Celebrating A Hollow Victory In Your Child’s Sexuality

Mike Leake

“Whew,” says the relieved dad. He’s just discovered that his twelve year old boy had pulled Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition out of the mailbox and stuffed it under his bed.

You might be wondering why dad is saying, “whew”. It’s because he’s actually relieved that his little boy has a swimsuit edition under his bed instead of a muscle magazine filled with half-naked fellas. Dad has been secretly nervous for years that his little boy might be gay.

He had told himself that his sons propensity for flowers and playing dress up was just a phase. He kept telling himself that straight guys can like decorating and fashion. It’s okay that his son didn’t seem to care much about sports. For twelve years now he had mostly avoided the topic but lived with a foreboding sense of fear that someday he was going to have to have a very uncomfortable conversation.

But then he found this blessed magazine. Now, it was clear that junior was into the ladies. “Whew”. He can now relax. His son is normal. His son is just doing what scores of boys have done for ages—admiring a pretty girl. Dad can now sleep easy at night. Victory won.

But it’s not a victory.

If your son is lusting over beach bodies you aren’t in safe territory. Sin doesn’t care by what name it is called. It aims to destroy us and dethrone God. It doesn’t care if your little boy is looking at dudes or ladies—if his heart rebels from God’s intended design for our sexuality, then sin has won the day.

Lust isn’t normal. It feels normal. It’s what every man—save one—has done since the first man fell to the lure of the forbidden. But it isn’t normal. Jesus is normal. Jesus is how humanity ought to be. And he didn’t hide an SI swimsuit edition under his bed.

Church, we aren’t merely trying to win a cultural war. If we raise men that are addicted to porn–but at least not gay porn—then we haven’t won anything. Not even a consolation prize.

Let us instead pursue training our children to be good stewards of this precious gift of sexuality. Let us not settle for the hollow victory of heterosexual sinfulness.

Today in Blogworld 05.28.14

Mike Leake

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What To Do When You Accidentally Say Something Racially Insensitive

Mike Leake 2 Comments

I guess I’m awkward. At least that is what I’m told. I have a tendency to say things that most people wouldn’t say and often at very inappropriate moments. Some of it is intentional awkwardness for the sake of humor. At other times I say things without meaning to offend but someone ends up offended.

As someone that is awkward and prone to sticking my foot in my mouth I’m always looking for examples. I look for examples on the front end—those that help me to have a better filter of what not to say. And I look for examples on the back end—those that help me whenever I either didn’t use my filter or something silly got through.

Today, I want to give you an example of what to do whenever you accidentally say something that is racially insensitive. This, my friends, is how to apologize and how to make it right.

The Story

Today will mark the release of a book that I believe will be very helpful to the church. Timothy Paul Jones and Daniel Montgomery believe that arguments about Calvinism’s TULIP have caused us to miss the wonder of grace. To help reorient the discussion they offer us PROOF. It’s a book with deep theological truths but it’s written in such a popular fashion that most anybody could read it and greatly benefit.

And that’s sometimes the problem with writing on a popular level. You make references that are funny in your head, or you say things that mean one thing in your cultural context but quite another when the book has a wider read.

On page 60 of the book Jones and Montgomery refer to Abraham as a “camel-jockey”. I skipped right over it when I read through it. Derek Rishmawy did not. I, like the books authors, was not aware that “camel-jockey” is a racial slur towards Arabs. Rishmawy, rightly, called them on using the phrase.

Jones and Montgomery quickly apologized and took specific actions as a result. It is here that we can learn.

Just because you didn’t mean harm doesn’t mean that it wasn’t hurtful.

The authors confessed that they had no knowledge that the term was offensive. In our every day lives we are often guilty of the same type of thing—we say something that is not intended to do harm but it does. At this point we can dig in our heels and fault the other person for being so sensitive or we can apologize for the offensive remarks. Here is what Jones and Montgomery did:

No matter how unintended it may have been, the hurtfulness inherent in such an epithet runs counter to everything toward which we are working at Sojourn Community Church–to rejoice in the diversity of cultures and languages that God brings together through faith in Jesus Christ.

We can assume that just because we apologized everything is peachy and we have no need for further steps of reconciliation.

When we unintentionally say something offensive we feel none of the weight of our error. We don’t feel the hurt. Jones and Montgomery have no context for feeling hurt by a phrase like camel-jockey. Neither do I—and so I’m tempted to just say, “come on, are we really this sensitive?!?

When we don’t feel the weight of an offense we can be a little quick to say that everything is rectified and wash our hands of the whole incident. I’m thankful that Jones and Montgomery took this a step further:

This morning, we have already taken every necessary step to have this error corrected. The first printing of the book has already shipped, but we have been assured by the editors at Zondervan that this section will be reworded prior to the second printing of the book.

I’m thankful for the example that Jones and Montgomery have set for us. Hopefully you never need to use this post. I’m pretty confident that I will.

Despite the offensive reference the book is excellent and filled with grace. If nothing else this shows us that Jones and Montgomery are captivated by the grace that they proclaim in their book. (Rishmawy would agree).

You can purchase the book here.

One Problem Of Celebratory Failurism

Mike Leake


Before I went on vacation a couple weeks ago I linked to what I considered to be a terrific article by Jen Wilkin entitled Failure Is Not a Virtue. In this article she notes how failure seems to have gotten a makeover in recent years. Rather than being broken by our failures, celebratory failurism is “the idea that believers cannot obey the Law and will fail at every attempt. Furthermore, our failure is ultimately cause to celebrate because it makes grace all the more beautiful”.

To this excellent article Tullian Tchividjian wrote a post in response and after his post came a firestorm of articles from both sides of the issue. The whole thing culminated in Tchividjian being removed from The Gospel Coalition.

One of the things that Tchividjian noted was that he’d “never encountered a Christian who ‘celebrates failure’.” Perhaps he is correct and “celebrates” isn’t quite the correct word. But I’ve heard something similar to “My life strategy for today: fail, repent, repeat.” Jen Wilkin isn’t just pulling these statements out of a hat.

One particular instance was a comment left on Tim Challies’ blog when we launched the 31 Days of Purity. One commenter said,

I’m shooting for 365 days of purity. But…so far, I can’t seem to get past 31 minutes (before a bad thought pops into my head). Oh well…I thank the Lord that He has decided to love me and save me…in spite of my best efforts…not because of them.

The commenter clarified that it doesn’t mean that he’s not sorry for his sin, or that he doesn’t turn to Christ. But I still cannot wrap my mind around every having an “oh well” response to sin. This is what I believe Jen is referencing in her article.

Now, I don’t write this post to enter this debate or to even discuss anything related to Tullian. My concern is with the local church (which by the way is why I appreciate this from Carl Trueman so much). My concern is that if celebratory failurism wins the day, then we’ll end up eventually losing the gospel. Allow me to explain with a little help from Richard Sibbes.

The Problem We Wish To Confront

I believe underneath all of these debates is a genuine concern to help people. We look across the landscape of our churches and we see many people who are cold in their affections towards Christ. We serve in churches filled with professors of Christ that seem to be producing far too little fruit. Many are worried and anxious and fearful in their relationship with Christ and we want to see them passionately living for Christ and enjoying His grace.

That’s what we hope to confront. The difference lies in the way in which we see the Scriptures teach such a passionate enjoyment of grace comes about.

Help From Sibbes

Early on in The Bruised Reed, Sibbes discusses the bruising that happens in the life of an unbeliever before conversion. It is whenever a person is in misery and has been brought to see sin as the cause of it. Such a one “sees no help in himself” and is “carried with restless desire to have supply from another”.

Such a bruising, notes Sibbes, causes us to “set a high price upon Christ”. In such a case:

Then the gospel becomes the gospel indeed; then the fig-leaves of morality will do us no good. And it makes us more thankful, and, from thankfulness, more fruitful in our lives; for what makes many so cold and barren, but that bruising for sin never endeared God’s grace to them?

We live in a day and age in which many of our gospel presentations have no place for such a time of bruising. Our culture is fixated on comfort and has made itself foolishly convinced that any suffering must come from the hand of the enemy and therefore must be fought at all costs. Today, we medicate, psychologize, spiritualize, or wordsmith away such bruising.

Do you want to know why there is such coldness and barrenness in our churches? It’s because we no longer believe that godly sorrow is a necessary component of the repentance that is necessary for salvation.

My Problem With Celebratory Failurism

And here is one problem that I have with such celebratory failurism: I don’t think it’s real failure that is being celebrated. It’s only a truncated “failure” that gives a hat tip to our dastardly sin nature, but not a true failure that is wrecked and bruised and battered by a real sin, with a real name, that makes you want to vomit because you can’t believe you foolishly submitted to its reign once again.

If it’s really sin that you are dealing with then you can’t give a flippant, “oh well” when you blow it in your battle for purity. You won’t be able to say things like, “My life strategy for today: fail, repent, repeat.” You say stuff like that whenever sin is just a concept. But when it’s something that you can name—something that causes you to hold your sobbing child as she is broken by your angry tirade—then you know what it is to be bruised. Then you know what it is to be forgiven.

And because the sin isn’t real the grace isn’t real either. We end up celebrating the fictitious victory of a fictitious grace prevailing over a fictitious sin. And we do this because we’ve lost the chutzpah to believe in a radical grace that conquers real sin in the here and now through our real blood-bought and Spirit-empowered obedience.

Christ is powerful enough to not only forgive our very real failures he is powerful enough to transform us and give us real victory over real sin. That, my friends, is something to celebrate!