Will You Go There?

Connally Gilliam

Are there any charged discussion topics that you like to avoid? Issues about which you have your secret opinions (or sticky confusions) but would prefer not to visit? I’m thinking of a few doozies like homosexuality, racial identity, the nature of gender, and so on. My October visit with the Trinity Forum Academy Fellows reinforced a growing suspicion that I’ve had: given the urbanizing, diversifying, globalizing, secularizing, twenty-first-century culture in which we live, we need to have the chutzpah to face head on the questions that nip at the heels and oftentimes hearts of the next, twenty-something, or however-you’d-like-to-call-it generation. For when these questions are avoided, perhaps out of reasons as innocuous as social decorum, we can inadvertently castrate the apparent scope and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and his kingdom. Oh, Christianity doesn’t speak meaningfully to the issues of the real world.

Conversely, when we are willing to go there in all our blind messiness (I’m not saying God is blind or messy, but we oftentimes are), these questions can become portals to discovery. We can discover that the living, triune God is seriously unthreatened by (and quite capable of leading us through if we’ll humbly follow) a convoluted, confusing, cultural landscape.

What, then, are a few of those questions? At the risk of appearing to shirk my responsibilities by letting the Fellows write half this article, I’d like simply to share with you the questions they offered me. The questions center on issues of sexuality and gender because that was the focus of our discussion. We as a group did not answer every question—we still have areas of blindness and mess—but we went there seeking answers. And I believe that that start pleased God.

1. [As homosexuality is a now a given in our culture . . .] How do we talk to our homosexual friends about sexuality?
2. If a woman invests a lot of time and energy into her career and then wants out to cook, create a family, make a home, etc. is she bailing out?Is she actually wasting the gifts God has given her?
3. What do healthy vs. unhealthy same-sex friendships look like?
4. What do healthy male/female friendships look like?
5. In other societies, have there been other sexual revolutions like ours?If so, how have they turned out?What can we learn?
6. What is freedom really?What does it mean that women have needed their freedom?What is a biblical vision of freedom?What’s if anything is the difference between taking away limits vs. freeing somebody for something?
7. Coming as I do from a Christian subculture/college background, it seems like if you’re not married by age 21, then something is wrong and you’re out of God’s will.How do you respond to that?
8. [Referring to an October report that single people now comprise 50.3 percent of the adult population . . .] Why do you think married people are now in the minority?Is there a positive cultural apologetic for monogamous, heterosexual long term relationship? Where is it? The images around us of marriage at best seem sort of “Thomas Kincaid-ish.”
9. Why do Christians seem to have trouble with women having power in the business world? It’s like it is okay for non-Christians but not Christians.
10. How does Scripture shape how you think about these things?

Perhaps, as you have time, you could try asking yourself and those around you these same questions. Chances are you might discover something of the riches of the gospel of Jesus and his Kingdom: good news that we and the cultural around us really need.

So, will you go there?

Connally Gilliam is a faith-based life coach with the U.S. Navigators. She is also the author of Revelations of a Single Woman: Loving the life I didn't expect.

Guest Speakers, Mon 11 Dec 2006