An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
It’s a topic that is more relevant to our day and contemporary discussion than you could have imagined only a few years ago, but it’s a topic Christians need to be prepared to speak to biblically. I’m Fred Zaspel here at Books At a Glance, and I’m talking about sexuality, of course. We have Christopher Yuan with us today to talk about his excellent new book, Holy Sexuality: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story.
Christopher, welcome, and congratulations on your new book.
Yuan:
Thanks, Fred for having me on.
Zaspel:
What is your book all about? And what is the contribution you hope to make?
Yuan:
I think there are books already out there that cover this topic of homosexuality. Some good books that have focused on the ethical nature, defending the biblical traditional understanding of sexual morality. And then other books that are a bit more practical in nature, talking about how to reach out to the gay community, how to minister to those who experience same-sex attractions. What I felt like was missing and was hitting it not just exegetically and ethically and not practically, but understanding sexuality in light of systematic and biblical theology. There wasn’t much done in that, so that’s the contribution that I hope to make with my new book.
Zaspel:
Tell us about your own background and how you came to write this?
Yuan:
I wasn’t raised in a Christian home and I wrestled with same-sex attractions myself from a young age. I didn’t come out of the closet until I was in my early twenties. I’m from Chicago; I moved to Louisville, Kentucky where I was pursuing my doctorate in dentistry there, and it was there that I came out of the closet. Remember, I was not a Christian. I came out to my parents and actually through that event, or through that crisis, my mother came to faith quite dramatically and then a little bit after that my father did, as well, miraculously, both of them coming to faith. I went in the opposite direction. I, unfortunately, was putting more emphasis on having fun and just being a crazy unbelieving young adult at that time. Even though I was still going to dental school, I was also kind of living it up and partying and going to the clubs. I got involved in drugs and also selling drugs. I was eventually expelled from dental school, moved to Atlanta, Georgia, farther away from my parents. And at that time, I was continuing to do what I wanted, just having fun at that time and I kept selling drugs. Eventually, I was caught and I found myself in jail. It was there that God began the process of breaking my hardened heart and it took some time, I think, because I was so hardened. But my parents kept reaching out to me; they prayed for me. For example, my mother fasted every Monday for seven years and fasted once for thirty-nine days on my behalf. Their patient, persistent gospel witness is an integral part of my testimony. It was actually there in prison that I found a Bible, in a trashcan of all things, and I began reading it. I have to admit, initially I just viewed it as a book. I wasn’t necessarily interested in it. To be honest, Fred, I was reading it because there was nothing else around to read. The Gideons are really good about getting the Bibles, free, into prisons and unfortunately, they are used for different things, but one was thrown away into the trash and I picked it up from the trash and I began reading it.
One of the first things that convicted me wasn’t so much the ethical nature of or that same-sex relationships are sinful, what I think was really essential was for me to separate who I was from my sexuality. Because I think, as we look into our culture, today, there has been this conflation between our sexuality and personhood and ontology. And it’s almost just a given – this is who you are. And as I read through God’s word and was confronted with the New Testament and the writers talking about union with Christ, that we are in Christ, in him. I mean you can’t get away from that. And I knew nothing about the reformers. I simply read the New Testament and could not get away from that. I was challenged in myself that I really had put my identity solely in being gay. This is who I was. Not what I felt, not what I did, not even how I was, but purely, as the world tells us today, this is who you are. And I think that’s an important aspect and that’s why my book begins with that identity piece, union with Christ ontological aspect. Because I think that’s the missing piece that we as Christians don’t get. We jump into the morality aspect but miss this very important theological foundational piece of identity.
Also, I was confronted with what I viewed as Christian pop culture that if you have same-sex attractions, your goal needs to turn straight. And, again, I was reading Scripture, and I didn’t have the baggage of the past, of growing up in the church. I just looked at it with fresh eyes and saw how the Bible was actually just as, how would you say, negative, derogatory, in heterosexual sin as it was of same-sex relationships. So I knew we couldn’t just condone any sort of heterosexual relationships. Any sexual intimacy is reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. Going from Genesis to Revelation, it’s a very clear witness. So I knew that heterosexuality could not be the goal or God’s intent, if you want to put it that way, for all of us. And it was actually there that I came up with this concept called holy sexuality, which is chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage between a man and a woman. When I wrote my memoir with my mother that was published in 2011, I introduced that concept of holy sexuality and I knew that I had to flesh it out. I very briefly introduced it in one of my chapters and I knew I had to explain that more and develop that more and flesh that out. So this new book is the result of all that.
Zaspel:
Talk to us about the concepts of “sexual orientation” and “sexual identity.” Do these concepts define who we are or not?
Yuan:
Great question, Fred. I don’t know if it’s just part of my nature, but I tend to question everything. If there’s a concept, or a word, I need to think that through. So, this concept of sexual orientation – I think many people just take it at face value, and then start using this concept without first truly defining it. What does it mean? And then second, putting it under the microscope of Scripture, of God’s truth. Is this, after we’ve defined it and all the implications of it, is this something that Christians can fully espouse? Defining it might be one of the first most difficult steps. People don’t really define it – what exactly does it mean? I think people would say it’s related to sexual desires, but it’s not equivalent to, so it’s maybe the potential to have sexual desires toward one sex, to the opposite sex, to the same-sex, or maybe to both. But it’s also more than a potential of capacities. If you look at the American Psychological Association’s definition, it also relates community and a sense of identity. With these definitions, I, then, critique that. So is there another current biblical category that helps us understand desires, or potential to have desires, or a capacity to have desires, specifically maybe a capacity to have sinful desires. Because what we often hear is the Bible does not address sexual orientation. And I didn’t want to take that at face value, I wanted to critique that and see is that really true? Of course, we can say the Bible doesn’t say anything about Internet. Well, does that mean that it might not say anything specifically, but does that mean that the Bible has nothing to say about it? That is a different question. So, sexual orientation – yes, the Bible might not specifically address the capacity to have same-sex desires, sexual desires, but I believe the Bible definitely has something to say about the capacity to have sinful desires, or the capacity to be tempted to have sinful desires. Paul talks a lot about sarx, the flesh, the nature. So, when we talk, then, about sin and the realm of that and the doctrine of sin, we get into original sin and indwelling sin, actual sin and I would say that I do believe that the Bible does speak into this.
But also, sexual orientation as you brought up earlier, about bringing in this identity aspect and how we really have distorted an understanding of the capacity to have desires or just even the desire itself. That should not be who we are, but it can represent how we are wired, you might want to say. We need to really be able to clearly differentiate between the core of who we are and the experiences that we might have as a result of sin.
Zaspel:
You mentioned that you want your book to examine these questions theologically. How does theological anthropology – the biblical teaching about who we are and where we came from – inform this discussion?
Yuan:
When we talk about homosexuality, sexual orientation, the term sexual identity will come into the picture. In essence, my book was a critique of the secular concept of sexuality, sexual orientation and sexual identity. And since we are looking at and framing this question around this concept of identity, identity is a theological concept. I thought if sexual identity should not be who we are and that that’s a wrong way to think about sexuality, that sexuality is a wrong paradigm, and then who are we? According to God’s word, who are we? We start right in Genesis 1, that we are all created in the image of God. The imago Dei is a very important starting point for us as we move forward in understanding who we are and also who is God. That’s a key concept. I really think that we can’t fully understand human sexuality unless we start with theological anthropology, particularly the aspects of the imago Dei and how that relates, as well, to the doctrine of sin. Because when we begin there, that really helps frame the question about sexual orientation and same-sex attractions. For example, you hear Christians in church who will say my friend has been this way as long as they remember, right? So therefore, the conclusion that they make from that, the logic they jump to, is therefore God made them this way, or this is the way they are. But they do that critique, or that understanding without having that foundation of theological anthropology. Yes, we are created in the image of God, but we also are born into sin. And we all have that sin nature, regardless of who we are, every one of us does. So having that framework really helps us to better understand that.
I started there with the understanding of the imago Dei and doctrine of sin, and from there built that foundation to better understand not only sexual behavior, but sexual desires, temptation, and our relationships.
Zaspel:
What’s the problem with using “therapy” to change sexual orientation?
Yuan:
I would say for many years, actually several decades, the evangelical church has diagnosed homosexuality in the wrong way. You go to a doctor and you’re not feeling well, you don’t know what it is, it could be flu, it could be viral, it could be bacterial, anything. It is very important that that doctor diagnoses you correctly because once that doctor makes that diagnosis, then she or he is able to treat the problem. Diagnosis is key and honestly, I think that the evangelical church, we have diagnosed same-sex attractions incorrectly and treated it as a developmental problem or a psychological disorder. Something happened in your childhood, maybe your relationship with your parents was a little skewed or your father was absent, etc. Maybe you were abused as a child, so, therefore, as a result you now have same-sex attractions, or therefore your psychological or sexual growth was stunted so you didn’t fully mature into heterosexuality. That’s kind of the common understanding that we’ve had for many years and yet, what it misses is the true problem. When we look at same-sex behavior in Scripture it’s clear that it is sin. So, if this is a sin problem, then we know if we are going to talk about any root cause, the root cause of this is sin, our sin nature, it’s original sin. Honestly, when we come at it with a more therapeutic or psychoanalytical methodology, then we are really trying to come up with an anthropocentric solution to a spiritual problem. It’s strictly a sin issue. I tell people if the solution for sin was a support group, then instead of providing us Christ, he would’ve given us a good support group. Or if the answer to sin was a better environment, then God would have just given us a better environment. But clearly the answer to sin, which is grounded in Scripture from Genesis 3, the problem of the Fall and the consequence of that, not only our guilt, but also that our nature has been distorted, that now the solution from that is Christ. Hence, my book, Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story. Having that full arc of God’s redemptive history: Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation, can really enlighten us to so many solutions to the relevant issues that we’re dealing with, today.
Zaspel:
People often feel unable to help those with same sex attraction because they themselves can’t empathize – they don’t feel sexually attracted to the same sex so they assume they cannot help those who do. What’s wrong with that thinking?
Yuan:
I find this is a common thing, and I understand where maybe pastors or elders or just Christians are coming from because this is so new to them. And part of it is because we have not talked about this very much in the church, especially conservative, evangelical, Bible believing churches. We might talk about it in the sense that this is sin, it is wrong, the culture is going this direction, we need to run from that. And those things are all true, but when we talk about it in that way, we treat this one sin issue as being in a different category on its own. The way I look at it is, if we want to put it in a different category we can, but that would be in the same category with all other sexual sins. I know that we all are dealing with sexual brokenness, so that, then, doesn’t make this category that much different. When we understand it in light of the reality that it’s just like any other sexual sin, it helps us to realize that we can help another individual wrestling with this. As much as it might seem foreign to us, it really just comes down to a biblical understanding of sin. If sin is a problem, Christ is the answer. I don’t really know of any other sin issue where you need to be an expert or actually struggle with that same sin to help someone else. As I said in my book, if there’s a drug addict, or maybe a heroin addict, you don’t have to do heroin or struggle with heroin yourself to help a heroin addict. In the same way, maybe a young man who is struggling with a pornography addiction, a pastor does not have to struggle with a pornography addiction to help a young man who is struggling with that. If we know the Lord Jesus Christ and have had even just some victory over sin, we can help another believer. When individuals come to any one of us in their time of need, I really believe what they don’t need most is an expert; what they need most is just a Christian brother or Christian sister to walk with them.
Zaspel:
Yes, that’s good.
Any practical suggestions how we might begin reaching out to a friend who struggles with this?
Yuan:
I think one thing, and I sometimes get this as well, is a lot of times people have a gut feeling that something is going on, that a friend is wrestling with same-sex attractions. I have friends who will ask, “I’ve always wondered whether this was a struggle with a certain friend, can I ask them?” And I think it’s best that the individual has to open up on their own, in their own time. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything. I think we need to be transparent ourselves about our own struggles because I think transparency fosters transparency. But also, I think giving people confidence and verbally saying that, having people know that their friendship is not something that can change in the midst of anything that the individual might say or do, that safety that people can be open about that. I think when an individual does open up, I think it’s great to, of course, not be surprised, (inside you might feel surprised, but don’t express that). I would really thank them that they trusted you with this really intimate personal private matter and invited you in to walk with them. I would help remind them that they are not alone. Like I said before, that yes, you might not be an expert on this, and you might have no idea, but a person struggling with this sin does not need a person who knows exactly what they are going through. What they need is an individual who will walk with them and point them to Christ. Get in God’s word, involve them in the community of the body of Christ.
This is another important thing. You asked, Fred, at the beginning, a contribution that I felt my book added to the conversation. And one thing that I saw lacking, especially in many of the books of the past was that it really left the local church out of the picture. It kind of gave this impression that this is just for experts, leave us alone and we will handle this. So, you have these parachurch organizations that have formed up and they were the ones that were doing all the work and helping people. And I don’t think, in a way, that was the best way, because if the local church is out of it, I don’t really see true discipleship happening that is devoid from the local church. I really wanted to bring the local church back into this conversation and make it actually central to the place where people can find hope and healing and freedom.
Zaspel:
That’s got to be right.
Yuan:
It has to be the center of that – the local church. And not even just friendship. Recently people say that people who have same-sex attractions what they need most is to have a covenant friendship, like a spiritual friendship, in a sense, to replace the need that they have for marriage. And I’m not convinced of that. Again, like I said before, I love to play devil’s advocate. I don’t take anything just at face value because of anything I say, and I’ll say the same thing, I don’t want my students at Moody to believe just because I said it, that it’s true. You go and study God’s word for yourself. So this concept of friendship, I took that concept and I went to God’s word. I went to the Old Testament, went to the New Testament, and what I found was a very, very sparse theology of friendship. It was a little here, a little there. And I also found it kind of ironic, when we talk about friendship of two men that are best friends, we often will go automatically to Jonathan and David, right? We think, Jonathan and David, that’s like the pinnacle of two men having healthy, godly, nonsexual, intimate friendship. But what I noted is the Bible never calls David and Jonathan friends. They didn’t use that word. Not to say that they were not friends, but that was not the main framework that they understood it. But what I did see, was that Jonathan and David were called brothers. They called each other brother. So that made me think, is there an understanding of relationship that the Bible is pushing forward? Then I go to the New Testament and I find that actually you can’t get around the understanding of brotherhood, family, sisterhood. And then I thought, well, let’s go back to the Old Testament; and, of course, we have in the Old Testament a huge emphasis upon family, children, offspring. In the New Testament we get that, as well, but it actually isn’t the strong emphasis upon blood family. Even Christ said, who is my brother, who is my sister, who is my mother? Those who obey our Father. What we see, then, is in light of God’s redemptive history, this concept of family that is so strongly rooted in the Old Testament and the people of the Old Covenant. Then when we move to the New Covenant, we see this family concept is still there, but it is not family bound by physical blood, but it is family bound by the blood of Christ. That then has huge implications of our understanding of a lot of things. For example, people of the Old Covenant grew by procreation, whereas people of the New Covenant don’t grow by procreation, we actually grow by regeneration. There’s nothing more Gospel than the concept of born-again. This concept of family and the local church – what is family other than the local church, the body of Christ, and the universal church of believers. I think the real help for an individual isn’t to find that one individual who can be your best friend for life. What we all need, not just those of us who have same-sex attractions, not that any of us who struggle with and are tempted with sin, what we need most is Christ and the body of Christ. That is what God has provided for us.
Zaspel:
You don’t address same-sex issues only, in your book. If you would, give us a brief overview of the book and a sampling of the kinds of topics you address and why you call this “Holy Sexuality.”
Yuan:
In the heart of my book, even though I start with theological anthropology, identity, image of God, the doctrine of sin and expound holy sexuality talking about desire and temptation. I have a chapter on desires and a chapter on temptations. In the heart of my book, I have four chapters designated: two chapters on marriage, two chapters on singleness. Why did I do that? Well, first of all if you’ve engaged with anyone in the gay community, marriage is so important for those in the gay community where if the government denies a marriage certificate, then it sounds like these individuals no longer have any meaning. So, I think marriage, in our culture, has really been elevated way higher than it ought to be. What about the church? I would say that I think the church also sometimes has a tendency to over emphasize the goodness of marriage to the point where I think even we have almost idolized it. And I know when I speak, listeners think, how in the world can you say that we idolize marriage? Marriage is good, true, but I really believe that the most deceptive form of idolatry is when we worship something good. Good things aren’t meant to be worshiped. So, I have a couple of chapters on marriage to help us understand the purpose and the intent of marriage, especially in light of God’s grand story, especially in light of the eschatological aspect of marriage and how even Jesus says that there will be no marriage in heaven because the perfect marriage is Christ being wed to the church. And what we are experiencing today with marriage here on earth is just a shadow of that perfect reality.
So, understanding marriage in the light of that; but also understanding singleness, how both are good. Because, again, if holy sexuality is chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage, are we then, in a sense, misunderstanding God’s truths on singleness and marriage? So I talk about that. Several people have contacted me since my book came out in November, that have emailed our ministry, even a few of my students in my class at Moody. They had picked up my book thinking, “I picked up this book to know how better to minister to the gay community.” And they finished it and said, “wow! Actually, this book was for me.” They don’t even have same-sex attraction, themselves. Some people who are married, and they thought, this really helped me in my own marriage in better understanding what is the real purpose of me and my wife? What is that? Is it just that we are to love one another, or is it something greater in light of God’s grand story? That husband and wife are supposed to reflect the mystery that Paul talks about in Ephesians 5, that beautiful mystery of Christ, the perfect Lamb of God being wed to the church, the spotless bride. Understanding that; but also, singles – many of them feel left out in the church and they feel like they can’t fit in. What exactly does this gift mean? I think there are so many misunderstandings of this gift that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 7. I just simply take it that it really is just a gift; Paul did not spend too much time explaining that because I don’t think there is that much to explain. There isn’t a special ability given with this gift. We don’t have any evidence that the Holy Spirit is in that, so I don’t see this as necessarily a spiritual gift, but I think of it just as a simple gift from God, a grace gift, a charisma. So, anyway, I’m pretty excited about this book because at the end of the day, you asked, what is holy sexuality. Well, at the end of the day, holy sexuality is really good news for everyone. Every one of us, young or old, single or married, whether you are wrestling with same-sex attractions or not, holy sexuality, chastity in singleness, faithfulness in marriage in light of God’s beautiful redemptive story is truly good news for everyone.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Christopher Yuan about his new book, Holy Sexuality: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story. It’s a biblical, insightful, and helpful study of a topic on which you need to be informed.
Christopher, thanks for being with us today.
Yuan:
Thanks so much, Fred, for having me on. God bless you.
