Parent Follow up from this Week's Lesson: Can't We Just Agree that Love is Love?
/Hi parents. As you probably know from the calendar, our lesson this past Sunday and Wednesday nights was on the question, Can’t We Just Agree that Love is Love? I pray the lesson was helpful for our students and I think we had some good conversations in our small groups. But I wanted to give you an idea of what we talked about and some resources for you to be able to continue the conversation with your kids at home. I do believe that this is a conversation we should come back to regularly in different ways with our kids to understand better what they are thinking about it, what they are learning from their friends and through entertainment, and to point them to Jesus who shapes our understanding of all things. I hope this helps. As always, please let me know if you have any questions or if there’s anything I can do for you.
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Can’t We Just Agree that Love is Love?
TOPICS:
Love, Intimacy, Friendship, Marriage, Sexuality, Homosexuality, Pornography
SCRIPTURES:
God is love. - 1 John 4:16
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. - John 15:13
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. - Ephesians 5:24-25
For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. - Romans 1:26-27
For the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine…Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. - 1 Timothy 1:9-10, 15
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. - 1 Corinthians 6:11
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself. - Luke 9:23-25
VIDEO:
Gay Girl, Good God: The Story of Who I was and Who God has Always Been
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLAe_JBvVwg
NOTES: [while we talked about most of this content at middle school and high school, the lesson and our discussions varied some and this a combination of both]
This is included as one of the ten questions because it is a big issue in the culture we’re apart of so it would be strange to hear so many conversations about it outside the church but never talk about what God has to say about it inside the church.
It’s helpful to frame this conversation in the context of love.
If God is love, then any type of love we experience in our lives is meant to give us a glimpse into what it means that God is love.
We experience different types of love in different relationships: parent/child, husband/wife, brother/sister, friend/friend. None of these is more important than the other because they each give us a different picture of what God’s love is like.
Scripture describes the relationship between God and his people as: father/child, mother/ child, and even the romantic love of husband and wife.
For example, in the Old Testament the book of Hosea shows depicts God as a faithful husband who continues to love and pursue an unfaithful wife. In the New Testament, Ephesians 5 talks about the role of husbands and wives pointing to the roles of Jesus and his church. The Bible often packages its most important truths in metaphors.
So marriage is a good thing, but its not the ultimate love we are to experience. It is a gift that points to the ultimate love, God’s love. This is why the Bible can portray marriage in a positive light but also tell us that singleness can sometimes be better.
So marriage is designed a particular way because it is a metaphor for something bigger that it is pointing to. When the Bible tells us homosexuality is wrong, its because it destroys the metaphor of marriage and no longer points to the aspects of God’s love it is meant to be signpost for.
In the same way, something like pornography is wrong, not just because of the immense damage it does, but because it is a sinful distortion of what sex is intended to be and to point to.
There are two paths that God chooses for people, everyone experiences singleness at one time or another, and some experience marriage. We are able to glorify God on either path.
Holy Sexuality consists of two paths: chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage. - Christopher Yuan
What do we do when our desires and feelings tell us something different than what God says? We look to Luke 9 above. Whether it is a desire for pornography, same-sex attraction, an impulse to be unfaithful to a spouse, whatever it might be, the gospel gives us the power to deny ourselves and our sinful passions for the sake of following Jesus. This is what it means to follow him faithfully. This is why, no matter what your temptations and struggles might be, there is hope.
Everyone in the world feels the power of sex and romance. When we say Jesus is better than these things, we’re not trying to shrink them but to magnify him. If we tried to pretend that these good gifts were actually bad, we wouldn’t even believe ourselves. I knew there was physical and emotional pleasure to be had in my old life. But the fact was that what Jesus offered me was simply better. His promises were sweeter, his sustaining love richer…To choose celibacy, Jesus must be really precious to you. What a chance to testify that he is! What an opportunity to call into question the narrative of salvation-by-romance, and to point to what all love dimly reflects. And not just with your words, bu, like an OT prophet, with your life. You only give up something awesome for something even better. I could only give up the pleasures of a girlfriend- even someday a wife- fro the more pleasurable embrace of Christ. - Rachel Gilson in Born Again This Way
If this is something you struggle with, there is hope. There is hope for you to glorify God with your life. And there is hope because even if God chooses singleness for you, he still offers you family in the church and intimacy through friendship [David saying the love of his friend Jonathan was better than that of a woman, John describing the intimacy of his friendship with Jesus as being the one whom Jesus loved].
If this is not something you struggle with specifically, become a safe place for friends around you to trust you with their struggles. Be honest about your own struggles. Don’t tell jokes that will confirm to people you can’t be trusted. Listen and love people well. Be willing to extend truth with grace.
When you read stories in the gospels of Jesus’ interaction with “sinners” [like Zaccheus, the Rich Young Ruler, the prostitute who washed is feet with her hair, the woman at the well] notice how he loves them well while telling them the truth. See yourself as one of these “sinners”, as the “foremost of sinners” like Paul. And see Jesus’ mercy and grace for you. Let that melt your heart into someone who extends that mercy and grace to others, who like you, desperately need it.
QUESTIONS WE ASKED:
What is something the Bible says that makes you feel uncomfortable? What should we do when we feel like that about something God’s word says?
Read John 1:14. What does it mean to be full of grace and truth?
What could happen if you respond to someone with grace but not truth?
What could happen if you respond to someone with truth but not grace?
Why is pornography so dangerous?
Which relationships in your life most display God’s love to you?
How does marriage point us to Jesus?
Why does the Bible say homosexuality is wrong?
If a person finds themselves attracted to the same sex, how could they live in a way that glorifies God?
If you know someone who is attracted to people of the same sex, how could you be a good friend to them and help point them to Jesus?
OTHER RESOURCES:
Books
Born Again this Way by Rachel Gilson
Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin
Gay Girl, Good God by Jackie Hill Perry
Holy Sexuality and the Gospel by Christopher Yuan
Is God Anti-Gay? By Sam Allberry
Surviving Religion 101 by Michael Kruger
What Does the Bible Really Teach about Homosexuality? By Kevin DeYoung
Books for Younger Kids:
God Made All of Me by Justin and Lindsay Holcomb
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures by Kristen Jenson
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures, Jr. by Kristen Jenson
Pamphlets
Explaining LGBTQ+ Identity to Your Child by Tim Geiger
How to Talk to Your Kid about Sex by William Smith
Raising Sexually Healthy Kids by David White
