Archive for the ‘relationships’ Category

National Unity

Posted: June 20, 2020 in relationships
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I’m reading Michelle Obama’s book Becoming. I’ve always respected her.

Reading through her story I am reminded the election of Barack in 2008.

I remember being so proud of our country when Barack Obama was elected President of United States. A huge opportunity was presented for uniting us. Whatever your politics, we had elected a black president. And he faced an economic crisis — significant, like the one we are now in — and he had to be there for all of us.

And Michelle, I liked her. She was from the Southside of Chicago and she was a down-to-earth person, a mother, a lawyer, an advocate for women, children and military families. She conducted herself with class.

Reading her book I like her even more. She has character. She has values. She grew and transitioned when she needed to.

In Becoming she writes, “For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”

2020 needs this perspective. What are we becoming, as a nation? And as we go through the pandemic, who are we becoming as a people?

Unfortunately Obama’s presidency didn’t unite us. Many remained opposed to him, and the 2016 election reminded us of that. We divided, right down the middle.

And now as a nation we are entrenched, stuck, holding onto differences and outdated political camps. We need unity more than ever.

What does it look like to evolve into the kind of nation, the kind of people who can accept others who are different? How do we get going on a mission to unite, not divide?

To become united we need to face certain realities. The first is our dependence on each other.

In these times, we are all dependent on each other to wear facemasks. We are dependent on those who have the virus to isolate. We are dependent on doctors and researchers to cure us and protect us. We are dependent upon the government to provide economic stimulus. In short, we are dependent.

We are dependent on each other for survival and we better get used to that because that’s the way it is.. We need each other for safety, for prosperity, for the good life. We need all of us, not half of us.

Secondly, we have been humbled and we need to embrace that. We have been reminded how very vulnerable and weak we humans are. We have taken losses. More than 120,000 of us in the U.S. have died from the virus. Some data shows U.S. employers shed nearly 30 million positions from payrolls this spring as a result of pandemic. Other data suggest layoffs might have topped 40 million. Life is not as stable as we have sometimes imagined. We do well to recognize that.

And finally we must note that we have been reminded at this time that the racial differences in America still divide. Our racial minorities are sick of a different standard being applied to them. They’re sick of abuse. They are done with racial privilege. We need to hear that and change things. To move forward we need to learn to listen to each other, especially when we disagree.

And again this points to the need for unity. Safety lies in all of us keeping all of us safe. It will take a concerted effort by the government and many people to unite.

For those of you who are like myself, Christians, Christian values need to come in to play here. Scripture counsel us not to treat the rich better than the poor, to care for the alien, to live at peace with everyone we can, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to be humble, to count others better than ourselves, and to remember that we are like grass, here today, gone tomorrow.

Are we evolving into better selves?

Are we evolving into a better nation?

We are, only if each one of us is becoming, changing, transitioning to a better, humbler, more willingly dependent — when that is needed — hard-listening self.

Thanks Michelle, for the reminder. We are becoming. What will that be?

Safety All

Posted: June 18, 2020 in relationships
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We’ve been watching a bit of TV during social isolation, and more than a bit.

We’ve seen some fun stuff, but in our shows we have also happened on a lot of rough, dark stuff. Many shows are based on or include abuse, violence and suffering. Murder fuels a lot of TV.

Last night the last show we watched was a murder mystery. As the show unfolded we found a coach sexually abusing his players. The plot included an extended boxing match where two young men pounded each other’s heads. We fast forwarded through the fight. I personally don’t like watching people hitting other people in the face until one of them is knocked out.

Is this soft? I think it’s sane. Watch what you want, but keep real life in mind. What makes good TV ruins real people’s lives. Concussions cause brain damage.

In 2020, the world suffers — and at this same time as I suffer my own chronic pain — perhaps I and we have an opportunity to change. Perhaps we might find our capacity for tolerating suffering diminished.

My growing awareness of how much some people or groups of people are harmed challenges me to want to stop such damage in our world. I want to protect and secure people’s safety.

What can I do in that direction? What can all of us do?

We can grieve. Once in a board meeting, as we dealt with a issue involving hurt and loss, one of the board members began to cry. Then she said, “I’m sorry to cry.”

I turned to her and said, “Yours is the most appropriate response.”

What but tears? Tears are the highest form of empathy and the highest form of judgment. As we mature we have the potential to grieve the world’s losses.

What else? We can get angry. Anger toward wrong doing is the appropriate reaction. Anger is motivating. Anger under control, that takes action, is the fuel of reform. I just read a biography of Frederick Douglass. When he got angry he got eloquent and he went to work to abolish slavery. We can use our anger to motivate us to fund and volunteer for organizations working for social change and justice.

We can take political action. We can elect those who are peacemakers and protectors and those who unite people rather than dividing them. We can not elect those who create an “us” and “them” culture. That sets the stage for violence.

And we can elect the oppressed. That’s hugely necessary. They are the ones who have authentic voices that need to be heard for systems that traffic in sanctioned violence to be reformed. Violence and oppression is often systemic. It is built into the very machine of society and of government. To end it will take a willingness to give the very people who are harmed and oppressed power, women, racial minorities, the disabled, people of different religious orientations or sexual orientations.

The majority, the privileged, must empower the minority for the safety and well being of all. In John Steinbeck’s novel The Moon Is Down, he asserts that an oppressed people will resist. And rightly so. How do we deal with that? Oppress them more? No, we wisely deal with that by ceasing to oppress them, by empowering them. That safeties all of us.

Lastly, we ourselves must not engage in violence. In our homes we must refuse to dominate and oppress our families. It would be easy to think that we don’t do that. But criticalness and judgment is often at the very core of family relationships. I know my own criticalness has caused harm in my own family, and I myself need to turn away from any behaviors or verbal expressions that don’t honor the other members.

TV has had our attention. What do we do now as society opens back up? Perhaps we go to work creating a world that inspires some better TV.

Relationally Messy: It’s Normal

Posted: June 17, 2020 in relationships
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“Am I a good person?”

My daughter Rosalind asked my daughter Laurel this today.

Laurel gave her the Hasper answer. But first she asked a question.

“Why do you ask?“

“Well,” said Rosalind, “the house manager got mad at us today because we were getting into it with each other, and so she told us all that we need to shape up.“

Rosalind lives in a community of persons with disabilities. It’s a beautiful campus, with professional leadership, a model for the whole world.

“So you feel badly because she got mad at you?” Asked Laurel.

“Yeah,” said Rosalind. “ I don’t like it when people get mad at me.“

“Yeah I don’t either. Nobody likes that. But you have gotten mad at her haven’t you?“

“Yeah, I have.“

“Well, we all get mad at each other sometimes. The house manager sounded kind of like mom didn’t she?Getting mad doesn’t mean we don’t like each other.“

That’s the Hasper answer. When things get messy, we normalize messy. When we get a little crazy, we normalize crazy. That’s what human beings need. They need to know that the things they feel and the things they do are things other people have felt and done, because they have, but we lose track of that and we need other people to remind us of that from time to time.

“You’re not a bad person, Rosalind. You’re a good person.”

“Thanks,” said Rosalind.

I heard this story from Laurel when I talked to her on the phone later the same day, and so I called Rosalind and told her that Laurel had told me about the conversation. We went over it again and I reiterated to Rosalind that mad was normal and that it didn’t mean that she wasn’t good.

I told her, “You’re a good person. You are a kind person.

“Yeah,“ said Rosalind. “I think I would’ve been more lenient on everybody.“

“Yep,“ I said. “That’s who you are.“

“What does lenient mean?“ Rosalind asked me.

“It means exactly how you used it. It means to be easy on someone. It means to be kind and gentle and give them a break. I think that’s the way you are, kind like that.”

“Sometimes I get my words mixed up,“ said Rosalind.

”You get your words right a lot. That’s one of your strengths. You have a good vocabulary.“

So I piled it on, the Hasper way. Relational messiness is the norm. And we process it with words. And we help each other feel good again.

It’s good to see my girls living the way they were raised. Comfortable with mess. Lenient, especially when it comes to emotions.

I like it.

I need it myself.

It’s a model for the whole world.

A Divided Nation

Posted: October 22, 2019 in Change, failure, relationships
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Our country is divided and not simply by the Mississippi.

Racism, political perspectives, gender, immigration, our President, religion, foreign policy, climate control  — we are even divided on how to fight about all this.

It’s a fight. So how do we fight?

Do we call each other out? Publicly, online, in social media? Or do we call each other “in,” privately, “Let’s have a talk,” then hug.

Loretta Ross wrote an article in August published in the New York Times,”I’m a Black Feminist. I Think Call-Out Culture Is Toxic.”

She wrote the following, “Call-outs make people fearful of being targeted. People avoid meaningful conversations when hypervigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes, feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture. Shaming people for when they “woke up” presupposes rigid political standards for acceptable discourse and enlists others to pile on. Sometimes it’s just ruthless hazing.”

“We can change this culture. Calling-in is simply a call-out done with love. Some corrections can be made privately.”

Karla Thomas writing  for Medium in an article called, ‘Mad About Call-out Culture?: Stop Centering White Cultural Norms & Feelings” disagreed. She says there is a clear need to publicly call out wrong, loud and clear, in order to reform our culture and move toward fairness.

“Interrupting racially offensive behavior, (or any other –ism,) in the same forum or elevated forum and at the same volume as the aggression was made, is paramount to ensuring that anyone from the oppressed group in ear or eye shot knows that those transgressions were seen and will not go unaddressed.”

“It is critical here to realize, that when an aggressor makes a transgression then is called out, and the rebuttal is, “well you could have told me in a nicer manner” or “it’s rude to call someone racist,” there is a clear and purposeful choice to avoid the message that points out their racism and to focus on the messenger.” 

Both make good points. The articles would be worth your time. They were published in August and are easy to find.

How do we heal our divide, particularly over what divides us the most.

Call people “in” and work together, that is for sure needed. Call out abuse, lies, hate, racism, gender inequality — that’s needed too. We must never silence oppressed, harmed voices.

Let’s talk about racism. The articles focused on that. For you who are white and think racism is not a big deal for you, I’d encourage you to read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. Her books are worth your time. School yourself! Open your minds.

What do you think?

I think racism is a huge problem in the United States and we need get to talking more and better about this soon. This is important. We better take some action to bring about change. This matters now!

What would Jesus have to say to us about all this. He sure did some publicly calling out of wrong. He was ruthless on the people who thought they were the best class, better than others, but then he defended the women called out for adultery. Jesus always defended the oppressed. He always confronted the powerful, privileged elite. What does that tell you?

Wisdom knows when to say what! And wisdom chooses the most powerful and effective way to say it.

Feel free to post a comment. Just click the talk bubble at the top of this post and comment there.

Thanks!

Words For Each Other

Posted: July 2, 2019 in conflicts, relationships
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Words for each other, where do we find them? How do we craft them? 

As a leader, and as a writer, and husband and father and friend, I’ve had no end of agony attempting to answer those questions in specific cases, especially involving conflict. It’s been hard to find the right words for the other person.

But it really matters, what we say and how we say it. 

Recently a fellow leader sent me an email expressing strong emotions and reactions concerning another leader. He asked if the content was okay and if the message should be sent. I  wrote back that the content was salient — it was actually right on the money —  but the emotion-laden conversation that needed to happen could not be handled by an email. It could only be well-handled face-to-face, with dialogue, with a back-and-forth. By the time the fellow leader got my response, however, he himself had decided not to send it.

Wise.

What we think, what is going on inside of us, what we want to communicate to others, it always needs time — like a finely prepared dessert —  to bake, cool, set, mingle flavors and receive the final drippings and toppings essential for good presentation and excellent consumption. Writing out our thoughts and feelings, not sending them, ruminating a while on content, living a little, editing, this produces the best product.  By taking our time we find words and feelings mingling wisely within; by waiting we find verbal toppings and relational dollops of tastiness to add to the our eventual expressions.

What are we saying?

When you feel strongly, pause wisely. What may not be heard with one set of words, may be heard with another. What polarizes in print may soften in dialogue. And what might be not heard at one time, by one person, may be heard at another time by another person. 

I just finished a novel. It’s a dysbiopian fantasy, but it unveils modern, relevant reality. We struggle to accept those different from ourselves.  I started wiring this novel for my children 35 years ago. Yesterday, as I added some final lines to the wrenching conflict at the end of the story, I was aware that the word I wrote would have been impossible for me to write years ago. I had not yet lived the  life experiences that extruded them out of me. My novel needed words, that needed time, to come into being. 

At the end of the novel one of the main characters — following a devastating conflict that uproots and destroys a whole community says, “Fear designed and built the first wall; love crafted the first door — and opened it.”

The antagonist to this point of view refutes this strongly saying, “No, different from each other crafted the first wall. It had to in order to survive! Love just made that fine wall higher — for protection. It’s the same as it has always been. Mind your own business, keep to your own kind, except when attacked, that’s the deal — period, exclamation point, done.”

The response? “No, that’s not right. There are no end stops here — not with this devastation in front of us — no simplistic formulae, no pithy morals for our paltry fable, no superheroes to protect us now, no perfect symbionts present, no borders that end all our disputes, no furious, final family fixes. Advocating that we open the door to each other is a simple gesture, a clumsy nod toward sane knowing, a small hopeful sun to shine over this disaster, something —  just perhaps something —  to help us blunder painfully forward to better times.”

If I had tried to write the closing dialogue between the main conflicting characters 35 years ago, I would not have come up with that. I think I would have come up with something much more more categorical, more judgmental, more arrogant, more moralistic than advocating opening a door to each other as a “clumsy nod toward knowing.” I was able to write that now because I know so much less now than I used to. 

Some words need to get knocked out of us, by life. Other words can only be knocked into us by experience. Time and patience, resulting in a bit of humility, craft our best speaches.

I just hope I can remember that the next time I get upset. 

What To Do With the Past

Posted: April 20, 2019 in relationships, restoration
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I pushed back the overgrown hedge, chopped at the tangle of old growth, peered in and, “What’s that?”

It’s interesting isn’t it, how the past lurks and shuffles, and twines into the present?

Underneath the overgrown lantana and rampant morning glory hedge was a forgotten thing, planted years earlier, suppressed and neglected but still alive — a gorgeous purple-and-dark-green-leafed Japanese honeysuckle. Lovely! 

It was still there, underneath all those covering plants, its white and purple blooms hanging out of the back of the hedge like a girl’s slip. I’m glad I found it. Next week, I’ll dig it up and replant it below one of the new redwood trellis in the backyard. It will thrive in beauty there.

It’s so interesting. The past just keeps showing up, sometimes pretty and charming — like a lost vine — sometimes ugly, like a past, ruined relationship. 

I woke this morning slightly tormented by something someone hadn’t done for me recently, something I had expected would be done, something that would have been loving, appropriate, pro forma and also classy. 

I couldn’t shake it. 

It’s interesting how the past hangs on, like an old vine, planted in previous seasons. 

This morning i pulled up an old irrigation system in my yard, cut the soft black tubing into pieces and put it in the garbage bin. Previously, I had tired to patched it. That didn’t work — too many breaks and holes and old repairs. So I replaced the entire line. Much better. 

Sometimes it’s best to chop up the past, and toss it out, and start all over. 

I find this kind of sorting of the past to be a constant issue for me, to shed it, to toss it,  and build a new present, or to bring it with me, to bring my past with me and replant it  in a new place in the present. 

But the relationships of the past are not like the things of the past. They won’t be tossed,  like an old irrigation system. Our people remain with us. They won’t be tossed; they persistently remain.  

I have one particular past relationship that was ruined by jealousy and competition. I find that it won’t be fixed, and it won’t be tossed and I can’t forget it, the harm of it, the devastation.

I find that we are who we have known, and we are to some extent, what we have done with other people, and this can’t be undone, and so we bring them along with us wherever we go. Old water tubing can be dug out, and forgotten. Old relationships can’t.

But here is the thing. Every person we have ever known has mostly likely both added to and subtract from our our relational acumen, our relational knowledge. Some have harmed, some done good. But if we so choose, we can learn from each past relationship, learn what to do, or learn what not to do, ever again. 

We are our people, the people we have known, our enemies, our friends, our family, our acquaintances, our ghosts. We can  gain from the gains they brought to us, and we can gain from the losses they brought to us too. We can take even from what they took from us. 

And here is what I know. All things work together for good for those who take the past in their hands, who hold it gently to themselves and who love. For those who cover everything in love and in the forgiveness love brings us, for those who replant every thing in love, for those who in some way tend to and care for all their  Japanese honeysuckles, then there is redemption and love and God.

Smooth

Posted: February 18, 2019 in people, relationships
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I approached him in the mix of the crowd without caution, despite being aware that others were avoiding him.

I offered him my sincere compliments, then asked the obvious questions, got the somewhat negative perspectives I was expecting, filed his judgments under “that-has-merit and “I get that,” and thus and so and nevertheless — plus therefore —  the conversation went well.

With her, she approached me — as she almost always does — with a fresh complaint. I fielded it, commented on what I could do, suggested that she take some responsibility to solve the problem, noted that she didn’t pick up on that, again repeated what I would do, and thus and therefore and nonetheless, plus a bit of however, we parted. She was smiling.

People — what to do with them?

Well, you love them, but one other thing too. You approach them, talk to them, engage them with no need to get anything from them. I don’t mean the people on our everyday teams, the people we supervise, the family who supports us. Of course we have increased expectation of our close ones; of course we need them; of course there can be conflicts when they don’t come through.

But people at large, acquaintances, new folks, the people in our outer circles, those we serve, those we help, those who look to us for something — they are perhaps best engaged in a preplanned way, with us deciding ahead of time that we are full, that we are okay, and that because our tanks are full, we can and we are going to listen to and affirm them. If we have no need of their compliments nor any defensiveness about their criticisms, we can be smooth with them.

It’s this: get full. Get okay with yourself. Do this by assiduously loving yourself. Figure out how to fill your own tank, and fuel up.

This matters, because when we don’t need someone to fill our tanks, to affirm our existences, to justify our beings, then we are free to let them be and say and feel what ever it is that is in them. With no personal agendas of our own, we can field other people’s agendas somewhat objectively, remain fairly untriggered by their comments and perhaps do them the most amount of good.

Want to be smooth with people, and better with your precious ones too?

Be smooth — that is okay — with yourself.

Personally smoothed?

It’s relationally smooth.

The Fungal Narrative

Posted: June 4, 2018 in relationships
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When I was growing up, I loved going out into the woods in the spring, looking down.

I was hunting morels, those delicious wild mushrooms that grow around old logs, in moist, rotten places that smell like damp soil, like mother earth, like tasty life.

They are the mycorrhiza, and they have a narrative.

The morel, the mycorrhizae, is a fungus that grows in association with the roots of a plant in a symbiotic or mildly pathogenic relationship.

Sounds like family.

Sounds like my family.

I well remember the warm, damp soil in which my parent and I and my brothers and I wove our roots together. It was good, symbiotic, mutually beneficial. I remember happily playing baseball with my brothers, quietly reading with my mom, going water skiing with my dad and brothers.

It was good!

It was also not always good.

Sometime it was competitive, combative, mildly pathogenic. I remember competing for the baseball win with my brothers, fighting down on the ground with them, arguing in the evening with my mom, being — in my mind — wrongfully and shamefully disciplined by my dad.

So looking back, which was it, my family?

Was it symbiotic and mutualistic or was it pathogenic and mildly harmful?

It was both.

It always is.

At an earlier and more naive stage of life, I thought relationships were one thing only, and stayed the same. I thought love was love.

It isn’t and they don’t —  the relationships —  remain the same. Relationships morph. Competition and jealousy and hurt sometime carry the day. We change. Over time we realize we are different. We bring some harm and some distance to each other. We unwittingly compete for the big thing — for love.

I love my family — they are some good people — but some of the relationships have slightly rotten edges.  They still exist as good, and as tasty, but also as mildly pathogenic.

Life — it’s not one thing. It’s a bit of a fungal narrative.

Soul Rain

Posted: May 6, 2018 in becoming, relationships
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I was on the phone with my dad recently. We chatted about books. I had previously recommended Endurance to him, Alfred Lansing’s riveting telling of the Ernest Shackleton story  He told me my brother Steve had picked up a copy for him.  It’s a great read, good for dad I think at this point in his life.

My dad is 90; he just lost my mom, he needs endurance, and really, he has it. He’s healthy, smart, active and provided for in a retirement community where he works as a furniture mover.

A furniture mover, at 90? Yup! I asked him if he had help. He told me he had a moving  team. I asked him if there were any young guys. He said he had an 85 year old. Then he told me with no hint of humor. “My strongest guy is 91!

Okay then, all set.

Toward the end of the conversation he came out with something I didn’t expect. He said to me, “You have an innate wisdom.”

I was a bit knocked over. I can’t remember my dad ever saying anything so affirming to me although he has often complimented and encouraged me. Actually, it rather gently stunned me — with pleasure. It warmed the space between us and flowed back into the past like a spring rain in my psyche.  It didn’t blow up my ego: it just gently affirmed the original grace in my life, something that has blessed my work, my marriage and my relationship with my daughters.

Affirmation — genuine and unmotivated any desire to manipulate or control — it adds to our ability to endurer.

Affirmation — it is sweet soul rain.

Culture Wars: Sexuality

Posted: October 8, 2017 in relationships, sex
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Sex– everybody makes a big deal about sex, or they don’t.

What’s up with that?

Sex is a normal, natural and enjoyable part of life, like eating ice cream, or sleeping in late, or playing a game.

My view is that sex is God-made and USDA approved.

Sting once said, “If God’s got anything better than sex to offer, he’s certainly keeping it to himself.”

On the other hand, many people get along fine without being sexually active.

Tracey Ullman once said, “As I get older, I just prefer to knit.” Hey, whatever works. Singleness, not being sexually active, getting older has no shame in it, it is just the right place for some of us.

Whatever stage of life we are at, it is healthy to talk about sexual culture because competing views on sexuality have caused a lot of confusion, and harm.

Some of us might see sex as dirty, shameful, something to keep secret, to avoid talking about. Others may have come to see sex as something so casual and free that it is not restrained by anything — marriage or morals or sensitivity.

We Americans are bipolar on sex. On one hand, we are Puritanical, we claim high morals, we shame people over sexual misconduct, on the other hand, many of us just can’t seem to keep our pants on.

So what to think?

First sex is something God came up with, it’s his idea, and it’s a really cool one. The Bible looks at sexuality as part of our God-made identity. I like this. When I experience my own sexuality, I’m like, “God made me this way. It’s his fault.”

Genesis 1:27 tells us that God made male and female out of himself. So our sexuality is an-in-his-image thing. Then the Bible tells us that God set us up to pair up, and make babies. This is why Christians are prolific,  pro-life, baby-making and baby adopting. We grow our own, or we pick up others along the way. We Christians are pro-sex.

That’s good. It’s spiritual.

Your sexuality is a God-made pleasure, a sacred way to oneness in marriage and a spiritual way to join God in his creative work. How cool is that! Sex is divine!

1 Corinthians 6:12 explains this, esp in the Message version of the Bible.

“There’s more to sex than mere skin on skin. Sex is as much spiritual mystery as physical fact. As written in Scripture, “The two become one.”

This scripture is clearly marking out sex as spiritual thing, not simply a skin thing. This follows Jesus when he says, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh?”

If sex is about spiritual oneness in a marriage, then, what about sex outside of marriage, sex by people who aren’t married or by people who are gay? The answer is so important for Christians.

1. God’s love for us any of us is not stopped by our sexual behavior or even our sexual sin.

2. Salvation is not achieved by sexual purity.

That’s really good news for most of us.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. Ep. 2:8

God saves us by what he does, not by what we did. God is very compassionate toward our sexuality.

So many of us fall into sexually immoral or harmful behavior because we just want to be loved. I was talking to someone recently, who slept around a bit when she was younger. She said something like, “I wanted love, I just got sex, I still wanted and needed love.”

God, he get’s that, and so he comes to help us into moral, lasting, loving relationships.

But we still need to understand that not everything is good for us.

1 Cor. 6 says, “Since we want to become spiritually one with the Master, we must not pursue the kind of sex that avoids commitment and intimacy, leaving us more lonely than ever—the kind of sex that can never “become one.

There is a sense in which sexual sins are different from all others. In sexual sin we violate the sacredness of our own bodies, these bodies that were made for God-given and God-modeled love, for “becoming one” with another.

Don’t you realize that your body is a sacred place, the place of the Holy Spirit? Don’t you see that you can’t live however you please, squandering what God paid such a high price for? The physical part of you is not some piece of property belonging to the spiritual part of you. God owns the whole works. So let people see God in and through your body.”

God loves and values us so much he doesn’t want us harmed by misusing your sexuality. God wants us to build trust and safety with him, and each other, in our marriages and churches. Therefore we must carefully and mindfully avoid sinful sexual behavior such as lusting, cheating, sex outside of marriage and adultery.

God doesn’t want us to do these things, because they deeply damage trust, erode relationships and just crush love.

Consider water. Sex is like water. It can be tasty, life-giving, healthy and satisfying and it can also flood your house, and wash it away.

This is why the Proverbs speak of drinking water from your own well. Drink your sexuality from your own marriage, and do not go outside of that where you may encounter a flood of damage and harm.

What to do?

1. Mind your own moral business.

Steward your own sexuality, work on your own purity, not on others. This enough work, to work on yourself.

Of course some people are called to bring justice to this area of life, to prosecute sexual predators, to protect with laws, to stand up for those who can’t stand for themselves.

But too many Christians have gotten so busy judging non-Christians for how they have messed up, or how they have compromised marriage that we end up presenting Christianity to them as a judgmental, rule-based, hateful religion.

I get it. Not many people take their sexual morals from the Bible. But the truth is, I can’t control others, and I am personally responsible before God for only my own sexuality, and for the sacredness of my own marriage.

And here is the cool thing.

My wife and I — by our faithfulness to each other and God — make our lives and our marriage sacred and this is not compromised by anything anyone else decides to do.

I encourage you and me, to mind our own sexual business.

That will keep us busy enough.

2. Don’t condemn others. especially for their sexual choices or failures.

Jesus didn’t.

John 3:17

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God did not call us to be the moral sheriffs of the world. We won’t redeem the world by condemning it. We know our work is to help them see Jesus, and that his death on the cross, and his forgiveness, will clean them up. When we point people to God, he points them to righteousness.

3. Let God work his purity in you.

Lastly, I advise you to get off the shaming treadmill of trying to make yourself pure, and to let Christ live out his purity in you. This is such a deeply mature and spiritual way to view yourself. Righteousness is something God gives me, and works in me, not something I do by just trying harder.

I have little hope in the world managing sexuality well. There is no good track record! But Christ at work in us, that is the hope of righteousness.

Once when my wife and I were house shopping, I wanted to buy this one house, she didn’t. So we didn’t buy the house. God — well my wife — said not to! A few months later, we found another house, perfect for us. There we raised our girls.

Sexuality works well when it is like houses shopping with God along as the Realtor. When God says, “No, this is not a good deal,” then “No” is best.

God always has the best in mind for us — regarding sexuality and love — therefore, it is best to wait on him, to hear his voice, and to follow his ways.

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