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With Ed Shaw
72 Plays3 years ago
Why are we afraid of talking about sexuality, especially when sharing our faith? Probably because many people today see religion as oppressive to their sexuality, and, by extension, their personal identity. However, today's guest suggests that marriage and sexuality is one of the quickest routes into telling people about how much Jesus loves them and the hope He offers them.
Ed Shaw is the pastor of Emmanuel City Centre in Bristol and leads the team behind www.livingout.org. He loves his family and friends, church and city, gin and tonic, music and books. He’s the author of The Plausibility Problem and Purposeful Sexuality (both IVP).
Find his books by searching for Ed Shaw at 10ofThose.com
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts and Podcast
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Christie and as ever I'm joined by my wonderful co-host, Andy Banister. Andy, hey, good to see you. How are you doing buddy? I'm doing well, Christie, up here in Scotland. How is life down in, well, trust, I'm assuming sunny London from the forecast.
00:00:28
Speaker
Not that you can see it from my study at the moment, but yeah, it's looking all right. It's all right. It's getting quite cold at the moment, though. I was outside the other day with huge blankets around me, but it's probably colder for you and Undo, like. You Southerners, you don't know what cold means, mate, but there we are. I know, right. What a time to be alive. Anyway.
Introduction of Guest: Ed Shaw and Topic
00:00:45
Speaker
Brilliant. So, Christie, who have we got joining us on the show today? We have the wonderful Ed Shaw. Ed, it's so great to have you. Welcome, brother. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. It's great to be with you from sort of sunny-ish Bristol.
00:00:59
Speaker
Yeah, but it's cold here as well. I realized this morning that I hadn't been outside yesterday. That's the problem about lockdown, isn't it? You feel lockdown and actually went out this morning and it was sunny but cold. It's funny you say exactly what lockdown does to you. In Scotland, cafes are now open and I went inside into a cafe yesterday for the first time in months. They felt very weird sitting inside with other people.
00:01:26
Speaker
Well Ed, you've got kind of many strings to your
Challenges in Evangelism Regarding Sexuality
00:01:29
Speaker
bow. You're a pastor of church. You're involved with an organization called Living Out, which we may talk a bit about as the show goes on, written many kind of books. And the most recent book you've written is Purposeful Sexuality, which I thought was a great thing to chat about for the next 20 minutes. Because I think one of the things I've realized is the whole question of sex and sexuality. Christians are, I think, so afraid of questions around that
00:01:55
Speaker
that it keeps them back from evangelism in the first place, right? They don't even open their mouths at work or at university because they're afraid. Someone will say, oh, you're a Christian, you're anti-gay, you're homophobic, you're whatever, whatever. And so they're afraid and they say nothing. What are some thoughts you might sort of have into how we can perhaps just break that paradigm straight away? There's some things that we can do differently in terms of A, not getting shut down by that and B, getting past that fear in the first place.
00:02:22
Speaker
Yeah, thank you. The first thing to do is to name the fear, really. And certainly a story from my life of actually realizing this was a conversation with the guy that comes to service my boiler every year. And he knows I'm a church pastor and he talks the whole time he's servicing the boiler. So I always know that I'm going to have two hours conversation with him when he comes.
00:02:41
Speaker
And he knows I'm a church pastor and we've talked about that a lot. And recently, or about two years ago, I started doing less work for church and more for living out. And I knew he was coming around and I knew he would talk about work because he always asked me about work. And I thought, well, am I going to have the guts to tell him?
00:02:58
Speaker
that I work for Living Out, which is a charity that helps people, helps churches, helps society think about faith and sexuality. And am I going to tell him that I'm a gay person who thinks that gay sex is wrong?
00:03:16
Speaker
And I found myself just sitting at my desk in the morning, knowing that he was coming, thinking, oh, I'm not, and I thought, no, you're going to do this. I thought this was ridiculous. So he was saying, you know, we had our annual catch up and he said, what was, and I said, well, I started working part time for a charity. So what does the charity do? And I said, well, it's a charity for gay people who think that gay sex is wrong because they're Christians.
00:03:38
Speaker
which is the little phrase I'd sort of worked on that morning. And there was a long silence for the first time from him because he's really chatty. And he said, that sounds very interesting. And we had a good conversation because actually it is quite interesting.
00:03:52
Speaker
I mean, just that little sort of statement was getting him to really think about it. I mean, he probably didn't realize it was possible to be a gay person who's a Christian who thinks that gay sex is wrong. And just out of that sort of odd mix of things, we had a good conversation. And I began to break through the fear of talking about what I do with quite a lot of my life.
00:04:20
Speaker
Now I know I'm in a pretty unique position working for a charity that helps that you know that helps that the existence of help and support gay Christians who think that gay sex is wrong but in some ways just beginning to think of some phrasing I could use that
00:04:39
Speaker
he as an unchristian could understand but would also be in a helpful way provocative I think was really important. So I think you know just sometimes for me it really was sitting down at my desk thinking how can I put this in a sentence that will that will he will understand and that might provoke a conversation and I think
00:05:02
Speaker
You know, without all becoming people who spend our time thinking of sound bites, sometimes actually just thinking, how could I put it in a way that my non-Christian friends, neighbors, the person that comes to service the boiler could understand? And just name it as an error fear and pray into that fear and ask for God to give you the words to say and the way to say it.
Power and Authenticity of Personal Stories
00:05:27
Speaker
I suppose, I mean, that's just so helpful for us to think about, Ed. I was just thinking that if, say, you have the power of your personal story behind that, and I suppose for some of us, if that were me, and I were to talk about that, I think I just have the fear of the lack of my own personal experience as a
00:05:48
Speaker
as a heterosexual Christian, I wouldn't be able to say, well, you know, I'm gay and I think it's wrong. And I think a lot of that of your story there is the personal power that you're living through this that adds credibility to it. So I'm just thinking that for how do we kind of combat that fear? Because I think for most of us, we kind of think, oh, gosh,
00:06:11
Speaker
If someone asks me a question about gay sex or sexuality and you happen to be straight, how do you actually go about moving into that question knowing that you have no experience? You don't know what that feels like. You don't know what that is even like to go through, let alone answer. Do you have any wisdom as to how we could go about moving into those conversations if that isn't our sexuality?
00:06:37
Speaker
Well, one thing would be to steal my story, steal the stories of the people on the Living Out website who are Christians, same sex attractive Christians who are gay, talking about why they believe in biblical sexual ethics and how that's been good for them.
00:06:53
Speaker
And actually just spending some time watching those stories, hearing those stories as Christians means that in conversation we can talk about those stories. We could say, I was watching this story last week, I was watching this film last week of a woman called Anne who, and in some ways you could use this, it doesn't have to be, you know, I'm not saying fake, fake, fake, you know, fake, fake a different sexuality, but I'm saying borrow our stories and use them.
00:07:19
Speaker
And I know that a number of people in my church family have said that when the topic comes up at work in conversation with non-Christian colleagues, and they'll often say, oh, our pastor's gay, and he thinks that sex is just for marriage between a man and a woman. And that is so interesting in and of itself. It's so pushing against the narrative.
00:07:41
Speaker
that people often become interested in a conversation comes out of that. I think people are so used, aren't they, to particular stories nowadays? And the particular story everybody's used to when it comes to sexuality and being gay in the church is, you know,
00:07:57
Speaker
somebody grows up in the church, discovers they're gay, leaves the church because the church was horrible to them. That's the story most people think we're going to be told and obviously there's enough people who've experienced that to make that story plausible and sadly true. But the reality is pushing an alternative story because there are alternative stories. Are there many people within the church who are gay but who have found out that
00:08:24
Speaker
The person that most meets their desires, most brings wholeness, most gives them an identity that lasts, most gives them a community that they're part of, are people who happen to be gay, but are also Christians who believe what the Bible teaches about sexuality and the place of sex within marriage. So I think borrow stories, it doesn't have to be your own. You can say what I was talking to, I was listening to, I've got a friend, dot, dot, dot.
00:08:49
Speaker
think the thing about stories as well that is so powerful, you know, it is that we live in a world where everyone's sort of, you know, everyone's advancing their agenda by stories, our friends in the LGBT community have, you know, used story very powerfully. On their side of the discussion, I think Christians, perhaps we've underplayed the power of, of story. In fact, I, I was speaking to I forget who this was racing as a friend, I forget which friend was was saying how
00:09:12
Speaker
one of the things they've done for evangelism in the workplace is they'll always read interesting books at lunchtime and they they'd been reading I think it was David Bennett's book The War of Loves and so it was amazing conversation starts because people in the cafeteria at lunchtime would just walk what book are you reading and to be able to lead with well this is the story you know of uh of you know someone who is an atheist and same-sex attracted now a Christian does that provoke an incredible conversation
00:09:35
Speaker
through the story of the book so that's fantastic advice as living out there's obviously books you've written Dave you know Sam Albury and others and draw on those.
Church's View on Gospel's Positivity and Sexual Ethics
00:09:45
Speaker
The question I suppose I wanted to press into though here is there is one of the reasons though that Christians are perhaps nervous around sexuality and stumbling into an evangelism is there is there a deeper issue that maybe in some parts of the church we've begun to doubt
00:09:59
Speaker
that the gospel is actually good news, you know, it's, it's, it kind of, you know, we sort of grapple with all the gospel restricts people, you know, if you're a same-sex tractive person, you can't engage in what the world would tell you is good stuff. And so we only see the gospel through that negative lens. Do we need to rediscover what it means for the gospel to be good news, not just for men and women who are gay, but actually for all of us?
00:10:23
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, again, back to the basic story, one of the basic stories narrative has been told is being gay and a Christian, being gay and living in the light of traditional Christian sexual ethics makes you miserable. And we're trying to do it living out as pushback against that. The other story that's been told is that being gay and expressing yourself in a same-sex sexual relationship equals happiness. That's one of the big narrative societies telling.
00:10:52
Speaker
And what's interesting is they're increasing voices from gay communities, non-Christian gay communities, saying that that simple equation, being gay, living it out in a same-sex sexual relationship, isn't equaling happiness.
00:11:07
Speaker
And so as well as it were telling stories of gay Christians, I think one of the things we need to be doing in the church is reading stories that are coming out of the LGBT community that are beginning to question their own narrative and are beginning to talk about the reality that the story that was meant to end and they all lived happily ever after isn't ending in that way.
00:11:35
Speaker
And it's really important for us to hear those stories and to feel the pain so that we can connect with people and we can point out to them that the only story that ends and they all lived happily ever after is the gospel story.
00:11:47
Speaker
And I think we think we don't have a story that's good enough to share that, as it were, could possibly, plausibly help somebody within a gay community come to know Christ. But everybody on this planet is looking for a happy end to their story. Everyone on this planet is looking for an intimacy that will last, for an identity that will last. People within gay communities are so often struggling with deep feelings of shame.
00:12:16
Speaker
and with mental health issues. And the answer to all of that is a relationship with Jesus for all of us. And we shouldn't fear we've got nothing to offer. I think so often I'll speak to somebody, they basically think they're steering away from sharing the gospel with gay family members and friends and colleagues because they think that telling about Jesus is going to muck up their life.
00:12:39
Speaker
because they're gonna have to sacrifice so many things. Jesus is not in the business of mucking up anybody's life. Jesus is in the business of giving us all life to the full, and we should not feel worried or ashamed in any way of sharing the gospel with people from LGBT backgrounds, people from LGBT communities, because they're discovering, as all of us are discovering, that secular narratives take you so far
00:13:07
Speaker
but don't take you to a happy ending, ultimately, and actually don't produce.
00:13:14
Speaker
the real intimacy that is offered in a relationship with God in Christ and should be happening in the context of a local church with brothers and sisters in Christ too.
Biblical Purpose of Sexuality and Connection to Gospel
00:13:25
Speaker
So actually, I think in some ways a lot of the battle has been to be fought up here in us having the confidence that the gospel is good news for all and that we're not ashamed of the gospel because it's a power of salvation for everyone who believes straight and good.
00:13:42
Speaker
I think that just takes us really nicely onto one of the big questions that your book is exploring, which is what is the purpose of sexuality? How would you lay that out?
00:13:56
Speaker
What is sexuality even for? I think this is one of the things that I most appreciated about reading your book is that I've read so few things on why we are sexual beings and how that is fulfilled in the Gospel. If you could give us just a few nuggets on that to get us into your book and thinking a little bit more, what is the purpose of sexuality?
00:14:19
Speaker
Well, just stumbling across this question has been a sort of game changer for me. It's just recognizing as I was talking with Christians, but also recognizing as I was talking with non-Christians and also other people who are Christians but disagree with me on sexual ethics, is I was sort of trying to make sense of all the conflict, all the disagreement and how so often we would just have conversations that went nowhere, would be saying stuff that other people just didn't get.
00:14:49
Speaker
And I found that giving some thought and time, that the most helpful question that made sense of the disagreement was the question, what do you think sexuality is for?
00:15:01
Speaker
and asking non-Christian friends that and asking Christians who disagree with me on sexual ethics that helped me and them make sense of what we're disagreeing about. Because, you know, I'd speak to non-Christian family members and friends and when you ask them what is sexuality for, they'd basically talk about sexuality as being
00:15:22
Speaker
It's something that brings pleasure, something that's quite recreational in its sort of object, something that is about you pleasing yourself and pleasing other people. I would talk to
00:15:38
Speaker
more liberal Christians, if I can put it like that, and they would talk about sexuality being just about bringing you into a committed lifelong relationship with somebody else, but that somebody else possibly being the same sex or the opposite sex and rematter. And then I'd be thinking, well, why do I think it's so important
00:16:01
Speaker
that in a sexual relationship, it's a man and a woman united for life in the covenant of Christian marriage. Why do I think that? Well, the answer is in the question, what is sexuality for? And from a biblical point of view, sexuality is there. Yeah, it's there to bring companionship in marriage. It's there to bring children into the world. But fundamentally, sexuality
00:16:31
Speaker
is a gift from God to all of us.
00:16:34
Speaker
And it's a gift that helps me as somebody that's never been in a sexual relationship. It's a gift that helps me grasp the full passion of God's love for me and Christ, just to start with. And I think this is just mind blowing. I can remember first reading Ezekiel 16 and being quite bothered by God using all this sexual language to describe his love for his people. And then actually realizing, no, God is taking our most powerful emotions and using them to help us grasp the power of his love for
00:17:05
Speaker
us, these people and just realise it. Oh and actually the God who's taken using sexual language to describe that is the God who created sexuality and perhaps this is one of the reasons why he gave us sexual feelings is to grasp how passionate he loves his people in Christ.
00:17:22
Speaker
And obviously, the biblical trail for that is Ezekiel 16. It's Song of Songs. It's Hosea. It's all the imagery you get in the Bible about marriage all the way through and what marriage is there to point us forward to, which is where the world is heading. And this is the other reason why we have sexuality from a biblical point of view, which is the marriage of God sent Jesus to God's people, the church. And I love the idea, the biblical idea, the biblical truth.
00:17:49
Speaker
that sexuality and marriage and the union of indifference of a man or a woman is there in creation, yes, to bring companionship and children, but most of all, to point me, to point you, to point us all forward to the fact that the world is going to end with a union indifference, a permanent union indifference between a man and a woman between God, Son, Jesus, and his bride, the church, and that that is going to be better than
00:18:17
Speaker
any union here on earth better than any sex on earth it's the it's the fulfillment of it all um and that then you know answering the question in those really quite christian biblical terms helps me and my non-christian friend and my christian friend from a different perspective make sense of our disagreements because for me marriage is it's almost a sacramental thing it's really significant
00:18:46
Speaker
in and of itself and the vision, the union indifference and it being a man and a woman, it's not just a sort of a thing to bring about kids or just a sort of historical mistake. No, it's all about the architecture of the gospel and actually it's all about the history of the world and where the world is heading.
00:19:06
Speaker
And that I found being, you know, I've had conversations where I explain this to both non-Christian friends and Christians coming from another perspective. And they finally, you know, they finally thought, I can see why we disagree on this. Because my non-Christian friend thinks it's just a recreational thing. My Christian from a different perspective thinks it's just a commitment thing. And I think it's all about the gospel.
00:19:32
Speaker
I think the other thing I'm just so conscious we've got about two minutes left because I'd love to go deeper into this but you know one of the things that really interests me about what you've answered there Ed is a theme that we return to so often on pep talk with different guests is you know encouraging folks when we're thinking about evangelism think about talking about Christ with our friends and our neighbors
00:19:50
Speaker
and an objection or a question or an issue comes up is try and be thinking about what's the biggest story that plugs into because if we just stay at the surface level of the question you can get tied up in all kinds of knots but if you can take the person you're talking to back into that bigger story then you say at least people can see okay you know my friend and I are in very different stories or better still hopefully you can help and see how as a christian this fits into the into the into the bigger story of christ so that would seem to be a takeaway point right there i think what's the bigger story right
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, and just asking questions, because I think when it comes to discussions around gay marriage or gay sex, we think we need to come up with a little PowerPoint presentation that's going to answer everybody's objections, rather than, you know, do what Jesus does, which is so often when he's asked the question, he asks the question back. And I would say, say, yeah, let's really have, what do you think sexuality is for? What do you think marriage is?
00:20:38
Speaker
And actually just either of those questions would be really helpful to find out where they're coming from. And there'll be commonality, there'll be connections you can make, but there'll also be big disagreements that will help you make sense of disagreements and give you a chance. It turns out it's not a long convoluted route from
00:20:58
Speaker
marriage and sexuality to the gospel. In fact, you can't really talk about marriage and sexuality without talking about the gospel. And so why we're all so afraid of talking about sexuality, I don't know, because it would seem to be one of the quickest routes into telling people about how much Jesus loves them and the hope he offers them. Stunning. Ed, thank you so much. I'm so sorry that we've come to the end of our time. I feel like there's so much more that I just love to ask you and chew over with you. Thank you so much for all of the
00:21:26
Speaker
Just the prayer and the deep thought and reflection you put into that book in particular, I can't commend it highly enough to listeners. Please go and look into Purposeful Sexuality, a short introduction, and by Ed Shaw, it's brilliant.
00:21:39
Speaker
Well, I think that brings us to the end of PepTalk for today.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:21:42
Speaker
Ed, thank you again so much for joining us. Andy, I think we'll be back in a couple of weeks' time, won't we, with our next guest? We will indeed, yes. So I hope you enjoyed the show. And again, it's been great having you with us. And join us again for two weeks' time, different guests, and another great topic. And so bye for now. Bye.
00:22:03
Speaker
I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. This is a listener supported podcast where you can only make it with the support of our friends across the country and around the world. And if you'd like to be a part of that community, simply visit the website, thepeptalkpodcast.com.
00:22:19
Speaker
and click on the Support the Podcast button. If you sign up to support Solas and the podcast for as little as three pound a month as a thank you, we will send you a free copy of my book, The Atheists Didn't Exist, or if you prefer, Christie's book, More Truth as a thank you. And through your support, we can keep making more podcasts like this one.