I know a lot of people are struggling with self-isolation, but I must confess, this has been a wonderful time of growth for me.

Generally people think of staying put as boring and mundane, and they fantasise about hitting the road (or the airport) and leaving everything behind for a life of travel. They equate the lack of responsibility to freedom, and they think their friends who travel all the time are “living the dream.”

But I have lived that dream.

By the age of nine I had already lived in nine cities/towns. I have lived in South Africa, Australia, the UK and India. I went to a summer school in New York City when I was 21, I did a student exchange program in China when I was 14, and I have holidayed in goodness knows how many other countries, including Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, and most of western Europe.

I know travel well.

Travel and ‘wanderlust’ are terms that are usually used with overwhelmingly positive connotations. But, as the Christian writer Ethan Renoe points out, the Bible only ever refers to ‘wandering’ as a curse, and home as a blessing.

Of course there are benefits to expanding your horizons and being exposed to other cultures. If you have never traveled in your life, you should do it at least once. But when it comes to the aimless nomadic existence, there is a dark side behind all the social media posts that people don’t see, and I would like to address some of them here.

First, I am always broke. This one is pretty self explanatory. I know they say that travel “makes you richer” culturally, and there is a point to this, but let’s be real. It also makes you poorer. Not just because flights are expensive but because you make less headway in your career and are less likely to be considered for promotions and pay rises if you are constantly quitting or taking more unpaid leave to go globe trotting again.

Second, I often make up small lies or deliberately leave out certain facts in order to maintain this image of “living the dream.” I became most aware of how much I do this by default a few years ago, when an old school friend messaged me on social media to say how much she loved my photographs, how she’d been following me for years, and that she aspired to hopefully be able to live my amazing life one-day. I was living in India at the time. What she did not know was that I had been sexually assaulted a week before by a police officer when I was on a train. Nobody online knew that I was having multiple panic attacks a day or that I ended up having severe insomnia which lasted over five years. I was in the darkest place I had ever been, and yet I was constantly receiving messages from people saying that they wanted to be me.

Third, and perhaps the most important of them all: I struggle to maintain relationships. The Bible makes it abundantly clear that relationships – first with God and second with other people – are the most important things to cultivate during your life on earth. I am really really really bad at this. When I was a small child we moved city every six months, so I was always preparing to say goodbye. I’ve now been a Christian for 21 years and my biggest struggle is observe Jesus’ basic command to love people. I view them as disposable. I am good at small talk, but because I have met so many different people all over the world, I am too emotionally exhausted to “let them in.” People often think they have a meaningful friendship with me, but it is rarely felt on my side. If I am completely honest, I can count on one hand how many friends I have who don’t make me feel numb.

It is often remarked that third-culture kids understand the “heaven is our home” thing better than anyone else because we don’t have anywhere on earth that we consider to be home. I think this is a tragedy, not a badge of honour.

There is also the obvious problem that this travel lifestyle is fundamentally terrible news for the planet God has called us to steward. I won’t go into this too much, but you get the picture.

The dream can actually be a nightmare.

But, as I am learning, staying put can be incredibly healing. I now live in a smallish city in England, and the community here has been teaching me a lot over the last five years. This is the longest I have ever lived in one place since I left my parents at age 17.

The most important thing God is teaching me right now is that, putting down roots can actually help reverse the sin of self-absorption.

For example, the simple act of planting a garden is teaching me how to love the earth, to recognise and submit to the seasons, to be hopeful, and to be still. Caring for something like a plant requires a huge amount of patience which I am not known for having, and it forces me to turn my attention outward.

Moreover, being committed to an incarnational community requires a different kind of generosity than what I am used to. Generosity is no longer about just sending cash to an organisation (this is good, please keep doing this!) but it is also about cooking meals for friends when they have a baby, or doing grocery shopping for neighbours who are self-isolating during Covid-19, or allowing one’s schedule to be interrupted by a friend who needs someone to sit and pray with them. This is actually more costly than just sending out cash, but it is much more rewarding.

Of course there are benefits to travel, and I don’t need to list them all here because society tells us this all the time. I doubt I’ll ever stop travelling – mostly because my family live all over the world and I need to see them from time to time! But my main point is that we should not envy the wandering nomad. Having a home is a gift from God, and you should cherish it.

You cannot grow without putting down roots, and your roots will die if you are transplanted too often.

So be encouraged to stay put. The Lord may have more opportunity to work on your heart, which is what is most important to him.

S

Recommended Reading

The New Lonely by Ethan Renoe. He also has a blog worth following here.

How Travel Narrows the Mind by Giles Fraser

The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller

About a year and a half ago, I asked the Lord for an unusual News Years gift.

“Lord,” I prayed, “please can you make this coming year really really boring?”

He did, and it was excellent. Almost everything in my life had become far too complex, and I had developed some very serious anxiety. I knew I was spiritually dry, and it felt like my whole life was running away from me.

I needed to stop and reset.

Many of us now are beginning to realise the value of this time in quarantine. Obviously this pandemic is a terrible thing – my sister had Covid-19 and has been very sick. This illness has caused a lot of harm, destroying people’s health and their livelihoods, and even ripping apart relationships.

But there is something I’m learning in this time of social distancing that I don’t think had ever struck me so strongly before. A forced time of rest (or Shabbat, if you will) is a spiritual discipline. And this discipline has the capacity to lead us into a wonderful gift that is simplicity.

We start to re-evaluate what is important to us. We realise that we are not in control of everything, and that there is more to life than endless acquisition or productivity. I have been thinking a lot about how we are not made primarily for utility, nor do we find fulfilment in endless hyper-individualistic consumption.

When we are forced to stop, we realise this simple truth: everything is the Lord’s (Psalm 24) and nothing is ours.

Richard Foster writes,

When we are tempted to think that what we own is the result of our personal efforts, it takes only a little draught or small accident to show us once again how utterly dependent we are for everything.

This is one of the reasons why fasting can be so helpful. It reminds us how much we need sustenance from something that is outside of us.

The gift of simplicity is not new – on the contrary it is very familiar to a large number of monastic communities. Although we are not all called to be monks and nuns, we are all invited into the gift of living simply.

This is not the same as the minimalist movement, but there will be some overlapping ideas. They both force you to consider what really matters in your life, as well as what your underlying values are. But, unlike minimalism, simplicity goes beyond our obsession with stuff and starts to look at the root problems of our addiction to consumption, which is really an addiction to control.

For example, the Netflix sensation Marie Kondo did an excellent job of convincing us to throw away whatever did not bring us joy (and also how to fold things nicely, for which I am enormously grateful). But, for Marie and others, stuff is still the idol. Once you have thrown away all the stuff you no longer want, you must now buy a whole bunch of new stuff that you didn’t even know you wanted; specifically from her. 

Throwing away half your possessions and changing your aesthetic may bring some (superficial) joy in the short term, but it will not address your need for control.

We are obsessed with ownership because we believe that once we have bought something it is really truly ours. And once it is mine I can control it. But what really happens is our stuff (or desire for stuff) slowly and subtly begins to control us.

Let’s remember that Jesus did not die on Good Friday and resurrect on Easter Sunday so that we can control or be controlled by stuff. He came to bring us freedom.

So how do we break this? Richard Foster provides some helpful insights:

1. Learn to appreciate creation. As much as you try, you can never tame it or control it. I have recently started growing my own food, and I had no idea how much we depend on the four seasons for our sustenance! If you can, spend some time in the wild. When you stop and meditate on the natural world it puts your life into a dramatically different perspective.
2. Try and buy less stuff, but when you do need to make a purchase, consider the people whom that item connects you with. A piece of local artwork may have a very small supply chain with just a buyer and a seller, whereas an unethically sourced T-shirt may have a surprisingly long supply chain, with no traceable information that links you with who made it or who grew the cotton. Ask whether your custom will support or exploit the people that this item connects you with. 
3. Give stuff away to those who need it more than you. I’m not talking about throwing away clutter that will end up in landfill. Consider your community – am I holding too tightly onto my possessions or am I freely making what I have available to others? This one is definitely my main struggle.
4. Avoid anything that distracts you from first seeking the Kingdom of God. After telling us to not worry about what we eat or wear, Jesus then shows us how: ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.’ (Matthew 6:33) This may seem a bit abstract, so I would highly recommend Foster’s books (see below) where he unpacks it further.

Above all, the gift of simplicity can only really stem from the peace and contentment that we find in knowing Jesus.

Paul writes in Philippians 4:11-13,

For I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Until next time,

S

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Recommended Resources: 

Freedom of Simplicity by Richard Foster

Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster (includes a fantastic two chapters about simplicity and solitude)

Generosity, a video by The Bible Project

Solitude and Community, a sermon by Tim Mackie

Or perhaps more specifically: let’s talk about how we talk about abstinence to unmarried Christians.

This is story is less about abstinence itself and more about Christian attitudes towards it when advising people who are not married. Here, I am going to outline two differing Christian views on abstinence by exploring the influence of two particular Christians; one from the Patristic period, and one from today. This is effectively a story about how two men – each grounded in their own culture and time period – set the church on two remarkable trajectories with her attitudes toward sex, abstinence and marriage. Although both of these characters have claimed to have life-changing turning points in their lives, as we shall see, neither managed to fully escape the cultural baggages they carried into their theologies.

So, let’s first explore the origins of the “Sex is dangerous” rhetoric:

Saint Augustine

Augustine was a North African man who famously met with God in a garden and wrote a book about it called the Confessions around 400AD. He is widely considered one of the most influential Christian thinkers after Paul, and was hugely important in systematising theologies of the Fall, the Trinity, and so on.

Augustine wrote his Confessions in his mid-forties, and at this point he had recently been made a bishop and was coming to terms with his famously shady history. Most notably for this blog post, Augustine had cohabited with a woman before he became a Christian, and was quite distressed when he had to break up with her.

Throughout his writing, Augustine gives a very honest and raw account on the power lust had over him throughout his life. For Augustine, even after converting to Christianity, his appetite for sex never really went away (big shock there), and this unfortunately skewed his theology. In an attempt to throw away his shameful fleshy tendencies, Augustine opted for a life of celibacy once he converted, and he is now quite famous for asserting that God only made sex for procreation, and that sex for pleasure was from the devil.

As such, the catholic church spent many centuries teaching that even within marriage sex can be a bad thing, and that making babies should be its sole purpose. This has caused immeasurable damage to Christians throughout the ages, simply because they were told by religious authorities that their God-given desires are actually bad and shameful.

In a nutshell, the dominant Christian view for centuries was that abstinence is good because sex is bad. 

A lot of time has passed since then, and we have thankfully figured out that God does not hate sex. As Maggie Smith aptly remarks in the 2005 film Keeping Mum: “the Bible is full of sex – haven’t you noticed?“.

One would hope this would eventually happen, given that we have had the Middle Ages, a Renaissance, a Reformation, and many other cultural movements that have no doubt shifted and shaped Christianity’s attitudes to just about everything.

We now come to the surprising “Sex is THE BEST” rhetoric, stemming from the True Love Waits movement that is ever so prominent in American Evangelicalism.

Joshua Harris

The cultural background to all of this comes from the sexual Revolution of the 60s and 70s. Key influences include the Pill (which made the consequences of sex less risky), psychologists such as Freud (who wrote about the detrimental impact of sexual repression), and of course the media (playboy culture and the normalisation of pornography). The church had to respond to all of this, as abstinence until marriage was no longer the norm.

Enter the Purity movement.

The fundamental premise of this movement is that sex is really really really good if you do it God’s way. (i.e. only do it with one person in your whole life, and that person is your spouse). In other words, they are selling abstinence by selling sex. If you want the best sex ever, then take some advice from the guy who invented it (God).

This counter-revolution to the surrounding culture went on for quite a while, but it climaxed (cough) in 1997 with one of the most famous books to ever come out of the purity movement: I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris. Written by an unmarried 20 year old homeschooled kid from Dayton, Ohio, this book sold over 1.2 million copies, and is regarded by many Christian millennials as one of the key influencers of the purity movement.

The book promises a fulfilling sex life if you follow this simple formula: don’t have sex, don’t kiss, and don’t even hold hands until you are married. Moreover, you shouldn’t even date when looking for a potential spouse. Instead, the book advocates ‘courtship’; a model that insists on the man being the ‘pursuer’, the woman being the ‘pursued’, and the overall consent of this pursuit being granted by the woman’s father. Fundamentally, it disavows casual dating and insists that men should only pursue and get to know women whom they intend to marry.

Remember, the book asserts that these rules must be followed not just in order to please God, but also to have fulfilling sex when you are married. Virginity is key. If you do it with someone else before your spouse, well, that someone else will forever have a piece of your heart, and this will bring your marriage (and your sex life) to ruin.

This premise became so saturated in Christian culture that the word ‘purity’ became synonymous with virginity, which in turn became fundamental to Christian identity.

Many of the Millennials influenced by this movement – myself included – are now finding out the hard way that this model doesn’t actually work. We are also realising that it is fundamentally sexist and it places disproportionate emphasis on virginity being central to the Christian message.

In 2017, Harris featured in a documentary entitled I Survived I Kissed Dating Goodbye, where he faces some of his harshest critics and greatest fans, all the while questioning the central premise of his original best-seller.

Since then Harris has more recently denounced his book, as well as all the others that came after. He has apologised to those negatively affected by the movement as a whole and asked for forgiveness. He has also announced that he has separated from his wife, moved from the US to Canada, and no longer considers himself a Christian.

So much for all that then.

But where do we go from here?

On the one hand, we don’t want to align ourselves with the the idea that sex is fundamentally bad and that abstinence is a weapon we must use to combat this dangerous evil. The Songs of Solomon should be chucked out of the canon if that is the case. On the other hand, we also don’t want to buy into the idea that sex is our ultimate fulfilment, and that abstinence is our channel towards that fulfilment. Neither of these views are Biblical.

But then how do we talk about abstinence?

The Bible does talk about sex and abstinence, but it doesn’t actually say much about why, other than simply to please God. Not that we like this message. We would much prefer the assurance that sex is going to be amaaaaaaazing as long as we just hang in there for now. And if we can’t buy that extreme then we slump back into our 4th Century view that sex is a terrible evil and must never be enjoyed (especially not by women!).

But I would assert that both of these extreme views have managed to place sex over and above God. Our problem is neither sex nor abstinence; it’s idolatry. 

Yes Augustine is wrong in placing sex in the category of bad; the Bible clearly commends it as a good. But let’s remember that it is a good with a little ‘g’ – not Good with a capital ‘G’. It’s not bad, but it’s not the Good (i.e. God). It’s just good. But, like all good things, they come with boundaries, and these boundaries are simply protecting it; they’re not what makes a good thing good.

If you are abstaining from sex until marriage, please note that getting married is not going to solve your porn addiction or your tendency to over-fantasise about the perfect orgasm. The purity movement has made virginity far too much of a big deal, and many people who have waited and waited and waited and then finally gotten married have been somewhat disappointed by their wedding nights.

Chill out. Sex is not an ultimate fulfilment in your life, and although abstinence might make it better (for some) in the long run, you’ll still have to work at it when you’re married and improve your techniques together.

How about we talk of abstinence (until marriage) as something that pleases God, and, like all things we do to please God, it’s not what makes you holy or ‘pure’. And of course there is grace when we fall short. But let’s make the end-goal of abstinence simply to please God and nothing more. The potential added benefits are just a side-note.

I don’t think there really is a set formula on how to ensure that your future sex life is going to be ultimately fulfilling. It probably won’t be. It will hopefully be good, but it will never be Good. 

Needless to say, both of these movements were founded by imperfect individuals who are both keen to remind us that they are flawed and we should’t take their word as ultimate. Thankfully, both Augustine and Harris will be remembered more for their repentance than their sins.

 

Recommended Reading: 

James K.A. Smith’s On the Road with St Augustine (pages 92-105) tackles the issue of sex really well, and uses Augustine’s own logic when exploring his blindspot on sex.

Ethon Renoe’s blog gives some interesting and pragmatic insight on this issue (and others).

A few years ago, a woman whom I had never met before was praying for me. We were at one of those big Christian music festivals, and she had simply offered some words of encouragement. However she said something that has been bugging me ever since:

“If you were the last person on earth, Jesus would still have died for you.”

Really?

Did he ever say that?

I tried to put it out of my mind. Surely she’s just a well meaning lady who was trying to be nice. The crucifixion could not possibly have been worth it unless a certain percentage of the global population would benefit. That’s just basic logic.

But then last night I heard the same sentence again, and this time it was not from a well meaning stranger. It was from the mouth of Nicky Gumbel, a Cambridge alumni and ordained minister. He says it in one of the videos from the Alpha course entitled ‘Why Did Jesus Die?‘

A lady I was watching with brought up that line and questioned its validity. Why do Christians say stuff like this so casually? This is not a direct quotation from the Bible, so how can we arrogantly assume that Jesus would really have died for just one person? The main reason why this has bugged me (and her) is the problem of cost and reward. The cost of the crucifixion was huge. Would the benefit of one saved soul really have been worth it?

But then I realised that I’m imposing a lot of metaphysical assumptions with this cost-reward mentality. It mostly comes from a post-modern western worldview that takes the principles of Utilitarianism for granted. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory coined by John Stuart Mill which determines right from wrong by focusing on outcomes. It’s a form of consequentialism, and holds that the most ethical choice is the one that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number. When properly picked apart, it quickly unravels because when taken to extremes it can become very dehumanising.

More importantly however, it does not fit into the nature of God’s character. The Bible does not explicitly say that if I was the last person on earth Jesus still would have died for me. Nevertheless, it does say a lot about the nature of God, so we can still infer a lot from the text.

Let’s have a look at the famous parables of the lost sheep and lost coin from Luke 15:3-10

Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?  And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Doesn’t she light a lamp, sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbours together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost coin.’ In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” 

Clearly there is something to be said for God’s heart for the individual. In fact, heaven throws a party each time one sinner repents, and that’s got to count for something!

So, would Jesus really have died for me if I was the last person on earth?

I think so.