Want to raise faithful and loving kids in an LGBT-affirming world? This episode is one you won’t want to miss. You don’t have to choose between truth and love—this conversation will equip you to give your kids both. Grab your Java and join us!
Prefer to listen? Listen to the full episode here.
Juli
Hey friend, welcome to Java with Juli hosted by me Juli Slattery. Now this podcast is listener supported and it’s an outreach of Authentic Intimacy which is a ministry that is dedicated to helping you make sense of God and sexuality. Well I want you to imagine that your child comes home from school and says that another kid on the bus was being teased for having two moms or maybe you have a fifth grader who asks what it means when someone says they’re non-binary after hearing that on a show or from a friend. Or maybe your sibling just came out as gay and your kids have questions. You know, moments like these come up more and more often today and they are actually opportunities, not just challenges. That’s why I’m so happy that Rachel Gilson is my guest today. Now, if you’ve been listening to Java with Juli for a while, you’re probably familiar with Rachel.
Juli (01:25.966)
She shared her story here of coming to know Christ while she was a student at Yale and while she was actually also pursuing same-sex relationships. But she has a new book out that’s called Parenting Without Panic in an LGBT Affirming World. And we’re going to be talking about how to take some of these big ideas about God’s design for sexuality and share them with children, helping them to love God’s design for sexuality without falling into demonizing people who disagree or who live by a different ethic. Rachel lives with her family in Boston and she serves on the leadership team for the Theological Department and Development at CRU. So lean into my conversation with Rachel. I know you’re going to be blessed.
Juli
Rachel, so amazing to have you back on Java with Juli. Every single time I’ve had a conversation with you, I have learned so much and you just have a gift of communicating deep truths in a way that people can understand. And so I know that this conversation is not gonna be an exception to that.
Rachel
Well, that’s high bar to live up to, but I’m glad to be back with you, Juli. I always have a great time with you.
Juli
It’s just who you are. So you’ve written recently a book called Parenting Without Panic and it’s such an insightful and easy read. And again, I don’t know how you mix those two things together because the way you think is brilliant. reading this book, I felt like any parent can read it, but also any like 12 year old kid can read it and understand what you were saying. So great job on it.
Rachel (03:02.902)
And that’s also the help of my excellent editor who kept reminding me this is not for academics, right? For normal people. we made a good team together, I think.
Juli
You did, yeah, she did a great job. You have an 11 year old daughter and you live in the heart of kind of the Boston area. And I also feel like your daughter helped you write this book because when you’re living it, it gives you examples, it keeps you honest.
Rachel
That’s right. My daughter helped and the kids of all my friends. Our church is filled with kids and so talking to my community about the questions they’re facing, the questions their kids are asking that they’re having to answer, it’s very much like a group project.
Juli
Yeah, you know, there have been a number of resources recently that have come out and that are being written on the topic of parenting and sexuality. And they typically handle LGBT questions as maybe one chapter of this is one application of it. What I like about what you’ve written is that in some ways the whole book is tackling the questions of how kids are navigating LGBT issues.
I know that’s a huge part of your heart. I know that’s part of your story. But that really sets us apart uniquely in really ministering to a pain point and even a fear point that a lot of parents have.
Rachel (04:28.984)
Well, I wrote it particularly because I kept getting emails from people who had maybe read my first book or heard me speak, something like this. And they were like, hey, well, I would love a resource for how to talk to my four-year-old about this, how to talk to my 12-year-old about this. And I realized I didn’t know of a dedicated resource to pass their way. And I was in the midst of trying to figure it out for myself as well. So I thought, well, you know, maybe I’ll write something that can be the beginning of the conversation and then we can all continue it together.
Juli
Yeah, I think in like the introduction of the first chapter, you just laid right out there. You start with a story of your daughter going to school. Was it kindergarten?
Rachel
It aas kindergarten.
Juli
Can you tell that story? Yeah, so.
Rachel
You know, she’s a delight in many ways. There’s some level, I think I would have loved to be homeschooled if I was a child, but my daughter, she’s an extroverted only child, so she was pumped to go to kindergarten. And I’ve never sent a child to kindergarten before, so was trying to get all the information. I have this great friend named Laura who is a missionary masquerading as a stay-at-home mom. And so her children, some of her children are a little older than mine, and she had sent them to our same little neighborhood school.
So I wanted to get from Laura, you know, all the information about the teachers and the school culture and that kind of stuff. And so she was reassuring me, she’s like, you know, all of the elementary schools in this town are great. The kindergarten teachers at our particular neighborhood school are incredible. And she mentioned, she said, you know, one of them is a woman who’s married to another woman. And she was just kind of moving on. She was just giving me data.
Rachel (06:06.446)
And I remember my heart stopping at that moment and thinking, how am I possibly gonna explain to Anna that teacher’s family situation in a way that doesn’t, I don’t know, detonate in any particular direction? I just immediately felt afraid and felt like a prayer within my heart of like, God, could you in kindness just put my daughter in one of the other classrooms? And then immediately feeling that kind of fear and hesitation, I also felt shame.
I was like, of all the people who should feel comfortable with like, yes, my daughter can go into this classroom with confidence. It’s like, I come from a background of same-sex relationships. I read about the gospel and sexuality and write about it for my career. Like I minister from this place of compassion towards people and faithfulness to scripture. Like I, of all people should be able to do this. And I just felt flat footed. God, in his kindness put Anna in that classroom and it was a great experience for both her and myself. But when first hearing about it, I was scared.
Juli
Yeah, well, I think everybody’s like, okay, well, if Rachel was scared, then I guess I’m not so, so that’s a weird to feel intimidated. But the big question is how did you deal with it?
Rachel
Well, I think the initial moment of fear subsides and I recognized, okay, well, you know what? This is a part of our life. We have all kinds of neighbors around us who are made in God’s image and who don’t necessarily follow the Lord. So they’re making all kinds of choices with their lives. You know, they’re not who our battle is against. They’re people in the fabric of our life who God has called us to love.
Rachel (07:52.716)
And so I thought, okay, at very least, we can talk about the ethic of Jesus. Like we love our neighbors. No matter what, that’s what he’s called us to do. We love our neighbors. And that doesn’t mean that all the conversations are gonna be easy. It doesn’t mean that the sentences I try so well to craft and say to my daughter, she’s not gonna telephone out in the worst way as possible, you know. It doesn’t mean that she and I won’t be misunderstood or maybe even maligned, but it’s a guiding star. Jesus showed me His love, I mean, goodness, when I really didn’t deserve it. So certainly, I can be someone who carries His love to other people.
Juli
Yeah, that’s a good starting place, Rachel, and a good thing to keep going back to. But there’s a lot of practicals and really that’s what you’ve written this book about. Okay, what’s the conversation?
Rachel
What are the conversations like exactly?
Juli (08:42.39)
And even, you know, I think you and I both have the conviction that we can’t talk about LGBT until we’ve really talked about biblical sexuality. That you don’t start with the problem, you start with what’s true. And so how did you begin to do that with your daughter at very young ages?
Rachel
Another interesting factor, you know, I’m sure some people listening, I’m sure some people listening don’t even have children. It’s just interesting because we care about the children of our lives. Some people listening probably were raised in Christian homes themselves. And so that gives a certain kind of North Star about how do I talk to my children about this. Although sometimes you reflect on my parents tried to do well, but they didn’t do great.
Rachel (09:25.87)
South by Southwest. my husband and I were neither of us raised by disciples. And so I’m sure some of your listeners also can relate to that. You know, I came to Christ at 18 and so I’m thinking, how do I do this? How do I raise my child as a Christian? So when I was considering how to talk about sexuality, I took a page really from my own journey, which is at first I was confronted by what God said no to about sexuality.
And it was hard for me to make sense of what he said no to because some of it felt either arbitrary or cool. So there was a big part of my journey in understanding God’s goodness related to sexuality was seeing God first says yes to sexuality. And so anything he says no to can only be understood if you grasp what he said yes to first because his no, only make sense in light of the yes. It’s kind of like my car that’s parked in the driveway. It runs on gasoline. It’s designed to run on gasoline because we weren’t rich enough to get a hybrid, I guess. don’t know, it on gas. Now, it’s not arbitrary or cruel that if I pour milk into the tank or maple syrup into the tank, it’ll wreck the engine. Like, there’s a no to other liquids because the yes is to gasoline. And so I felt like what I need to give myself, what I need to give my daughter is here’s a lot of things God says yes to.
Here’s a built-out system. That felt like a useful place to start because it’s where Genesis starts. Yes and yes and yes.
Juli
What does he say yes to that a five-year-old?
Rachel (11:01.102)
Well, that a five-year-old can understand, that’s right, because, you know, we can think, well, this is pretty complex. But one of the things that helped me was, okay, the gospel is actually fairly complex. You go into like reams of atonement theory. The Trinity is incredibly complex. Yet we also know how to teach our children these complex topics because we bring them down to the irreducible minimum, right? What is the gospel? Jesus was sent by the Father to die in our place and rise again so we can be united to Him. He forgives us of our sin. offers us new life both now and forever. My daughter can understand that at a young age. Jesus died for you. He’s alive for you. My daughter doesn’t need to know all these things about the Trinity, but she can know there’s one God and three persons, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. So I thought, okay, we can get down to some irreducible minimums when it comes to sexuality. One of them that we see in Genesis, God created humanity, male and female, very good.
Think about the beauty of the first chapter of Genesis. Just good, good, good, good. He’s creating all these things. He gets to humanity very good, male and female. And something so solid that He breathed his life into this clay, made it a human person, that we’re not souls that have bodies. We’re embodied souls. Part of what that means for talking to a five-year-old is you have a body that God made and it’s good. And your body will tell you who you are.
It tells you that you are my daughter, tells you that you’re a little girl, tells you all kinds of things, that we can trust our bodies. And just the solid foundation to stand on in this cultural moment of saying, being made a little girl is so good. Women are good. Being made a little boy is so good. Men are good. Like we are created by God to be good.
We do have to talk about the fall eventually. We don’t always experience our bodies as good. We don’t experience our relationships as good. We’re troubled and sinful. But sin is not necessary to humanity. Goodness is. Sin entered after the fact. And sin will go away. God promises he’s going to rescue us from it entirely. So I want our children, I want their first thing they hear about their bodies is that God gave you these gifts and they’re good.
Juli
Yeah, and that’s so tangible. When we think about teaching our kids about sex, we think about all the intangible things that you want to explain, but to start with the physical of what’s right in front of them, what they experience every day.
Rachel
As simple as like at a bath time, you know, you’re washing your can and you’re talking about your name and all the body parts as you clean them and it can actually be so helpful to be like, look, we know you’re a boy because you have a penis and that you’re, it’s so good that you’re a boy and look at your hands that help you use all your toys and look at your legs that help you run. You just, there’s can be a celebration of the body, which is also why it’s really important to use actual words for body parts. We could start that early.
Juli
Okay, so that’s foundation. Where do you go from there? Like how do you take that and get to the place where you equipped a kid to walk into a classroom with a woman who’s married to another woman?
Rachel
No, that’s right. Well, one of things I realized as I was thinking about talking to my own child is I kind of had three different buckets. I had a biology bucket. Here’s how we like see things on the ground. So for example, male and female, or for example, babies come from the generative life giving union of a man and a woman. So just reproduction, right? So we’ve got the biology bucket. That’s really helpful to give children, explaining to them those scientific facts.
Rachel (14:54.35)
But biology on its own doesn’t get us as far as we need to go. I also have a bucket I think of as the theology bucket, which is like for example we were just talking about, not just that we have bodies, it’s that God gave us both bodies and souls and he declared us good. Or for example the theology of marriage and singleness. Now you can talk about that in very complex ways, but you can also talk about it in ways that work for little children.
Did you know that a healthy marriage between a man and a woman is a little living, breathing picture of the Gospel. Did you know that a person who is single for the sake of Christ is a living, breathing picture of the Gospel? And you don’t even have to always fill it out. You can just teach your children, there’s a connection between what we talk about on Sundays and around the table at Bible time to how I actually live with my body. So that’s what I think of as the theology bucket.
Biology and theology. And then the third bucket I think in, I basically call missiology. And that’s big for me living in progressive Boston because I need to give my child categories for why many of our neighbors, most of our neighbors, do not think of the body and how to steward the body in the same way that mom and dad do.
Juli
Okay, so you’ve got those three. Yeah. That’s a lot. I mean, do you regularly think about those and how to integrate those into parenting?
Rachel (16:25.262)
So I didn’t think about it explicitly until I was writing this book. One of the things that I think helped me is I am a vocational missionary. I’m employed by crew, formerly Campus Crusade for Christ, so I’m thinking as a missionary all the time, which I think is how all Christians should be thinking, right? We’re called to spread the good news. I also, by training, am a theologian. So I’m constantly thinking about what is this material world, how does it connect with the great truths that I’m reading in the Bible?
Now can’t say I’m a biologist. I got a D-minus in intro bio at Yale, I wouldn’t trust me very far in terms of the physical science, but I at least have a body and I’ve had a child, so you know, it’s success. So I feel more confident in talking about the missiology and theology buckets on some level, although, you know, basic reproductive biology is not so hard.
Juli
Yeah.
Rachel (17:20.785)
But I think, so we’ve all experienced talking to little kids. You’re not giving like three minute speeches even, right? Every conversation with a very little kid is like dribs and drabs, snippets, thrown sentences across the room. And that’s why I think having, articulating these three different buckets are like, I can be mentioning lots of these ideas all the time. Like, you have a boy’s body, that’s good.
Oh just pointing out new baby at church like, look at her body, we know she’s a little girl because the body God gave her. we went to a wedding. Look, that is a picture of how much God loves his people. You just these little snippets and missiology comes in because all kinds of questions happen like, we’re the only ones who go to church, why is that? Well, because not everyone has Jesus for their king, though everyone could have Jesus for their king. Sometimes they just need to hear about Him.
Rachel
So working these little statements in, wanting my child and the children at my church to think of our neighbors not as enemies, but all of them as potential brothers and sisters in Christ. Because I think what can happen in a contested cultural moment like ours is we naturally feel fear. I feel it too. And fear often makes us isolate ourselves or attack or both.
And neither of those movements are the movements Jesus has actually called us to. He’s called us to love not only our neighbor, but to love our enemy. His form of love was speaking the truth of both idolatry and forgiveness. His truth is full, speaking the truth to the point of being willing to die for his enemy. You can’t do that without the Spirit of God. You can’t do that without a community around you. You can’t do that if your lead foot is being afraid of your neighbor.
Rachel
But I take very seriously what Paul said in Ephesians 6. Our battle is not against flesh and blood. It’s against the prince of the power of the air, against spiritual forces of evil. When we talk about things like in the LGBT agenda, you might hear that, gay activists, trans activists, things like this, there can be a big sense of fear. And we have to take that ideology seriously because it’s very attractive to certain types of Christians to buy into that ideology and our battle is against dethroning bad ideas, false ideas, but our neighbors are entrapped by that ideology. We have to see that any ideology that’s false and sinful is trying to destroy my neighbors. It’s not interested in helping them, saving them, giving them happy, fulfilling lives. It wants to chew them up and spit them out.
Only Christ comes so that we can actually be forgiven and whole. And so I want to take the ideology seriously. And as my daughter has gotten older, we’ve talked very seriously about these ideas without ever making my neighbors the primary enemy, even if they act as enemies to the cross, which most of them don’t. Most of them are just trying to watch their Netflix and pay their bills. But even if people are acting as enemies of the cross, they’re still, while they’re drawing breath, first potentially a brother or sister in Christ.
Juli (20:36.686)
Hi friend, I’m jumping in to just let you know that we are so excited about the new book that I have coming out July 1st. It’s called Surrendered Sexuality, How Knowing Jesus Changes Everything.
And you all are listening or watching this podcast because you care about people embracing God’s design for sexuality. And so I consider you as part of the team that can celebrate with us, but more importantly, help people learn about this book. And so we’ve got all kinds of ways for you to plug in. And we’ve got an early reader team. We’ve got a book club happening.
We have ways that you can share about this book and we would love for you to be connected. Now the best way to do that is to sign up for our newsletter if you are not already signed up. And you can do that by going to AuthenticInimacy.com or just clicking the link in the show notes. Hey, thanks so much for being part of our team here at Authentic Intimacy and helping us get the news out about this new book. Now back to our coffee shop conversation.
Juli (21:36.878)
Yeah, what I love about what you’re presenting there, there are a number of things, but one of them is I feel like often when we talk about biblical sexuality, we’re saying the Bible has different sexual ethic than the world does. We’re not saying the Bible has a different definition of flourishing than the world does. Because a lot of parenting, and I think even in the church cultures, like follow God’s law even though it may not lead to flourishing.
And so there’s a feeling of tension even for parents of, well, what if my kid is gay? Like I’m taking them away from happiness. And yeah, can you talk a little bit about how we present that alternate view, not just of how we behave, but where we find life?
Rachel
I can talk about it. I’m a little worried I’ll talk for 45 minutes. This is something that is really important for us to consider as disciples. Where are we getting our vision of salvation? Now we believe, you know, if we belong to Jesus, we know in our heads I’m saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But all of us try to find life in other places.
And one of the most common false gospels that runs through churches in my circles is salvation by romance. It’s an interesting type of prosperity gospel. Salvation by romance, both in my neighborhoods, people who Christian, and in churches, which means I’m not a full or complete person unless I have a romantic and sexual partner. Now the church will say you need to marry them. Outside the church, maybe not. But either way, it creates the illusion that I am utterly empty without this other person. There’s so many problems with that.
There’s so many problems with it. Particularly in a Christian context, can be a big problem because we accidentally, sometimes we do it on purpose, let’s say accidentally, for being our best selves, we can say, oh, well, if you’re a very good boy or girl, then God will reward you by giving you a spouse. Which means we’re putting words into God’s mouth, which means we’re lying.
Rachel (23:52.942)
So then you have a scenario where you have a young woman who is dedicated to the church. She’s serving Christ faithfully and God never brings her a husband and she thinks I’ve been lied to. Either I’m a bad Christian or God is against me or my community lied or you just sow these terrible seeds or you tell this to a young man and he serves faithfully, following Jesus, working hard, he gets married and then his sex life isn’t this endless utopia where it meets every single emotional need that he ever has. Maybe he actually discovers that his sex life is incredibly complex and broken.
There’s all kinds of ways when we sell salvation by romance to our kids that we end up breaking their hearts later. And it’s not even a good prize. I mean, I love my husband. I would every single time choose Jesus over Andrew. Like, there’s no competition there. So when we make the prize anything but the bridegroom, anything but our big brother Jesus, anything but the God who actually promises to never leave us or forsake us, who sees us truly without destroying us and loves us deeper than we deserve to be loved. If that’s not the prize, then it’s no wonder people run away from the gospel because they’re not being given the real gospel.
Juli
And so you’re saying even in the situation where our kids grow up, they get married, they have a nice marriage, like, you know, good marriage relationship. When we set that as the definition of flourishing, we’re selling them short.
Rachel
Definitely, because even the best marriages are just signposts. You don’t want the model car instead of the real car. I mean, maybe unless you’re a weird hobbyist, right? You don’t want to stare at the sign that’s pointing you towards your destination. You need to get there.
Juli (25:37.23)
Okay, so how, if that’s the way that we’re using the example of marriage to point to something greater to kids, you’ve mentioned it, but how do we use celibacy? How do we use the example of the French, yeah, to point to the gospel?
Rachel (25:51.822)
Well, and we should say marriage is designed to be a signpost so that when you design your marriage as God says, it will point to God’s relationship with His people. So faithfulness is required because God is always faithful to His people and we’re called to be faithful to Him. Fruitfulness is a big piece of that, either through biological reproduction, through adoption, or through fruitfulness of other means. A marriage is supposed to mimic how God’s relationship with His people is incredibly fruitful.
The sexual relationship in marriage is supposed to be a place of intimacy, safety, pleasure, and trust because God’s relationship with His people is the ultimate place of intimacy, safety, pleasure, and trust. Marriage is required to be male and female because we see there are two non-interchangeable parties, God and His people, mirrored in these two non-interchangeable parties, male and female. So you might be male and female, but you might have an abusive adulterous marriage, and that does not point to the gospel.
Juli
Right, yeah, that’s a good clarification. Or even a selfish marriage where it’s like, yeah, where it’s like, I did this for you, so you have to do this for me and it’s demanding.
Rachel
There’s all kinds of ways, right? So we all need the forgiveness and grace of Christ to actually partner with him so that our marriages communicate what they’re supposed to communicate. Likewise, singleness. Singleness isn’t automatically a picture of the gospel, but it can be through the forgiveness and grace of Christ. Singleness is this beautiful picture. If you’re single for the sake of Christ, let’s say you would want to be married, but God just hasn’t brought it about yet. You say, okay, marriage is a good thing. I see it.
Rachel (27:35.064)
But I’m not going to miss out on the real marriage. The real marriage is coming. I am a part of that. So even if I don’t experience the picture now, I will experience the reality. And singleness can also be this. So it’s like a prophet pointing to the reality of the resurrection. Like I’m not putting all my eggs in this basket. I know what’s coming. And the person who’s single for the sake of Christ also gets to practice real time, as married people should be too, but in a very particular way, this real intimate relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ, which is non-exclusive, which is different than marriage, but very real and deep. And so if our churches are filled with healthy marriages and healthy single people actually relating as brothers and sisters in Christ, we kind of get stereophonic access to the gospel. In the new heavens and the new earth, we’re all going to be single and we’re all going to be married.
We’re single in that we’re not married to each other, we’re married because we’re all part of the bride of Christ. so both of these vocations carry gospel potential and dignity. And so we can talk to our children when we see faithful marriages and faithful single people, we can say, look how beautiful that is the way that they are trusting God in their marriage. Look how beautiful that is the way that he is serving God in his singleness, trusting God there. Look how beautiful it is that we’re family together. We can talk to our kids and not say when you get married, but if you get married. We can even like lay some interesting burdens on people.
Juli
Yeah, or it always being the question of are you dating somebody? You’re getting, yeah, that sort of thing as they get older. I think it was Sam Alberry who wrote, marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, but signalist shows us the sufficiency of the gospel.
Rachel (29:31.592)
That absolutely sounds like Sam, and I give two thumbs up on that. Two thumbs up. That’s right.
Juli
So I was talking to a mom today who has a few kids and two of them would identify within the LGBT spectrum. she’s a follower of Christ. It has been just a heartbreaking kind of journey for her. Her kids have walked away from the Lord over these issues. I think that is sort of a great fear and for some parents is their reality living in today’s day and age.
And, so let’s talk about what do you do if you have, starting with like a nine or a 10 year old, who is starting to ask questions about maybe I’m gay because my best friend is a girl, or doubting their gender. How do we begin entering into those conversations?
Rachel
Yeah, and this is really important. Now, what I to say upfront is my book, Parenting Without Panic in an LGBT Affirming World, is not for parents whose children have come out, but it lays some really important groundwork. It’s just how to talk to children about these questions, but it’s actually really, really helpful if you end up having a child who does have questions about their sexuality, who ends up later identifying as LGBT in some way.
Because one of the things that’s really important is the reality that children who grow up in religious homes often wait longer to tell their parents when they’ve got questions about their sexuality. Or perhaps they don’t have questions, they’re pretty sure about it, but they can wait longer to tell their very religious parents, even when they know their parents love them deeply, just because they’re scared to death about what might happen. And one of the things we can do, the way we have talked about LGBT questions in the home, or the way we’ve talked about LGBT identifying neighbors in the home will set a table for if my child feels safe to talk to me about what they’re feeling, which is why it’s so important to speak as God speaks about our neighbors. They are first and foremost in his image potential brothers and sisters in Christ.
Because when our children do have questions, which they will, and not these questions, other questions, we want them to know that mom and dad are calm, confident sources of truth. They’re not going to be shamed for asking certain questions. They’re not going to be BSed when asking certain questions. They’re not going to freak mom and dad out. Even if mom and dad don’t have the exact answer, they’ll take the question seriously and go find the answer.
Rachel
If we set that kind of groundwork, then if we do face these particular situations where children are asking questions about same-sex attraction, gender dysphoria, other things, we’ll have already set the groundwork of like, you can always talk to us. We can’t guarantee it, right? Our children are, they have their own will, they’ll make their own decisions, but it at least gives a better chance.
So one of the things that I think is so important is recognizing that even if your child experiences lifelong same-sex attraction, which you won’t be able to know if they talk to you about this when they’re 11, but let’s say, let’s just jump all the way there. Even if your child experiences lifelong, unchanging same-sex attraction, that does not mean that they will not have a flourishing life of obedience in Christ.
Juli
Wow. Yeah, and I think, you know, your child is going to have a lifelong struggle with some sin. That’s right.
Rachel (33:09.55)
We don’t none of us get the ticket out of this like Promises to save us from the penalty of sin he promises to save us now from the power of sin I never have to sin But we’re not safe from the presence of sin yet This is what we pray every single day keep me from temptation because temptation is serious and we’re constantly tempted by things I think something that can happen in a parent’s mind when they hear these things and they can collapse everything down. Like, if my child experiences same-sex attraction, if they identify as gay, then they’re going to have this particular life. And the truth is, we don’t know what kind of life your child is going to have. And so I think it’s just a calming moment.
Juli
Yeah, but I think what might be different, and this is where it becomes so complex. Like, let’s say I have a child who struggles with telling the truth. At some level, we can agree that lying is wrong. But when it comes to same-sex attraction, our kids are constantly getting messages that there’s nothing wrong with that. Like, is who you are. And that’s what makes it, I think, so complex. And how do you help a kid understand that those attractions are not life-giving, you don’t want to act on that without having them feel shamed in who they are?
Rachel
That’s right. And that’s an important element, right? Like there’s not a widespread cultural movement to bless the practice of lying.
Rachel (34:39.469)
Exactly. You’re so like, don’t know where the cult is going. But you know what I mean. Yeah, we don’t have a lying pride month. So that is a really important distinction. So that’s why I always do the triage. And like you were talking with your friend. So I’m always thinking, does my child identify as a Christian or not? If she does not identify as a Christian, then the main thing I’m thinking is, how do I help her see the beauty of the gospel? And that can happen in lot of different ways, but no one has yet been saved only by hearing God’s good sexual ethic and thinking, makes sense. They have to be saved by saying yes to Jesus’ work on our behalf. So that doesn’t mean we can’t have conversations about what God says about the body and relationships, but I’m always trying to bring it back to the main thing, which is the gospel. As in like, God’s sexual ethic is weirder than you think, child. It is weirder than you think.
And it’s all about pointing to his great love for us. So I kind of want let the main thing be the main thing. Which means, if my child is open to having conversations with me, we can talk about, like, what does the world say about our desires? It’s very interesting, you know? Secularism, of course, is a radical Christian heresy, which is why it’s so appealing to Christians, because there’s parts of it that trade on Christian goods, but pervert them. So you think authenticity. Like, whatever I find inside, I have to do. Now, weirdly, this is actually Christian in its correct form.
It was Jesus of Nazareth who said, your outside has to match your inside. And it’s been the great Christian thinkers of history who’ve said, I have to actually understand my own heart so that I can understand God. I have to go inward in order to go upward, which is what St. Augustine said. John Calvin talked about you have to know man and God. there’s authenticity is a major Christian virtue, but it doesn’t work without a doctrine of sin. Jesus is like, your outside and inside have to match, but when you go inside, so much of what you find is going to be sinful and damaged. Some of it you’re going to need forgiveness for, some of it you’re going to need healing for, some of it’s going to be a mix of both. And if you don’t have Christ, when you go inward, you have no way of dealing with the trouble that’s there. So the world goes inward, is confronted with sin. It either has to pretend it’s not there, which leads us to further and further detachment from reality and really unhealthy things.
Rachel (37:05.856)
Or it does see what’s there, and despairs and leads to all kinds of other damage. I can only go inward safely with Jesus. So you think about it. So the society tells me I have to do whatever I feel. The only people I know who do everything they feel are toddlers and they’re not good examples for like mature, vibrant living. And so we can talk about this with our older children, right? Like, and this is going to land so much better if from an early age you’ve been talking about, ‘we shouldn’t always do what we feel’. Sometimes I get so mad at my daughter, I want to throw her out a window. And that would be sin.
Juli
Yes, it would.
Rachel
And sometimes I sin against her in my anger and I need to go to her and confess and say, I was mad and I sinned against you. I need you to forgive me. Because I don’t have permission to do everything that just wells up naturally in my heart. The only place I can go to to understand which of my feelings need to be nurtured and which of them need to be cut off at the root is God’s Word. Otherwise, I have no system.
And so we can look in society and say, okay, society’s telling you do everything you feel, except some of the things that society still thinks is wrong, like pedophilia. One of the few things, right? And so we can actually have, and I talk about this a little bit in the book, we can actually have some really interesting conversations with our older children about like, let’s understand the world’s narratives and interrogate them. Let’s interrogate the Christian narrative as well.
Rachel (38:35.842)
But the world’s narrative, because secularism is a radical Christian heresy, there’s always going to be pieces of it that affirm certain Christian things. But because it’s chopped Jesus out, there’s always going to be parts of it that are sinful, rebellious, false trails. And so we can actually learn to see both of those. This is in the missiology bucket for older kids, right? Like there’s going to be something about this I can say yes to. Yes, my outer life should match my inner life.
But there’s something about it I should say no to, which is I should not give vent to everything I feel. I would burn my life down, the life of my whole family if I did that. But with Christ, I actually have the grace and forgiveness to move on. And some of our kids are going to be very attracted to the world, and they’re going to try out what the world says is the good life. We have to have an authentic relationship with Jesus ourselves so that they’ve got a picture.
What is the difference between the world and the church? And with family it’s always the long game and you’re like that’s a bummer I don’t want my kids to look at me because like they see me at my worst and the gospel has to be real at our worst or it’s not real at all.
Juli
And that’s actually the opportunity when they see us at our worst to, as you modeled, to confess that, to go back to the gospel. Yeah, Rachel, I know this is part of your story and these are kind of tying some threads together that you’ve already mentioned, but how important is it for us to reframe why we get married?
Even within today’s church culture, it’s all about chemistry and romance and who I’m attracted to, which isn’t really biblical, but talk about how we do that.
Rachel (40:20.27)
That’s right. Which, you know, don’t we all love love? It’s so lovely. But part of the problem, another flip side of the salvation by romance thing is that we, along with our society, have collapsed all of love down to the erotic. Whereas God’s vision of love, it’s so much more expansive. He wants all of us to experience not only a deep love relationship with Him, but a deep love relationship with our brothers and sisters.
This is why I think it’s so helpful that the scripture preferences calling us brothers and sisters in Christ. Because siblings in a healthy family do experience non-erotic deep intimacy and affection. It was this great image of like, I’m supposed to like really love you and let you in and be let in. Which by the way, as we descend more into an AI future where people are going to choose computers over humans is going to be even more important.
Rachel (41:19.864)
But it infects how we think about marriage. We think, well, I’m only gonna experience love if I experience it in this huge sort of movie, pop song, taking me over, capital-R-romance kind of way. And if your whole marriage is founded on an explosion of feeling, no feeling like that lasts forever. This is what gets certain drug addicts into deep trouble, right? Because they will take a substance and those first couple times, the feelings I hear are incredible and then they just chase those feelings and actually destroy their lives Because the feelings never quite live up and that’s not what God is talking to us about in marriage at all. Because marriage is a picture of the gospel. It’s a picture of long-term covenant faithfulness Which really involves love but it’s love It’s bigger and deeper and fuller than what the romantic sexualized version is in the culture.
Juli
And there’s a lot to navigate there with planting the seeds of that to little kids, but then discipling them through attraction, dating, making sense of their feelings of intimacy. And Rachel, this time goes so fast talking to you. feel like we’ve sort of turned to a little bit. It is. mean, I’m like, I can’t encourage people enough to get your book, Parenting Without Panic, and not just for parents, for grandparents, for aunts and uncles. So many times a week I get an email like, my sister is gay and bringing over her wife and I don’t know what to tell my five-year-olds. And this is the world we live in. So it’s just a great resource and you are a great resource. Just what God has done in your life and through you.
Rachel
I’m so excited to continue to see what He’s giving you for the body to encourage us. So thank you. Thanks Juli.
Juli (43:19.534)
Well, I know we’ve given you a lot to think about and this might be one of those episodes that you have to come back to and listen to again. But as you think through these ideas that Rachel shared, I know you’re going to be more equipped to teach your children what to think about sexuality, but also how to think about sexuality yourself. Now that being said, her new book covers the hardest questions that kids might be asking about sexuality and gives you thoughtful, trustworthy answers.
Again, the book is called Parenting Without Panic in an LGBT Affirming World and we’ll drop a link to that in your show notes. And as always, let me remind you that you’re going to find blogs, videos, books, and other digital resources to help you make sense of God and sexuality at Authenticintimacy.com. Thanks for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for more Java with Juli.
