely theoretical in the UK’s current moment. Instead, I’d like to look ‘between.’
By this I mean that there are a number of small institutions between the individual and the church. The household is the most obvious, whether that dictates a nuclear family, a much looser collection of housemates, or the explicitly Christian concept, but there are other possible forms of community. I suspect most people jump to those that are organised by churches: small groups and sports clubs and knitting circles and such like. These aren’t out of scope, but I want to include something broader, as the group of mates from your church (or many churches!) that hang out together to do a thing regularly should be included too. I’m talking about any loose form of ‘institution’ or ‘community’ that has a habitual life. That habitual life is then open to being thought about theologically and as a locus for formation.
I can sense that my writing is vaguer than I’d like because I’m searching for terms for a concept that I suspect is easier to draw. I want to argue that there is a sort of Christian community that can be found whenever you gather with Christians and that habitual elements of this also teach us that all of life is meant to be about following Christ.
Most British Christians find this concept off-putting. If I were to suggest that the group of mates who’ve gathered to watch a film could maybe pray together before they do, many would scoff. Perhaps you might accuse that of sounding dreadfully American. I’m sorry American readers, but we’ve become culturally allergic to earnestness, and often find those who take their faith seriously a bit kitsch.
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