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With Andrew Bunt
104 Plays2 years ago
In today's culture, sexuality and gender are the embodiment of happiness, fulfilment and our sense of self. It's no surprise that especially young people can find a God-centred view of sex to be oppressive, unfair or even hateful. No wonder Christians can find this area such a stumbling block to presenting the gospel. How can we help our friends and family discover a deeper and more satisfying view of Christ, His calling and our identity in Him?
Andrew Bunt is a writer and speaker who studied theology at Durham University and King’s College London. He is the Emerging Generations director at Living Out and the author of People Not Pronouns: Reflections on Transgender Experience (Grove Books, 2021) and Finding Your Best Identity: A Short Christian Introduction to Identity, Sexuality and Gender (IVP, 2022)
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:11
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another exciting edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister from Solace and I'm joined as ever by my energetic, enthusiastic co-host, Christy Mayer from down there in London at Oak Hill College. Christy, how are you getting on today?
00:00:28
Speaker
All right, thanks. Gosh, what an introduction. Well, I try and produce new adjectives every time. That's why. A lot of live up to it. Was it energetic and enthusiastic? No pressure. No pressure.
Role and Focus at Living Out
00:00:41
Speaker
Well, hopefully they won't be too much pressure because we are joined by an amazing guest today. I'm sure he was all in our days for the next 20 to 25 minutes. We are joined by Andrew Bunt. Andrew, welcome to Pep Talk. Hello, thank you for having me.
00:00:55
Speaker
And so you are, well, you wear many hats, I know, but one of the big hats you wear, you are with Living Out. We've had lots of folks who were living out on the show before, but you are, I love this title, you are the Emerging Generations Director at Living Out. So before we get into the good stuff, what is an Emerging Generations
First Meeting Anecdote
00:01:11
Speaker
Director? It's a good title, isn't it? I think my colleagues are quite jealous. They all have single word director titles. They want a double word title now.
00:01:19
Speaker
So, emerging generations, my responsibility basically is how do we make sure we're engaging with under 25s and those who are serving them? We're so aware that for that kind of generation, that demographic, questions of sexuality, gender identity are so prominent, so real life in their own life, the lives of those around them, we want to serve them well and help parents and student workers, youth workers, different people who are serving them as they kind of wrestle with those questions.
00:01:44
Speaker
I struggle with the under 25 part because that sadly means that neither Kristi nor I are technically emerging. Let Kristi have at it with the first question. I should tell a little story here. Of course, you and I had an interesting story about how we met, didn't we? We met in a field in Norfolk. This is true. Actually, we met at a shade in a
Young People and Identity Issues
00:02:01
Speaker
field in Norfolk to be.
00:02:02
Speaker
I told Kristy that she's like really intrigued. I'll let you spoil, I'll let you let it down gently. It's not quite as exciting as it sounds. So what was going on? Why were we in a shed in the field in Northook? It was very exciting. We were at a new day, which is a large youth festival run by the New Frontiers network of churches. We're both Andy and I. We're speaking that day and thankfully someone introduced us over to lunch, which was lovely.
00:02:28
Speaker
Oh, nice. Do you remember the first? There were 8,000 young adults in the field in Norfolk. It was quite something, actually. How was the lunch? Can you imagine the lunch? I don't remember the lunch. It was good. I was there a week. I loved the food at New Day as well. When you were like, well, I was going to say when you were staying at 10, I was in a hotel this year. Don't tell anyone. Normally, when you're staying at 10, to be catered for like that is wonderful.
00:02:47
Speaker
I did once speak at one festival and I will not mention which one it was and the food was a little bit ropy and one of the sort of highlights was one morning they served the sausages that had literally been cooked on one side and not on the other. That was interesting.
00:03:02
Speaker
I thought it would be fun there, Andy. I was waiting for some kind of half-baked way. Anyway, it's a lovely segue into the conversation about emerging generations. Andrew, what are some of the big questions that you've come across that people in that age group are coming up against at the moment?
00:03:26
Speaker
I think when it comes to kind of everyone working on sexuality and gender, part one thing just notable
Fairness of Biblical Teachings
00:03:31
Speaker
is how many are directly affected. There's not a single young person who doesn't at least know someone at school who is identifying as bi or gay or queer or questioning their gender in some way. Just the kind of prominence of these topics is so huge.
00:03:47
Speaker
And then I think, I mean, various questions and what I was struck by a bit like New Day actually was the range of questions among, particularly that context was young people from a Christian background. Some are really wrestling with the how do I hold on to biblical truth and really love my gay and trans friends. Well, actually, so where the assumptions people have about Christians or attitudes on these things.
00:04:10
Speaker
and want to love well, which was going to really encourage them to see a lot of young people really struggling with what the Bible says actually. And two questions I've noticed are particularly prominent. One is, is it really fair what the Bible says? And the other is, is it really doable? Even if it was right, say it's actually possible someone to live that out. And I was struck this summer at various youth festivals, those were particularly prominent questions that seemed to be coming out. Yeah.
00:04:34
Speaker
Well, why don't we start by pressing into those for a minute? So perhaps Andrew's about to start with that fairness one. And before we do that, we should also say as well, and we will mention it again, I'm sure, you've written a new book called Finding Your Best Identity, which is looking at all of these questions. And obviously as we go, I suspect you may tell us a bit more about that and we'll put a link
00:04:58
Speaker
in the show notes, so folks can come and check that out and buy a copy or buy 10 copies, buy a copy for rent. But the whole fairness piece, right? So help us think about that. So how do we engage with that? And perhaps particularly say for Christians who are thinking about wanting to share their faith with perhaps fellow students on campus, you know, they're concerned about what happens if I get the LGBT question flung at me, maybe themselves, they're struggling because back
Gospel's Good News for All
00:05:21
Speaker
of their mind, they're like, is this really fair? I know I'm supposed to believe it, but I'm struggling.
00:05:26
Speaker
How do we navigate that, both in terms of our own faith, but then also engaging with and showing love of Christ with those from the LGBT plus community? With the fairness question, I think the first thing actually is to realize what a good question and good thing it is to think through. It's right that we should care about people being treated fairly actually. So particularly engaging someone who
00:05:45
Speaker
isn't a Christian or just who's really wrestling with a Christian perspective on this. I want to affirm all the goodness in the fact they're raising that as a point because yeah, I agree. We want actually a sense of fair treatment and treating people well. And that's, that's rooted actually, I was saying a Christian worldview. And that's also an avenue we could explore with someone.
00:06:02
Speaker
And then I think it's almost kind of asking further questions, kind of just chewing that around or something, what they mean when they say it's unfair. Because what's interesting is there are inequalities. We all recognise our normal parts of human existence based on where you're born, different life experience and stuff. There's all many inequalities which happen to us all the time. And most of those we don't go when it's not fair. And so it doesn't seem that actually when we say it's not fair, we're talking about people being treated differently.
00:06:32
Speaker
I think what we actually mean when we say biblical teaching in sexuality isn't fair is we think it denies people something they need and have a right to. And that's often what people really mean behind that. There's actually asking the question, well, in what way do you mean it's not fair? Often gets you to a place of, well, actually, it's not fair to deny someone their need to receive love and to be loved and to loved. And I'm going to go, I totally agree.
00:06:55
Speaker
and we're going to go, I don't think the biblical ethic does that. I think it still leaves space for all of us to be loved and to love because surely we don't want to reduce love just down to sexual relationships actually. And so actually asking more questions, unpicking in what way do people think it's unfair can open some really great opportunities to kind of amass some of the unhelpful thinking of our culture, such as you're only going to feel loved if you're in a sexual romantic relationship.
Cultural Impact on Identity
00:07:21
Speaker
and show some of the really good news that the biblical perspective brings. Things like a really high view of friendship, which is open to all of us and can be such a fulfilling and life-giving element of life. That's such an important element, isn't it? Friendship that's often kind of sidelined in some of these discussions because of the cultural emphasis upon romantic relationships. I was just thinking, struck by what you said, Andrew,
00:07:50
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thinking about how the Bible gives us so much more of a basis to receive love than we do through sexual relationships. But I suppose one of the
00:08:03
Speaker
one of the kind of responses to that that I've come across as well. You're a heterosexual Christian and so for you there's still the possibility that you might actually get married. You're not saying that your whole sexual kind of orientation
00:08:20
Speaker
is wrong or sinful. And so, you know, to actually say that to somebody who is same sex attracted or gay, you know, to say that actually there's no possibility for them to enter into a sexual or romantic relationship. How do you respond to that kind of follow up question to that initial question of, is this fair?
00:08:45
Speaker
One thing I'd want to say in those terms, I want to talk around what it means
Engaging with LGBT Friends
00:08:51
Speaker
for the language there was all of a sexual orientation to be simple and talk around actually kind of distinction between orientation, what we experience and desires and action. That'd be one thing I'd pick up in a conversation like that.
00:09:03
Speaker
But yeah, no, I think it is. And I think there are two things maybe to talk about. One is to talk around the purpose of sex. And this is where my colleague, a choice on such brilliant work of sex being actually about pointing us to the relationships in Christ in the church, sexual desire, speaking to us about Christ desire for us, the relationship he wants to have with us. And therefore, in a sense, the end goal of sexuality being to experience that, not to experience the kind of signpost on the way to that, which is sexual relationship.
00:09:33
Speaker
which means actually for any of us, whether it be because of our sexual orientation, whether it be actually we never find anyone to marry. For any of us who don't experience a sexual relationship in this life, it isn't actually missing out on anything that's the be-all or the end-all because actually we still get to, as it were, jump straight to the things which we truly are made in the relationship where true life truly is found in your sense. So I want to kind of put that bigger picture
00:09:56
Speaker
And I would want to talk around the cost of the cypress ship that actually following Jesus for all of us is a costly thing and Jesus used the language of taking up a cross. He uses the language fascinatingly of losing our life in order to gain life. And so this experience feels like losing life and yet in that actually we are experiencing true life, fullness of life and even greater life in a sense.
00:10:19
Speaker
And that does look different with different people. Our different contexts, different situations, our different experiences, different patterns of desire will mean the way that a cost to follow in Jesus kind of manifests in our life will look differently for each of us. But it is there and should be there for any faithful follower of Jesus. The way it manifests in my life, in part, is a choice to be single and set up out of faithfulness to Jesus that look different from other people. But my life is no different than ours. It's just the gospel mapping onto my life in a different way.
00:10:49
Speaker
May I just come in very quickly before Andy does? I really appreciate what you said earlier about making that distinction between orientation and action. And partly I was asking that question, I was framing it like that intentionally because that's the apprehension that comes up. So thank you so much for making that because that's such a crucial element of this conversation for us as Christians. And then again, how do we then communicate the goodness of Jesus?
00:11:15
Speaker
to others through that. So thank you so much. Sorry, over to Andy. No, that's very, very helpful. I think...
00:11:24
Speaker
I think that one of the sort of follow-up questions I was going to ask Andrew. Well, first I was going to say, I think that cost-effective thing is really helpful. And I think one of the things I really actually hugely appreciated for reading and engaging with material like yours, and you mentioned Ed's, you know, Sam Albury, Rosario Butterfield. The list goes on of folks, Christians who experience same-sex traction have written about
00:11:47
Speaker
about this in this area is the cost of such pieces i think
Closing and Book Promotion
00:11:51
Speaker
it's frighteningly easy not to pay a price following. Christ and i was coming from reading you know having read read it's possibility from the other week for the first time i can we actually profoundly challenged construes okay where are the areas where i'm really sacrificing with the wrong city. I think it's worth asking one some tough questions yeah.
00:12:10
Speaker
One of the questions I sometimes get on when I'm sort of, you know, doing university kind of work or other contexts where I'm engaging with folks who don't have a faith and these issues come up as they often do. One question I will occasionally get your take on is this, okay, in what way is the gospel good news for gay people?
00:12:29
Speaker
of going, you know, because if you're not a Christian and you're LGBT, life's great, right? It's one big party. You can sleep with who you want and live with how you want. You make the choices that you want. Nothing's restricting you. And surely then if you become a Christian, suddenly everything has to change. All these restrictions come in and all the rest. So in what way is the gospel good news for gay people? What would you say to that? Another question like that.
00:12:55
Speaker
Well, I love that because it allows us to come straight back to Jesus. In a sense, why is the gospel good news to gay people in many of the initial answers? It's the same reason why is the gospel good for any of us. As there's a chance to talk about Jesus, why did Jesus come? What does Jesus offer me? It's a chance to talk around the reality of my need for forgiveness of sins. And if I'm having that conversation with someone ready to a church background, I'm not going to start actually with the reality of being created by a loving creator. I think often we're in this context of people don't see any forgiveness of sins,
00:13:24
Speaker
Have no sense of obligations they might have failed in such i'm gonna start not with i'm assuming start with the love of the creator. Who's designed us and doesn't it make sense that if we are created look at the world it seems we might well be doesn't make sense we have obligations to our creator the problem is in.
00:13:41
Speaker
salvation offered in Jesus but then in that not as a kind of you can get your ticket to heaven kind of thing but actually what if you are made for a relationship with a God who made you and who loves you and wants you to be in a relationship where you can be secure in being loved in being
00:13:58
Speaker
Delighted over when you make the stakes but let's be honest we all know we do actually there's total enough to freedom and forgiveness and that what if actually there's a relationship you're designed for which might be a niggling longing we all have that niggling sense there must be more to this what if there is a relationship that actually would welcome you in something relationship that does fulfill that and niggling kind of longing.
00:14:19
Speaker
It's bringing it away from sexuality in a sense to Jesus and all the things that Jesus offers us in the Gospel through forgiveness of sins, intimacy with God, restoration to the very relationship we're meant to experience. We have it now into eternity because really in a sense that in a majestic context is where I want to get anyone full stop and the sexuality stuff kind of becomes a bit of a
00:14:44
Speaker
Not a sidetrack because it isn't important to talk about, but actually the focus issue is Jesus. To the extent that sometimes I want to say to people, look, I know this sex stuff is complex and difficult, but if Jesus isn't who he says he is and didn't rise from the dead, it doesn't really matter anyway. So should we talk about Jesus? We can come back to this sexuality stuff absolutely if you decide Jesus' issue he says he is, but that's kind of the center point to focus. And so I love a question like that because it's an open door to talk about Jesus, how wonderful he is, what he offers us, how good life with him is.
00:15:13
Speaker
And that, at its core, is why the Gospel is such good news for gay people too.
00:15:18
Speaker
That's such a beautiful response, Andrew. Thank you so much. I think that also nicely leads us into a conversation that we started to have before we hit record, which was around the question of how do I find who I am? And this is one of the questions I think that is brought up in your book. How do you go about responding to that question? How do I find who I am? You have that niggling sense, that longing for a little bit more that you just mentioned.
00:15:47
Speaker
What's the next step? How does one find who one is? I think it's helpful first just to be aware of ways that we answer that question without even realising it. And ways that is really that our culture does that and preaches at us sometimes and certainly exhibits. And so one really common answer is how do I find who I am? I let other people dictate it. That actually other people kind of make this evaluation of me based on how well or badly I do and I absorb that as my sense of self.
00:16:16
Speaker
Well, if we're honest, of course, often we don't really know what people actually think. So it's this assumption of what we assume they think about us, we absorb as our sense of self. And that could be one of the reasons why for some people they get kind of perfectionistic tendencies or become a right workaholic, can't stop and rest and stuff, because how to find who I am, well, it's people who've got to think well of me, so I've got to keep doing all this stuff.
00:16:35
Speaker
But then another problem messaging our culture and the one being preached most loudly at us and the one that gets applied to sexuality most clearly is the idea that I get to decide who I am. Actually, no one else can say, only I can say, and I look inside myself and my feelings and my desires. That is the core self, my core self, my true self, and I need to embrace that and express that to be true to who I really am. And in our culture, we're told that our sexual desires or our internal sense of gender are the things that are most key about ourselves, are how we find who we are.
00:17:05
Speaker
Those both have some major problems. One problem for both of them is real pressure. On others' side, this is pressure to be the kind of person people will think well of, to live up some kind of criteria, and that's exhausting. And on either side, there's this pressure to look inside of yourself in, let's be honest, the mess of feelings and desires we find and work out, wait a minute, which one is me? And they're changing, they're conflicting sometimes, they're not clear. It's just huge pressure to work out who you are, because only you can know, and yet that's really difficult to do.
00:17:34
Speaker
Which is why I think, again, the way the Gospel is good news to gay people to all people, I think we have a better narrative to bring actually of God decides who we are. That actually who we truly are, how we shape our sense of self, is dictated by what God says about us. And the best form of that is when we trust in Christ and receive identity in Him. What God says about us on the basis of what Christ has done.
00:17:57
Speaker
And so how can we best start to answer that question? Actually, it's to listen to what God says about us, because that offers a truly life-giving form of identity. It takes the pressure off. I've not got to act in a certain way to get it, because it's based on what Jesus has done, not based on what I do. I've not got to kind of work out from this mess of stuff inside of me who I actually am. I've just got to listen to what God says in His Word and receive who I am. I think it's a really good news story that we have to tell a world that's longing to know who we are,
00:18:24
Speaker
And he's asking that question, who am I? It's good news that we can offer to people around us. So Andrew, as we come towards the top of the show, we're almost out of time. I suppose one last very practical question I guess I would ask. Again, I think a lot of Christians I meet are quite nervous by engaging their friends who are in the LGBT community. Have you got any advice on where to start? If you've got a friend at work or if you're a university student, you've got a kind of classmate and stuff, where's a good place to kind of gently
00:18:53
Speaker
sort of try and open up spiritual conversations. Because I'm presuming, hello, I'm a Christian, shall we talk about identity and sexuality? Might just be a bit too far too fast. But are there good ways that from your experience are of just beginning to move the conversation to these kind of areas and approaching faith conversations?
00:19:13
Speaker
Well, I think actually those initial steps of wanting to start faith conversations, bring up the general topic with someone who's LGBT should be no different to anyone else, actually. And it's so interesting. Christians, we have such kind of mental blocks or mental paranoia, maybe, around questions of sexuality and gender.
00:19:33
Speaker
And part of that is understandable. We've done badly in the past in the church and we're very conscious of wanting to love people well. We're very conscious of some of the very good, complex questions that people have around that. So I'm not insensitive to why we have that. But actually, funnily enough, LGBT people are normal people with the same kind of
00:19:53
Speaker
questions, desires, experiences we all kind of have in life. And so I think whatever we as an individual find usually works for us to connect with someone who's not yet a believer and to start that conversation, that would be where I'd be encouraging someone to start. Certainly not, as you say, not jumping straight in with sexuality stuff, particularly because the risk is that's what people expect because people so often outside of the church think that the gospel is kind of get your life together and Jesus might accept you, you might be able to come to him.
00:20:22
Speaker
Because the wonderful truth of the gospel is, come to Jesus, he accepts you from where you are, and then he helps you get your life together, as it were, from the position of now being a follower of him. And the risk if we jump in, starting from a question of sexuality or gender assays, people are hearing a backwards gospel, which actually is why we want to get into Jesus as soon as we can, and Jesus is the center point from which everything else flows.
00:20:46
Speaker
I kind of don't want to give you some examples because I think it's whatever works for you normally to begin to connect to someone. Don't think of people as any different actually and take those same opportunities. Andrew, thank you so, so much for joining us this week. It's been an utter pleasure having you before Andy signs us off officially. Where can we get a copy of your wonderful book from?
00:21:09
Speaker
So, finding your best identity is published by IVP, so you can get it directly from the publishers, or I think pretty much wherever you tend to get your books from. Love it. So, and as we've said, we'll put a link in the show notes, and you can find your best copy of Finding Your Best Identity at the link. See what I did there? Oh, nice. Right, good, exactly. Back in the game. There you go. Start on a dad joke, end on a dad joke. Well, you've been listening to PepTalk. It's been great to have you with us, Andrew. Thank you for joining us.
00:21:38
Speaker
And Christy and I were back in two weeks time with another episode, some more terrible jokes, hopefully a slightly more organized introduction and a new guest. So we will see you in two weeks time. Thanks for listening. Bye.