Well, I'd like to welcome you again. This is the second evening in which we're having issues surrounding Christian ethics. A little short four-week series entitled Christians Living in a Sin-Stained World, Some Ethical Questions Christian Face Today. Last week was our first and second sessions, or one evening in which we took up two topics. moral reasoning and then worldview as grounding moral reasoning. Tonight, which is our second evening, taking up sessions three and four, we hope to look at issues surrounding human sexuality, very specifically pornography and transgender issues. We're not going to take up homosexuality, but transgenderism. To get started, shall we ask God to bless our time. Gracious God and Father, you are kind to us and good. You are faithful and loving. You know the world we live in, which finds itself in sin and in misery and sorrow and brokenness, and also a world where there's much sexual dysfunction, where there's infidelity. where there's lack of trust and communion, where we don't live out your good created purpose for us, where there's many individuals who are caught in sexual misery as well, find themselves caught up by the tentacles of pornography, or even find their own sexual orientation and their sense of self challenged or sidetracked or where they face confusion. And Lord, your church lives in the midst of a world in which it seeks to be light and salt. and to offer hope in Christ Jesus. Help us to have a compassionate heart, but also to rest strongly in your word. Your truth is grounding us in an understanding of the world, of ourselves, of our neighbors, and of the brokenness and the hope of redemption in Christ Jesus. So bless our time this evening, and may we be able to think together Christianly and grow in knowledge and understanding. We ask this all in Jesus' name, amen. We welcome many more viewers, not only those of you who are here physically with us, but many more viewers who are tuning in online, some of which don't tune in live, but later from the recording. We're glad you're with us as well. So tonight, session three, issues surrounding human sexuality, particularly pornography and how this brings on marital trials besides many others. I'm going to be reading through these notes. You can read along. I'll be also making comments besides what you find printed here. But Western society, the world we live in, has changed rather radically. I'm old enough, because I was born in the 1950s, to at least remember programming from that era. And I certainly remember programming from the 1960s and the like. And television, 1950s television and movies, is the sexual standards depicted there, is very different than what we find today. Back then, gays weren't called gays or gay-oriented people and the like. They talked about being in a closet mostly. Terms like gender dysphoria was a culturally unknown concept. Pornography existed, but was a scandalous hidden indulgence, kept in private drawers, stashed away in boxes in basements, behind other boxes in the basement. Pregnancy out of wedlock was the occasion for shame and public embarrassment. Even divorce was a sort of scarlet D. I'm not saying that was a good thing, but it was. sort of the Scarlet D branded on people's chests. With the advent of Playboy magazine in 1953, the sexual revolution commenced. You could argue that it was partly underway already back in the roaring 20s, but was sidetracked because of the Great Depression and the Second World War and the like. But the sexual revolution gained real momentum with the arrival of the pill in 1960. This liberated women from unwanted pregnancy. About that same time, James Bond Playboy extraordinaire enticed a whole generation of young men to fantasize about the exploits of the sexually conquering male with little emotional attachment to any female. Then too, the 60s revolution, the hippie movement, free love, along with women's liberation, and more social forces. Each and all these coincided in ushering in the brave new world of sexual freedom. In the 70s, gay rights gained sway and an onward march ever since. More recently, transgenderism has become the focus of attention, most notably when Bruce Jenner, the famed Olympian decathlete, transitioned to become Caitlyn Jenner. We've moved then from the world of Ozzie and Harriet, which I don't remember very well, and Leave it to Beaver, which I remember very well. I still watch reruns of it. To the Conners, which has a transgendering child as one of the characters. Beavis and Butthead, a big thing in the 90s. But I heard it's making a comeback. If you've never heard of that, my apologies. But that cartoon depicts two fellows by that name who offer every rude, crude, sexist cliche imaginable. We're a strange culture in which We want to hold women up, and then we also celebrate shows like that that do the very opposite. Pornography, and not the tame sort of stuff of Playboy fame, but explicit, hardcore, triple X's that used to be referred to pornography. of many in this room couldn't imagine the content of, is only a few clicks away, a few clicks of some buttons on your computer or your cell phone, so that literally you could take out your phone now, and with a few clicks you'd be shocked what will pop up. That's the world we live in now. Pregnancy out of wedlock is now publicly paraded as an occasion for celebration, even on national TV. Gay persons have moved from the closet to the spotlight from a hall of shame. to a hall of fame. In fact, the old values and social mores are increasingly viewed as what should be shot into the closet and hidden away or exiled. In these two sessions, then, we're first going to look at pornography and then, as I noted, transgenderism. So pornography. We don't have to look very far to know that our culture indulges lust, celebrates it. It's not a vice. Lust is luscious. It's not a deadly sin. It's a charm. This is how our culture depicts it. It's an engine that fires us, or a fire that fires our engine. It brings on life's adventure. It fuels fun. The media portrayal is that it's hardly a vice. In other words, lust isn't vicious. Of course, the biblical portrait's different. As a vice, lust is vicious. a sexual coveting of bodies, and outside the bonds of vowed love called marriage, it's a desire gone astray. This vice in a world alienated from God, is often, that is, the device of loss is often packaged with other sorts of sins, like greed, like anger, like envy, and the like. Sexual loss can be manifest in many forms, premarital, marital, extramarital, postmarital. It can include any sort of sexual desire or pleasure or satisfaction that really stands contrary to, against God's will for us. Though the window of the eyes can breed lust in the heart, this is a important thing to understand about ourselves. It's not the case. Lust is out there. And it gets me in here. The eyes might be the windows in which we see out there, but it's the heart. that directs the eyes, and it's the heart that receives the information and translates what's out there into lust. In other words, Jesus taught us a long time ago, lust is a heart problem, first of all, not a sexual organ or sexual desire problem, first of all. It's a heart problem. Our hearts are disordered. Our hearts are misdirected so that we see with our eyes even with our mind's imagination. And because our eyes, what we see with our eyes is then twisted into lust. The Bible has various ways of talking about sexual misbehavior, fornication, adultery, lustful fantasizing, and everything associated with the same. And all of this is easily practiced, by the way, in the privacy of one's heart. Inasmuch as lust is sort of a private coveting of bodies, a coveting of a neighbor's wife, or a woman in your heart, it can be a very private sin. Men can be quite, and I suppose women too, can be quite expert of, I checked her out, and she didn't, and no one else even knew I checked her out. But indeed, I did. And it's up to your heart what you do with that, what starts rolling around in your mind and imagination. Inevitably, loss aims to push beyond the confines of the imagination and find satiation through another. And even though our culture judges loss for the newcomers, I'm on page 10 of the handout. Even though our culture judges lust as harmless and private, just as long as you don't hurt anybody, a corrupted imagination is a type of self-harm. What are you doing to yourself? And if one is in a committed relationship, it harms one's partner, compromising or altogether corrupting trust, commitment, friendship, fellowship, union. Lust does put another person between you and your spouse, for example, you and your fiance. Part of the fidelity of marriage includes mental fidelity. Of course, sex itself is good. And so let's sort of shift a little bit here. Sex itself is good. It's not shameful. It's a wonderful gift of God. Who invented it? He did. Who wired us? He did. Who knows about our sexual desires and celebration and the wonderful intimacy and ecstasy of our sexuality? God does. He made us that way. He's not ashamed of it. He designed as such. God invented it then, and I consider it, along with many others, a rather great invention at that. God is not ashamed of sex, but we're able to make it shameful. Certainly a part of sex has the purpose of procreation, but that's not its sole purpose. Humans aren't merely animals who come into heat. We are not meant for just any body handy, but for life lived together and committed love and fidelity. That's the design then, a design plan for human happiness, for human flourishing, God's plan. And the Song of Songs, many take it merely as a metaphor, allegory for Christ and his church. Well, you can look at it theologically and draw conclusions, but what it is first of all is a celebration of wedded sexuality and celebration. Pornography, by contrast, mounts a full frontal assault on this divine plan. Pornography, the word being derived from two Greek words, porne, which literally means prostitute. And when one's engaging in porne, it's a kind of whoring. And grapheme, writing or drawing. Pornography is whoring, prostitute writing. whoring, drawing, depiction, a portrayal of sexually oriented material in written or audio or visual form, deliberately designed to stimulate sexually, to incite lust and passion and longing, sexual desire this way. It contains explicit descriptions or displays of sexual actions, and or organs with the aim of stimulating sexual feelings, desires, and the like versus, say, mere artistic expressions and depictions of the human body. Ancient pornography. once came in the form of paintings and drawings, literature, carvings. Now pornography comes in the form of photographs, films, live sex shows, literally. Internet pornography is now the dominant avenue. in which it's consumed through personal computer, tablet, cell phone. Now you can subscribe and have very particular people, internet sites that will send new content to you unsolicited for a fee and by the same token you can sign to be treated to very specific people, even celebrities who do pornographic shows for a very limited audience for a fee. This has become a new thing. Some students were informing me about this today, as a matter of fact, where there's big money to be made for such sorts of persons. If you have a million subscribers, and you charge 50 cents or a buck, there's a million bucks. Bam. One of the most troublesome features of pornography, as some authors have noted, is not that it reveals too much, but of course it does. But it's talking about one of the most troublesome features, is that it reveals too little. All it reveals are objectified bodies, body parts for sexual arousal rather than God's image bearer, rather than a person's heart, mind, soul, spirit, rather than love, commitment, embrace, intimacy, communion. None of that. It incites lust, not love. It arouses lust. but doesn't satisfy. It objectifies persons and reduces them to sexual playthings in both directions, by the way, male toward females and males toward males, females toward females, et cetera, et cetera. It also sells a fantasy world of sexuality that is just that, fantasy. I remember seeing a TV show late back from the 80s and a character on the TV show, her husband was a consumer of pornography and she was upset and reviewing him because he wanted her to be like that. And she rightly said, but those are fake women behaving in a fake manner. Yeah, a fantasy indeed. The persons performing in pornographic media are acting, to be sure. Women are reduced to sex-starved sex machines that enjoy being disrespected, brutalized, becoming the sex object for any sex organ, performing most any possible sex act. Men are reduced to sex stars, sex machines as well, who live for that one singular purpose, to be satiated by any and every possible sexual activity. In pornography's devolution, the sinking corruption of the human soul, that next sexual high is to go lower, thus the descent into child porn, incest, rape, bestiality, a descent lower and lower. And all of that literally is clicks away from your cell phone or laptop. That's our world today. It's a global world like that today. The church has mostly turned aside, looked down at their feet. You know, you'd like to do one of those comments where the names have been changed to protect the innocent, but some years back I, through a colleague, was told about, a porn stopper site, you know, that you can put in on your computer so that pornographic content may not come on. So I asked him a little more about it. And I thought, well, this might be helpful to advertise and put in the address and so forth. So I went to the elders and the pastor and told them about that. And they agreed. But this is how they put it in the bulletin. Not we, the consistory session, have made the decision to help facilitate sexual purity in our church. I recommend that you have porn-stopping software on your computer. And here's one such thing. Instead, it was put this way. Dr. Beach says. It was very stark, I thought. Oh, we don't care about fool. We've never been tempted in our life, perhaps Dr. Beach has, so he's offering some helpful advice for the rest of us. This desire not to embrace something that is startling in the statistics and the facts that can be known about it, And I know, I have no doubt there's people in this room who have no clue about and have not ever witnessed such content. I also am quite convinced there's people in this room who've witnessed exactly what I've talked about. And certainly there's those listening by way of internet who likewise know what I'm talking about. So it shows too little. It doesn't show a world in which there's love and commitment and celebration and vulnerability and self-discovery and mutual discovery and growing together sexually in union. None of that. It's use her, use him, perform for her, perform for him. A new high means to go lower. So why pornography? Well, I suppose there's always been pornography. Before I was ever exposed, well I wouldn't say ever exposed to pornography, but I can remember in public high school, crass boys drawing their own pornography. I worked in a grocery store in which craft boys used potatoes to sculpted their own pornography, rather raw at that. And once again, where does that come from? From the human heart, from us. It's not a sin that's out there. It's a sin like most sin that starts in here. And we're all damaged sexually, pretty much all. And some of that damage is toward perversity and multiple, the desires for multiple scenarios and others. We're damaged because we don't really believe it's a wonderful gift of God. We don't believe God invented it. It is shameful. It is to be denied and repressed. And the devil's winning both directions with that. So why pornography? Why is it legal? Why does it remain legal in Western society? The biblical answer is it's a reflection and result of human depravity. I don't mean that in a superficial sense. I mean it in the depths of what we are. We like to sin. We're bent and tilted to it. It becomes natural for those who cast off the natural. The legal answer, and this isn't by statistics, this is a theological professor's opinion based on his knowledge of the human heart. The legal answer for pornography is that it represents a form of free speech. That's the way it's defended. It's free speech. It's free expression. But truth be told, and this is my personal opinion, the legal answer is but the outcome of human depravity having its way. For in brief, much of the male population, including the white-collar judges, lawyers, and politicians have a porn habit, and they want to indulge in some pornography. They don't want it to go away. Porn is here to stay because much of the male population enjoys it, or at least think they do. And more recently, with the rise of internet pornography, an increasing percentage of women and girls are becoming regular users of it as well. This is what's happening. The trends aren't, it's not improving. It's not a high and then, well, now it's sort of, It's not a wave that lapped under the shore and has now receded and isn't going to come back. And that's not what's happening. Now, part of the argument that goes with this is, what's the harm? It's a person's private business. I think most of us have heard these sorts of comments. How does it harm individuals or families or society at large? In fact, it's argued, it's healthy. It helps free people from their sexual inhibitions. Some have even said it's public sex education. The statistics are unsettling, but while many churches and sessions and consistories act innocent in regard to pornography, because the church is just much too pure to fall into such a scandalous sort of sin and sinning, the facts say otherwise. I have a little footnote there. Some 90% of American children between the ages of 8 and 16, and I know that's a pretty wide range, but have been exposed to it. Long before internet pornography, I was exposed to it simply because it was thrown in the trash and trash cans fall over. And boys walking through alleys see stuff. I didn't go seek it, but it was found. Others bring it to school. There's different sorts of mechanical shops and things like that where posters were put up. It wasn't your choice, but it's plastered right in front of you, okay, of a more mild sort. But it wasn't long before more raw stuff is passed around or shown, giggling, teenagers in a corner or something. According to the statistics, there's over 1 billion online pornography sites. Billions. According to a 2016 Varna study, the majority of pastors, some 54%, have reported being former or current users of it. And what of all the statistics that bothered me more than others is that many practicing Christians report feeling no guilt about that if they said many practicing Christians felt guilt about it and struggled to be rid of it and don't, they're not very successful, that I could have believed and understood. What I had a hard time is to feel no guilt about it. That shocked me. and still does. About two-thirds, but there are many, and pastorally I've confronted this. I haven't been in the pastorate for some time, but I've even dealt with students from time to time in which they know deep shame and misery from this and want liberation and freedom from it. About two-thirds of Christian men view pornography at least monthly. What? Yes, that's the statistics, which isn't very different than non-Christian. So it doesn't mean all men are watching pornography, but a lot of them. And it doesn't mean they're all indulging in it with a smile on their face, but they're falling into this sin that is so readily there and easily made private, undetected by others. So for the many who say they feel no guilt, there are many, too, that feel immense guilt and struggle. None of this is very edifying to hear about, is it? Putting this together is like, I want a new topic next week because I'm not enjoying this one at all, neither of them. It's unedifying for a pastor to focus too much attention to the poor porn problem in our midst. And it's not exactly helpful for children to be always hearing about this. And I've known parishioners who've suspected their own pastor of having a porn problem because he talks about pornography from the pulpit too much. And I wonder about him. Well, I guess you can wonder. But you ought to be wondering about everybody if you're going to start wondering. You know, men are a little wired a bit differently than women. And one of the marriage books I have is, men have sexual thoughts. How many times a day? 20, 30. What the why? You think you know us. You don't know us at all. But that's true of many men. They think very sexually. So it's not edifying to overdo it, but it's also not helpful to act like ostriches head in the sand because we're too ashamed to admit our own churches are seeding with lust. And it doesn't take internet pornography. It can help feed lust, fuel lust, reduce women to sex objects. And the same women can look at men this way. But internet pornography can degrade us so that it then becomes rather easy to look at any female, even as she walks the aisle in church to come to worship. and look and evaluate her sexually constantly and fantasize accordingly. It's so easily a sin practice in the privacy of your own heart. Now interestingly, the Presidential Commission on Pornography, appointed way back in 1967, when you were young and spry and strong, and when you didn't exist. Basically gave pornography a clean bill of health as having no social negative repercussions on society. But that study was refuted virtually on every conclusion it reached. by the Attorney General's 1986 Commission on Pornography. If some of you were listeners of Dr. James Dobson back then, you probably remember that he served on that latter commission and reported all kinds of scandalous things. And some of the things he talked about aren't fit to talk about here. Like all political debates, however, public debates on morals, on morality, wallows in a quagmire of opinion and so-called scientific findings, or that's your opinion, or that's your religious view. You can't impose your view on us. Well, somebody's view is being imposed on everyone else. I mean, that's inevitable. So what about some scriptural perspective on this? When you start to evaluate something like pornography biblically, what do you find? We turn to what scripture, well, although the Bible doesn't address pornography directly, it does address lust, sexual immorality, violence, racism, abusive or exploitive attitudes and actions. It also talks about things like modesty. Whatever else you want to say about pornography, it's not modest. Pornography fosters all such behaviors, sexual immorality, lust, racism, because pornography often uses all sorts of racist stereotypes in the way it depicts things, persons of different races. First, we know that lusting in our heart is mental adultery. Jesus teaches us that. We're told to make no provision for the flesh, and yet that's exactly what pornography's up to. Provide, provide, provide. in sight, something pornography is quite deliberate about. Believers are exhorted not to walk in the way of immorality, impurity, coarse joking, or filthiness. None of this fits the way of faith, Paul tells us. And certainly, pornography then falls under that same sanction. By contrast, we're urged to dwell on what is noble. What is just? What is pure? What is lovely? What is excellent? What's of good repute and praiseworthy? Think about that. Well, pornography is none of those things. In other words, people find themselves dwelling on the very opposite of what we're urged to dwell on. Its pornography is dastardly, it's debased, debauched, impure, shameful, disgraceful, and leaves minds in the gutter. Women are reduced to sexual objects for sexual exploits. It leaves the minds of its consumers choked with poisonous sexual imagery, with a sensual idolatry etched in the mind. Now when you view something like that, it sticks. It's in there. And it's not easily taken out of your head. It leaves the minds of its consumers choked with this sexual imagery. In this way, pornography inhibits or inhabits, excuse me, inhabits the mind long after a given visual display is over. Thus, or this in turn, feeds a sex-saturated heart, feeds a sex-saturated society, as it just gains this momentum and takes on a life of its own. And all of this is the opposite. Whether you're participating as an actor and producer and director and wonder of pornography or you're a consumer of it. What's true about all of it is you're not loving your neighbors yourself. It's also true about all of it as a consumer or otherwise is you're supporting and giving your money and time and attention to prostitution of a type. That's what it is. I would never visit a prostitute, but yeah, you actually do. And most women who are prostitutes, there's exceptions, but most are forced into it, are abused into it, are sexually broken and fall into it, have been abused by other sorts of persons. There are brazen people who are simply in it for the money, didn't have to do this, they chose to do it. Yes, there's that too. But even those people, there's often sexual brokenness in their background. If you hunt back further, they've been abused so that they deviate in this way. Again, this is all very opposite of loving your neighbor as yourself. What would you want for your neighbor? So why are you helping this neighbor? Why are you promoting and becoming part of this destruction, this brokenness? You're not looking for your neighbor's welfare at this point. And it also involves, I'll put it strongly here, a taking off of Christ and pursuing waywardness rather than a putting on of Christ and pursuing righteousness. That's what it is. So the scripture is clear. Sexual desire is permitted and natural, but it must be directed toward one's spouse alone. Pornography, though, works in opposition to that, in opposition to a passage like 1 Corinthians 7. That's the passage where husband and wife may rightly expect conjugal rights from one another. and are not to deprive one another, none of this using sex to punish him or her. No, no, no, no, no. Your body's not your own. It belongs to the other. And if you do deprive one another, it's by mutual agreement and for a set purpose. That's the biblical depiction there. Pornography, though, given that it's mostly accompanied by masturbation, involves isolated sex versus a communion between partners. It all too easily involves depriving the victim's spouse of sexual affection, being replaced by a fantasy on the screen, or it's used in a manipulative way to guilt the victim partner, usually the wife, into becoming more like the fantasy is found in the imagery of pornography, to do or perform or act like the women in porn do or perform or act like. Hebrews 14.4 informs us that marriage is honorable among all and the marriage bed is to remain undefiled. But pornography defiles it very deliberately. In fact, it talks about God's judgment does come upon adulterers and fornicators. We have a whole culture saturated in this and we keep flaunting our sin in God's face and, Lord, we should flourish as a nation. I mean, we're testing God, literally. We will deny you, sin against you, spurn you. We'll give you the colossal, forget you. But bless us. I mean, who are we trying to kid? Pornography doesn't honor marriage. Do you want to honor marriage? Pornography doesn't. Pornography is wholly disinterested in sex between a husband and a wife, unless a third party is brought into the situation, a daughter, a stepdaughter, a sister-in-law, a neighbor friend. That's what's depicted in pornography. It feeds human perversity, evokes deviant behaviors as normative, the naughtier, the better. The more scandalous, the more exciting. The more corrupting and debauched and novel, the more sexually creative and fulfilling. That's the depiction. Perversity's pleasure by this account. So in short form, pornography takes the beauty and wonder of our sexuality, debases it, cheapens it, poisons it, dishonors fidelity, It's not ever about that. Celebrates sinful behavior and incites the same in the lives of all of its consumers, whether one is a believer or unbeliever. Cultivates lust, certainly that. And certainly adultery in the heart cultivates that. tempts some to find casual sex from internet sites, to go to Craigslist for little liaisons, induces men to go to strip clubs to pay prostitutes, or turn to other partners in the pursuit of sexual excitement. It also debases our view of persons, Both men and women, but women tend to be more the abused side of it. Darkens hearts and minds and damages and brings disintegration of marriages and families. So this is, I think, when you look at it from a biblical portrait, what we find happening. And it's happening every day, 24-7, non-stop. All sorts of children have innocently, being on the computer, come across it. All sorts of people, simply because they're pursuing, who is that exactly? Who hasn't photoed? There was a photo of something, and then a few more photos, and now suddenly a pornographic photo. pops up. You didn't go looking for it, but there it is. And that's by design, it's on purpose. So what is a TARM? Well, It commodifies people. People are flesh to be sold and used. I've, through the years, done a series, both of sermons and lectures and the like, on the seven deadly sins from medieval fame. They're deadly not because they're mortal sins, but because they're sins from which, out of which, other sins easily blossom and flourish. And loss is among them. One of the books of treating the seven deadly sins had artistic interpretations of each sin. So envy depicts, for example, this awful looking person eaten with envy and anger, peeking through a keyhole, casting the envious eye. But lust I found interesting. What is it going to show? Something pornographic? Not at all. It simply showed a person lying down and another person standing in dominance on top of them, over them. You are available to me. You are at my disposal. Commodifies people. I have dealt with women and men have to be sensitive when sometimes women just feel like meat, like a commodity for their pleasure. Pornographers prey on that. Runaways are exploited. Runaway children, girls are exploited this way. Boys too. There is underground child porn and the like. Women are forced into it by abusive boyfriends. Women and girls trafficked from poor nations. Other financially needy women. Most of those who are the performers, as I mentioned earlier, have been sexually abused. Much of the profits never finds its way, and most of the actors and actresses who are part of it. But pornographers get rich. There's a humiliation depiction. Women are often made to perform acts, choking them, hitting them, gagging, many other acts not fit to describe here. Online porn is designed to offer free services that then hook you into paid services and to make it a habitual, literally a habit. Psychologists have tracked how it hyper-activates appetite systems, creates new maps within the brains, makes us dopamine-like, that pleasure thing. And when you have something mapped, you want to go back to it, and that kind of thing. So it's not exactly reckoned as an addictive behavior. But most people who deal with people trying to free themselves from sexual addiction recognize it as such a kind of addiction. This sort of dirty industry incites other dirty industries. And what does it do when you introduce what woman can compete with all those? What wife can compete with all those? None of them. Who can compete with a fantasy? A man can't compete with the fantasy world of pornography either. If a woman is incited with this kind of lust and you have to be like this sexual, a man of the sexual prowess and posture and physique, you're a slob. Everyone's left diminished. Everyone's left decrepit and ashamed. And it breaks fidelity. It breaks trust. It breaks respect. and it's supporting prostitution. Now, I'm gonna stop. There's particular harm given to women, to children, poor children who come across this. Boys start getting all twisted in what sex is, how it's to be expressed. And the same can happen to girls. I have to make my boyfriend love me. He has to accept me. He's telling me to be like them. I have to be like them to be counted. So it damages both ways. And if you're struggling with it, I offer six little things. But this isn't a pastoral care class. If it was pastoral care, then my approach would be different. This is ethics. And you're making a moral evaluation based, grounded on a biblical set of principles, a worldview grounded in that we're ordered and created and designed a certain way for a certain purpose. But we live in a culture in which all of those givens are misdirected back to structure and direction. The structure of our sexuality is good, but now it's pointed and directed in ways contrary to God's will for us. And sin always bears its consequences, its misery. I'll allow a couple of questions and then we'll take a break. Yes ma'am. that they wish they could unsee what they see in their own home, you know, from a pornography Exactly. I don't have the statistics, but anecdotally, I've known many such occasions where Dad has his stash. Even before internet pornography, he had his little collection of movies. A child inevitably discovers it, inevitably out of curiosity views it, invites neighbor kids to view it, and you're innocently raising your children well, but it's not, you know, they get exposed nonetheless. I get exposed simply being a boy walking down an alley, you know. And as you say, there's those who are rather brazen about it. I've known homes where men view pornography brazenly, publicly, in view of their family. I've known of college students who did the same. And now they're just getting all hardwired into, and then if you're raised in that, amidst that, now what? I would think that a young boy would be raised with a devaluation for his mother and other women. Right? I mean, he might conclude his father is broken and perverted, and I don't want to be like him. But it's just as likely that, like many behaviors, what's modeled to us, then we in turn perform. So yeah. How many? I'm going to start with the little secret stash thing. always get discovered one way or another. But that doesn't mean you're discovered as the stasher. It's not like the kids run and tell mom, we found a dirty magazine in the wood pile. But it is found nonetheless. Any other questions? Sobering, isn't it? Not a happy topic. You have to pray for our nation that this is such a given in our culture. It's so much part of the warp and wolf of what's normal Americana. And it's not just America, the whole western world and beyond. It doesn't bode well for the human predicament. Let's take a brief break, 10 minutes. We'll come back at 35 after the hour. And we'll treat another topic. sexual issues. All right. I'll invite you to take your seats. And we'll commence with our fourth session, which is the second in our second evening class. And this one will deal with transgender issues. I want to preface my remarks here. First, that I'm no expert in this area, either theologically or scientifically. or something in between that. This is scratching the surface of this topic. It's a sketch, so it needs to be heard and understood accordingly. It's a sketch about an issue. In other words, we haven't dug deep down into all the things. Once again, this is not a a pastoral care approach to this question. It's an ethical approach. These can coincide and interface with each other, of course, and I do have some pastoral comments I make along the way. But I'm mostly trying to sort this out and then look at it from a reform biblical sort of perspective and offer some assessment about it. And in making an assessment, I'm not trying to disrespect anyone or grind anyone into the dirt or disregard them or anything like that. So that needs to simply be put out there. Now transgender, so this is a question about particularly transgenderism. It's a rather recent trend following in the wake of homosexual activism and the wider social shift regarding homosexuality. We might say embrace and acceptance of it. What is now branded as the LGTB. LGBTQ+, lesbian, gay, trans, bi, queer, questioning, and other stuff you add on to it, has become normative within large segments of society, especially in the academic world, the corporate American world, large swaths of liberal political and media world. So what does it mean to be transgender? Well, one definition I came across offers it this way. Transgender is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity differs from what is typically associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. It is sometimes abbreviated to trans. Transsexual refers to persons who experience a gender identity inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth. That's all rather abstract. Another term that needs definition is that of gender dysphoria, which refers to the distress a person experiences whose gender identity differs from their biological sex. You might have male sex organs, but you feel in your soul, your heart, your desires, perhaps you feel like a female. Yes? The term transsexual used to mean somebody who had a sex change operation. Has the definition changed over time? Yes. Well, yes, all kinds of definitions have been shifting. And it's hard to stay abreast on the way terms are used. But they view themselves as transitioning sexually somewhere else. Another term, gender dysphoria, is this distress that people feel they have a gender identity different from their biological sex. Gender identity has reference to a person's internal sense of being male or female, or nowadays, back to this fluidity, other. I'm not one or the other, but other. Or I'm some of this, sometimes some of that. Sex refers to biological sexual organs, physical, biological, hormonal, anatomical characteristics. In this connection, we also know that some people suffer with disorders of sexual development. And this is referred to now as intersex, historically to persons who were hermaphrodites. Maybe I didn't say that exactly right. Denoting a congenital condition in which the development of a person's chromosomal, godinal, internal, and or external anatomical sex is atypical. I remember seeing a show, it was sort of like a 60 Minutes or one of those kind of shows about a girl. who by the time she was around eight or nine, I mean, all the pictures of her, she looked very boyish as a girl, to speak in that way. She looked tomboyish. She looked boy, but they thought she was a girl. But at a certain point in her development, Her sexual anatomy, basically testicles, penis, emerged, dropped from what heretofore had looked female. So in fact, all along, she had been a he. She always felt like a he, carried herself like a he. I told her parents that she thought of herself as a boy, but she looked physically like a girl until this happened. And there's other versions of this, and it can be the other way too, but there's that. That's, in one sense, that can be a case in which there's gender dysphoria. What's happening with me? From the above, we see that sex and gender, given the new trend about transgenderism, sex and gender are viewed as distinct, such that persons can take on roles and identity of a sex different from their biological sex. Gender has reference to roles. This is how it's defined now. What is gender? Well, it's defined as referring to roles and a sense of identity. A sense of identity is subjective, not biological. Gender also has reference to culturally defined roles, behaviors, expressions, which often are labeled as masculine or feminine. And in that light, without those kind of definitions, gender non-conforming persons refuse to act or identify according to those labels. You might say that this is what a masculine gender is like, but I don't accept that. Other terms used are queer. That term doesn't mean what it meant when I was a boy growing up. as a way of simply saying you're a homosexual person, you're a queer. That term has now been re-owned, re-appropriated to refer to people, this is what I am. And it doesn't mean I'm a homosexual as such. It can mean I'm questioning. I'm in a state of fluidity, a state of deciding. It can be even non-binary. You're not male or female. What? But yeah, that's part of this big equation and trend of thought. Some persons who are transgender have transitioned or are transitioning having undergone or are undergoing medical treatments such as hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgeries to bring their bodies into alignment with the gender with which they identify. I again remember seeing a show back some 20 years ago, perhaps, in which a male and female, a husband and wife, each flip-flopped. So the wife became the man, the man became the wife. They each had sexual reassignment surgeries and the like. and stayed together with this switch of not only gender identity, but the biological sex changes to accommodate that. Others make only a social transition. They make non-medical changes in their person, their clothing, their name, their personal pronouns, and the like, in order to live in alignment with this gender identity. So those are some basic definitions. Increasingly, though rare, although I heard on the news today some town in the Chicagoland area elected transgender mayor or something. I didn't quite catch it. But some of us, you know, maybe it's a barista at Starbucks or a waitress or waiter somewhere, meet people who count themselves as transgender. And certainly on college campuses, you would find a much higher percentage in that sort of setting. Key to this debate is the question whether sex and gender are distinct from one another. Beginning in the 60s, and over time, this distinction became normative in the field of psychology. So if you're asking, does the psychological sciences recognize this as a legitimate thing, yes. I mean, it gives credence. It endorses this. at least for the most part. From a biblical point of view, believers are placed in an awkward position in counting as normative what seems to be prima facie disordered or malfunctioning or not normative. Yet human language has now been turned on its head, at least in my opinion, as terms like natural or normative and the like. If used one way, well, that's not natural, or that is natural. That's normative. This is what's normative. If used one way, it's branded as oppressive speech, or phobic, or sexist, or bigoted. But if used as descriptors of freedom to decide what's natural or normative, then those words apply. They have wholesome import. That's what I mean by language. being kind of turned around. With the concept of gender fluidity and the like, humans are to be viewed as a mix and match assemblage of parts. In other words, you know, and it was like the potato head. It was always Mr. Potato Head, and there was Mrs. Potato Head, and now there's just Potato Head, right? At least I heard that on the news or something. I personally don't own a potato head, but as a child you don't need a potato head to play with potatoes. All you have to do is have your mom mash them up and then play with them. but a mix and match assemblage. That is, physical sexual biology is one thing. Gender identities across ranges, another thing. Sexual desires across ranges, another thing. Some may opt for internal coherence to match physical biology and sexual preference. So let's say you feel like a woman, but you're a man, but you want to become a woman and you have sexual desires toward women. That would be your sexual preference. Or it could be toward a man. The idea, though, is to have internal coherence. Others reject the idea of internal coherence. That's oppressive to have internal. That's Neanderthal to have internal coherence. Now, in assessing this, Now again, I'm a beginner really in this area, so I don't pretend to be expert at it. I haven't taught it in ethics courses before because on the most part it was so on the periphery and you have so little time in an ethics course to cover all sorts of different topics. They can just read about that on their own. But now it's become more in public purview and is normative. And I think as I started reflecting on it, It really grounds, it really illustrates how things ground down into worldviews, a basic perspective on reality, what gives us authority, what gives us meaning, how we view ourselves within a world and a cosmos. And so ethical issues are shaped by worldviews. A definition of worldview I didn't offer last time, but this might be helpful, is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart that can be expressed as a story, or in a set of presuppositions, assumptions, which may be true, or partially true, or entirely false. A worldview doesn't necessarily mean the view you have is right. but it's the view you have. And these presuppositions which we hold, and we can hold them consciously, subconsciously, we can hold them consistently or inconsistently, But we hold these beliefs about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being, by which we think and decide things and evaluate things. C.S. Lewis noted the Christian and the materialist. A materialist is a secular kind of worldview. All there is is physical stuff, and that's all we are, chemicals of stuff. The Christian and the materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can't both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn't fit the real universe. They could both be wrong, but they can't both be right. Christians, of course, believe that they're right about the world, the universe, the moral universe God has put in place. Secularists, sometimes called humanists, materialists, atheists of different stripes believe they are right. In addressing this issue, we need to recognize that we interact with a rival worldview to that of Christianity. So if you're saying, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore. And well, that's because you're not. You're operating in a world that's not operative for you, but operative out there. And you say, well, wow, this is way different. That's right. It's the worldview of secularism. There's no God. There's no law giver. There's no moral standard except what we construct for ourselves. There's no right and wrong, again, except what we collectively decide for now to call such. And that's very fluid, by the way. And there's no heaven, there's no hell, there's no afterlife, there's only this life now. As such, there are no consequences beyond immediate gratification for self or the selves that embrace yourself. And you live for that. Of course, there are many rival worldviews to the Christian faith, but everyone has one. Everyone has a way of making sense of life and living it. Even someone who's pure hedonist. Drink tomorrow, be merry tomorrow, you die. Well, OK. There's your values. Live for fun. Live for the maximizing of pleasure. Live selfishly. But live, man. And all sorts of teenagers live like that, right? What are you doing with your life? I don't know, man, but I'm having fun now. What are you up to? What's your goals? Man, this is the beavis and butthead version of life again, as depicted in the cartoon. Someone else can, say, have a more sophisticated version of the same thing. It's just like, man, I live to make money and have fun and take trips and do exotic things and buy stuff and experience what there is to experience out there to the max. It's much more sophisticated than Beavis and Butthead, but it's the same basic world view. Let's see. Worldviews then shape and account for authority, what counts, who tells you what to do and why, what you know and how you know it, who knows what's right and what's best, and also trustworthiness, who loves us and wants the best for us. So you can take a pure secular sort of person who can have all kinds of morals and values grounded in what? Not in a sturdy foundation, but a collective agreement. You know, a collective agreement of Jews are bad. We should get rid of them in our society. Yeah. And, oh, we can't deport them, I guess we'll have to kill them. A collective agreement. People that have wealth and own stuff are bad. We have a collective agreement that they should be reprogrammed and punished, sent to gulags, and retaught values in life. And if they won't be retaught, we'll execute them and be rid of them. So fascism and forms of communism have done that. But it's all fluid, right? You can shift. And well, now, these sort of sexual expressions are bad. But now you come together and say, no, it's good. So I was recently in the Midway Airport this fall, traveling and sitting there at the bar and having something to drink, waiting for my flight. And there was various people. And there was a person who had a big white jacket on, self-made, registered nothing to me. Had a purse. Okay, someone you would identify as probably gay or something. Okay, fine, whatever. I noticed certain people were very friendly toward him. and deliberately would come to him and strike up conversations. An old dog like me, and no one wants to talk to it. People wanted to talk to this fellow. I'm observing this. After a while, he looks my way and holds up his drink and gives me a smile and goes like that. So I go, hi. I'll be friendly, whatever. But then I notice right behind me someone else. And that's who he's. Because this person, had I saw him being self-made and so on, and had bought him a drink, And I admit, I mean, I was confused by this. And then the guy behind me says, well, the more the merrier or something. Because I said, oh, that was for you. And he didn't buy me a drink. Anyway. I mean, I was quite confused by it. I was thinking, OK, this guy's evidently gay and fine and has a lot of bling and all that. But it was only, to be perfectly honest, in putting notes together like this that I realized what was being celebrated now. That identity self-made, see? It was transgenderism that was being celebrated. He was out there publicly letting, you know, an advertisement I am this different person. And regular, they mostly look like 30-something, 20, 30-something, with a long beard, wearing very nice clothes, but dressed casual. In other words, well-to-do Chicagoites. Here's to you, man. You're the best. That's what was happening. I see it now, totally. But at the time, I was too naive, and I was just like, what is this? There's a cultural shift going on here. I'm out of the loop. Because I was. I see it now. Well, when you look at the worldview of secularism, you see that it prizes science, but truth is fluid. Even scientific truth, because scientific truth is always changing. Natural order, even so-called natural law, or the laws of nature, is all a matter of interpretation. Morality is a choice, not an objective state of affairs. See, for Christians, this is all just really difficult to put together. Morality consists of feelings and preferences, like, ouch, That's morality. What you feel that feels bad to you, it's bad. And it feels good to you, it's bad. That's morality. That's its definition, your preferences. In keeping with this, life is split into public and private. The private sector is viewed as those places where religious beliefs and the morality derived from them comes from. Keep it private, keep it subjective, keep it personal, and keep it out of the public square. The public sector looks to scientific authority and the sanctions of that. It forms values for the public square. It's called objective and valid for everyone. It's incontestable. And you're contemptible if you challenge what's incontestable. Because this is how the universe works. So to speak of values here is only to say that science supports a kind of fluid, evolving set of opinions about humans, how humans should behave to one another. And right now, it supports buying drinks to someone who's self-identified as self-made. But not the poor old guy who's sitting there minding his own business. In order to understand this secularist materialist worldview, we need to understand that this view splits apart facts and values. This is key. This means that there is finally no objective truth out there, facts. We only have ourselves creating our own values as we see fit. Now Christianity denies this split. Theological biblical facts are inseparably related then to moral values. If one denies the facts, if one denies the giver of facts, God, then one also denies the connection between facts and values. Friedrich Nietzsche's program, in part, was to declare God dead, along with the Judeo-Christian values grounded on him, in order to transvalue to a world of our own making. He thought we could get to a better world of our own. But over a century ago, he was on to this. And ideas, over time, gained momentum. And this is where we're at. There is no God. We must make our own values. So when you get to this debate, you don't feel that way. Yes, I do. No, you don't. You shouldn't. But I feel that that's fruitless. Because underneath it all is a whole perspective of looking at life that's different. You do better to say, you interpret the world from this perspective. I interpret the world. I'm grounded in this. You're grounded in that. And of course, then the lens by which we view all this stuff is not the same. It also brings then, as we noted last time, too many Christians split life into secular and sacred, and then the secular is given to the devil. And this is played out, at least in parts of the Christian world, in which we'll pray for our children, but the unbelievers can educate them. And we'll prepare them to die in Jesus, but the world can have Adam, to learn how to work and live and have fun and play golf. You split life up so Jesus becomes this sort of Sunday savior. And we're left to be sitting ducks in a culture in which we've embraced it as belonging to Jesus when everything about it is against the Christ. And we suddenly wake up one day and say, what's wrong? Well, there's a lot wrong, and it's been wrong for a long time. So this is why I attack this dualism that has left Jesus on the church porch of our lives. Redemption is mostly escape from this world. But the world we're escaping from is under sin, but it's his. He made it, not the devil. You have to be very careful how you think about these things. So in reference to the question of transgenderism, scripture doesn't endorse the notion of self-identity or being self-made, not at least respect to human sexuality, in contrast to the current blending of genders or transforming or transitioning from one identity to another or seeking internal coherence or rejecting that idea. are opting for one preference of sexuality versus another. Scripture lays out principles that present a different account of what ails us as humans, even an account why we experience, at least some people, gender dysphoria or associated feelings, conflicting desires, yearnings. Well, to see how that works, and again, what does the Bible show us in this regard? Well, here, I want to make clear again, I'm not trying to disrespect anyone, including the gentleman I was referring to with the jacket, self-made. Again, I thought he was offering cheers to me. I wanted to be polite and kind and love such a person in my capacity and so forth, not denigrate or or be disrespectful or jaded or anything. So we're called to respect persons. And we're called to be compassionate and sensitive to human beings and their suffering from their own sins and misery and the sin and misery that afflicts us all. The Bible tells us we're fellow sinners. There's always a we self. among sinners. I think the church needs to relearn this. There's a huge distinction between church and world, but there's also this unity that we're all in this together, to use a COVID thing. We're all in this together, but we really are in the condition of sin and needing grace and forgiveness and help and rescue together. Christians have to stop being so conceited. toward unbelievers. It's our big, it's our congenital flaw. Unbelievers smell it on us. We're conceited and that's unattractive. I've seen beautiful women who are conceited and you're gross. You're icky. You're conceited. You're snobby. Christians aren't attractive when they're snobby. I'm better than you, and I know it, and you should too, and God hates you, and so do I. I mean, even Robert Shuler at least did us all the, God loves you, and so do I. But some Protestants were, God hates you, and so do we. It's awful. So we need to learn something about ourselves. We all need liberation, deliverance, grace in spades. But because God loves us to heal us, save us, forgive us, transform us, I use that word very deliberately, We're all under transformation. He's not going to stop halfway. Now, in this life, some people experience deep and radical transformation of what's broken in them. Other people experience, frankly, meager and faltering transformation of what ails and wounds them. simply true. But forgiveness in God's grace is always deep and radical, just as it's persistent and patient and finally infallible and irresistible. Scripture, and a worldview informed by it, offers different diagnoses and remedies to the issues surrounding gender dysphoria and transgenderism Because no matter how much modern advocates want to erase differences between men and women, biology refuses a radical erasure. You know, the new controversy is those who have gender identify as males who identify as female. Now I get to play on the women's sports team and all that kind of thing. Well, you're acting against created order here, right? I mean, that from a Christian perspective, this is an anti-creational. thing. You know, how does it go? The average high school boys soccer team can defeat the women Olympian soccer team in a game because of the physicality differences. and its physicality differences. Women can defeat any group of men. And I won't say it because I'll be labeled. But their patience can come through in ways that are amazing to the weak male. The Bible is pro-body. pro-sex, pro-male and female, pro-marriage, pro-love, pro-fidelity. It's for, it calls all these things good, yet from a biblical Christian understanding, each of these can be and are disordered, subject to corruption, can be twisted, have been twisted, misdirected. And so what do we find? Well, from Genesis 1 and 2, A Christian views what is God's blueprint, his plan for human beings and human sexuality, and he created them male and female in his image. He created them for mutuality, for a suitable mate, fit, for An animal of some or any type is not suitable or fitting. A woman from his side to be at his side, companion, one bringing together image of godness in the unity and community. of their diversity. Also a unity of flesh which is reflective of image of godness. I don't think historically we've done enough with as male and female created he them as image of godness. Even within the trinity there's a trinity of one to another of communion and perichoretic fellowship, which is then reflected in our imaging God, this vowed love community, this one flesh commitment. In other words, you're going to approach what disorders people. Well, what orders people? Where is something broken or twisted, misdirected? Well, to talk about that, there has to be something that is a standard for order, for direction. a compass. What's north? You need to get to Denver, you're going to have to go west. But if there's nothing that orients direction, you might end up in Florida. And you're not going to have a very good ski vacation down in the Everglades. You've got to get to Colorado. You need something that's going to give direction. But if we are the ones who decide what we are and define what we are, and God's not allowed to define what we are, well then everything's fluid. There's no up, down, left, right. And no wonder, of course it's fluidity. Why not? Because there's nothing that serves the standard except my feelings. Now, here I don't want to be unshareable, but all of us have deviant feelings. And if you say you don't, then you're just a liar. We all have thoughts we think that shame us, including sexual thoughts. Some of us more than others, I'll certainly readily admit that. But sometimes our corrupt feelings can be that we don't think sex is a good idea and it's disgusting. That's not biblical either. Or it's just oriented and it's directed to the wrong thing. There's people called pedophiles. So they have sexual desires for children. That's disordered. Until a society says, no, it isn't. And there's those already advocating for no, it isn't. There's those who have a disordered sexual desire to humiliate women by raping them. That's disordered. That's a standard. You're hurting someone else. Well, until someone says, well, not really. See, when there's nothing that grounds morality, morality's preferences and feelings, especially collectively so, then Jews are bad people. And former landowners need to be in gulags. And people who disagree with this are, or you know, who says a five-year-old can't consent? Who says that eight-year-old girl can't enjoy it? In fact, who says that incest is wrong? Who says that bestiality is inappropriate? In the history of humanity, it's been happening. Who says? See, if there's no standard, there's no lawgiver, and we decide together, OK, right now, we've collectively, as a society from a secular materialist worldview, have still said, well, no. Collectively, no. and tell collectively yes. Someone could say I identify with canines. No, I'm not trying to make light of people. I'm just trying to say, grounded in what? And there are those, and there's pastoral issues, people, pastors who've dealt with parishioners who've engaged in that kind of behavior. What? Yes. Are they supposed to identify their gender identity according to their most deviant behavior or feeling? In other words, all of us have deviant compulsions, dispositions, desires. But there's another part of us that says no to that, that says resist that, that says be ashamed of that, that says repent of that, that says God change me from that. Reorient my mind. Let me trust you, and I ask for your help and blessing to orient me back. In other words, we live in a culture in which whatever I feel has to be right. So can a little boy have a disposition toward art and music and not sports and hunting? Yeah. That doesn't make him feminine. That just makes them a boy who's oriented. I have colleagues who are like that. They're very mean. They're very masculine on one level, but they're not chewers and spitters and mechanics and they don't cuss and chew and dance with girls and do anything. They're not a brand of male. That some aspects of our society calls masculine. But they're still male and oriented to females for their wise and fidelity. And by the same token, there's men who are hunters, hunters and fishermen, and lift weights, and the kind of guy you want there with you in the dark alley. Take care of him. Flex your muscles. There's that kind of male too who doesn't want to play piano. or have to listen to a recital. Please dear, no. There's that kind of male. And the same with women. They don't have to all want to sew and cook and crochet. They can do, you know, cool stuff too. Hey, I said last time, I learned to crochet. And I did latch hook rugs as a teenage boy. And I have lost none of my masculinity. The point is, is what's disordered needs a grounding to be called that. Without it, indeed, everything's fluid, not just our gender identity. All kinds of behaviors that we would call deviant now could just as well, well, this is how I feel. So this is my identity, and I should accept myself that way. And society doesn't accept it yet, but it's acceptable. Well, no. No. God says what we are. God gave us the bodies he gave us. There's those rare people that can be sexually nondescript, eunuchs of sorts, the rare cases. We can be disordered in the mind. We can be born with various birth defects, emotional habits of heart, and dispositions. But we don't take what is disordered and call it ordered. So such people need love, they need community, they need like what we all need, love, respect, fellowship, friendship, and biblical truth. They need the Christ. They need God's definition of what life is and what we are. And however we're disordered, and we all are, to be reordered, to be remade, to be given new minds, And it is indeed possible to be happy. And for some people, their calling in life is to be chaste and solid. That's not an impossible life. There's many who live exactly that life more happily than living with that guy or her. We just live in a society that says that's impossible. But that's not true. not according to the Bible anyway. So I'll allow a question or two and we'll call it to a close. Any questions? Well if you know such persons, pray for them, befriend them, love them, And may the church learn to have collective wisdom on these topics. Again, I'm a beginner in this area, so it's the best I can offer you tonight. Shall we pray together? Lord, we ask that you give us a kind heart of humility, for we all need your love. Sin distorts, misdirects, redirects our sexuality from your good design. And there's many things that can factor into that, brokenness from childhood, abuse from others, even physical things that can happen to us or we're born with that can disorient us in this way. We ask for healing, for love, for help, for wisdom, and bless what we've sought to explore this evening. Give us safety in our homeward way for Jesus' sake. Amen. Next week we hope to look at different ways and models in which Christians can engage a culture like ours today.