Ep. 241: Let’s Talk About Sex (Part 2)

Welcome to the indoubt Podcast, where we explore the challenging topics that young adults often face. Each week, we talk with guests who help answer questions of faith, life, and culture, connecting them to our daily experiences and God’s word. For more info on indoubt, visit indoubt.ca.

Erika:

Hey, it’s Erika, and welcome back to another episode of indoubt. Based on the title of this episode, I’m sure you’ve guessed what we’re going to be talking about today. Sex. And I should clarify, the biblical understanding of sex. Here with us as our host, Isaac, and pastor and author, Paul Carter. Paul has dedicated much of his time to understanding sex with a biblical perspective, and we’re so grateful he’s here to help us understand a little bit better what sex means within the context of marriage and what the Bible has to say about it. We’re so glad you’re here and hope you enjoy part two of our conversation with Paul Carter.

Isaac Dagneau:

Hey, welcome to indoubt, my name is Isaac. I’m one of the hosts here at indoubt. I’m also the pastor at North Valley Baptist Church in Mission, British Columbia. Well, it’s great to have with me again on the show, Paul Carter. As some of you already know, Paul is the pastor at Cornerstone Baptist Church in Orillia, Ontario. He’s on the board for the Gospel Coalition Canada, and he himself podcasts at Into The Word. And you can find that podcast at intotheword.ca. Today, we’re continuing this important and needed conversation on different aspects of biblical sexuality. I hope you enjoy. Paul, you and I both know that we do live in a very sexualized culture. We’re in the middle of a sexual revolution. There’s lots of issues we could… I mean, we haven’t even touched on sexual addiction, even. We’ve talked about pornography on In Doubt, as well, and just every time you even think about that one aspect of sexual distortion in our world, every time we look at it, it just, again, surprises me. And it shouldn’t surprise me, but it can surprise me on how much of an effect it’s having, an impact it’s having on people. So, with that in view, but also other ways that the culture has portrayed a damaging view of sex, as a pastor and as a father, what are some of the best ways that you can teach sex in a way that’s not going to be a stumbling block to others? I know we’ve already talked about some of this, but maybe you can elaborate a little bit more. As a father, what are some of the ways that you have best understood, “How can I teach biblical sexuality to my children?” And also, I’m sure you’ve probably mentored young men who may be are in the thick of sexual addiction, or at least maybe you can perceive that they are, and how can you teach about sex in a safe, godly way?

Paul Carter:

That’s a great question. So, I’ll start as a parent and then speak as a pastor, because I think they are slightly different. My kids are a wide range in terms of age. We have a 22 year old, and then we go all the way down to eight. So, yeah, we’ve quite a range there. My son plays soccer at a high level, so we’re constantly driving all around Ontario, and one of the things that I found has been very helpful is we debrief what he hears in school and what he hears in the culture as we drive. And we have a lot of two hour drives this way and two hour drives that way, so yeah, we have a lot of great conversations. So, I think talking to your kids about what they’re hearing, and I often bring it up… I mean, occasionally, he brings it up, he’ll say, “Oh dad, you never believe what I heard today at school,” and, “Okay,” we’ll start talking. But I will often bring it up. I’ll say, “I read an article today indicating,” whatever, whatever the last article I read was. One of them was, I remember discussing with him, the rate of STD infection on British university campuses, and I think the number was 44%, which is just enormously high. And so, we started having a conversation about that. So, I do think interacting with the kids, being aware that they are swimming in a sea of assumptions that generally go unchallenged because we’re not allowed to challenge sexual assumptions in this culture. And so, as a parent, stepping into that and just saying, “Hey, I read this, what do you think about that? Let’s talk.” I think that’s very, very helpful. Similarly, to know what I said about preaching, if you’re in the habit of preaching through books of the Bible, then sex is going to come up, but it doesn’t look like you’re making it come up, so it doesn’t look like you’re obsessed. So, at our home, we do family devotions after dinner, and we read through books, the Bible, so actually, we just read through I Corinthians for a family dinner. We’re still in II Corinthians right now, actually. So, those conversations come up in the course of what, for us, is normal dinner conversation, so I think that’s very helpful. And then, a third thing I would say is just modeling an actual biblical approach to sexuality in your marriage, meaning your kids should… You don’t want to gross out your kids. And nothing inappropriate, like inappropriate displays of sexuality in front of young children. I’m not talking about anything like that, but I’m just saying your kids should know that you have sex, and it should be playful, romantic, appropriate. We joke with our kids, but in an inappropriate way. We say, “Mom and dad are having date night, so you guys get a pizza, go downstairs, and watch a movie. And if you come in here, you better be bleeding or vomiting because mom and dad, were together and you don’t want to see that, and we don’t want to see you.” And so, little things like that. Our kids know that we enjoy each other’s company and all that implies, and there’s no,… Our older ones, actually, will joke about it, and they know mom and dad love each other and mom and dad enjoyed each other. Mom and dad aren’t embarrassed. And where do you think y’all came from anyways? So, zip it.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It’s awesome. It’s so good. And that will impact them. We’ve already mentioned this already when you talked about how important it is for children to know that about their parents, but that will impact them to know that, when they start getting into a relationship, they’ll always think back to, “Okay, mom and dad, they loved each other. They weren’t just together for the sake of us.”

Paul Carter:

In fact, it’s you guys that make it hard to stay together.

Isaac Dagneau:

Exactly. Exactly. Oh, that’s awesome. So, yeah. So, then, yeah, so that’s the home. So, then maybe talk a little bit about as a pastor.

Paul Carter:

Yeah, as a pastor, I would say some similar things because pastoring is really just parenting applied to a congregation, but I would say, again, it’s important to go through books of the Bible so they don’t feel like, “Oh, here we go again. We’re having the sex talk.” No, it should just come up in the course of regular teaching because the Bible actually says a lot about sex, so we’ll talk about it in proportion to its appearance in the scriptures. So, I think that’s important. And then, I think, I want to be careful how I say this one, I think it’s helpful to share your struggles as a pastor appropriately, meaning I’ve heard lots of pastors overshare, and that always makes me terribly uncomfortable. And it also, I think, normalizes or even glorifies sexual sin in a way that’s not helpful as if, “Come on, we’re all doing it, blah, blah, blah.” Oh, I don’t like that at all. I just finished Charles Simeon’s biography yesterday. He has a great line. He said, “The worst of a man and the best of a man,” I think is how the quote goes. “The worst of a man and the best of a man should only be known to himself and to his God.” And I just think that’s a very helpful quote. So, let’s not overshare, but I think it can be helpful to just say, “Hey, listen…” I said this this past Sunday in my sermon. We were talking about hypocrisy, and I said, “For me…” Because I grew up in ministry, I started when I was in third year university as a part-time youth pastor. I was on my way to seminary. So, from third year university, and then through seminary, the time when I should have been growing up, I was actually pastoring. And so, I felt tremendous pressure to not admit that I was dealing with all the things that a 25 year old young man would be dealing with, because I was supposed to be the pastor, I was supposed to be perfect and teaching. And so, that wasn’t helpful for me. I said there needed to be a place where I could be honest and say, “I’m a young man, too, and I’m wrestling with every young man’s battle.” And so, for me, that involved having some really good accountability partners and some good brothers in ministry who we could have that kind of conversation with each other. But I think, just every once in a while, saying something like that. Because now I’m old and people look at me and they think, “Oh, well, Pastor Paul has never struggled with the things I struggled with.” Just for them to hear like, “Hey, when pastor Paul was 25, he was struggling with what 25 year young men struggle with.” And that, I think, gives them hope that, “Okay, this is age appropriate struggle,” but it also lets them know, “This doesn’t have to destroy my life. If I confess my sins, if I take hold of grace from God through Christ, if I make use of the ordinary means of the scriptures, of the church, of worship, of the sacraments, and of Christian community, of brothers and sisters in Christ… Like I said, those brothers, I think of two pastors in general that we were very honest, very frank. We used to get together and ask each other five embarrassing questions. And those brothers were God’s gift to me. They were a means of grace. So, by taking hold of the means of grace, it is possible to leave those besetting sins behind, and of course, we always struggle until the day we die, but it is possible to grow and become mature and stable in your approach to human sexuality.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah, that’s really good. And maybe, Paul, I’m just thinking, as someone’s listening, if someone is listening right now and they are in sexual sin, maybe sexual addiction, I know that there can be this feeling that the enemy can whisper saying, “This is just going to be something that you’re going to have to deal with. You’ll have to just figure out.” And you just already kind of hinted at the hope that there can be, just like you can mature and you can grow, but maybe can you just speak directly to those, maybe, listeners right now who are in sexual sin and maybe they do feel like, “Well, I’ve tried to stop. I can’t. So, I’ve just settled that I’m going to have to try to do my Christian life with this.” How would you encourage them and maybe even help bring some conviction?

Paul Carter:

Yeah, sure. Well, that’s a great question, too, and it takes us right to the heart of what the gospel is. And actually, I think this is one of the places where the culture and the gospel are most at odds. The culture says that your sexual moment right now, like who you are sexually at this moment, is your identity. And this is who you are, this is who you’re going to be. And they don’t even listen to their own experts. Their own experts, for example, say that the majority… I’ve heard different numbers. I’ve heard 77%. I’ve heard over 60, whatever. So, let’s just take them both. Between 60 and 77% of teenagers, who struggle with gender dysphoria, revert to a biological understanding of their own gender by the age of 30, so meaning their own scientists are telling them that how we feel today is not our destiny as sexual people. But the culture wants to absolutize your moment of sexual feeling and sexual identity. Whereas, the gospel says, “Listen, God meets you where you are.” Right? I love that line in I Corinthians 6, “And such were some of you.” Paul lists all these sexual sins and deviations, “And such were some of you, but you are washed, you are cleansed, you are justified.” Right? “You were sanctified.” So, he’s saying, “But that’s who you were, not who you are, and God is doing this miraculous dynamic work in you.” And then it goes on and the Corinthian correspondence to say, “And we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, as though in a mirror, are being transformed by one degree of glory to the next into the same image, for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit.” So, he says, “If you have seen Christ, and if you are seeing Christ, if He continues to be your Lord, if He continues to be the object of your worship, then He’s dispensing grace to you in that dynamic, and you’re going to change all. He says, “Most of us are growing.” He doesn’t say that, he says, “We all.” He says, “No, no, no, you are going to change, but it’s going to be slow, by one degree of glory to the next, for this comes from the Lord who is the spirit.” So, to a young person, I would say, struggling with anything, I would say, you need to understand the effect of the gospel and human nature. There’s an old book, it’s called The Fourfold State of Man, and it’s very helpful. It talks about how, originally, in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, humanity, were able to sin, able not to sin. They had free will, right? They were able to sin, but able not to sin. They weren’t able to obey the Lord. After the fall, and before Christ, human beings were only able to sin. They were never able to please the Lord. They were never able to keep the law perfectly. That’s the story of Israel in the Old Testament in a nutshell, right? They tried, God gave them every advantage, every help, and they just couldn’t do it. But then, after Christ, after the gospel, after the new heart and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which was the great hope of the Old Testament, after those things come, human beings are, again, able to sin, able not to sin. That’s the state of a human being. Like Paul talks in Romans 7, he says there’s two principles at work in me, right? There’s I want to do good and I want to do bad, and that’s our experience, isn’t it? We’re able to do good now. A lot of Christians today don’t know that. With the help of the Holy Spirit, by degrees, you are able to obey the Lord. Not perfectly, necessarily, and certainly not at first, but by degrees, you’re able to walk in conformity. Paul talks about the obedience of faith. That’s what we’re talking about. So, that’s the third state of man or humanity. And then, the fourth state is the best. This is the state we enjoy in our glorified bodies after the return of Christ in the new heavens and the new earth, only able not to sin. Yeah. That’s where we’re going. So, you say to a young person, “Listen, God knows who you are. God knows where you came from, right? And such were some of you. But if He gives you a new heart, and if He fills you with the Holy Spirit, and if you’re looking at Jesus, and if you are involved in a dynamic relationship with Jesus, wherein you are worshiping Him and receiving grace from Him, you are, guaranteed, are going to change by one degree of glory to the next.” Now, until you die. Right? I John 3 tells us when the battle’s over, right? And Paul says this, too, in 1 Corinthians 4, “Do not judge before the time.” Don’t ever take the measure of a man or a woman before the time because God’s not finished with them yet. But I John 3 says, “Beloved, we are God’s children now,” so that’s who you are. But what we will be, right? We don’t know that. But one thing we do know, one day we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. So, when you see Jesus, either at his return, or at your resurrection or at your death, when you see Jesus, the battle is over, the only perfect Christian’s a dead Christian, you will be fully and finally changed. The last 100 meters of your sanctification journey will occur after you’re dead. So, there’s going to be this journey of progressive change, and then there’s going to be this beatific vision of Christ that results in the completion of your sanctification and your ultimate glory. You will be like Jesus in eternity forever.

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. That’s so good, Paul. Let’s jump here. You helped start a renewal movement in your denomination because of some of the churches that were beginning to disagree on matters of human sexuality, so the question is, what are these issues or what were these issues? And after you explained how you dealt with that, how would you encourage those that maybe are in a church or have friends that are thinking things that are just seemingly contradict a little bit of what they feel the scripture says about sex and sexuality?

Paul Carter:

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, for those of your listeners who maybe come from different faith traditions, I’m part of the Canadian Baptist Movement, and Baptists are kind of a funny bunch in that because they believe in the autonomy of the local church, there’s a sense in which denominations… I want to be careful how I say this. Denominations don’t matter as much as they might in a Presbyterian context or an Anglican context. We own our own building. We appoint our own pastors. All those kinds of things. So, as a result, a lot of Baptist churches can be kind of unaware of where their sister churches are at, and that’s probably not helpful because I think if you’re going to have an association, it should be a vital association and you should be up to speed on what’s going on. Our church, about a decade ago, became aware that there was a bit of a sexual revolution happening within our wider association and that we actually became aware of that through another sister church, who asked us for help with an issue that they were facing in their region. There’s a pastor in our association that was basically preaching that the Bible does not address the issue of homosexuality, that we don’t need to listen to what the Old Testament says because, after all, we’re all wearing polyester shirts right now so, obviously, we don’t take that seriously. Jesus never spoke about homosexuality, I think that was the second sermon in the series, which, by the way, is not true, but anyway, that’s what the sermon was. And then, the third message was, “And you know what? The apostle Paul was just a creature of his time. He didn’t really understand the nature of homosexual relationships today. He was just reacting against Greco-Roman excesses.” And so, the Bible doesn’t really address this issue, and therefore, we can all believe whatever we like. And so, we were concerned by that, obviously, as you can well imagine, and we started a bit of a renewal effort. We made a determination that we didn’t want to just go after the fruit, which was just a defection from the biblical gospel with respect to sexuality, we wanted to go after the root, and the root issue for us was hermeneutics, how people are reading their Bible. It occurred to us that people in our wider association were reading the Bible in a way that allowed them to avoid coming into conflict with cultural norms, particularly with respect to sex and gender, and we were concerned about that. Because once you teach people to read the Bible such that it means the opposite of what it appears to say, they will use that in more than just one category. It’s a universal asset that will eat its way through every aspect of Christian doctrine and teachings. So, we decided to focus on the issue of hermeneutics, and we had some great conferences and some great guests and some great speakers and we began to work on that. But it may have been a matter of too little, too late. Humanly speaking, it appears that we are about to lose. This has been a long process through a variety of appropriate institutional channels. We’ve had churches, in essence, try to normalize homosexuality. Very recently, it was on the CBC, there was a pastor in our wider association who used the Sunday sermon to do a coming out message in terms of transgender identity. So, obviously, this has massive implications for this individual and for the family, but our churches are in chaos. They’re not sure how to respond. And again, part of it is just, we haven’t talked enough about sexuality, and we haven’t talked enough about hermeneutics, how we’re reading our Bible. So, we made the determination that it would be best and wisest to focus on the root, because if you fix the root, you probably address three or four or five different fruits simultaneously.

Isaac Dagneau:

Absolutely.

Paul Carter:

So, that was our decision. Even though, as I said, humanly speaking, it appears as though we’re about to fail, I would recommend the same approach to anybody. We don’t want to just be fruit bashers, because we just find ourselves playing Whack-A-Mole. We want to go after the root, and the root issue, to be honest with you, in the church right now… Our denomination is a microcosm of evangelicalism in general, is particularly evangelicalism in Canada, and I say the root issue is really hermeneutics and authority. How are you reading the Bible? And are you in complete submission to the Lordship of God through Christ? That’s really the issue. Who’s making the rules for you? Is it the culture? Is it yourself? Is it your desires? Where does authority come from? Does it ultimately reside in the Christ of scripture? That’s the big issue that I would recommend folks focus on if they’re in a similar situation?

Isaac Dagneau:

Yeah. That’s good. Paul, as we finish our conversation here, and maybe this could be a conglomerate of things you’ve already said, but maybe bringing it in sun. Maybe I would ask it like this. Could you just encourage those listening right now who are both married and not, so both single people, which we’ve already addressed at the beginning, which I hope was helpful to those that who are single, but also to married people, by helping just understand more biblically the act of sexual intimacy and just who we are as sexual beings, that it’s okay to enjoy, it’s okay to experience that? But yeah, what’s a way you could just encourage us in terms of the act of sexual intimacy and who we are as sexual beings.

Paul Carter:

Yeah. Maybe a helpful way to say it, in order to address, as you say, both those who are married and wanting to understand sexuality, and then those who are living a celibate or desiring to live a chaste single life, maybe a good way to say it would be to say that sexual intercourse is one of the ways that we image and represent God. It’s one of the ways we fulfill our function to be image and likeness. By saying it’s one of the ways, of course, that allows space for people to understand that there are many other ways that we image God and that we represent and resemble God over creation, and so a celibate person can represent and resemble God in many other very important ways. But for the married couple, sex is originally introduced in the Bible in that context, right? So, in Genesis 1:27, it says, “So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, He created them.” That sentence in Hebrew is actually intentionally grammatically obscure. We don’t often… flip back and forth between him and them, singulars and plurals, but the idea was that humanity, in its essence, is both a singularity, we are the image and likeness of God as individuals, but is also a plurality, meaning there is something that we say particularly as a plurality about God when we come together as man and wife. And so, that is embedded in the understanding of human sexuality. So, Genesis 2:24-25, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.” And so, when the man and the woman come together, they maintain their individuality. He’s still a man, she’s still a woman, they’re distinct entities, and yet the expression one flesh literally means one soul, one entity. And so, it’s a very strong term. There’s a sense, then, in which the sex act says something about who God is. It is one of the unique ways that we represent and resemble God. And of course, if you think about it, that would have to be done somehow. For human beings to fulfill their function to resemble and represent God, we wouldn’t have to find some way of reflecting this singularity and plurality that is at the heart of our understanding of God. God is a singularity. There’s only one God, and yet there was plurality to God, too, with respect to His personhood. And so, it’s a special part of our human calling, to represent and resemble God, and I think when we understand that… By the way, that explains why the man and the woman were naked and not ashamed. What’s to be ashamed of? The sex act is basically presented as a giant Bible study and sermon all rolled up into one. It’s an exploration of God’s character, and it’s a declaration of God’s character. Why would we be ashamed of that? That’s part of what it means to be human. That’s our job. And so, they took to that aspect of their calling and mandate without any shame, and so should we. Now, when you understand what a thing is, there are implications, then, with respect to how that thing is done. I think this understanding of sex rules out any casual approach to sex. We can’t have sex with any number of people and then come together in a covenant union with a one and immediately discover that sense of exploration, delight, vulnerability, openness. We talked about that already. That’s going to make that part of our job more difficult. And so, there can’t be a casual sex. Sex becomes sacred. It becomes a type of worship. It becomes related to our mandate. It’s not incidental. It’s not simply a human function like eating or going to the bathroom. No, no, no. There is a sacred nature to this, and so it can’t be casual. It can’t be exploitative, right? Because the members of the Trinity, the persons of the Godhead, they delight in one another, they delight to serve one another. Jesus talked about how, as the Son, He delighted to do the Father’s will. The Spirit, the Spirit delights to throw glory on Jesus, the Son, and so it can’t be exploitative. It needs to be glory giving, it needs to be mutually delighting. And of course, it immediately outlaws any kind of betrayal or adultery because God is faithful, and the Son is faithful to the Father. The Father is faithful to the Son. The Spirit is uniform in His delight to glorify the Son. So, there needs to be, again, that understanding of fidelity. And I would say it also rules out homosexuality, because part of what we’re celebrating in the Godhead here is diversity and unity, and so it’s these other parts finding delight in each other that, again, throws light on who God is, as part of the exploration, as part of the proclamation. And so, how we understand what sex is, of course, conditions how we engage it as Christian people, and this is why I think it’s so important that we maintain our distinctiveness with respect to sexuality. Christianity has never gone along with the crowd in it’s history. It has always been counter-cultural, and we forget that. We think that this is a new phenomenon, but it wasn’t. In the first century, what Christians believed about sex ran completely counter to Roman cultural norms. And so, this has always been the locus of our witness. It’s not incidental to our witness. People will say, “Well, this is not a gospel issue.” Oh, brothers and sisters, it certainly is a gospel issue. It’s the gospel issue with respect to what we believe about the new heart and the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s a gospel issue in you, but then it’s also a gospel issue with respect to our proclamation. Our witness has always been embedded and amplified in our sexual conduct, and we mustn’t lose that. It’s been part of our story since the very beginning.

Isaac Dagneau:

That’s so good. Well, those are great final thoughts. And anyways, Paul, I just want to say huge thank you, and I’m sure my listeners would thank you, as well. You addressed this… Yeah, I would still say it’s kind of a taboo topic, in a gracious, biblical, pure way, and I trust that it was very helpful for… well, obviously, for myself, but also for our listeners. So, I just want to say thank you so much for taking the time to do this with us.

Paul Carter:

Well, it’s my pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.

Erika:

We hope you enjoyed this episode of indoubt, and thanks for joining us. Even though sex is something that is talked about all the time in our culture, it’s often skewed when it comes to talking about it from a biblical point of view. Hopefully, you learn some new ways to view, respect, and understand sex during this episode. Sex is so important in the life of a Christian, and that’s not a bad thing. All we need to do is understand it and participate in it in a way that God designed it for. And thanks so much to Paul for joining us today for another episode. If you’d like to hear more from Paul, you can find him on social media @pastrpaulcarter. It’s like pastor without the O. We’ll have all of his social channels linked on the episode page on our website. Don’t miss next week when we’ll have Isaac back in the studio with apologist, Steve Kim to talk about the big, often confusing, topic of human rights. We’ll see you then.

Thanks so much for listening. If you want to hear more, subscribe on iTunes or Spotify, or visit us online at indoubt.ca or indoubt.com. We’re also on social media, so make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.