Biola University
On today’s episode, Rachel Gilson speaks with Tim about sexuality, same-sex attraction, and living faithfully as a follower of Jesus. The conversation dips into Rachel’s journey in coming to faith, being attracted to the same-sex and yet choosing to follow the Bible’s teaching on sexuality, considerations of sexuality for discipleship, and what the Church is doing well and not doing well with transgender and LGBTQ communities.
Transcript
Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a professor of communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California. I'm also the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open communication, not close it, both with people inside the church and outside the church. We're moving in a direction today. We're becoming fearful of talking, and we hope to just expand that space. I was recently at a meeting with college presidents, Christian college presidents from all over the country, and the moderator went around and said, "What is the number one issue that you fear the most and feel most inadequate to address every single one?" Every single one, every single one said, "How to deal with the LGBT community." So, we need resources. I'm glad that we have a resource today. Her name is Rachel Gilson. She serves on leadership team with Theological Development and Culture with Cru. We're huge Cru fans. My wife and I were on staff, Rachel, Noreen, for almost 30 years with Cru.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, that's amazing.
Tim Muehlhoff: So, we absolutely loved it.
Rachel Gilson: She got some great staff prizes.
Tim Muehlhoff: She got, we did. We stayed.
Rachel Gilson: That's right. That's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: Right. Yeah, absolutely. It was awesome. I wanted to stay for a hairpiece.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, well, you have to hit 50 for that, maybe.
Tim Muehlhoff: Maybe 50, maybe 70. Her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, Desiring God in the Gospel Coalition. She regularly speaks at churches and on college campuses. She is the author of Parenting Without Panic in an LGBT Affirming World, and Born Again This Way. Rachel is pursuing her PhD in Public Theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological...
Rachel Gilson: Southeastern.
Tim Muehlhoff: Southeastern. Thank you so much.
Rachel Gilson: Because there is a Southwestern.
Tim Muehlhoff: There is a Southwestern. She lives in Boston area with her husband and daughter. Welcome to the show.
Rachel Gilson: It's my pleasure to be here.
Tim Muehlhoff: It is great to have you. So, we have a common friend...
Rachel Gilson: We do.
Tim Muehlhoff: In Cru, Keith Johnson, who's just awesome. And honestly, Rachel, he raised about you, the quality of your thinking, your spirit, and so it's just a treat. You're here for something called the Torrey Bible Conference started in 1936.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, dang.
Tim Muehlhoff: So, no pressure.
Rachel Gilson: I didn't know it was that old. Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: It's that old. And we bring some of the best to campus and you come so highly recommended. So, thank you for taking time to be here.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, I'm really glad to be here. I grew up in Solvang, California, but never made it down to Biola.
Tim Muehlhoff: Really?
Rachel Gilson: So, it's nice. Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: Wow. How close are you to finishing your Ph.D.?
Rachel Gilson: I just passed my comprehensive exams last week.
Tim Muehlhoff: Last week?
Rachel Gilson: Last week.
Tim Muehlhoff: Congratulations.
Rachel Gilson: That's Wednesday. So now I get to turn my face towards my dissertation.
Tim Muehlhoff: And do you have a topic?
Rachel Gilson: I think I'm not allowed to say publicly, it's secret.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, got it.
Rachel Gilson: But the general idea is I'd like to help us have a more Christian conversation about transgender identities.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, how needed is that? That's amazing. We're really interested in talking about this with you because you think so carefully about both the deeply held Christian convictions, but also how to communicate with people. We believe in both the truth part and the love part. And I fear sometimes Christians feel like they have to choose between one or the other.
Rachel Gilson: Right.
Tim Muehlhoff: I'm going to shoot straight with the truth or I'm going to love and we won't ever really get around to the truth.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, that's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: Tell us a little bit about your story, some of your experience growing up, how you came to Christ and some of what you are doing in ministry today.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, sure. Well, I mentioned I grew up in Santa Barbara County. It was a delightful place to grow up. I think the new heavens and the new Earth will look a lot like Santa Barbara. Pretty convinced.
Tim Muehlhoff: No humidity for sure.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, definitely not. So, I grew up not going to church ever at all. My mother had been sort of raised Catholic, but in her words, gave it up at 13 for cigarettes and boys and my dad had sort of been raised nothing. So, by the time they were raising my brother and I, church just wasn't a part of our life. But I grew up, if you know anything about the Santa Barbara County, San Ynez, it's actually quite conservative. So, there were a lot of churchgoers around me. It just wasn't part of my family culture. So, I did go through a period of time in high school where I was like, well, is there something to this church going thing, my friends and youth group and this stuff? But I found that the questions I was asking, I wasn't getting the type of answers I wanted from my 14-year-old peers. Not totally fair, right?
Tim Muehlhoff: Yes.
Rachel Gilson: So eventually, I got this angry edge by the end of high school where I was like, "Well, maybe religion and Christianity are for people who don't really know how to think for themselves." Teenagers are so arrogant.
Tim Muehlhoff: Right, right.
Rachel Gilson: And then, the other thing that happened during high school was I realized the way that my female friends felt about young men was actually how I felt about other young women, which at the time, I mean this was in 2001, which feels on this topic like a century ago. At that point, no state in the United States had legalized same-sex marriage. But I thought, no, this is where I feel comfortable. I think that the future is with me, so these are the relationships I want to pursue. And that also didn't help my view of Christianity because I thought of Christians as just bigots, even though I had never been mistreated by a pastor or a Christian or a youth group or anything like that because of my sexuality. So, it's interesting to me now to consider that, that I didn't have any personal baggage, and yet somehow just from the air, I assumed that Christians were hateful people when it came to this topic.
Tim Muehlhoff: And it's so good to know that about a person, to know their journey to the present.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: To uncover that and to say, "Well, how did you arrive at this opinion of my community?" Or this issue is so important to uncover that you had an amazing article in Christianity Today that is absolutely fascinating, called I Never Became Straight, Perhaps, that was Never God's Goal. And in it, you say this, you say, "My parents met at a gay nightclub in San Francisco." Mine too. No, just kidding. Just kidding.
Rachel Gilson: That's amazing.
Tim Muehlhoff: But I will say I grew up in a totally non-Christian home as well, and never went to church. Not even Christmas, Easter.
Rachel Gilson: Oh yeah, me neither. Nothing.
Tim Muehlhoff: Nothing,
Rachel Gilson: Nothing.
Tim Muehlhoff: Never prayed over dinner.
Rachel Gilson: And look at us now.
Tim Muehlhoff: Look at us now. But it was really wild to walk into Christianity. I didn't have a lot of preconceptions to it.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, okay.
Tim Muehlhoff: So that was really wild to hear people's stereotypes of it.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: I became a Christian. My football coach gave me a Bible.
Rachel Gilson: Good on him.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah, good on him. I naively took that into a class and set it on a table and somebody said, "What the blankety blank is that?" And I was like, "What's your problem? It's a Bible." But then I was introduced to the world of Christian stereotypes and I thought, "Oh, this may not have been a great career move. You know what I mean?" Kind of a thing, but, you go on.
Rachel Gilson: There's plenty of them and I held many of them. In my mind, I had a lot of negative stereotypes about committed Christian people.
Tim Muehlhoff: In the article you say, "My mother just wanted a safe place to dance. My father was a security guard. He abandoned my mother and me after abusing us both physically." So sad to hear that.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: I grew up in abusive home where they were always verbally abusive to each other and then finally ended in physical violence.
Rachel Gilson: Which is terrible.
Tim Muehlhoff: That's something to watch that happen is very forming as, how young were you watching this?
Rachel Gilson: So, I never watched it. Here's what happened. I was an infant. My mother came home. She was like, "Why is the baby's leg fractured?"
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, no.
Rachel Gilson: But by God's grace, when she had to take me to the hospital and herself to the hospital, basically DCF was like, "Well, we can't make you leave this man, but if you don't, we're going to have to take your daughter." And my mother had the sense, she loved me. She was like, "Okay." That gave her the strength to walk away. So, we walked away early and then she remarried when I was three and a half, and the man she married adopted me. So actually, even though I was born in 1985, my birth certificate was issued in 1988. And I like to tell people that just like Jesus, I grew up with my biological mother and my adopted father. That's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: That's great. So, tell us a little bit about the background that led you to this place where now you feel compelled, I assume by the spirit to be talking about what those university professors, presidents all said was, "Listen, we just flat out need help in what to do, how to respond." Tell us a little bit about that part of your story and then why you feel like the spirit's leading you into what is a very contentious space, I'm sure to make some people very angry no matter what side of this issue you come down on how to respond.
Rachel Gilson: Sure. Well, for me, it was a survival issue first. So, I got tricked into moving to New England from Southern California because I got into Yale, very excited, and I didn't realize I was wearing the shirt today, a Yale shirt on right now. And I was so excited to be in a place with big ideas. And then, it turned out I was underprepared to be at a world-class university. So, I felt so stupid for the first time in my life, and the girl that I was dating broke up with me. Teenage breakups are so difficult, and I was just in this pit. And in the middle of that pit, I happened to be at a lecture on Western philosophy. The lecture was talking about Descartes and this proof Descartes had for the existence of God. And I remember thinking, "Oh, it's so stupid, but it interested me." So, I started Googling proofs for God.
But even in the midst of that, I started being interested in Jesus as a character, not really as a person, but as a literary character. But I thought, "Oh, I can't be interested in Jesus. That's for silly people, not respectable people like myself." The only two people I knew at Yale who identified as Christians were these two young women who were dating each other, and one of them was training to be a Lutheran minister. So, I thought, "Oh, well, maybe I should talk to them." And they were like, "Oh, yeah, it's all been a big misunderstanding. The Bible actually supports monogamous gay relationships. It's just been an interpretation issue." So, they gave me a packet explaining the correct way to interpret these verses, and I was really excited. I remember going back to my room and looking through the packet and thinking, "Oh, this makes a lot of sense. This is really good."
But I was also training as a history major. So, I learned you don't just read the interpretations, you read the original documents. I didn't happen to have a lot of Bible papyri nearby, but I Googled the Bible passages that they were claiming to interpret. And really, the only things I'm good at are reading and writing. So, when I was comparing what I saw in the scripture text, which I'd never studied before with the interpretations, I thought, "Oh, these don't actually, these girls are really sweet, but this doesn't actually make sense. There's not space for my sexuality in this system even to get close enough to care about it in a literary way." So, I just put it aside.
But pretty soon after that, I happened to be in the room of a friend of mine who was a non-practicing Catholic. And I remember I was standing in her doorway. She had a bookshelf next to her doorway and she was further in her room. And I love looking at people's bookshelves and judging them.
Tim Muehlhoff: Love it.
Rachel Gilson: It's great. And in a place like Yale, it's fantastic. And she had on her shelf the spine of a book that read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Now, I wasn't raised on Narnia, but the title of the book looked really good. I also had no meaningful moral compass, and I was too embarrassed to ask my friend to borrow it. So, I just stole the book, put it in my bag.
Tim Muehlhoff: Did you know much about Lewis?
Rachel Gilson: I didn't know a thing about Lewis.
Tim Muehlhoff: You didn't know a thing about Lewis? It was the title of the book.
Rachel Gilson: It was the title of the book.
Tim Muehlhoff: Wow.
Rachel Gilson: So, I was reading this book one day in between classes, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with the reality that God does exist and not Zeus or some store brand God or something, but the God who made everything and was perfect. So, it was like I was getting the edges of God's holiness without knowing that vocabulary word very well. And really the first thing I felt was, "Oh no." I knew me. I was arrogant. I was a liar. I was mean to people. I was sexually immoral, cheated on stuff. I was reading a stolen book. It's pretty clear that all the chips were in the guilty category, right?
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, you're being too hard on yourself.
Rachel Gilson: If you had met 18-year-old me, you would disagree. So, I felt the bad news first. But really quickly with that, I think the spirit helped me understand because I don't think this was on the page in Mere Christianity, that part of the reason Jesus had come was to place himself as a barrier between God's wrath and me and that the only way to be safe was to run towards Jesus, not away from Jesus. I remember my first thought was, "I don't want to become a Christian." Christians are really lame."
Tim Muehlhoff: Right, right.
Rachel Gilson: But I was also like, "Well, I can't pretend this isn't true just because it's bad for my lifestyle or reputation. This is a good deal. I should take the deal." So, I was like, "Well, what do I do?" So, I just closed my eyes and I was like, "Okay, fine, I'll become a Christian." And then, I went to class and I saw a little sign for a Christian group on Yale's campus, and I went to visit their meeting and I just followed them around a baby quail learning all the things. But it was really obvious to me very quickly that even though I was now following Jesus, my attraction to other women wasn't going anywhere.
And it's been 20 years and my attraction of the women hasn't gone anywhere. And so, at very first I had to figure out what am I going to do? How am I going to make it? Because I see in scriptures that God says no to same-sex, lust and sexual relationships. And I've since learned in Greek and Hebrew, I'm so confident it says no. But I really struggled with why does he say no? And what do I do in the midst of it? How do I make it as a disciple?
Tim Muehlhoff: And that's really fair, right? Because otherwise God comes across, and I know you're a parent. If the children never know the reason behind the rules, they become really resentful about the rules. And I love that God does eventually give a rationale.
Rachel Gilson: Eventually,
Tim Muehlhoff: Eventually.
Rachel Gilson: But I think he helped me learn some important things by not giving me the rationale at first. I needed to learn what did it look like to obey God before I understood? Because there was a challenge to me. Because I was like, "Oh." I was like, "If you'll just tell me why you say this, then I'll obey perfectly," which is ridiculous frankly, but you should have seen me as a 19-year-old. But I felt oppressed from the spirit like, "Hey, if you're only willing to obey when you understand and agree, maybe you're not really serving me as God. Maybe you're interested in serving yourself as God." And I had to figure out what does it mean to trust him like that?
I got pressed a lot into the story of Adam and Eve in the garden because God put them in this beautiful place, good and good and good and very good, gives them this glorious vision, so much yes and then there's just one no. And when you think about it, it's a really funny prohibition. Don't eat the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden. The day you eat it, you're going to die. You're like, "Even vegans eat fruit." It's not the type of rule that's like, "Hey guys, don't murder each other." Be like, "Oh yes, very good rule. Right?" Because I'm just drawing an image barrier and can't do things.
The fruit prohibition suggests to me that righteousness by faith was a part of the world even before sin entered the picture. What does it mean? The only way you obey something that you don't quite get is if the person asking it of you is deeply trustworthy. If you had a random person come up off the street and ask you to do something weird, hopefully you'd say like nothing.
Tim Muehlhoff: No, thanks. No.
Rachel Gilson: But if you had a best friend of decades or a parent you really trust, say, "Hey, I can't explain this right now, but can you do this for me?" And this was something kind of weird, you would at least think about it because you knew the person. What it reinforced for me was, is God someone I can trust when I don't understand? Because I was a little bit making it about, "Well, is this a good rule or a bad rule?" That kind of thing. Really, I needed to more formationally answer, is this a good God or a bad God?
Tim Muehlhoff: And what answer that question for you?
Rachel Gilson: It was reviewing the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. It's not that I hadn't known that, but there was something about having to view it from that angle. Jesus didn't have to come to save us. I would have died in my sin, stood in front of the Holy God, seeing myself fully for the first time in him and saying, "Well, yeah, you have to condemn me." Jesus was not obligated to save, but God's love meant that he came and he lived honestly a really difficult life.
Under Roman rule in a backwater, we don't see Joseph later in his life. So, he had to help his mother raise all those siblings. And then by the time he's grown up, he's living as a homeless man. All of his friends are idiots, and the people who were training to really recognize him are the ones who went on the successful murder campaign. I don't know who I would do that for, let alone my born enemies. And then, you get to the fact that he died for me. So, I saw that no one who was willing to go through all of that could possibly be against me. So even if I didn't understand exactly what he was saying, I could trust that he was for me. He had shown it definitively.
So that for me was the solid foundation. Is he good? Can I trust him? Now over time, as I studied scripture at my church with my friends on my own, I realized, oh, there is actually a deep and beautiful logic to what God is saying about sexuality. But I think at first, he let me sit in that space of not understanding so I could learn a more fundamental lesson. So, part of the reason I minister out of this now is just because for so long it's been a personal issue for me.
Tim Muehlhoff: And you would say you're still same-sex attractive?
Rachel Gilson: Oh yeah. So, the beautiful thing about walking with Jesus for 20 years is I have by God's grace built up a strong muscle of obedience. So, I would say at 19, I was struggling with same-sex attraction and sometimes struggling with it like I struggle with a cheeseburger when I'm hungry. That was the main discipleship issue for me at that time. But now at 39, I would say, so sometimes any person who's married will sometimes experience attraction to someone who's not their spouse. So, every Christian person will sometimes experience attraction to someone who's not their spouse. I guess, unless you're asexual, in which case you're spared that, well, what's the Christian discipline? Right? Well, by the power of the spirit, you say no to that temptation and yes to God. So, it just so happens when I experience attraction to someone who's not my spouse, Andrew, it's always a woman. But at this stage in my life, I'm too tired to really experience that. My discipleship issues right now are more related to parenting. How do I relate to my daughter with grace and truth, right?
Tim Muehlhoff: And it wouldn't be better if it was a heterosexual...
Rachel Gilson: No, I don't know if you've met straight people, but they do. They deal with sexual sin. You wouldn't have to have anyone who ever experienced same sex attraction for sexuality to be recognizably broken. Everyone needs the grace and forgiveness of Jesus and the transformation.
Tim Muehlhoff: So, let me make a parenthetical comment.
Rachel Gilson: I love parentheticals.
Tim Muehlhoff: And then, a question for you. We need more testimonies. Hearing your story is so encouraging that God got you through that Mere Christianity. You didn't know C.S. Lewis, you stole the book. He is, he's going after all of us.
Rachel Gilson: He is so creative in getting people in and we need to be reminded the gospel is really good news. I think sometimes there are people in my Christian community who for one reason or another, actually haven't had to give up that much to follow Jesus. For whatever reason, it doesn't, we've got brothers and sisters in the world right now who their governments are actively persecuting them. So, we do live in relative ease here. And so, I think there can be discomfort sometimes in thinking about sharing the gospel with a friend who identifies as gay or trans because they think, well, they're not going to want this because it goes against so much of what their life is built around.
But the gospel is beautiful. Jesus had a parable in Matthew. He says, the kingdom of heaven, it's like a treasure hidden in the field. And when the man found it, he went, and in his joy, sold everything and bought that field. When someone really encounters the gospel, they'll sell everything. We have to re-encounter how good the good news is.
Tim Muehlhoff: That's really great. And remember Lewis, go back to Lewis. He's the hound of heaven.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, that's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: That once he gets your scent...
Rachel Gilson: That's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: There's just a lot of encouragement. So let me ask you this. When it comes to this issue of dealing with the trans community or dealing with LGBT community, what do you think? So, I think if you were to ask Christians, how are we doing in this issue? I think many would say we're not doing well. But could you play both parts of that? What do you think the church has done well and what do you think the church needs to improve in order to make this a better, more productive conversation moving forward?
Rachel Gilson: And that's a great question. And of course, when we say the church, well, gosh, there's so many streams of the church. I come from a very particular stream of American evangelicalism, so I feel confident speaking about my stream. Let's not pretend that this is a comment on all of the church or Christianity. One of the things that I think we've done well, let's say in the past 10 years is that we're finally opening up opportunity to talk about same-sex attraction, and talk about it not just in ways that say the only way you can tell if the spirit is doing well is if all of these attractions are removed. There is a small number of people statistically for whom that is what the spirit has done, but we've been able to have a conversation that gives a broader picture of what faithfulness and growth and holiness looks like and just space to talk. I think that's been really good.
And a huge part of that was even from books like Washed and Waiting by Wesley. That was a book that really opened up a lot of new conversation for people. Similarly, Rosaria Butterfield's first book opened up some new conversational space for people over a decade ago at this point.
Tim Muehlhoff: The most eye-opening books I may have ever read in the last 20 years is Wessell's book.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah. And if you survey like people have done, in fact, those who are disciples who are walking with Jesus, who hold to a traditional sexual ethic and still experience same-sex attraction, they'll almost always name Washed and Waiting as a really important book in their journey. So, I think different ways, different places, conversations have been opened up. There's space to be able to talk about what I experienced, not because I want to celebrate it but also not because I want to just shame upon myself. But just because all my other brother and sisters, I want to be able to talk about what I face so I can in community figure out, okay, how do we respond to these things together? I think it was a beautiful gift to me that I was first walking with the Lord in a community at a place like Yale where no one else experienced same-sex attraction, but I was never made to feel any different. They were like, "Oh, well, we're college students. We're all trying to figure out sexual wholeness. You're not dealing with anything different than what we're dealing with."
And that was so beautiful and helpful because I had a particular angle on it, but it helped me see like, no, this is basic Christian discipleship. We're always going to feel things and we have to hold those feelings up against scripture. The only people who do everything that they feel are toddlers. That's not the picture of maturity, right? That's not the direction we want to go. No, we are trained as Christians to say, "Okay, I might be having a feeling, but I need to test that against the scriptures and the wisdom of my Christian tradition and say, okay, well what do I do with that? Are there parts of this that are good? Is it all bad? Or how do I steward this in a way that promotes holiness and fights my sin?" Basic things. So, I was able to see that my discipleship wasn't this special problematic category. It was just normal to discipleship. That was so good for me. So, I think in church communities where that is happening, that's a really good thing.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, that's good to hear. Now, what, according to your perspective, might the church do better moving forward?
Rachel Gilson: I think we still have plenty of space to continue to have this conversation and to be comfortable with the conversation being in process. Sometimes there can be an impatience for certain things to be just already decided. So even things like language, there are some, I don't describe myself as gay or as a gay Christian especially because before I was a Christian and actually in same-sex relationships, I never identified it as gay or lesbian because it didn't seem like it fits. So why would I do it now? Right? Yeah. I think that the phrase same-sex attraction communicates accurately what I'm trying to describe. There are also other disciples who, for a variety of reasons, maybe they're young, maybe they've had particular experiences, they gravitate towards other language or they're confused about what language to use. And sometimes there can just be a heavy policing.
If you don't use these particular terms, then you're not really a disciple or you're falling behind. I'd like us to have patience with each other and grace for each other, which doesn't mean we don't have opinions that are very considered. I really do think, and I've published this in various places, I think embracing LGBT language as a disciple carries serious troubles for varieties of reasons. So, I am happy to say that I'm happy to defend it, but I'm also happy, especially with a young disciple, to be like, okay, tell me why. That's language you're gravitating towards. There's got to be a reason. Let's explore together.
Even the way you're framing things. Does that help or hinder how does it help or just some space to be in process that I would love to see us creating more space, not for anything goes. I'm really not anything goes kind of lady. I'm like, "We need to look to the scriptures and there's a lot that doesn't go but grace and truth over time so that we can move from strength to strength, walking in the spirit." I'd love to see more of that.
Tim Muehlhoff: And here's what I love what you just said. So, we've been working with a group called Bridging the Gap, Simon Greer, he's brilliant, nationally known. And so, he's actually leading us, me, Rick Langer, VP here from Biola and this group of people talking about the election. So, I'm going to write down everything he says, right? This is the master facilitator. And he goes, okay, if I could distill my entire philosophy down to this and I'm ready to write it down, he goes, just say this phrase, tell me more.
Rachel Gilson: Exactly.
Tim Muehlhoff: And I was like, "Wait, I'm sorry I missed that." I couldn't write that down quick enough. I'm like, "What?" And he's like, again, this goes to John Gottman that the first 30 to 60 seconds of every conversation sets the tone for the entire conversation. So, to say...
Rachel Gilson: I've never heard that, but I believe it.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, isn't it true in marital communication and in parenting that first 30 seconds? But I think that's brilliant to say to a person, I need to hear more. I want to hear more of how did you arrive at this moment?
Rachel Gilson: Because as you said at the beginning with college presidents, but as we know from talking to people in our churches and just being alive right now, the number one emotion covering LGBT questions is fear. And there's lots of different types of fear, and there's fear coming from a lot of different angles. And fear doesn't help us move towards that posture. Fear makes us isolate or attack or both. And Jesus doesn't call us to isolate or attack. Jesus calls us to lay down our lives even for our enemies, which is why I think it's so important. That verse in Timothy, it talks about God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self-control. So, fear might be natural, right?
There might be times where we feel it, but trying to respond and say, "Okay, but God hasn't called me to fear. How can I respond in faith? This spirit that he's given me of power and love and self-control are going to give me greater access to representing both grace and truth in the conversation so that I have freedom to say, tell me more. But if I'm overcome with fear, I'm going to worry that inviting more conversation is just going to send things backwards." I have an experience that as true.
Tim Muehlhoff: For a second, let's talk about parenting, which humbles all of us. Good parenting. And every parent just looks at each other in two different stages. The toddler stage, you just look at each other and go, "I'm so sorry." And then you know a Mark Twain's quote about teenage boys.
Rachel Gilson: I don't know that I do. Tell me.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, come on. Mark Twain says, "When a boy turns 13, stick them in a barrel, cut out a breathing hole. When he turns 16, plug up a hole."
Rachel Gilson: Oh, that's terrible.
Tim Muehlhoff: No, the views represented here do not necessarily represent those.
Rachel Gilson: Indeed, indeed. Yeah. That's right, indeed.
Tim Muehlhoff: But you wrote a book that I think is so needed because when I do speak on this issue, not nearly to the depth that you do, I am literally flooded with parents, grandparents, relatives...
Rachel Gilson: Me too.
Tim Muehlhoff: Who literally come up and say, "I honestly don't know what to do, and I am freaking out."
Rachel Gilson: And I'm freaking out.
Tim Muehlhoff: So, you wrote a wonderful book, Parenting Without Panic in an LGBT Affirming World. Okay, talk to our listeners who honestly don't know what to do. I don't know. Do I go to the wedding? Do I not go to the wedding? Do I use pronouns? Do I not use pronouns? I honestly don't know what to do. And so almost the temptation is I'm putting a fence around this topic and I'm going to love the people I love, but I'm not stepping near this. So, talk to us a little bit about what to do.
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, and the reason I wrote this book was because I just kept getting emails from folks who were like, "Hey, I really like what you've put out in Born Again This Way." But how do I talk to my six-year-old? And I didn't think I was going to have to talk to my six-year-old, but it turns out I do. And in my very progressive neighborhood in Boston, I encounter this question all the time. So, there are so many, if I'm thinking about my cohort of millennials, many who grew up in the church, they often had parents who weren't quite sure how to talk to them about sex. So, I'll hear funny stories about like, well, my mom left a book about puberty in my room.
Tim Muehlhoff: Can I say That was me?
Rachel Gilson: Yeah.
Tim Muehlhoff: Can I say that was me?
Rachel Gilson: And that was because it was probably better than what you got.
Tim Muehlhoff: Can I tell you a true story?
Rachel Gilson: Please, I would love to hear a true story.
Tim Muehlhoff: We speak at Family Life marriage conferences, my wife and I. I spontaneously ask the question. So, we do the sexual intimacy talk. I always joke with my wife, "You really should have married the accountant because you wouldn't be talking about sexual intimacy in front of a ballroom."
Rachel Gilson: That's right. That's right.
Tim Muehlhoff: But Rachel, honestly, I ask the spontaneous question. I go, men, let's say there was a thousand people, "Men, how many of you, your dad had the sex talk with you, sat you down, had it? Rachel? So, 500, roughly 500 men. The number was so small, the women gasped.
Rachel Gilson: I believe it.
Tim Muehlhoff: Do you know how many out of 500?
Rachel Gilson: Oh, I don't even want to guess.
Tim Muehlhoff: Nine.
Rachel Gilson: I was going to say 10.
Tim Muehlhoff: I can count.
Rachel Gilson: I was going to say 10,
Tim Muehlhoff: Nine. And then, I say to the women, it's higher, but it's not crazy.
Rachel Gilson: But it's not nuts.
Tim Muehlhoff: So, we are failing miserably, not with this issue, but just having the sex general.
Rachel Gilson: And here's the thing. We don't want to shame anybody.
Tim Muehlhoff: Right.
Rachel Gilson: We don't want to shame anybody. Often our parents were just giving us the best they knew how or they were scared and they didn't know what to do.
Tim Muehlhoff: And I don't want to give them wrong information.
Rachel Gilson: I don't want to give them wrong information. And even my peers who had parents who did a really good job, their parents still didn't have to equip them on societal level LGBT questions.
Tim Muehlhoff: Right.
Rachel Gilson: So, even those who had good examples are like, "Wait, I don't know how to do this with my little kids." So, some of it is that with other topics, we can look to our elders and say, "Oh, what did you do?" And there are some particulars where actually we're having to create the best practices on the ground right now, which by the way, doesn't mean that our parents and grandparents don't have excellent stuff for us. We need to talk to them. And some of their instincts are actually going to be perfectly transferable to this, but we just feel lost. So that adds to the fear. So, part of what I try to do in parenting without panic is walk through what are some basic principles that help us handle this like Christians. So, we want to do some biology. We want to be able to say, "Hey, it's amazing what a great foundation it is to reassure your children that their bodies are good and that it's so good that God made them a little boy or a little girl."
And that actually you can and should talk to your children about where babies come earlier than you think. Because when it's little, we can be awkward in talking about reproduction with our kids because we have a lot of sexualized baggage because of all kinds of things. But your little kids, it's just a biological process. You can work up and talk about, do you know where new puppies come from? You can just talk about reproduction and then it...
Tim Muehlhoff: Age appropriate.
Rachel Gilson: Age appropriate.
Tim Muehlhoff: The sex talk isn't a talk, it's a series of talks.
Rachel Gilson: We think about this with the gospel. I didn't share the gospel with my daughter once when she was four and think, "Well, that's done." Yep, you have to talk about the gospel over and over and over again. But my daughter also doesn't need complex atonement theory to understand the gospel. I can say to her, "Jesus died for your sin on the cross so that you can be forgiven and have eternal life. And he was raised from the dead so you can be with him forever." That's enough. And as she gets older, if she wants to walk with him, she can learn much more about what the gospel is because it's got so much texture, but the minimal information gives her exactly what she needs.
So, when we're thinking about conversations about bodies and sexuality, there's a minimal biological sense that just helps our kids understand, "Oh, look at this design. It's good." And they're not going to be mostly they'll just respond with like, oh, that's gross, or, okay, then you'll have to have the conversation multiple times. But it's not just biology. We also want to have theology. Biology is something that exists for birds and pigs and fish and humans, but there's a theological beauty to what God has called us to either the vocation of faithful Christian singleness or faithful Christian marriage. And both of those in their way communicate about the gospel. And so, if we're able to talk to our kids in little ways, when you see that single person in our church living for Jesus, when you see that marriage that has all these hallmarks of what the gospel is, we can celebrate both and teach our kids to look for the gospel in both of those.
And then so you talk theology, you've got some biology. I'm going through this quickly just because all in my book, we also want to figure out what does it mean to think like a missionary? What does it mean to understand that everyone around me was made in God's image? So, there's going to be ways that they reflect God still. They're going to have some desires that really are good desires. They're going to have some fears that really are fears they should have. But because we're fallen image bearers dead in our sin rebels, well, we're not going to do the right things in response to those desires or fears. We're going to mess things up along the way. And so, it's helpful to teach our kids well, look for the yes. Look for that thing that we can affirm. You know what? That is a good desire.
So, if we think about it in terms of the affirmation of gay relationships, well, God did in fact make us for intimate relationships. He really did. The only thing that God said was not good in the garden was that Adam was alone. And I don't think that's just Adam didn't have a sexual and romantic partner, it's just Adam was alone. And you're thinking sometimes the evangelical subculture can say, all I need is me and God. He designed us to need each other. So yes, your desire for deep intimate relationship is really good, but what's the no? Well, and the church has helped create this. We pretend like sex and romance are the only place where intimacy can be found. Or if I don't have those things, that I'm not a full and complete. I call that salvation by romance. So, outside the world, you just need consent inside the church, we still want it to be marriage.
But we can spin this false gospel of like, you aren't going to have intimacy unless you're married, which doesn't make any sense at all if you read the New Testament. Marriage is beautiful and good and displays the gospel when it's actually practiced as it should be. But the number one relationship described in the Testament is our brothers and sisters in Christ, which means married and single all together in the church. That's what God designed us for.
Tim Muehlhoff: That great passage where Jesus's family shows up and they're like, "Hey, your family's here."
Rachel Gilson: It's like, "Who are my brothers and sisters? Mothers?"
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, my goodness. What a radical [inaudible 00:42:32].
Rachel Gilson: Yeah, if we actually took that seriously. So, the no, and there's lots of different ways that this comes in. So, when we encounter Jesus, we get that other yes, of like, "Hey, Jesus actually wants you to experience intimate relationships." You can't. You're cut off in your sin. You need forgiveness. But when you come to Jesus, you're not only going to have this amazing intimate relationship with God himself who made you and redeemed you. He's also going to give you these brothers and sisters that you'll have forever. Because in the new heavens and the new Earth, we're all single and we're all married. We're not humanly married.
Tim Muehlhoff: Give me your best theological take on why there's no marriage in heaven.
Rachel Gilson: What a good question. No one ever really phrases that way. I feel secure that there's no marriage in heaven because Jesus says so in Matthew 22 or 23, I don't recall right off the top of my head. I think the main reason is that human marriages here were designed primarily to be a picture of the gospel. And so, when we get to the capital M, marriage in the new heavens and Earth, we don't need the little pictures anymore. It's like if you're going to go, it's like if you've got a toy car until you're 16, you get the real car. I don't need the toy anymore.
The real marriage is going to fulfill us, which is also why singleness for the sake of Christ is such a beautiful picture of the resurrection because someone who is single for the sake of Christ, she might even want to be married. But maybe God hasn't brought that yet, but she can say, but even if God doesn't bring that, "I'm not going to miss out on the real thing because I know the resurrection is coming. I'm not participating in the sign." Maybe I would want to, but I am absolutely going to participate in the marriage, which is such a beautiful picture for our society, which is drunk on romance in deranged ways.
Tim Muehlhoff: Rachel, thank you for being with us.
Rachel Gilson: It's my pleasure.
Tim Muehlhoff: Love Cru. I so much appreciate the hard work you're doing with Cru. When you're an organization that big, you can get a lot of critics, and I love the vision of Bill Bright that's been carried on to this day. So, thank you for helping them stay theologically rooted, and thank you for having the courage to wade into the top topics. Would you come back? We'd love to have you back on the podcast.
Rachel Gilson: Oh, happily.
Tim Muehlhoff: That'd be awesome.
Rachel Gilson: With joy.
Tim Muehlhoff: You've been listening to the Winsome Conviction podcast. If you want to find out more about us, just go to winsomeconviction.com. You can listen to all our past podcasts as well as free resources, including an interactive website called endthestalemate.com that will teach you to do perspective taking with perspectives that may make you feel uncomfortable or even perspectives that you might disagree with, but we need to learn to do perspective taking. Thank you so much. We don't take your listenership for granted. Thank you.
