Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / What Is Sex For? || Purposeful Sexuality with Ed Shaw || SLP 344

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What Is Sex For? || Purposeful Sexuality with Ed Shaw || SLP 344 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to the Speaker Life Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_02: My name is Glenn Scripton, and thank you so much for joining us today.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: You're in for a treat.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: We've got Ed Shaw, the author of Purposeful Sexuality, a Short Christian Introduction.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: And we also get into his earlier book called The Posibility Problem of The Church and Same Sex Attraction.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: So we talk about all sorts of areas to do with sex and sexuality, marriage and the family, church life, and the gospel of Jesus Christ as the grand cosmic romance.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: We talk about everything really in this episode, including its work with the Church of England and its Living in Love and Faith document, which is really at a bit of a crossroads, as is the Church of England itself as a denomination.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: We get into some of that and into how we can proclaim the good news of Jesus in a world that does not think our words about sex are good news.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: What do we say?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: How can we say it?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: We get into all that and I cannot wait to share it with you.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: But first, can I tell you about our foundry?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Our Speak My Foundry is our internship program where for 10 months we take people who are particularly interested in evangelism and in creativity.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: And we bring those two things together in our creative evangelism internship.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: Come with us here from ESPON and go on mission together, we produce resources together, and we study together so that we can get this good news out on every platform that we can.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: If this sounds like the sort of thing that you'd be up for, uh then we'd love you to go to speaklifefoundry.com.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Or perhaps it's something that a family member or a friend might be into.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: So what do you think about that family member or friend?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: And uh recommend that they check out Speak Life Foundry for our unique internship opportunity.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: But without further ado, uh let's get into our conversation with Ed Shaw as he talks to us about purposeful sexuality.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: Today I am with Ed Shaw, the author of Purposeful Sexuality, a short Christian introduction.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is brilliant to be with you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you are looking very bright behind you.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a wonderful kind of feature.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Is this a feature wall or is that that entire room lovely?
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: The entire room.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I was under sort of I moved into this, uh I moved in into this home about 10 years ago.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been in rentals or church accommodation up until that point.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I went wild and I've got a bright red room.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I've got a bright green room.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've I and I actually I love I love colour and I love red.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Do you notice your mood changing as you go into the different rooms?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, well actually this this room is my this is my time off room.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't normally use this for anything that approaches uh stuff like work because it it's meant to be the relaxing room, and I think red helps me relax.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm glad that you think that Speak Life will be a relaxing kind of Yeah, I know.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: This is an honor, basically, of what I'm saying, for you guys to to see the thread and too.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_02: Into the inner sanctum with Ed.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: How how are you keeping with you know lockdown three and all the rest of it?
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think, well, I think I I I I've gone slightly crazy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've all gone slightly.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we've all gone slightly crazy, haven't we?
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to do it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: You in particular, Ed, but yeah.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know I've been crazy for years, but I finally recognized it.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just beginning to think I I've got to be careful because I can't really trust my own words and instincts at the moment because you know, so much of life has been sucked out of me by the last nine, ten months.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I've gone slightly crazy, and I'm noticing that everybody's slightly crazy.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the people that are the people that are sort of most sane at the moment are the people that know they've gone crazy and uh are sort of slightly cautious in what they're saying and how they're saying it.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: The people that they're really worrying me, and there seems to be a lot of them, are those who don't think they've gone crazy and are saying and doing things which just causing a huge amount of damage at the moment because they don't know that actually we've all gone crazy and we need to put even more filters on what we think, say, and do at the moment than perhaps anytime anytime else in our lives.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, as Paul Blackham said on on the show a couple of weeks ago, yeah, 2020 will be remembered not just for the pandemic, but for the tribalism and the anger.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you decided to wade into the the sedate issue of human sexuality.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've been I've been I've been doing that for years.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: So this is just this is just a continuation of that.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: You have, I mean, um uh you you you wrote uh a former book about the plausibility problem that um sort of conservative Christians have on this issue, um, sex and sexuality.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh take us take us back to the plausibility problem.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what was it that you were trying to get across to the church at that stage?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I was trying to say to um my church and to other churches was that when it comes to actually singleness in general, but particularly the singleness that those of us who are same-sex attracted a gay experience, that people just don't think it's it's a plausible lifestyle.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, people think that the only way to be happy is to be in a relationship with somebody, a sexual relationship with someone to be in a marriage, whether that's the traditional sort of definition of it or a same-sex marriage, and that to deny that to anybody for any reason is just not plausible.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not a livable life.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I wanted to say to the church, it is a livable life.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that we've created a plausibility problem, but we've created a plausibility problem by just departing from New Testament um ways of doing church, and uh from departing from Christianity's high view of singleness and from forgetting some pretty basic stuff like Jesus was single and was and is the uh the best expression of humanity that ever has been.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus didn't get married and settled down into a nuclear family life, and yet, if you want to know what true humanity looks like, we need to look at him.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, we've spun this lie that true humanity, true life, life to the full is finding your other half settling down and having 2.4 children.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the plausibility problem was really, I suppose, a critique of evangelical churches um and a call to return to the New Testament way of viewing things like what churches, the value of singleness, uh, what sexuality is for, and a whole host of other things.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I've got, I can't remember how many missteps I've got in the book.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: I basically said there's a whole number of missteps we've taken, we need to reassess and we need to repent, and we need to rebuild our churches around what the New Testament teaches and a whole host of things.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I love that approach to things, that it it's not um, it's not so much, okay, um, here is you know, a gay couple who comes to church and starts, you know, liking the teaching of Jesus, here are all the ways they need to change um in order to fit into the the ways of church we've been, you know, we've been kind of uh we've fallen into over the decades.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yes, there is repentance called as anyone comes into the faith, and that repentance is for everyone, but it really is a call to the church that you know judgment begins with the house of God, and we are the ones who get our our houses in order.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I I wonder, like, what what are the myths that you think we've bought into as church that's meant that we're not living really according to New Testament patterns, but but according to to other stories that are out there.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_02: What are the other stories that we're falling for?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're for it.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we're falling for the you're falling for the sort of that the only way of coping with being a sexual being is to express yourself in a sexual relationship.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's the only way to be sexual is to be sexually active.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: That that would be something.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um that yeah, that nuclear family is everything without recognizing that the whole idea about people just living and interacting in nuclear families is a very odd 20th, 21st century blip in human experience that is only actually uh a lived reality for a you know a minority, even of the world population today in Western societies.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: We sort of we think nuclear family is normal.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not, and actually it's not very healthy.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and increasingly, actually, people recognizing and seeing that, actually, particularly in the midst of a pandemic.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what other myths have we fallen for?
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've fallen just for the myth that that when something's hard, that doesn't mean it's wrong.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've also fallen for the myth that um if something feels natural, it must be right to do it.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean we wouldn't, we wouldn't, you know, let's just say, you know, we we we ran the argument, oh, if you are same-sex attracted, it must be right to express that in a same-sex sexual relationship because it came naturally to you, and therefore if it comes naturally to you, you must do it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: We we don't say that uh when it comes to stubbornness or when it comes to lying.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you, stubbornness and lying come very naturally to me.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: I lie instinctively in some situations, and nobody says, Oh, it comes naturally to you, Ed.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: You just get on a lie.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, they call me out on it.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: So we just uh myth upon myth uh has been allowed to build up.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And and I know a lot of us perhaps despair about how much time the church has spent uh thinking about debating issues around human sexuality, identity, and gender, and shouldn't we be getting on with the real work?
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think God in his goodness is is getting us doing the real work of reforming ourselves and repenting through the conversations that are happening around uh sexuality, identity, and gender at the moment.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And rather than thinking, oh, can we just put all that in a cupboard and get on with the real work?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think in this moment, this is a huge part of the real work that God wants us to be doing.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you've you've raised like huge issues to do with, you know, what what is the good life?
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if part of the good life is this sort of romantic idle of finding my other half, um, then that takes us in a certain direction.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, what what is um the family, as you said, and we're having to rethink that.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: And and the pandemic's helping us to rethink that, and you know, the collapse of the housing market's helping us to think that.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the there are all sorts of societal pressures that are making us realize what what weird people um we've been since the 1950s.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um and then you you start talking in this book about a purposeful um sexuality.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I wonder if that's sort of starting to answer the question.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, for somebody who's interested, well, then why are Christians so weird?
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um when when the if if they properly center themselves on Jesus Jesus and the Bible, um, why are they so weird?
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what is what is sexuality for?
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_02: Is that kind of where the where the book's coming from?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I've been now talking about sexuality um you know in public with a lot of people and part of Church of England sort of uh committees and conversations on the subject, and and out of I suppose the experience of that over the last seven, eight years, I I've I've increasingly found myself um recognizing that the big question that we haven't asked, I didn't use to ask, but we need to be asking ourselves and other people is that question, what is sexuality for?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, why why from a in a Christian worldview do we think the creator God of the universe has given his image bearers uh sexuality?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why in other worldviews do you think that we are sexual beings?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: What is your sexuality for?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And and I find it a really helpful question to be asking people and to in particular to make sense of the different places we land.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think you know, if your answer to the question, what is sexuality for, is basically to have fun, to please yourself.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, uh of course that means that you've landed on a world in which really the only sexual ethic is consent.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you can go and do what you want to because it's about pleasure, and that's the only reason for it.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh it's a pleasure-seeking thing, and you're as it were gonna go and do what you want as much as you possibly can, with the only thing limiting that somebody else saying, No, I'm not happy with what you're doing to me.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but if you think, you know, within a more liberal church circles, the you know, what is sexuality for?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's about um, you know, bringing two people who love to love each other into a lifelong uh monogamous and sexual relationship, if you think that's all that sexualities are for, of course you're going to be up for a same-sex marriage.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because that's what sexuality is for, it would seem to be wrong to deny that to people of the same sex if you say that it's possible for people of the opposite sex.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you make sense of that ethical position within Christianity.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: But if you like me think that sexuality is for something much greater and bigger, uh, that it's actually about helping us to appreciate God's love for us, the full raw power of that, and it's about training heaven, it's helping us to understand that this world is heading to the union and difference between God's son Jesus and God's people, the church, uh, Revelation 21 stuff, and that the reason we have difference in marriage and a union and difference is to point us to our destiny.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you begin to make sense of why someone like me says you can't have two men a union in similarity and call that marriage, and you can't say that that is part of the Bible story, and you can't embrace that as part of a Christian sexual ethic because I think that sexuality is for pointing us uh forward to the union and the difference that this world is heading to.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that just begins to make sense of where I'm coming from and where other people are coming from.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I've I've just it's it's a question I've started to ask more and more.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a question I wished I'd asked more in the past, and I think it's the question that the most makes sense of the disagreements and most helps us to understand where where different people are coming from.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: So, what does that look like in a conversation?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, let's let's say I'm um I might be on the outside of the faith.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm not entirely against Christianity.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: I see some of the good things that Christian civilization has brought to the world.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but come on, like honestly, Christians need to get with the program on the sexual revolution.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in you know, we we now look back on a pre-1960s, you know, um morality of sexuality that was preached by the church, and we recognize it instantly as um the bigotry that it was.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: We've jumped on the train with Martin Luther King, and we we see that um we want um racial equality and liberation.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but the church has not jumped on the um sexual liberation, sexual equality train.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's back in the dark ages, it needs to be brought into the future.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_02: Ed, stop holding out on us.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um we know you're we know you're a nice guy, um, but you're you're just caught up in this ancient kind of bigotry and everyone's got their blind spots, but come on, get with the program, Ed.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: What do you what do you say to me in that conversation?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many different routes I could go with on that one.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, one route would be to say actually, yeah, that the church, the church has got sex and sexuality wrong, or many many branches of the church or um have got their attitude to sex and sexuality wrong for many centuries in many places.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um but actually, if we go back to New Testament Christianity, if we go back to the Apostle Paul, we actually see um someone living in a pre-Christendom setup, a pre-sexual revolution setup, but actually living in a world that was very similar in its attitudes towards the body and sex than our world is today.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we see him building a distinctive and positive and attractive uh sexual ethic that was good for people, that protected women in particular, uh, but it was also good for uh the gay people that were around there, even though nobody would ever have used that label.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: And and you see someone who had no embarrassment about talking about sex, no embarrassment about talking about the value of the fact that we're embodied creatures in a way that at some point in church history has been lost.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Although, having said that, we also want to say go back to uh church fathers and you see an ability to talk about sex and sexual desire and an openness about that in Augustine, for instance, that you wouldn't see elsewhere, even though perhaps Augustine took some false steps.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: You see, in the Puritans, who often sort of held up as the example of sexual repression, actually a wonderful celebration of uh human beauty, physical beauty, um, a wonderful appreciation of how powerful our sexual desires are, wonderful insights into the point of sexuality.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think ask many a Puritan what is sexuality for, and they would come up with a much, much healthier answer to that question than uh many uh liberals and also many Christians uh today.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: So I wanted to sort of say, yes, hold our hands up.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Christians have often not uh appreciated the value of what it means to be embodied sexual uh creatures.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's been a sort of uh a whole strand of Christianity that's failed to do that, but at the same time, there has been a whole strand of Christians and Christian theology throughout the ages where you can see actually healthy attitudes towards sex, sexual desire, uh, being embodied creatures.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm wanting to encourage the church, as it were, to connect with the right strand and to repent of our connections with unhealthy strands that there have been throughout uh church uh history.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, I mean that would be a that'll be a way of answering, perhaps in a Christian context, in in uh a conversation with unbeliever, you might go in a different direction.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what would you do?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_02: I'd I'd I'd love I'd love to know.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, how how can we have more fruitful conversations?
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I I guess one of one of the things you're pointing us to is what is the purpose of sexuality?
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: What is what is sex for?
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: What are bodies for?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: What what are we doing really with our bodies?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: Is that the sort of territory you get into?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you know, if somebody, if somebody is in conversation, you know, wanting to, you know, either giving me a hard time or just wanting nicely to find out why I believe what I do believe, I would ask them, what do you think sexuality is for?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And respond to their answers and you know, listen to their answers and try and find common ground.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also try and help them make sense of why my answer to that question, what is sexuality for, is so radically different from a Christian point of view.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the sort of language I'd use is actually to help them grasp that from a Christian worldview, our bodies and sexuality and sex itself are sacred things.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And actually perhaps to use that language of sacredness, that actually this is this is these are things which we think have deep religious uh significance um in a way that I think people begin to grasp because people know that faith groups have things that are sacred, faith groups have things that are are religiously significant and attitudes towards things that in some ways don't make sense to outsiders, but make sense within that particular worldview and helping people to see that for me, sex isn't just about two people who love each other wanting to express that love for each other, it is about uh a mystery, as Paul puts it, of two people, two different people becoming united in their difference, uh becoming one, and in that oneness, experiencing and trailing and advertising to the world uh the reality that we are heading, humanity is heading, God's people are heading to a union and difference between Jesus and the church.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that, you know, for instance, an orgasm is but just a foretaste of what is on offer for God's people in eternity.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: The best sort of sexual experience in the here and now is just a pale imitation of the eternal bliss that God promises uh his people married to his son all the time.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I yeah, a lot of that obviously there's a huge amount of, as it were, Christian freight and language I've just used there, but I suppose the basic point I wanted to make is for Christians, this is a sacred, a holy, uh, a holy thing, and and helping people to understand that it's not just an arbitrary rule you must not have sex outside marriage, and marriage is between a man and a woman, and we've just that that's just that for you know, somebody made that decision a long time ago and we stick with it.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's for reasons that are central to our understanding of where the world has come from and where the world is heading, and that it's all about relationship, it's all about intimacy, but actually it's most of all about us being in a relationship and enjoying an intimate relationship with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as we are united to Jesus.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's it's woven into the natural world, it's woven into our experience as humans and our experience of our bodies, such that uh I know um you've appreciated the work of Jonathan Haidt uh as well, but in in the righteous mind, he speaks of uh, you know, more conservative cultures thinking of the body as a temple and more liberal cultures thinking of the body as a playground.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I just wonder whether, you know, when you look at things like the Me Too movement, or when you look at when sex goes wrong, you recognize everybody recognizes that a bad experience with sex, it doesn't feel like you've grazed your knee in the playground.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um it feels like holy space has been violated.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and we we recognize actually, especially when sex goes wrong, that our bodies are not just playgrounds, that there is something sacred about the body, there is something special about sex, such that you know, if you force me to play a game of tennis, then you're Just weird.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: If you force me to have sex, you're a rapist.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: And we we recognize the sanctity in that sense of the body and the sanctity of sex.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I want I'm coming across more and more um the kind of argument that says, what is my sexuality for?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's for whatever I say it's for.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I will identify in my own way.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_02: And you you you don't know what my sexuality is for, and you can't tell me what my sexuality is for.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_02: I will identify in a very fine-grained way.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and and we see sort of the the explosion of categories in the LGBT plus community, which I think what one of the reasons for that is the explosion of um ways in which people do experience their sexualities, and therefore they might experience you saying, Oh, here's here's what your sexuality is for.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's in this book.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and they say, No, my sexuality is unique to me and it's very fine-grained, and you can't you can't tell me what it's for.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: How would you respond to that argument?
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, obviously, at one level, I I can only speak out of my own experience.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things I always want to sort of say to people, you say, Ed, you should just go with your sexuality, you should just express yourself sexually in the way that you want to.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I always want to push back on that one and say, if I did that, that would have been disastrous for me and people that came into contact with me.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's this presumption that that Ed Shaw living out his sexuality would be settling down in a nice, comfortable way with um somebody of the the same sex and then living happily over ever after.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you that that is not what I want to be doing sexually.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: It really isn't.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I want to, you know, I you know, I I would not I I could, you know, without sort of using this podcast to you know share all my sexual fantasies of the last 20, 30 years, which I suspect is something that nobody wants to uh take part in, you know, let me assure you that that sort of story is not is not what I would have been doing.
• 24:05
  unknown: Yeah.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: That is not where my sexuality would have led me.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: We'd all be in prison by nightfall, wouldn't we?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: If if we just I mean it's just you know, it we you know, it's just it would, you know, I I I know I know the patterns of my and then they're not they're not it would not have been healthy for me.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and interestingly, one of the one of the realities of you know, reading as a do and interacting as a do with a lot of uh gay literature and um accounts of what it is to be gay today, I recognize in the many stories that are not living, that are not ending, and they all lived happily ever after, my story.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think, yeah, this this is the alternative lifestyle, and it's ended in, or it's it's been an experience of promiscuity and mental health uh challenges and huge body images, and uh it hasn't ended in a nice monogamous relationship, but has ended in a constant search for the one person that's gonna complete them that is never ending and gets harder and harder.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, over the last two or three years, I've really tried to push myself, as it were, by by just saying, okay, you've got to read, you've got to read the other stuff.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: You've got to, as it were, test your own Christian convictions by seeing what the alternative narrative is, where it would lead you.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so I've done that.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: And what has been quite shocking for me, quite surprising for me, is that the the alternative story that is sold to us as and they all lived happily ever after isn't ending in that way.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And brave voices within gay communities like uh like Matthew Todd and others are saying it isn't working out.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what's gone wrong?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I would disagree profoundly with Matthew Todd, he disagree profoundly with me about or why it's gone wrong.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I wanted to say to people, you you think you think the alternative story for Ed Shaw is a beautiful one, it isn't, right?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because Ed Shaw is, as every human being is, a real mess of good and bad desires.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and actually, what I most need, what we all most need, is actually somebody from outside to help us understand what it is to be sexually embodied creatures and to help us know uh what the good life looks like as a sexually embodied creature who has experiential purity from which to speak, you know, who knows what it is to be human, who knows what it is to have a sexuality and yet hasn't mucked it up.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I need.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we all need.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: We need actually someone who can say, listen to me, follow me, this is how you behave in a good way sexually.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is how you live the good life as a human being, as a sexual creature.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the only person is Jesus Christ.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what does hashtag me too?
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is expose the fact that so many of the people that held themselves up as you know, the moral leaders for us to follow when it comes to sexuality, both as it were in the secular world, but also within the church, have been absolute failures at doing that and were sexual abusers and have ruined people's lives.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I can think of you know, a few other points in human history where we have most clearly needed someone who is human but is perfect, someone who is human and yet can speak from both as it were inside and outside the human experience to help us make sense of things.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when it is so beautiful to be a Christian and say, actually, yes, in Jesus, we've got somebody who's human, who knows what it's like to be us, but he's also divine, who is able to speak with authority into the muddle we've all made of our lives.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hey there, are you on our email list?
• 27:42
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• 27:46
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• 28:05
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• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: So go to speaklife.uk slash sign up and we'll keep in touch.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks so much and on with the show.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_02: And therefore, the call to Christ is a call, um, first of all, to come to him as the sinners that we are, um, with messes in our lives in all kinds of areas, including in our sexuality, um, and nobody gets a free pass on that question.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, whether you identify as heterosexual, homosexual, however you identify, um, there are all sorts of messes, all sorts of um ways that you need to be healed by Jesus and led by Jesus.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but as you as someone comes into the church and submits themselves to Christ, um, if they are in, let's say, a same-sex relationship, are you calling them to deny their sexuality as they come to Jesus?
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: No, what I'm wanting to say when it comes to sexuality is that I I want all Christians, you know, gay, gay, straight, whatever they might sort of, however they might label themselves in contemporary terms, I want all Christians to recognize uh and appreciate their sexuality.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and actually, I want to, in some ways, I mean, it'd be interesting.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: There are various things in the book, Purpose for Sexuality, that will cause controversy.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing that nobody's quite picked up yet um is that I call out repression of sexuality as a sin, which which I think it is.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there are times when it's right for us all to repress sexual feelings and desires, but the Christian approach that has been we're not going to talk about sexuality, we're gonna deny sexuality, we're gonna repress our sexuality and act as if it doesn't exist or that it's a it's a purely bad thing, I want to call that out as a sin.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: I want everyone to appreciate their sexuality, to appreciate the good things about it as well as the bad things about it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, to give an example, when when I when I feel the full power of sexual attraction to someone, and let's say, you know, in my case, that's gonna be a certain type of good-looking man, there's there's something for me to repent of there.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because what do I want to do in that moment?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: I want to consume that person, and that person has become the answer to all my problems, and that person has become an idol that I want to I want to bow down and worship, I want them to take control of my life, want to give my life to them.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: That is in Christian terms, idolatry, and that needs to be repented of.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, as I experience the full power of sexual attraction, I've got a chance to reflect on wow, this is this is this is the sort of intensity with which God loves me.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when I'm blown away, when you have that, this wow, that is just a this is just a small little insight into how God loves me.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because in scripture, when God most wants to communicate the power of his his longing and his desire and his love for his people, what does he do?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: He uses sexual language.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel 16, I'm gonna be blown away by Ezekiel 16 as God portrays himself as a sexual creature full of desire and passionate love for his people.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: And when we feel the full passion of sexual desire, we've got just a little insight.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's something there that I can actually say, this is redeemable.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: In in that moment of really struggling with wrong sexual attraction, I can also think, wow, this is how much God loves me.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then also when I see, when I recognize beauty in that man who I think is gonna be the answer to all my and I'm tempted into idolatry and tempted to worship him, I've actually received what is a call to worship, but it's not a call to worship the good-looking man, it's actually a call to worship the God who created beauty and who scattered it all over creation, who scattered it in sunsets and scattered it in the natural world, who scattered it in beautiful buildings and paintings, but also made some people beautiful.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when I see beauty in another human being's character or looks, what am I mean?
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's a call to worship the God who placed beauty in them.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the reality is their beauty's passing, his beauty is permanent.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I might as well worship the true source of it rather than a passing image of it, shadow of it.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: I wonder if a distinction from Augustine is is helpful.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: He he talked about the desire of the heart and the heart of the desire.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So if God were to give us the desire of our hearts, um, that would kill us.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's it's like, you know, give a give a coke addict 10 grand, and you know, it would will not be for their good.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's the there's the heart of the desire that God does give you and wants to give you.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I I find I found that a very um helpful distinction to to think through in all sorts of areas, but but also in in sexuality.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: I I remember years ago in in London on the tubes, um there was um an advertising campaign for um National Art Gallery, and and uh it was Modigliani's models.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so there was just a massive oil painting of a naked woman there.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I just I just remember, you know, every time catching a train, being confronted by this naked woman and and feeling the oppression of it, because if I if I look with lust, then I failed, and if I don't, aren't I a hero?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: And but either way, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna fight this with my own willpower.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, one one day I kind of I came across this this picture of a beautiful woman, and it caught me off guard, and I wasn't, you know, wasn't ready to either look with lust or turn away in um heroism.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I I saw her, and I was just like, she's just a beautiful woman, isn't she?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't she lovely?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: Huh?
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: And all of a sudden she's got it.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: What struck me about her was just, yeah, she's she is beautiful.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't the human body beautiful?
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_02: And it was amazing how the power of that, the the power of lust fell away when I saw through a different lens.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: And it's it is the the heart of the desire is for a beauty, which when you can recognize is God-given, and you respond to it in God-given ways, it's it's glorious.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um so so then so then for you, Ed, like what what is it to be a sexual being or to to have a sexuality um in a single state?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, how do yeah, how do how do you be a sexual being uh when sex, the physical act is off the table?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: You you use it in the spiritual ways that it was designed to be used.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I I you know I can't I can't express my sexuality.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: It would be wrong for me to express my sexuality in a sexual relationship uh with another man, but it's entirely appropriate uh for me to, as it were, use my sexuality in spiritual ways.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I suppose I've just demonstrated what that looks like.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is as it were when I feel the power of sexual things to think this is this this is this is a little insight into God's love for me.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's when I I'm attracted to beauty to think to myself, this is a chance to worship God.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I in this in this in the book, I I I I sort of use uh I quote a prayer that um there's entitled Upon Seeing a Beautiful Person.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um and it's um from a fantastic uh American book of uh of prayers for all sorts of situations.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I was going when I first read the book to be amazed that that that somebody's written a prayer for what you do when you see a beautiful person.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it it is just a it's just a beautiful exercise of doing exactly what I've talked about, of just recognizing that when you see beauty, it's divine beauty, and when you see beauty, you've got a chance to either idolize them and sin into idolatry or a chance to worship the source of all beauty.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so I see my sexuality as something that I actually express spiritually um in uh and have a chance to as it were, you know, redeem in the spiritual exercise of when confronted with beauty to praise God.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna pretend that every time I see beauty, I do that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: But I think like your what you were saying, your experience, I found that actually just beginning to realize that there's some positive ways I can use my sexuality has, as it were, lessened um my experience of bad ways of using it.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and actually, you know, if if the only thing we say to people about um sexuality is run away, which has basically been the Christian sexual ethic that we've sort of, you know, you're gonna have sex within marriage, but apart from that, the only response to sexuality is to run away from it.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, you see you see that sort of advert on a tube train, you should, if you get into a carriage with that picture, move to another carriage.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, what you need to learn to do is respond positively and spiritually to that image.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for some people with different patterns of behavior, you know, they will need to run away.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I'm not saying that what Jesus teaches about you know cutting your arm is wrong, but actually, most of all, we just do need to learn how to positively respond to human beauty in ways that allow us to worship God rather than uh descend into idolatry.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, when when Potiphar's wife um grabs your hand, then okay, run.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, run.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's a good, yeah, but you can't live your whole life running from Potiphar's wife, you know.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, especially now, and I can remember, you know, years years ago when I was mentoring somebody who was addicted to pornography, and uh, there was a stage when I had, you know, their mobile phone, their laptop, you know, any way they could access stuff in my office drawer, the desk, um, and they were trying to run away, and then they just ran they ran everyone day, you know, on their landline to say, they've just put a billboard up at the top of my street, you know, and it was of this ravishingly beautiful woman.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I mean, they lived in a dead end, they had to walk past this billboard.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I ended up saying, okay, we've got to you've got to learn how to deal with beauty.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: We had the same scenario on our on our student weekend away for years.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: There would be this long, very anxious discussion about what are we gonna say to our students about what they wear on the beach, you know, and there was a moment when I said, Are we asking, you know, it almost sounded as if we were we were going for a system where the men and women should should swim separately or would ask everybody to be sort of fully clothed when they went into the sea.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, No, we we've got to to to disciple this group of of young men and women well, we've got to allow them and encourage them to think about how they dress in a way that's helpful to others, but also we've got to help them appreciate beauty in another person and respond to that correctly rather than running away from it.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you know the church has has not has not, well, we just haven't helped ourselves by not having um done the thinking and the pastoral application of some you know key verses like Genesis 1 verse 27 as to what it means to be surrounded by image bearers of God that inevitably um are going to make us want to worship them, but are actually are there to point us to the creator who's the only one worth it worth worthy of our worship.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so much of the problem is that um let's say heterosexual um men in leadership in the church have lived under the illusion that um okay, heterosexual men in a marriage they don't need to transform their desires, they can they can kind of unleash their desires um unredeemed upon their poor spouses.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I've gotten into conversations with um sort of conservative Christians, and we've gotten into the points of of uh of of going back and forth on on these sorts of issues, and they they kind of say, but but are you saying that you know you're um that you can sin sexually with your spouse?
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, Of course I can sin sexually with my spouse.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_02: And this wasn't even a category for him.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: He he had bought into this this ridiculous taxonomy of sexuality as as though we are either gay or straight or bi.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_02: And like he happened to be, you know, born with the lottery ticket and he he was straight.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_02: So he could just, and I just prayed, I honestly prayed for his wife at the end of this conversation because I just thought that poor woman he thinks that there is that there are these sort of categories written into our nature, and that God says go for it if you're heterosexual and don't if you're homosexual.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas what he's saying to all of us is all of us must discipline the desire of our hearts.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if we would just pursue the desire of our hearts, it would it would really mess ourselves and everybody else up.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: But but discipline in a way that you seek after the heart of your desire for the sake of others and for the blessing of others.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it seems like historically we have had that first century revolution of the Christian sexual revolution that has given us the first the discipline that has led to the blessing of protection for women and for children.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, you can't use people sexually in the way that the Romans were were kind of doing it.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_02: And we need to relearn that that sort of in in all our own lives.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that that brings me to mind of of um uh Dan Strange uh when he when he talks about the subversive fulfillment of our of our desires and the subversive fulfillment of what we we are seeking in in the culture.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: We might seek for freedom, but we think that freedom is you know doing what I want any old time.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, can we learn to discipline ourselves in Christ and with Christ and under Christ, such that on the far side of that discipline there there is a liberation?
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to do that with with with all our desires.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the church is meant to be, you know, helping us to sort of do that.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: And this is kind of the the direction your your book kind of goes in.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, having spoken about uh why is talking about sexuality so difficult, then we talk about what is sexuality for.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_02: That's more on the sort of the horizontal level, then what is sexuality really for, this sort of cosmic romance that's being broadcast.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_02: And then you go into a couple of chapters on on how does this help us?
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so with all this background, um, how do these thoughts about sex and sexuality help us?
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: They they help us, I mean, they help us deal with all the things we find difficult, they help us understand difference.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, one of the really hard things for people who find that they haven't got the lottery ticket, as it were, and the same sex attraction Christians is it's hard to make sense of why there's this insistence on sexual difference in relationship.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: But when you see the big picture, you make sense of that difference.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's been incredibly helpful for me is to actually to realize that you know, God is not out to screw up my life when he says you shouldn't be in a sexual relationship with a man.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, God is out to bring flourishing to me and to humanity and actually obeying his commands in that area are good for me.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that's made sense of in the sort of the cosmic love story, but also just actually in reading of the experiences of people that have rejected what God says and the muddle they've got themselves into.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you know, it it also helps me make sense of beauty and my responses to beauty.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: It also helps me make sense of how of how difficult this area of human experience is and how and why it's uh an area of human experience that's that that the devil, the evil one from a Christian worldview has, as it were, put under attack so often, you know.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you want to screw, if you want to cause as much damage as possible to human beings, you attack their sexuality.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to split a church, uh you and or you know, destroy a church, you You bring sexual sin into it.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: If you want a domination to fall apart, uh it's sexuality that is the way to do it, and you know, and of course that's the case.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: If it is, if our sexualities are tied up in God's cosmic love story, the way that He wants to win us and woo us to an everlasting relationship with Him, if it's all part of that, and if that is the big story that God, God, as it will wants to draw us all into, of course, you're gonna try and from the devil's point of view, undermine, muck up, destroy a Christian understanding of sex and sexuality and of bodies because it's it's the quickest way of causing the maximum amount of disruption to God's plans and purposes.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that that's just no, that's to help me make sense of why you know so much of my life has been conflict inside as I've uh slowly and painfully learnt to express my sexuality in godly ways, but it also helps me make sense of the conflict all around me in the Church of England, which is the denomination I'm part of.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the conflict that surrounded us in society as a whole, the Me Too movement exposed, of course, this is a painful, deeply painful era of human experience because it really matters.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, and it's not just a recreational activity that we're taking part on, it is a a sacred activity that really, really matters when it comes to human to human flourishing.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so talk to me about what is happening at the denominational level with the with the Church of England and uh some of the conversations you've been a part of uh at the moment.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_02: Where are they up to?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the Church of England uh launched uh in November last year something called uh Living in Love and Faith, which is a suite of resources that is supposed to be helping the Church of England to have a better informed conversation around issues of sexuality, identity, and gender than we have before.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly there was a need for that.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was involved in the previous uh conversation, which were called shared conversations, and the level of sort of ignorance and understanding from all sides on what other people thought and believed and did and why they did it was just incredible.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, in many ways, I welcomed the attempt to say, let's have a better informed conversation.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Here are resources to help make that happen.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the whole Church of England is now meant to be going through a year or two of discernment, using those resources to try and help us come to a settled, united view on issues, experiences around uh identity, sexuality, and gender.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that's what's supposed to be happening.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the reality is that that's that's that that is that's not gonna happen because behind behind um those different uh experiences of sexuality, identity, and gender is are very, very different views as to how God communicates and whether God has communicated effectively in God's words, and whether or not we do trust in the Bible, and uh what it says about all of the stuff we've been discussing so far.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, really, what's going to be happening in the Church of England over the next year or so is a discussion around sexuality, um, which is actually a discussion about the authority of scripture and God's words and where your authority comes from.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Every discussion in the Church of England starts with an agreement that we all care about the authority of scripture and how important the Bible is.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's remarkable that everybody sits in the room and nods.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: But then as soon as you move on from that and actually you're taking somebody's life and you're thinking, how does scripture apply to that situation?
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: you find out that that although we all say that we respect and love scripture, actually the ways that we use it are completely and utterly different.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that some people are wanting to, you know, to simplify things slightly, basically say, you know, human experience trumps what God's word says, and other people that are wanting to say, um, you know, human experience and our understanding of how to make sense of human experience needs to need to come under God's word.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be people that basically say it's impossible to interpret the Bible and apply it to today, and people who say, no, it's more than possible uh to interpret and apply God's word to today.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_00: So it it's going to be a discussion around sexuality, identity, and gender at one level, but what it really is is a discussion about whether God communicates and can communicate and does communicate clearly and lovingly to his people today.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, lots more to talk about, but uh, we're coming to the end of the uh of the interview.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_02: I'd I'd love I'd love you to um say a few things about Living Out, which is a website that you've been uh behind for a number of years now, and it has uh a wonderful renovation and uh some great new resources.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: So tell tell me what is the thinking behind Living Out and what is the new website looking like?
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: So Living Out was started by three same-sex attracted gay uh church pastors, uh, yes, seven, eight years ago.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought we'd just put a website up with a few stories and then walk away.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what turns out has happened is that increasingly uh we've been involved in uh discussions in denominations and training of church leaders and conversations on the media and the public square around broader issues of sexuality.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so we at Living Out are increasingly wanting to articulate um a Christian worldview when it comes to sexuality as a whole for the benefit of individuals who may be Christians or not, uh, churches who are struggling with these issues for a whole host of reasons, and also for society at large, as it were, listening in to what's happening within the church, but also struggling themselves and seeking answers.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh Living Out exists to help individuals and churches and societies talk about faith and sexuality.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there's there's stuff on the website about singleness, there's stuff about uh sex, there's stuff about identity, uh, there's stuff about marriage, uh, there's stuff about culture.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole host of resources that will help people who are same-sex attracted, but actually help anybody that's got a sexuality on this planet to try and make sense of what it means to be a sexual being in God's world today.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: IVP have been very generous in wanting to give out uh copies of this book to others.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: And um in the link below, you'll find out ways that you can get your own free copy of this.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: You can enter into a competition, and we'd love to uh give this to people.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: But Ed, uh, what are what are your biggest hopes uh for this book?
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Well, my biggest hope is that you'll read it and you will by the end praise God for the beautiful gift of a sexuality, and that rather than seeing it as just something that brings sort of guilt or confusion into your life, you'll think, thank you, thank you for making me a sexual being, thank you for the wonderful gift of a personful, purposeful sexuality that points me, that points me to your beauty, that points me uh to uh where I uh and and your people are heading.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm hoping it will restore to people the joy of their sexuality.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the joy of people's salvation, but I want people to be restored to the joy of being created in the image of God as embodied sexual creatures and to see that as a as a positive thing.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that's that's my prayer.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: Great, and caught up into a greater love story.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_02: And you uh you portrayed not only that love story, but also the good news of living it out uh in a in a really compelling way.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I recommend purposeful Chris uh sorry, purposeful sexuality by Ed Shaw.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_02: IVP, the publisher, have given us five copies of Purposeful Sexuality to give away, and we would love to get these into your hands.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: Would you like to enter the prize drawer to win one of these five copies?
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: What you need to do is to sign up to our emails.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_02: That is speaklife.org.uk slash sign up.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: And uh once you go there, it's very easy to sign up for our regular updates to the work uh here at Speak Life.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then uh leave a comment underneath this video, whether you're watching on YouTube or whether you're watching uh on Facebook, let us know that you've done that and let us know that you want to enter into the prize draw to win purposeful sexuality and five lucky winners.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: I mean five providentially ordained winners, uh, because the lot is cast into the lap and it's every decision is from the Lord.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: We understand that, right?
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: But five happy winners uh will get a copy of Purposeful Sexuality by Ed Shaw.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: So go to speaklife.org.uk slash sign up, get onto our email lists, let us know, and we'll put you in the drawer.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that'll do us on the Speak Life Podcast for this week.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: I hope you've enjoyed that episode.
• 52:32
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• 52:38
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• 52:43
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• 52:46
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• 52:50
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• 52:54
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• 52:57
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• 53:01
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• 53:19
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• 53:25
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• 53:30
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• 53:35
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that'll do us for this episode.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_02: See you next time on the Speak Life Podcast.