Rosaria Butterfield After Wheaton: Three Unbiblical Positions on Christianity and Homosexuality

Rosaria Butterfield—a lesbian English professor who hated Christianity and later became a Reformed pastor’s wife and told of the story in her book, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert: An English Professor’s Journey into Christian Faith—is fresh off of her return from Wheaton College, where 100 students protested her invitation to speak as implying that her testimony should be seen as normative. (You can read President Phil Ryken’s response here. You can also read an interview with Dr. Butterfield about her interactions with the students.)

As I write and speak today, 14 years have elapsed since my queer activist days. I’m a new creature in Christ, and my testimony is still like iodine on starch. I’m sensitive to three unbiblical points of view Christian communities harbor when they address the issue of Christianity and homosexuality. Everywhere I go, I confront all three.

1. The Freudian position. This position states same-sex attraction is a morally neutral and fixed part of the personal makeup and identity of some, that some are “gay Christians” and others are not. It’s true that temptation isn’t sin (though what you do with it may be); but that doesn’t give us biblical license to create an identity out of a temptation pattern. To do so is a recipe for disaster. This position comes directly from Sigmund Freud, who effectually replaced the soul with sexual identity as the singular defining characteristic of humanity. God wants our whole identities, not partitioned ones.

2. The revisionist heresy. This position declares that the Bible’s witness against homosexuality, replete throughout the Old and New Testaments, results from misreadings, mistranslations, and misapplications, and that Scripture doesn’t prohibit monogamous homosexual sexual relations, thereby embracing antinomianism and affirming gay marriage.

3. The reparative therapy heresy. This position contends a primary goal of Christianity is to resolve homosexuality through heterosexuality, thus failing to see that repentance and victory over sin are God’s gifts and failing to remember that sons and daughters of the King can be full members of Christ’s body and still struggle with sexual temptation. This heresy is a modern version of the prosperity gospel. Name it. Claim it. Pray the gay away.

Indeed, if you only read modern (post 19th-century) texts, it would rightly seem these are three viable options, not heresies. But I beg to differ.

Worldview matters. And if we don’t reach back before the 19th century, back to the Bible itself, the Westminster divines, and the Puritans, we will limp along, defeated. Yes, the Holy Spirit gives you a heart of flesh and the mind to understand and love the Lord and his Word. But without good reading practices even this redeemed heart grows flabby, weak, shaky, and ill. You cannot lose your salvation, but you can lose everything else.

Enter John Owen. Thomas Watson. Richard Baxter. Thomas Brooks. Jeremiah Burroughs. William Gurnall. The Puritans. They didn’t live in a world more pure than ours, but they helped create one that valued biblical literacy. Owen’s work on indwelling sin is the most liberating balm to someone who feels owned by sexual sin. You are what (and how) you read. J. C. Ryle said it takes the whole Bible to make a whole Christian. Why does sin lurk in the minds of believers as a law, demanding to be obeyed? How do we have victory if sin’s tentacles go so deep, if Satan knows our names and addresses? We stand on the ordinary means of grace: Scripture reading, prayer, worship, and the sacraments. We embrace the covenant of church membership for real accountability and community, knowing that left to our own devices we’ll either be led astray or become a danger to those we love most. We read our Bibles daily and in great chunks. We surround ourselves with a great cloud of witnesses who don’t fall prey to the same worldview snares we and our post-19th century cohorts do.

The History of Christianity in 25 Objects: William Carey's Couch

If you were visit Oxford, England today, and find your way to the Angus Library of Regent’s Park College (a part of Oxford University), you might just come across an old, nondescript couch settled there in the archives. This antique couch sits at the top of a stone staircase, beside a plaque warning that this area of the library is a “quiet area.” It looks for all the world like a piece of furniture someone put down for a moment and then forgot to move to a better place. And yet this couch has greater significance than you might guess, because William Carey died upon it in Serampore, India, almost two hundred years ago. William Carey’s couch is the next of the twenty-five objects through which we are exploring the history of Christianity.

William Carey was born on August 17, 1761 and raised in Paulerspury, a small village in central England. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to a cobbler in a nearby village and, though Carey had been raised Anglican, a fellow apprentice who was a Dissenter influenced him to leave the Church of England and join a Congregational church. This was just the beginning of an important spiritual pilgrimage.

During Carey’s time as an apprentice and shoemaker he found that he was adept at languages and taught himself Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Dutch, and French. In 1783 he became a Baptist and by 1789 was a full-time pastor at Harvey Lane Baptist Church in Leicester. After reading Jonathan Edwards’ account of the life of David Brainerd, as well as the journals of the explorer James Cook, he became increasingly interested in missions and in 1792 published his most enduring work, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens. This book outlined the Christians’ obligation to do missions, shared a brief history of missions, gave statistical data about the world’s need for missions, provided answers to objections against doing missions, and a contained a proposal for the kind of society that could be formed to support such an effort.

Also in 1792 he preached the sermon which contained the quote that has become indelibly associated with his name: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.” In the fall of that same year, he formed the Baptist Missionary Society alongside other charter members Andrew Fuller, John Ryland, and John Sutcliff. Carey sailed to India the following April, and would never again return to England.

Over the next 41 years Carey accomplished or influenced a remarkable amount of work, and for good reason is considered the father of modern missions. He translated the entire Bible into India’s major languages: Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese, and Sanskrit and parts of 209 other languages and dialects. He influenced social reform, including the abolition of infanticide, widow burning, and assisted suicide. And he helped found Serampore College, a divinity school for Indians. But, as Mark Galli says, “His greatest legacy was in the worldwide missionary movement of the nineteenth century that he inspired. Missionaries like Adoniram Judson, Hudson Taylor, and David Livingstone, among thousands of others, were impressed not only by Carey’s example, but by his words ‘Expect great things; attempt great things.’ The history of nineteenth-century Protestant missions is in many ways an extended commentary on the phrase.” Carey expected great things from God and on that basis attempted great things; thousands would follow his lead.

Carey’s initiative, expressed through the Baptist Missionary Society, ushered in what is now known as the First Wave or First Era of Modern Missions. This wave focused mainly on the coastlands of foreign lands, with later waves focusing on the inlands and then the unreached people groups that remained. Ralph Winter identifies two especially bright notes about this opening era in the missions movement: The first is the “astonishing demonstration of love and sacrifice on the part of those who went out. … Very few missionaries to Africa in the first 60 years of the First Era survived more than two years.” And still they went. In fact, Carey himself suffered immeasurably, marrying three times as his wives succumbed to illness. The second is “The development of high quality insight into mission strategy.” Such strategy had to be learned through patience and perseverance—rather difficult qualities when so few of the missionaries survived long enough to apply the lessons.

While Carey was not the first Protestant missionary, he served as a catalyst for a whole new movement so that John Piper can rightly say, “Carey was the morning star of modern missions.” Generations of Christians were inspired by Carey’s example and followed him from the safety and comfort of England and America to foreign lands. Over the next century, the missionary movement he sparked would reach almost every coastland on earth with countless souls being saved.

Today that old couch rests in The Angus Library where students are free to sit on it or to use it to catch a quick nap. This library is a fitting resting place because it houses a leading collection of Baptist history and heritage from around the world. But it is fitting as well that the couch is relatively unknown, for Carey himself was content to be unknown. Not long before he died he scolded a friend: “You have been saying much about Dr. Carey and his work. When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey; speak about Dr. Carey’s Saviour.” While Carey’s life ended upon that couch on June 9, 1834, his legacy continued and, indeed, continues today. And his Savior still reigns, and is still drawing his people to himself.

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Christianity in a Culture Feeding on Self — John MacArthur

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. (Luke 9:23)

John MacArthur,

If you ever wanted to know how to give an invitation, there’s one. Do you ever wonder what to say at the end of a service? Do you ever wonder what to say to sinners after you’ve preached the gospel? How about this! “Any of you who would like to follow Christ: Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow. And to further explain what that means:

For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it. For what is a man profited if he gains the whole world, and loses or forfeits himself? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when He comes in His glory, and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:24-26)

Now let’s get the picture. There are a lot of people following Jesus and His ministry at all points on the spectrum of belief and here Jesus gives an invitation. The issue is “coming after me”, “devoting yourself to me”, “following me”. And the terms are unmistakable: “Let him deny himself.” Doesn’t sound like the “self-esteem gospel” to me. Doesn’t sound like felt-needs to me. Arneomai is the verb and I want you to know what it means. It means to “refuse to associate with”, to “disown”. You want to come to Christ do you? Disown yourself. Refuse any further association with the person you are. It isn’t about adding the whip cream on the top of your already successful life. It isn’t about taking the final step to secure forever the wonder of who you are. It is about disassociating with yourself. The one you want to no longer associate with is you. You’re sick of you. You don’t want anything to do with what you are.  This is hard. This is why it’s hard to believe. A sinner has to come to the place of complete self-denial. Abandoning any hope of self-fulfillment. It’s back to that beatitude-attitude again isn’t it? Blessed are the poor in what? The poor in spirit. The spiritually bankrupt who know they’re destitute. And their spiritual destitution causes them to be also those who mourn, and those that are meek, they’re lowly.

In Philippians chapter 3 the Apostle Paul spent his life up until the point of his conversion in the pursuit of self-fulfillment. Self-fulfillment for him came through the legalistic system of Judaism–the works-righteousness, self-exalting system of Judaism–and Paul had achieved  as much as could be achieved. Philippians 3 talks about the fact that he was circumcised the eighth day, and that he was of the tribe of Benjamin, he was a Jew, and he was kosher–that is he followed all of the traditions–a Hebrew of the Hebrews, he was zealous for his religion to the degree where he persecuted people that were a threat to it. As far as outwardly concerned there was nothing that could be laid against him as a violation of the law. He was all of that that one could hope would be enough to fulfill one’s self as having achieved religious stature before man and God, and he said when he came across Christ, he looked at it and said it was dung. So much for self-fulfillment. It was once gain to him, but when he saw Christ he counted it as what? Loss. It wasn’t neutral. It was devastating.

This is not about self-fulfillment. The gospel is not about self-fulfillment, it is about self-denial. Out of the carcass of self-denial comes the honey of divine grace. An old puritan prayed this way:

LORD, HIGH AND HOLY, MEEK AND LOWLY,
Let me learn that the way down is the way up,
that to be low is to be high,
that the broken heart is the healed heart,
that the contrite spirit is the joyful spirit,
that the repentant soul is the triumphant soul
that to have nothing is to have everything
that to bear the cross is to wear the crown
that to give is to receive

Let me find Your light in my darkness
Your joy in my sorrow
Your grace in my sin
Your riches in my poverty
Your glory in my humiliation
and Your life in my death

We need to tell people that if you want to be saved–that if you want to follow Jesus, you want to come after Him–it’s the end of you. All your ambitions, all your desires set aside in utter submission to His Lordship. It’s the attitude of that publican in Luke 18. The Pharisee goes in to the temple: “I thank you that I’m not like other people…”, you know the story. And what is the publican doing? He won’t look up, his head is bowed, he’s pounding his chest, and he’s crying out: “God be merciful to me a sinner.” The Pharisee was happy with himself. The publican didn’t want any further association with himself. That’s where we have to take the sinner. This by the way then becomes a way of life.

When you present some shallow gospel that calls for no self-denial what do you expect people to live like from then on? If they think that Jesus is in the business of giving them what they want does that ever end? Does that ever end? And guess what happens as soon as Jesus doesn’t deliver.

No, we begin  at the point of self-denial and, listen, that’s how you come to salvation at the point of total self-denial and then the Christian life is the struggle to stay that way. And it’s a struggle. I was there when I was saved but it’s a battle to stay there because my flesh rises up and makes it’s demands, doesn’t it? So I have a little set of things written that I keep close by to remind of the fact that I came to Christ in self-denial and I want to live my life that way. This is what it says:

When you are neglected, unforgiven, or when you are purposely set at naught and you sting and you hurt with the insult of that oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ, that is dying to self.

When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed and your advice is disregarded and your opinions are ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, you take it all patiently in loving silence, you’re dying to self.

And when you lovingly and patiently bear any disgrace, any regularity, any annoyance, when you can stand face to face with folly and extravagance and spiritual insensitivity, and endure it as Jesus did, that is dying to self.

When you are content with any food, any money, any clothing, any climate, any society, any solitude, any interruption by the will of God, that is dying to self.
And when you never care to refer to yourself in conversation or record your own good works, or itch after commendation from others, and when you truly love to be unknown, that is dying to self.

When you see your brother prosper and have his needs wondrously met, and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy and never question God, though your needs are greater and still unmet, that is dying to self.

And when you can receive correction, and reproof from one of less stature than yourself and humbly admit inwardly as well as outwardly that he’s right and find no resentment and no rebellion in your heart, that is dying to self.

That’s how you came, and that’s how you stay. We are selling a kind of evangelicalism that is deadly to this. You can’t build a gospel around people having self-fulfillment, and then not expect them to think that that’s what God has to deliver to them from then on. This is another way to attack the issue of Lordship.

Furthermore, go back to Luke 9. Jesus didn’t just say: “if anyone wishes to come after Me let him deny himself”, but he took us to the level, or to the extent that that self-denial must go when He said this: “…and take up his cross daily”, take up his cross daily. And the daily there is important because the daily means we’re not talking about an event, we’re talking about a way of life. In the fourteenth chapter and the twenty-seventh verse of Luke, Jesus essentially says the same thing. You take up your cross and you keep carrying it. What does this mean? Well, what did a cross mean to them? It didn’t mean to them what it means to a Keswic preacher. It doesn’t mean some psychological self-crucifixion. It simply meant to them what it was: an instrument of execution.

They knew what crucifixion was. The Romans crucified people. The Persians had sort of launched crucifixion. The Egyptians used crucifixion. There were other barbarians that used crucifixion. It was somewhat common. There had been one occasion of a rebellion in Jerusalem in which 800 Jews were crucified there for a revolt which followed the death of Herod the Great. The Proconsul Varus crucified 2,000 Jews. They knew exactly what a cross meant. A cross was the most heinous form of torture and death. And what Jesus is saying here cannot be mistaken. He’s not talking about something psychological here. He’s not talking about something even spiritual. He’s talking about something very physical: “I want you to deny yourself and be ready to die because that’s what it might require.” In fact you need to be ready to die any day and every day. When Paul said I die daily, he wasn’t saying that I get up spiritually and I execute my ego. He was simply saying every single day I anticipate the possibility of my death so that in my mind  I’m dying everyday. So many plots of the Jews, so many plots of the Gentiles. Paul is talking in his own personal testimony of dying daily, to the Corinthians, the same thing that Jesus is speaking about here. So, Jesus says, you want to follow Me do you? You want to come after Me? It’s the end of you. Even to the degree that every day you put your life on the line should I desire to take it. And then, the literal Greek closes the verse: “And let him be following Me.” Self-denial, cross-bearing, and loyal obedience, those are the life patterns of those who are truly the followers of Jesus Christ…

…It’s hard to believe, but you wouldn’t think that today, in fact, today, it’s easy to believe and in fact it’s getting easier every month…Over the last few months we have been told that you don’t have to even know there was a Jesus. You don’t even have to know there was a Bible! You don’t even have to know the true God! In an article in Christianity Today I read, a couple of editions ago, people are saved by Jesus who don’t even know Jesus is saving them. This is no-Lordship carried to the extreme, this is no Jesus! Some of you may feel I’m a little extreme on this, but I’m just telling you what Scripture says. We have certainly succumbed to the fundamental opposition of sinners in a culture that supports and grows self-love. We’ve literally succumbed to that. Everybody is in to self-love, and fulfillment, personal fulfillment, so that’s the way we’ll put the Gospel — and there are lots of people all around the world who don’t know about Jesus, so let’s get them in the kingdom without having to know about Jesus. If we have to we’ll “trans-dispensationalize” them to get them in.

Martin Luther launched the great Reformation of course with his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Castle Church. The fourth of his protesting assertions, the fourth, was that a penitent heart was characterized by a self-hate…quote: “penance remains, while self-hate remains.” Luther said true penitence is self-hate, and he says that remains in those who enter the kingdom of heaven. This is essential for the Gospel.

“Depart from me O Lord, for I am a sinful man”, “Woe is me, for I am disintegrating” says Isaiah…This is so alien to a culture feeding on self-love and having every whimsical need met insisting on rights, privileges, equal respect, reward, and honor for everything.

taken from: General Session #1 address given by John MacArthur at the 2003 Shepherds’ Conference. (emphasis added)

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Christianity is a Supernatural Faith

“The God hypothesis is no longer necessary to explain the origin of the universe or the development of human life.”

This assertion was at the very heart of the movement that took place in the eighteenth century that we call the Enlightenment or the Aufklärung. This movement spread from Germany to France and then to England. The French Encyclopedists (writers of an encyclopedia during the eighteenth century that promoted secular humanism) were militant in their denial of the need for the existence of God. His existence was seen as no longer necessary because He had been supplanted by the “science” of that period that explained the universe in terms of spontaneous generation. Here we see an example of pseudoscience supplanting sound philosophy and theology.

Added to this, we have the agnosticism of the titanic philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that it is impossible for science or philosophy to acquire knowledge of the metaphysical realm of God. It was declared that all knowledge must be restricted to the realm of the natural. With the combination of Kant’s agnosticism and the hypothesis of the Enlightenment, the door was open wide to a thoroughgoing philosophy of naturalism. This philosophy captured in its wake the academic theologians of Europe in the nineteenth century.

Out of this came nineteenth-century liberalism with its militant anti-supernatural perspective. The liberalism of that era denied all of the supernatural elements of the Christian faith, including the virgin birth of Jesus, His miracles, His atoning death, and His resurrection. The supernatural was stripped altogether from Christianity. Commenting on this in the twentieth century, the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner described nineteenth century liberalism as mere “unbelief in disguise.”

The twentieth century saw a continuation of the impact of naturalism with the so-called neo-liberalism of German theology, particularly as it was manifested in the writings of Rudolf Bultmann. Bultmann saw the Bible as a mixture of history and mythology. He believed that which was mythological had to be removed from the text of the Bible in order to speak relevantly to modern people. Of course, from Bultmann’s perspective, the supernatural trappings of the New Testament were all a part of the mythological husk that had to be stripped away from the ethical core of the Bible. The impact of liberalism and neo-liberalism on the church left it basically as a worldly, nature-bound religion that sought refuge in a humanitarian social agenda. This is the approach to Christianity that has all but completely captured many of today’s mainline churches throughout the world.

However, in the last few decades, we have witnessed a comeback of sorts of the supernatural. Yet this increasing interest in the supernatural has been driven in large measure by a fascination with the occult. People are now interested in demons, witches, spiritualists, and other occultic phenomena.

If we take away the supernatural, we take away Christianity

The Christianity of the Bible is a religion that is uncompromisingly supernatural. If we take away the supernatural, we take away Christianity. At the heart of the worldview of both Testaments is the idea that the realm of nature is created by One who transcends that nature. That God Himself is “supra” or above and beyond the created universe. The first principle of the Bible is that God must never be identified with the realm of nature but always and everywhere be seen as the Lord over nature. The difference between the natural and the supernatural is the difference between that which is restricted to this world and that which participates in the realm of the divine, the realm that is above and beyond the reach of what is found in simple nature.

In no way does this affirmation of supernature in the Bible denigrate the importance of the natural. The natural realm is where God’s work of redemption is played out in space and time. But that work of redemption is not a natural process of human evolution or development; rather, it involves an intrusion from above, from the transcendent realm of God, which addresses the spiritual nature of our humanity.

With the renewed interest in the supernatural that comes with the occult, we must be ever vigilant to make sure that whatever understanding we have of the supernatural is an understanding that is informed by the Bible and not by paganism. Sheer naturalism is paganism with a vengeance, but so is the occult. What we need is an understanding of the supernatural that comes to us from the supernatural, from the Author of the supernatural, who reveals to us in His Word the content of the supernatural realm — so that our understanding of angels, or demons, or of spiritual beings comes from God’s self-revelation and not from human speculation, neo-gnostic magic, or other forms of pagan intrusions. Again, we must insist that without the supernatural, Christianity loses its very heart, and this writer cannot understand why anybody would attach any great significance to Christianity at all once it’s been stripped of its supernatural elements.

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Fruit Bearing Christianity

The Christianity which is from above will always be known by its fruits. It will produce in the person who has it repentance, faith, hope, love, humility, spirituality, kindness, self-denial, unselfishness, forgiving spirit, moderation, truthfulness, hospitality, and patience. The degree in which these various graces appear may vary in different believers. The germ and seeds of them will be found in all who are the children of God. By their fruits they will be known. Is this your faith? If not, you should doubt whether it is authentic.

~ J.C. Ryle

Tract: Authentic Religion

More on the Masculine Feel of Christianity

In his 2012 biographical address on "The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle," John Piper highlighted the value of a masculine ministry — and with it, the importance of Christianity having a masculine feel. It's a provocative thing to say when, not only in our day, but throughout history, true masculinity has seemed too often like an endangered species, under assault from both the left and the right.

Such a controversial claim is open to swift misinterpretation, especially when heard from presuppositions not shared by the speaker. Does Piper mean that the church should be masculine only, and in no sense feminine? Or might he mean there's an essential place for both, relating to each other, all the way down, in a complementary way?

So we asked him in the speakers' panel, "Should Christianity also have a feminine feel?"

His response, in short: "The answer is yes. [In a] church . . . proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places."

Here's his full response (with a transcript below) describing the complementary relationship of masculinity and femininity in the church:

If it is done right, this masculine feel creates a space. It is big, it's roomy, it's beautiful, it's peaceful. It's just full and radiates with all the good things of life and in it women, flourishing, will give it that feel. So that as you walk in on Sunday morning and strong singing, led primarily by men, and then a voice from God is heard, and women are loving this, they're radiant, they're intelligent, they're understanding, they're processing, they're interacting. Then all the gifts that were just articulated will flourish in that space. And as you navigate that community there will be feminine feels all over the place.

If I would have had another hour I would have like to spin out the benefits of that community. One of the things I would have said is that in a community where there is a secure, strong, humble, masculine feel, men are free to be appropriately feminine. And women are free to be appropriately masculine. In other words, when you look at any given human being, the most attractive, interesting, winsome human beings are not all masculine or all feminine. They are appropriately, if they are a man, prominently masculine. And there are things about this guy that are remarkably tender, kind, warm, nurturing (the kinds of things we would associate with a woman).

And when you look at a woman who is dominantly and prominently feminine, she will have a backbone, she will be articulate, she will be thoughtful (things we tend to think are male). And in a community that is well-defined there is freedom to have a man, who in some places might not be viewed as masculine. He is an artistic guy. I didn't want to create, and I want to uncreate, any sense that the only, appropriate masculine guy is the guy who hunts, or who does flag football, and doesn't like anything creative or artistic or doesn't like to write or make music. . .

So the flavor is yes. The answer is yes. The church, as you move through this community, proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places.

More on the Masculine Feel of Christianity

In his 2012 biographical address on "The Frank and Manly Mr. Ryle," John Piper highlighted the value of a masculine ministry — and with it, the importance of Christianity having a masculine feel. It's a provocative thing to say when, not only in our day, but throughout history, true masculinity has seemed too often like an endangered species, under assault from both the left and the right.

Such a controversial claim is open to swift misinterpretation, especially when heard from presuppositions not shared by the speaker. Does Piper mean that the church should be masculine only, and in no sense feminine? Or might he mean there's an essential place for both, relating to each other, all the way down, in a complementary way?

So we asked him in the speakers' panel, "Should Christianity also have a feminine feel?"

His response, in short: "The answer is yes. [In a] church . . . proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places."

Here's his full response (with a transcript below) describing the complementary relationship of masculinity and femininity in the church:

If it is done right, this masculine feel creates a space. It is big, it's roomy, it's beautiful, it's peaceful. It's just full and radiates with all the good things of life and in it women, flourishing, will give it that feel. So that as you walk in on Sunday morning and strong singing, led primarily by men, and then a voice from God is heard, and women are loving this, they're radiant, they're intelligent, they're understanding, they're processing, they're interacting. Then all the gifts that were just articulated will flourish in that space. And as you navigate that community there will be feminine feels all over the place.

If I would have had another hour I would have like to spin out the benefits of that community. One of the things I would have said is that in a community where there is a secure, strong, humble, masculine feel, men are free to be appropriately feminine. And women are free to be appropriately masculine. In other words, when you look at any given human being, the most attractive, interesting, winsome human beings are not all masculine or all feminine. They are appropriately, if they are a man, prominently masculine. And there are things about this guy that are remarkably tender, kind, warm, nurturing (the kinds of things we would associate with a woman).

And when you look at a woman who is dominantly and prominently feminine, she will have a backbone, she will be articulate, she will be thoughtful (things we tend to think are male). And in a community that is well-defined there is freedom to have a man, who in some places might not be viewed as masculine. He is an artistic guy. I didn't want to create, and I want to uncreate, any sense that the only, appropriate masculine guy is the guy who hunts, or who does flag football, and doesn't like anything creative or artistic or doesn't like to write or make music. . .

So the flavor is yes. The answer is yes. The church, as you move through this community, proscribed by and protected by a masculine feel, there will be a feminine feel in lots of places.