How are we to respond as believers to everything that is happening in our country? Is there an alternative response that is deeper than “you have to stay positive” and more nuanced than “just trust God?” Most South Africans find themselves in a state of either despondency or desperation when it comes to the state of our nation. There seems to be this corporate anxiety that every water-cooler convo is feeding and every “kuier” around the campfire is stoking. I have found a few things more challenging in the last 3 years than navigating my fear for the future in the context of my faith as a South African. And when I am braving traffic at stage 6 load shedding where it seems everyone forgot how a 4-way stop works, while my food rots away at home in my fridge, it’s hard to feel or act like a Christian, much less think like one.
Listen, the irony that I am writing this to you in a month where we are up to stage 6 load shedding (we all know it’s actually stage 8 right?) and our crime stats have just been released is not lost on me. It has meant that what I share with you here is what I have had to wrestle through and wrestle down in my own spirit first, as I struggled with wave after wave of fear, frustration and hopelessness, same as you.
As believers, we live in this tension, between what we know about life and what we know about God. Between what we see and what we believe. Between faith and fear. And we are always either feeding one or the other. Given greater credence to one or the other. Allowing the one to shape/ influence/ guide us (and our conversations) most, or the other. It’s no wonder we are always called to take our thoughts captive (2 Cor 10 v 3 – 5), to focus on what is good (Col 3 v 2), to practice gratitude and persistent prayer (1 Thess 5 v 16 – 18), to trust in God’s reasonings and abilities over our own (Prov 3 v 5 – 6). It’s for this very reason. Because God knows how fragile our faith is, our egos, and our minds. Because the alternative is for our peace to be completely dependent on and for our faith to ultimately be derailed by our circumstances. I have never come closer to this reality as in this season of my life.
But what does this look like practically, in our feelings and responses around where we are at as a country?
We are afraid:
Let’s be honest. For many of us, this fear is based on facts…on first hand experiences. Many of us represent the actual faces of the actual people that make up the actual (and frightening) crime statistics of our country. I do not talk about fear metaphysically anymore. For me is a visceral thing as much as a mental thing. So please don’t think I am going to flippantly throw around “faith over fear” slogans and just tell you to try harder not to be afraid. I know what it means to be truly afraid for my life and the lives of those I love. But that means I have been confronted with this argument that, because I have a legitimate reason to be afraid, I should have that fear govern my next move. My every move.
But the Bible calls us to live carefully, not fearfully. The Bible uses words like prudent, circumspect and wise when it comes to making decisions. Not fear. Never fear. The only worthy form of fear that Scripture acknowledges is fear of the Lord – i.e having God in His rightful place in my life based on an accurate acknowledgement of who He is. And that tracks, because when (fear of) the Lord is in the right place in our lives – we are not likely to be slaves to any other forms of fear and we are more likely to live lives of practical wisdom and insight (Prov 9 v10) We are often much more knowledgeable of the things we should be afraid of – swopping “did you hear what happened to so and so” stories – than we are of the character and nature of God. We often put fear first instead of putting God first. But what if I allowed what I knew and understood about God to govern the way I live, instead of all the things I was afraid of? I refuse for my decisions to be governed by any fear other than a fear of the Lord. I refuse to have my emotional well-being dictated to me by Load shedding and my spiritual stature to be stunted by crime stats. And I refuse for decisions based on fear to misalign me with God’s will for my life.
“The way we make our anxious thoughts smaller is by making our awareness of God’s greatness bigger. “
Louie Giglio
We feel uncertain:
There are just so many “what ifs” right now. What if the grid does collapse? What if our businesses go under because of load shedding or corruption? What if commercial opportunities dry up and our children can’t find jobs? In fact, “We need to give our kids better opportunities” is one of the key (fear) factors that it the motivation behind people leaving. Uncertainty fuels fear. We as believers can deal with uncertainty not because we know the future but because we know the God who holds our future. We know what He is like. We know what He has purposed for us, not a life of prosperity and pleasure, but a life of passion and purpose inside His providence and provision, even in the darkest times. And we know these are not empty promises because God put the weight of His love behind them when he sent his Son. If he has already done the hardest thing, can we not then trust Him with the details of our lives (Rom 8 v 32)?
The promises of God are not a myopic and thoughtless response to reality, a band-aid for the melancholy of the masses. They are declarations of ultimate truth, ultimate reality, that we can direct our thoughts towards every time someone sends us a doomsday newsletter or traps us in a fear-ridden conversation. They are what is most true about us, even in our circumstances.
It is there, in those moments, that I remind myself (and others) that my children are safest in the hands of an all-knowing God (Ps 37 v 25), that I can trust that He will show me which steps to take when I stay surrendered to Him (Psalm 143 v 8).
We are negative:
How long have we wallowed in this perpetual state of mind that believes that everything is bad? It’s all we see and all we hear. From potholes to the failing Rand, from Andre De Ruyter’s truth bombs to the ANC winning another election – Lord help us. We wonder about how the land appropriation or labour laws will affect our children, how the ever growing public wage bill and grant burden will pressurize the dwindling number of taxpayers and whether inflation is going to turn us all into vegetarians (no offence to the vegetarians). The state of our country (and the world) means news channels are never short on clickbait. If being the spokesperson for Eskom is currently the worst job in the country, then being a journalist is probably the best. And easiest. They have a consistent stream of fodder for their fear machine.
And no doubt, things are very very bad. And there is no indication that they will improve. But when we buy into this idea that it’s ALL bad ALL the time, we risk missing what God is doing. God doesn’t not only work on a cosmic canvas. He is also always at work in the micro and the minuscule, where He knows our meaning lies. That is what we read about in Hebrews 11 v 1 – 4! The Bible does not propose gratitude in all things as a self-care strategy, but because gratitude cements our faith. It makes our well-being dependent on something more than just our circumstances and our eyes open to something more than just the tangible and terrible. That is what faith is after all (Heb 11 v 1). Don’t allow the “everything is bad” narrative to steal your zeal and drain away your readiness to see God at work. When I have gotten stuck in one of those “everything is bad” conversations I remind myself of what my friend Lisa Whittle said, that things can be good and hard at the same time. In fact, it’s what Jesus himself said that in this world we WILL have trouble, but that we can’t take heart, He has overcome the world (John 16 v 44). There is a danger in the lie that we are actually supposed to have this trouble-free life. Or worse that it is our right. It makes us think the goal of life is to exert energy to get rid of all and any struggle or risk or discomfort and it makes us ineffective for God’s Kingdom. Beware the unbiblical pursuit of a trouble-free life dear friends.
“The more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer. Because the smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is in the end the one who suffers most.”
Thomas Merton
We feel frustrated:
Probably because we feel powerless. Frustration is a type of energy that pents up in us when we feel there is nothing we can do. Many of us feel stuck in a state of perpetual, anxious disempowerment. But I think we’ve missed a trick.
Jordan Petersen in his study of human nature rightly encourages us to not forsake the good we can do (as does Gal 6 v 10), and yet, every day, we make thousands of choices that place our good (our comfort, our goals, our lives) above the greater good. And that, in the way we foreswear our responsibility to the highest good, we tear something out of the fabric of being that is of inestimable value.
For us as believers, we should feel this more than most. Because we know we are called and sent. Nothing about our lives, not even where we live and raise our kids, is random. Because we are planted in particular places at particular times to accomplish particular things (Eph 2 v 10). Robin Hood said one man fighting for his home is better than 10 hired soldiers. I believe one (wo)man answering the call of God right where (s)he is, is better than 50 overpaid, unproductive civil servants. I believe if instead of moaning and moving we started investing and improving we could do what God has asked all of us to do, which is to expend effort for things to be better because we were here. And I don’t even mean tons of time, effort or money! I just mean a little more than we are expending now waiting for someone to come and complaining that no one is coming! If we spent half the time we did complaining and half the money it takes to move to greener pastures to fill in a pothole, clean up a park or report a traffic light, our communities would start changing. When the righteous thrive our cities rejoice (Prov 11 v10), when we are blessed cities are built up (v 11) and when we pray for our cities to prosper instead of cursing them, we will prosper too (Jer 29 v 7). What if we intentionally supported small businesses and paid our bills on time? What if we encouraged entrepreneurship and creativity in our kids? What if we prayed for civil servants and government officials? What if we took back that park or that street corner? What if we were generous with the people we employed and diligent with the work we’d been given? What if we saw every conversation about the hopelessness of load shedding and the future here as an opportunity to share about where our hope and peace come from?
Only God’s promises can help us look at our realities differently. Only an ever-deepening understanding of His character and nature can help us trust Him more even in all of this. It doesn’t mean we act like these things don’t affect us. But they don’t have to afflict us. Our present circumstances can call us into a greater state of anxiety and distress or into a greater desire and dependence on God. But let’s not kid one another that we don’t ultimately get to choose one way or another. Uncertainty is always an opportunity for greater surrender to the one Who knows the future. And fear is always an opportunity for a deeper faith in the one who loves us perfectly.
And I am praying for you in these things as much as for myself.
A Biblical Response to LGBTQ+ for Christian parents.
This blog is aimed at Christian parents and kids who 1) find themselves on the back foot in terms of current culture and popular opinion and wish to equip their kids with a biblical position on LGBTQ+ issues with both love and truth, and 2) have a deep awareness that this is only the beginning and a very real sense that the conservation of biblical truth, especially in terms of scriptural sexual ethic, will be the next battleground of Christian persecution. If this is not you, don’t bother reading this. Also, you know this is not going to be a short blog post, right?
Reading time approx: 17 minutes.
I cannot discuss every angle of this in this blog. Lots of people have written about this more and better than me, plus they are all cleverer than I am (the fact that I am not even sure if “cleverer” is a word serves to prove this point! Ha!), So here are some helpful articles if:
Someone said to you that homosexuality is not actually in the Bible, and if you have the appetite for a theology lesson: here are 2 articles that might help you further understand the revisionist/ affirming position.
I was in no mood to write this blog. A lot of my blogs start off this way. I had to write this blog for myself AND for my son, who came home from school recently after his Math teacher wanted to teach them about fractions in class by dividing up the girls and boys and one little girl refused to participate because she doesn’t “identify as either”. My son is 12. It’s already a minefield out there for our kids! We are past the time of pat answers, about God and about culture. We are as parents as always called to lay a foundation, something we can’t do if we ourselves don’t even know the truth we stand on in terms of all the cultural narratives swirling around us and our kids. So I leaned in, to the point where I can now, hopefully, through this little bit of writing, at least give you a view steps of light, a few bricks for your foundation so you can form a biblical position on LGBTQ+.
This is not a black and white issue. I mean, biblically it is. But socially and conversationally and relationally it calls for immense grace, it calls for huge sensitivity that I pray I can bring to this writing. You can’t always draw straight lines across a crooked world, and I am not about to try. Here is what I will try to do:
Be as tender and nuanced as possible here as I
understand that this is close to home to many, raising kids in an environment where gay or lesbian is not just the parents of a friend at school but a loved one or close family member, or a class or teammate
understand that our kids as young as 7 are having to navigate social settings with puzzling pronouns and a social contract where the rules of friendship (and everything else) seem fluid, and all values and beliefs are not always considered as equally worthy of respect, and certainly not biblical ones.
Share with you what I shared with my sons, to equip them with understanding so they can navigate relationships – NOT POLITICS. Let’s leave that to someone else.
Considering that our kids are already being confronted with the LGBTQ+ issue, from the classroom to the Disney Channel, I want my kids to
Be informed
Be Tender
Be Truthful
Be prepared
So here is what I told my kids:
Be Informed:
It has never been more vital for all of us to understand what the Bible says, about God, about people and about sin. Any thorough reading of the whole of scripture will confirm that the premise and practice of the LGBTQ position is incompatible with the Bible. It is important for us and our kids to 1) know what the Bible says and 2) know that we can trust what the Bible says.
The way we deal with Scripture in our homes should attest to our kids that our definition of truth does not get set by the world but by the Word.
So begin by talking with your kids about God’s good design, set out for us from the beginning of scripture and why this design is good for families and communities and our world. And talk with them about sin, which is the deviations, temptations and desires that move us (yes, all of us!) away from God’s design. That is what all sin is, a departure from God’s plan. This is something we are all always tempted with, in what we do and say, how we think and reason, what we desire and long for. We can have compassion for the way in which LGBTQ people struggle with sin, because we all struggle with sin. Sin is not God’s best and it’s not His plan or intention.
If you’ve read anything I’ve written you will know that God’s word is always my jumping-off point. We have a saying in our house: “Truth is God’s opinion about everything”.
In light of that, this is what I told my kids in terms of the Bible’s position on LGBTQ+:
I read Romans 1 with them. This is a great starting point. We are all born sinners. Paul points out that we all have this 1 big problem, which lies at the root of every problem in our heads, our hearts, our bodies and our communities: that we exchange God’s truth for a lie. This is not just a problem the LGBTQ community has. This is a problem we all have. All humans everywhere. This is also a helpful starting point because often what our kids are hearing are people saying they where “born this way”, but the truth is, we were all born this way. Born into sin because of the fall of man. And we all have natural tendencies that are contrary to God’s design. One person might struggle with same sex attraction, but another might struggle more than others with greed, with selfish ambition, with lying. We all have areas in our lives where we feel tempted to sin more than someone else might struggle in that same area. It is the nature of fallen man.
We need to be clear with our kids that this is a problem we all have. Not just some people. But then we need to be clear about why the LGBTQ conversation differs in the following ways:
What God’s word calls sin is now being normalized. In fact, if you just look about what Hollywood and the media present to us, our current culture is not just trying to normalize what God has called sinful, it’s trying to promote it. In this way the world is trying to define for us what is and isn’t sin, and that definition does not line up with what God says.
Yes, we are all sinners, but the Bible tells us that sexual sin is different from other sins and here is why:
It corrupts God’s representation of his full character in the world. Both male and female represent the image of God (Gen 1 v 27).
It corrupts God’s intention: God’s model of male and female matters. God’s sexual ethic as revealed in Scripture is 2 sexes, male and female, created in God’s image, for the sake of family, for the sake of community, and ultimately for the sake of a fulfilled representation of the loving, sacrificial relationship between Him and us, His bride, the church. God is against anything that disrupts this sexual ethic because it’s a disruption of His intention, plan, and purpose with and for us. The way God creates, the way He does things, always has a purpose!
It corrupts us on every level, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. It defiles more than just our bodies because we are sinning against ourselves, our nature, our design, and that is why Paul says in 1 Cor 6 v 18 that it stands apart from other sins.
Even though homosexuality is one of the most vivid representations of this breakdown, any disorder of God in our hearts leads to disorder in our lives and in our communities. We were all born sinners, with desires and longings contrary to God’s design, because of the fall of man. We all stand condemned (Ps 14 v 1 – 3). It is not about having less of a desire for what is wrong, it is about having more of a desire for God. We all have to deal with sin when we come to Christ, and not just some sin, all sin, because all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3 v 23). That is why the healing of someone struggling with same sex attraction is the same as the healing of any other soul, in repentant returning of God to His rightful place in our affection.
As Christians, we believe that God tells us who we are, because He created us – not the other way around. We read about how we were made in Genesis 1 v 27. Biblically, sex and gender are one and the same. What is now referred to as “Gender Identity” is not a biblical or even biological concept. Some people might tell you that gender is a social construct, meaning people came up with it. Now, of course, some ideas about how men and women “should behave” have been socially and culturally constructed over time – like for example saying all boys like the colour blue and all girls like the colour pink. But the biological categories of male and female is not a social construct. It is not a feeling. It is not fluid. People cannot claim an internal identity that trumps their external reality, that man decides himself who and what he is, is simply people playing God and that is a sign of our times. But that doesn’t mean it’s true or accurate.
Eventhough we may live in a world where, in the name of “love” anything goes, and we are expected to change our truth in line with what is popular, God doesn’t change. The first words of the Bible is “God created”. That means He is in charge of it all. That means He gets to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and what is male and female too. Read these scriptures with your kids about the unchanging nature of God: Heb 13 v 8, Malachi 3 v 6, James 1 v 17, Numbers 23 v 19, Is 40 v 8.
Many today reject biblical authority by saying that certain texts in scripture have either been misinterpreted or need to be revised. People will base these arguments on for example the fact that Leviticus forbids homosexuality (Lev 18 v 22) but it also forbids eating shellfish (Lev 11 v 9 – 12), yet, how many Christians do you know who don’t love a plate of prawns! But this view does not consider the full counsel of Scripture. , The perfect life of Christ fulfilled all the ceremonial laws (i.e intended to make us physically clean) of Moses around the sacrificial system and ritual purity, which were in place in the Old Testament to facilitate the relationship between a Holy God and a sinful man. We know from verses like Heb 10 v 16, that the moral laws (i.e to govern our spiritual, mental and emotional cleanliness) of the old testament are now written on our hearts (i.e still in force), even though Hebrews also tells us that we are no longer bound by the ceremonial laws. But the prohibitions against homosexuality is re confirmed in the new testament (Romans 1, 1 Cor 6, 1 Tim 1). PS, the prevalence of this message across the entire canon also puts to bed any argument that specifically the references to God’s sexual ethic, across both Old and New Testament, could have been mistranslated in Romans 1.
Lastly we must always be honest with our kids about the counter cultural nature of our faith. The ways in which the Bible’s position on LGBTQ+ and so many other issues alienate us should not be surprising to us (Matt 10 v 34 – 36), because the counter cultural way we are called to live affects everything from how we spend our money and our time, to how we vote, to what we watch on TV (and what we don’t watch!) and to what we believe is the best way for society to function. Just because there is something in the Bible that makes us feel uncomfortable or sound unpopular doesn’t mean it’s not true. This is the tension every believer is called to live in until The Day that all is set right and this is something we need to be honest about with every single person who comes to faith, including our kids. Jesus was honest about it in Matt 16 v 24.
“Forever O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens” Ps 119 v 89
Be Tender:
We need to help our kids understand both tolerance as it is required of them to live along with others, but also to understand what I believe is a higher value than tolerance, which is kindness. Because tolerance as a word, can feel a little bit loaded, right? And with the compromise of Christian beliefs in many countries including the US now being set into law (and soon with the PEPUDA act here in SA too!), where standing on what you believe and value now is something you can be prosecuted for (not to mention culturally persecuted for), what is set before believers is a difficult road that must be walked with wisdom, the kind of wisdom that most of us grown ups can scarcely manage!
Even if this is something we as adults still struggle with, here is something I think we would be wise to help our kids understand:
It is possible to love someone without agreeing with them. It is possible to disagree with someone without hating them.
Yeah! Read that again!
So in terms of tender responses, this is what I told my kids:
God calls us to look at people the way He looks at them (2 Cor 5 v 16). This is why Jesus was never mean or unkind to people. But He was firm. He was uncompromising. He could do that because He was perfect, representing both love and truth at once.
Jesus’s example of compassion towards the woman at the well should be our template for engaging with people in sexual sin of any kind. Jesus saw people through a lense of love and truth, he didn’t see her through the labels others had for her, or that she had for herself. Understanding this, and having a deep awareness that we are all sinners and image bearers at the same time, will help us be more tender with people. When we see ourselves and others as God sees us it means we can have empathy for anyone else deceived by sin, stuck in sin, struggling with sin (even if they/ society does not name it as such and rather calls it a choice or an identity) because we have been there. This is where grace comes in. It is only possible to be gracious out of the position that we are all sick and in need of healing, that we are all sinners in need of saving.
So seeing people the way God sees them means being gracious. But it also means seeing their need for Him and responding. That is truly loving. God has a missional heart and so should we. It’s what we are all called to – to share the gospel. The gospel displays the kind of love people really do need, not the watered-down lipservice kind of the World.
But we cannot share the gospel in a vacuum. The Gospel is God’s message of love, and so we cannot share it void of love for the person we are sharing it with. Otherwise the gospel becomes a weapon or a stick, something it was never meant to be. So tender compassion is the only valuable starting point. We need to be kind in our conversations, and tender in our telling of the truth, because what people need before they need to understand what the Bible says about their lifestyle choices is the gospel. We cannot lead people to God’s greatest act of love by leading with a theological argument. Before people need a lesson on doctrine, biblical literacy or the inerrancy of Scripture (ps, tell you kids what the inerrancy of scripture means!!), they need the Gospel. Not the other way around. It is a person’s relationship with Jesus that will help them see what He says in His word and start applying it. Without the gospel, none of us can change. My teenager can’t stop being disrespectful, the bully on the playground can’t stop being aggressive, that bachelor can’t stop looking at porn, that neighbor can’t stop gossiping, and someone struggling with same-sex attraction or stuck in sexual sin has no means for change without the gospel. (if you need help talking to the kids about the Gospel’s relevance to our hearts and lives, please consider getting a copy of THE MOMMY DIARIES to foster Gospel-driven change conversations with your kids!)
Always remember that how we act is as important as what we believe. We are, for Christ, both messengers and witnesses. If we want to be messengers of His truth, we have to be witnesses of His love.
God’s love doesn’t mean we accept ideologies and ideas contrary to scripture because that seems “more loving”. It’s actually the opposite. The world tells us that to be truly loving is to “love people just the way they are”. But that is not loving. God loved us so much He died so we wouldn’t be stuck “just the way we are” (Rom 5 v 6-8), relegated to a life separate from Him, His peace and His purposes.
“What separates Christianity from other faiths is found in the scandal of grace. It is when we acknowledge our brokenness and inability to live as God wants us to that we begin to experience inner transformation.”
Sean McDonnel
Be Truthful:
In Jesus we saw the example of how love and truth must always go together. He showed us in the way He lived his life that they cannot be separated.
Bring truth in love, and do not sacrifice either, because only truth in love is the fullness of Christ.
Mila Venter
And to His followers, Jesus said: “If you love me keep my commandments” – Jesus said (John 14 v 15). But truthfulness gets tricky when the LGBTQ issue or any other type of lifestyle sin hits close to home. Like when it’s someone we know and love. And we are tempted to tell our kids, when they ask why “so and so” has chosen to do “such and such”, that it’s “it’s ok for him but it’s not ok for us”. What we don’t realise is that this definition categorises truth as 100% subjective, exactly in the “your truth is your truth, my truth is mine” way the world presents it. If you’re truth is your truth and my truth is my truth then what we are talking about is not truth, but opinion. Rather say “it’s not ok for anyone, but he/ she does not believe that. That doesn’t mean we don’t love him/ her. It just means we make different choices.” In a post-truth culture, we need to be clear with our kids about understanding the nature of truth.
And one of the things we need to be the most truthful about, is love, because this is what our culture tells our kids about what love looks like:
Loving our neighbor = affirming every narrative our neighbor holds to. Every latest sitcom normalises alternative lifestyles and shows our teens that real friendship means saying “You are so brave, I support you no matter what!” But what if that is what God had done for us? What if He had said to us – “you do you! I support you no matter what!”. That is not merciful, loving or gracious. And brazen sin is not brave. And being supportive of it is not loving. We live in a world that tells us that hurting someone’s feelings is what we should truly fear, not the ultimate spiritual position and the health of their eternal souls. It is indeed a most unloving approach to love and as those set apart we have become really terrible at loving people enough to tell them the truth.
“Our culture has wrongly equated loving everyone with approving everything”
Lisa Bevere
So how then do we bring the truth to conversations about love and tolerance, identity and gender, biology and feelings, choice and freedom? What will be their foundation in current culture’s arguments against truth?
This is what I told my kids:
Soulish love and spiritual love are not the same thing. Love covering all cannot be used as an excuse for the acceptance of sin. One theologian said “better bad theology with love than any theology without love” but these things cannot be mutually exclusive. It can’t be love at the price of truth or vice versa, well it can, but then we can’t call it Christlike. We can’t call it “what Jesus did”. Jesus is 100% love and 100% truth, that is the fullness of who He is (Eph 4 v 13-16). So without that what we are preaching, what we are representing, is simply not Christ.
In a world obsessed with “freedom” which means the absence of restriction, the Bible calls us to a new kind of freedom. Tim Keller puts it this way:
“A fish is designed for water. It is meant to breathe and move in water. Only in water is it free to realize all its inner potentials. But if it is not confined to the water, it cannot realize this freedom. If it is “free” from any restrictions—free to go up on land—then it will die.”
Tim Keller
True freedom, then, is not the absence of constraints or restrictions. It is finding and complying with the right restrictions, the ones that fit the givens of our nature and being. Who better to tell us what those are than the One who called into existence our very selves? History is a wasteland of people who pursued the worldly freedom to dispose of the “yoke” of morality and Christian values, to their own destruction. Being left to ourselves has not worked out well for any of us. That is why Jesus came!
We live in a world where people believe that how you feel dictates who you are. That it’s our desires that define us. The very nature of the LGBTQ argument affirms this. But the Bible says that Jesus came to restore us from the desires that are at war within us (Gal 5 v 17). The world says those desires define us, but Jesus came to truly set us free!
We are all broken, every last one of us, even if our brokenness is expressed in different ways. Brokenness = sin. Sin = the distortion and depravity that is part of every person. Paul states so clearly in 1 Cor 6 v 9 – 11 how we are all sinners, justified only by faith (Rom 5 v 1), battling all our different genetic, hormonal, environmental, and contextual difficulties and disorders that constantly incline us towards sin. It is important for our kids to understand this because the distortion of our affection is justified everywhere around us, the loudest voices in the crowd is calling us to love ourselves first, put ourselves first and be true to ourselves first, because, according to the world, that is what freedom is and that is what is the truest truth and the highest love. But that is not the truth of Scripture.
The world and its Instavangelists tell us to just trust ourselves, to follow our hearts, but you just have to be around people for a second to realise that we don’t have to be taught to lie, cheat, steal, be selfish. Original sin is a reality, and that is what has made the heart deceitful above all things (Jer 17 v9) – certainly NOT worth following, until you can – through faith receive a new heart, and a new spirit (Heb 8 v 10). In a world where gender-confused individuals believe their desires reveal their “true self”, it really only reveals the sin nature that is true for all of us. The Bible doesn’t speak of the “true self”. It speaks only of the old self (dead to sin) and the new self (alive to Christ). So the best thing we can do is not to become more like ourselves (whatever that means in terms of feelings/ desires) but to rather become more like Jesus. Putt off the old self, and be constantly renewed (Eph 4 v 22 – 24). All of us need this.
That is why the gospel is good news for every single person.
But the Gospel is hard, that is a fact. Why? Because it represents a dying to self (Gal 5 v 24), it represents a cross to carry (Matt 16 v 24 – 26), it represents repentance of everything that is contrary to His order and ordinances. The cross will always make us choose. An old way of life, or a new one as I’ve already mentioned. And secondly, when God calls us He doesn’t just call us out of some sins. He calls us to repent of all sin. God does not call us out of these things to be a party-pooper, His biggest driver is always love. And so He calls us out of these things because He knows, they can never bring about our ultimate, eternal good and thriving.
“To carry a cross means you are walking away, and you are never coming back.” A. W. Tozer.
Be Prepared:
Especially in the teenage years and going into young adulthood, our kids are going to be confronted with these things and drawn into conversations about them, whether in person or online.
“You need a thick skin and a soft heart to stay faithful in this world”
Jackie Hill Perry
Here are some things that are good to know for them (and us) to be prepared in these conversations:
Not everyone is going to want to hear what you think about this. And that is ok. If you are a kind person, you will in your life have many opportunities to walk with people, and they may even ask for your help or guidance. Always be ready to share what you believe. Also always be ready to defend what you believe. That’s 1 Pet 3 v 13! But never confuse these 2 things. God is a relational God, and it’s not your job to go out and crusade for truth in the absence of relationship and love. Especially in this space and in these conversations, we need to have soft hearts for people who are hurting.
Our kids live in a way more volatile world than us, the internet brings aggression, anger, and hate right into our hands, our homes, our hearts. So we need to be sure they know: Yes, your convictions can be expressed, but be sure to express them with compassion. That whole sticks and stones thing is “malarkey” as my dad would say, words ignite, words explode. And we will get it wrong, all of us, all the time. Sadly, what has happened in the church around this issue is an example of this. So remember to be gracious. There is only ONE Word that is infallible, the One that became flesh (John1v14).
Walk in step with the Spirit and always practice discernment. 1 Cor 2 v 14 tells us that not everyone is open to the things of the Spirit of God, that to some, it’s foolishness. Seeds cannot be planted in soil like that.
Remember that love and compassion should not demand agreement. But, and this is a pretty big but, the rights of one group should not be used as a weapon against the beliefs of another. And that is what we now see happen in the US and it will start to happen everywhere. Disagreement is not the same as discrimination, but there are many agendas today that will try to make it seem such. We need to be aware of this and do what He told us to do when the love of many start to grow cold, which is to endure, with His help (Matt 24 v 11 – 12).
We don’t have to honor someone’s lifestyle or choices. We do have to honor their humanity because we have to honor God. We do have to love much because we have been forgiven much (Luke 7 v 47). Remember God looks at our hearts.
“Theological zeal must be subject to the test of love. Not all zeal is from God. Even when the error we oppose is clearly heresy, our aim must be to heal, not to disgrace”
Gavin Ortlund.
If you want to engage with me on this, I would love to hear from you, so please connect with me where I am most of the time, which is here.
I will try my best to respond. Know that every single one of my readers and subscribers are in my prayers.
What word would you use to describe your faith in this season? In our online prayer meeting at church a few weeks ago (yes, cause that’s a thing now), a live poll indicated that more than 70% of people felt that their faith had grown during lockdown! Yay for them, but if I am honest I know that I have struggled to stay within that 70%. I wanted to. But it felt like a fight. A fight for faith. A fight I refuse to walk away from because I know what a life apart from Christ is like and to me that is just not an option. But that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been hard. Most of the time I felt like I was faltering. To be fierce means to show heartfelt and passionate intensity. I want to be a fierce woman of faith, who intently and intensely displays faith.
But what does the fight for fierce faith look like in this season? I don’t know about you but it feels like there are blows coming at me from all sorts of directions! How can we keep choosing the walk of faith when the journey is this hard? Faith is more than a spiritual position. Sometimes, no often, it’s also a response. And a response is always a choice! Job gave us that example, so did many others in the Bible. So how do we keep choosing fierce faith when we feel like we’re faltering?
We choose fierce faith when we stay fully convinced of God’s intention to perform what He promised:
If anyone needed ferocious faith it was Abraham and Sarah! Am I right? I mean talk about unlikely people in the kind of circumstances that made what they hope for flat out impossible nevermind what your God promised! But even as the years ticked by and the promise remained just a highlighted set of verses in his bible, Abraham remained fully convinced (Rom 4 v 21) that God was able to perform what He had promised. How did he remain convinced? In him and Sarah’s waiting, they continued to “judge God faithful” (Rom 11 v 11) They fixed their eyes not on the impossibility of their situation, not even on the set of highlighted verses of promise, but on the intention of God to do what He said ((Is 14 v 24). They assessed His track record and became fully convinced that yes, He is able, and in His time also ready to perform His word (Jer 1 v 12).
We choose fierce faith when we acknowledge God’s ability in the face of impossible circumstances:
If Abraham was taking our Corona Poll at Rosebank Union Church, he would have been firmly in the 70%, because rather than growing weak, his faith in God grew stronger while he waited. We read in Rom 4 v 20 that Abraham did not allow himself to waver through unbelief – he did not falter – which just blows my mind by the way! And through the act of simply holding on, his faith was strengthened. Wow, right?
Faith is not as some people might think, a denial of impossible circumstances. It’s not tattooing “with God all things are possible” on your arm and not watching the news so you are more able to maintain a “positive attitude”. Yes, I’m using inverted commas. And yes, with all the snark you’ve come to expect from yours truly. That is not faith. Faith is not a denial of the problem, it’s believing God’s word in the face of the problem. Biblical faith does not deny the problem or circumstances but holds fast that God remains greater than the problem or the circumstances. Is that the God you know? Because it’s hard to trust someone you don’t know, as I discovered in my fight for hope through the uncertainty Coronavirus.
We choose fierce faith when we choose to believe God has the final word over our circumstances:
Not our words. Not our feelings. God’s final word is yes! Because faith is taking God at His word, not taking our feelings so seriously that we can’t see past them.
You see a guarantee, the one we’ve received, is not a feeling, it’s a contract. What we have been given in the Holy Spirit is not about good vibes (which obviously don’t last long in bad situations), but a guarantee, a pledge. It’s God’s commitment to complete His work in us (Eph 5 v 5, Rom 8 v 23), thereby confirming the Yes that is Jesus, the complete portion, the fulfillment of every promise God ever made! But how does that help me? By His Holy Spirit, we are enabled to live God’s perfection in imperfect situations. God’s perfection is Jesus, who lives in us, making us more and more able to respond perfectly in the difficult and challenging circumstances of our lives, oh and bonus, offering us grace when we don’t!
We choose fierce faith when we choose what we know over what we feel:
Here is the thing that I am realizing. Pastor Dave one of our pastor’s said on Sunday during online church (cause yeah, that’s a thing now too) that our faith in suffering is really our biggest testimony. We are all, right now, becoming what we declare. How scary is that? Right now, all over the world, believers are wrestling, and it’s because our doctrine, what we truly believe about God and what we believe about the world in relation to God is never more apparent than when we are in crisis.
The fact is that our doctrine is our everyday companion, it is coming out of our mouths and our fingertips, rolling around in our thoughts and manifesting itself in our homes all the time, maybe without us even being conscious of it. What we believe about God and the world is evident in how we work, how we entertain ourselves (jip, in the TV series we pick!), how we speak and eat, and yes, in how we suffer and struggle. One of the reasons I wrote The Mommy Diaries is because of this fact, that our fundamental beliefs are not some random mental state we engage from time to time, but it actually shows itself in every action and situation. And that it’s ultimately our children’s beliefs that drive their behaviors, as is the case with us, whether we like it or not. So addressing the beliefs rather than the behaviors if you’re a parent, is critical.
All of my life is the outworking of my beliefs. If so many of us are experiencing a crisis of faith, what we should be doing is working back from that intense worry, anxiety, need for escape, emotional low to the core belief that drives it and measuring that against the doctrine we profess to subscribe to so it can reveal itself as either true, or a lie. So as we go through whatever we’re going through, I hope what we are asking ourselves more is: what do I believe – i.e what is my doctrine? About God…the world…all of this. And hopefully what we are listening to a bit less is: How do I feel? Faith is not a feeling.
Jesus calls us to do the “work of believing” (John 6 v 29). That work is this: consistently lining up your convictions and your action. And for that work to be aligned, correct, built on truth, not a house that will falter and fall when shaken, Jesus should be the plum-line, the ultimate reference point. That’s what a cornerstone is!
Kona Brown
So how can I have this kind of faith? Paul said he could suffer while remaining full of faith because he knew WHOM he had believed and was persuaded beyond any doubt in His ability (2 Tim 1 v 12). The focus of his faith was more than just what he believed, it was in knowing WHOM he had believed. His faith was about more than merely holding on to a set of promises, it was about holding on to the Person behind the promises, so that even if the promises are not fulfilled, then he would remain convinced that even that would be, MUST be, for his good because of the character of Whom he believed, the one who works ALL for our good (Rom 8 v 28), even something that looks like a broken promise or disappointment. Fierce faith rests IN Him (1 Cor 2 v 5), abides in Him (John 15 v 4, 7) and cannot be separated from the loving personhood of God in the Lord Jesus (Rom 8 v 38, 39)
Choosing faith may not eliminate our present pain or difficulty. It probably won’t even stop the many questions we still have. It will not “explain away” our present circumstances. But it will remind us of Who is really in control and produce in us endurance (James 1 v 2 – 5), and yield in us even greater fruit (Heb 12 v 11). I know I want that, even if it’s hard!
This is all I’ve got. I know how hard it is right now. Remember I am praying for you.
With handy journaling prompts to help you dig deeper
I’ve read a lot about what people think this global pandemic means. I am sure you have too. We swerve all over the map, wondering if this is a judgment, grappling with God’s sovereignty, forwarding prophesies and Bible verses and any relevant podcast to friends and family. On the other side, we challenge ourselves and our friends to “make this count”, i.e get a six-pack, run a marathon, learn another language, do a masterclass, and the list goes on. I think maybe we’ve all emotionally positioned ourselves in all of these responses at some point? I know I have. And I believe the reason is this: We are meaning-makers, and whether we know it or not, we want to understand, what does this mean? Why is this happening?
I don’t know. Most of the time I am as confused as a monkey with a maths problem. But I do know 2 things:
God is involved. It never just “is what it is”. There is always more going on than just what you can see. We are holistic beings and our experiences and our walk through this world always have physical, emotional and spiritual components. God is uniquely involved in the lives of his children so nothing that happens to us just “is what it is”. We walk by a different light and it is because of that that we are called to walk circumspectly (Eph 5 v 15 – 21), always looking for and trying to understand the will of God, because the times we live in call for it.
We as believers, right now,in the midsts of this, are being tested. How do I know that? Because I can feel myself stretched. I can feel myself grappling for answers and understanding. I can feel myself failing. I can feel pressure. And isn’t that what being tested feels like? Regardless of what else this is, this is test for us as believers. A test that calls us to look a little deeper at every area and part of our life and our world.
Understanding that this is a time of testing is really helping me right now, because it means I can position myself to gain the benefits that tests and trials are supposed to bring about. If that sounds like something that will help you too, keep reading:
A test is only useful and meaningful if we allow it to do what tests are intended to do. Otherwise, it’s just a stressful season we must “white-knuckle” through. So, what is the purpose of a test?
The purpose of a test is to assess our ability to apply what we’ve learned:
Almost as though our time with God, under good teaching, in studying His word, is like being in the classroom. The knowledge is only useful to us if we are able to apply it outside of the classroom. Once we leave church and go into our week, once we get up from that quiet time, once we put our bible, that resource, that devotional down. That is where the test lies because that is where our ability to apply what we have learned is revealed. Until then, it’s all just theory isn’t it? We are all just sitting around postulating. Looking like Christians but not necessarily living like them. That is why James says we will be matured, because biblestudy might grow us, but a test will mature us.
The purpose of a test is to examine our foundations and reveal cracks:
Do you know how concrete is tested? By something called a compressive strength test – which is a mechanical test measuring the maximum amount of compressive load a material can bear before fracturing. It’s basically a pressure test.
When the lockdown came about, and its impact on me and my family’s life, in the immediate and in the future, became more and more apparent, I came apart at the seams. I won’t lie. The pressure of the situation revealed to me how much trust, how much faith I had placed in:
My financial security
My ability to plan and control the present and the future
Suddenly, neither of these things “worked” anymore. They could not be my source of peace anymore because, in short, they no longer existed. Suddenly they could not save or protect me. The situation I found myself in revealed to me how much I held on to these things as pillars, how foundational they were to my well-being, how much I trusted in them for my future and the future of my family. It revealed how little stability they truly provided, how unable they were to withstand the pressure of the current situation. This crisis had exposed my idols, the things I worshipped and trusted in more than God. And they were crumbling under the pressure.
That is why James says at the end of a test we will be more complete/ more whole, not lacking in anything. Almost always, tests show us where we are lacking, where the gaps exist in our trusting, in our believing and therefore in our thinking and feeling.
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord And whose hope is the Lord. For He shall be like a tree planted by the waters Which spreads out it’s roots by the river And will not fear when heat comes But it’s leaf will be green And it will not be ancious in the yea rof drought Nor will cease from yielding fruit”
(Jer 17 v 7 – 8)
The purpose of a test is to refine us:
To refine silver, the refiner would use a delicate process of lead and heat to remove impurities to purify silver. It is a process requiring the refiner’s diligent attention, not a process he sets in motion and then walks away from, only coming back once there is a satisfactory end result. There is so much hope for us in understanding this.
If this feels like a trial by fire for you, this is what I want you to know:
God’s refining fire is not to destroy, it’s to purify. But why does purity matter? God’s desire for our purity is not because his love depends on that or because our salvation does, Jesus already proved that is not the case. His desire is to walk with us, and the purity of our hearts brings us ever closer to Him (Matt 5 v 8). We are being purified to be drawn into greater intimacy with Him, definitely something we can consider “pure joy”.
Secondly, our impurities, the things that are hampering us, distortions in our picture of God, incorrect beliefs, sinful patterns of brokenness or behavior, is being burned away, for the sake of our fruitfulness. Our fruitfulness (not our comfort) is always of huge concern to God because of what it (our fruitfulness) declares about Him to the world. We all have areas of rebellion and unbelief, and nothing will reveal to us those attitudes but a test that feels like fire.
God is paying vigilant attention to you right at this moment and is deeply involved and invested in the outcome of this in your life. He is watching for more of His reflection in you. Take heart!
Maybe it feels like a discipline, shedding light on areas in our life that we wish God would just leave alone. Our debt and spending habits. Issues of communication with our spouse. Places where we dropped the ball in the raising of our kids. Our neglect of our time with Him. This pandemic and it’s results are forcing us to face those things and more in a myriad of ways. But know this: The Lord disciplines those He loves (Heb 12 v 6 & Prov 3 v 12), and even things that might look like the worst thing, can be used by God for our good.
We cannot “get pure” on our own. That is the message of the Gospel. Of the entire Bible in fact. We all have areas of rebellion and unbelief in our lives, but the beauty of a test allowed by God, is that we don’t have to stay stuck at the place of knowing what the impurities are that hold us back. We have a place we can go to with them. The purpose of a trial (the heating up of our lives) is to accomplish a purer and stronger character and faith. It is in the “heating up” of our lives that our weaknesses, sin, and character flaws come to the surface, so that they may be transformed. And the place of that transformation is always the cross. Forgiveness for sin and triumph over it is found right there.
If the bible is anything to go by, there is something beautiful on the other side of every test or obstacle. The red sea, the Jordan, the furnace and the cross. God’s word reveals, in the most intense trials of the saints that went before us, that there lies a revelation of true peace, true joy and true security for believers right there in the times and trials where these things seem to be most absent. My prayer is that, as you surrender to this test in your life, you will discover that too. For help, I’ve developed some journaling prompts and scriptures you might like to use during your quiet times and times of reflection with God. Be sure to subscribe to receive them in your inbox.
My son saw the #metoo #amInext march in Cape Town last week on the news. The conversation went like this:
“Why are they marching Mom?”
“Because violence against women in South Africa is like an epidemic my son”
“But why Mom?”
“Because there is something fundamentally wrong in our society?”
“But why Mom?”
“Because my son, there is something fundamentally wrong in our hearts.”
I stand behind that protest 100%. But a protest is like a volume button, it get’s your attention. but making something louder doesn’t make it better. It is certainly no substitute for action (Yes this is actually also something I’ve spoken to my kids about). But action by whom? As a mom raising boys, I find myself at the coalface of where I believe the change must happen. Graca Machel was right as she addressed mourners at the memorial service of tragically slain student Uyinene Mrwetyana, when she said: “it is in our families”. The correction needs to happen much closer to home than in a courtroom or a police station or via some system or law. At home is where the shaping happens, make no mistake. Your home is the frontline where mutual respect (yes, boys should respect girls and yes girls should respect boys because people should respect each other. Bottom line ) is modeled or distorted, where we either uphold or disregard, instill or destroy the fundamental truth of our shared worth, value and humanity. We don’t need governments and systems to change. We need people to change. And we are people…raising people. That is actually why I wrote The Mommy Diaries, because we are raising kids in a complex world that is only set to become more so. But there is a way to live and lead in that complexity with courage and wisdom.
The hashtags of #metoo and #amInext and #femicide is a call to a higher standard of engagement. But as parents we must call ourselves to it if we are hoping to call our kids to it. And so I believe it is above everything not a call to governments and leaders, but a call to action directed at families, a call to parents.
It’s all of our responsibility to raise the kind of kids who appreciate the uniqueness, equality, dignity and value of the opposite gender. That doesn’t just happen.
It has never been more important to engage with our kids in a new and focused way around these things and to be intentional about it. So this is what I told my boys:
The way women are treated is an atrocity:
This is not limited to South Africa or certain communities or cultures. It’s true everywhere. And women have had enough. Our breaking point has been centuries in the making and now it’s here. And I want my boys to know why. It is based on certain misinterpretations of biology and theology, that didn’t take into account a full set of facts or context. Misinterpretations (i.e the “glasses” through which people “read” these things) that have been accepted as truths, but that are in fact lies. And I have no problem in calling them lies because the idea that women are somehow “less than” has no biological, cultural or scriptural basis. These lies have informed everything from how women are treated and paid, to where they are and aren’t allowed to be/ serve/work/play and have snowballed into the utter disregard with which they are hurt, abused, spoken of and to. These lies are present in homes, in businesses, in churches and in cultures. I know this first hand.
But the problem is not in how women are treated:
The true problem lies in the way women are viewed. The problem is deeper than history, than a culture of patriarchy, than biases and blond jokes. Because all of those things find their origin in one place, in the way one person sees another person. In that sense racism, xenophobia (another evil that rocked our nation again this week) and femicide/ gender based violence is not that different. Because at their root they all find their origins in the way one person sees another person. And as is always the case, the way you see someone else is most often based on how you see yourself. If you see someone as less than, it’s because you see yourself as “more than”. If you see someone for some reason as less deserving, it’s because you see yourself as more deserving.
So yes, it’s important that we address equality, pay equity, femicide and all those good and essential things, but lets make no mistake, real change happens in a different direction.
I don’t want to raise boys who know how to behave in a way that honors, values and respects women. Having the good manners to not tell blond jokes and not hit girls is not the same as holding firm to a fundamental believe that all people are worthy of honor, value and respect.
Because ultimately if we wish to see changes in our society, in legislation, in our communities, there can be no fundamental change effected on that level if we don’t dig down a little deeper and try to affect change at a heart level.
Change will not come through laws and loudspeakers if it doesn’t first come in hearts and homes
Always fight lies with truth:
This is the definition of truth in our house: God’s opinion about EVERYTHING. And if God sees everyone the same so should we. His opinion is that we are all equal (Gen 1 v 27/ Deut 10 v 17/ Rom 2 v 11/ Gal 3 v 26 – 29) and have equal standing with Him.
In God’s eyes we are endowed with worth not because of this or that attribute but because of His likeness in us and His love for us. It is not dependent on status, race, gender or culture. This is something that is true of every human person.
God gives us a different lens through which to see the world. In fact Jesus in word and deed was an example to us in how women are to be regarded and treated in society, in defiance of the social, judicial and religious customs of His day. In all things He is the embodiment of what loving others should look like. Jesus shows us that our lens must never be culture, or history, or tradition or popular opinion. The examples that proves that there is no “less than” attitude in the bible when it comes to women are too many to mention, but I like to throw some at the boys from time to time just to make sure they know: “The first person Jesus told He was the Christ was a woman, the first person He appeared to after He rose from the dead was a woman. Oh, and just incase you were wondering what God thought about women consider this: none of you would even be here if it wasn’t for us”.
The call on all of us is to regard everyone not by what we see on the outside, but by the truth of them as spiritual beings (2 Cor 5 v 16) and image bearers. Misogyny (and yes, my kids know what misogyny is because they understand prejudice. Thank you South African Public schooling) is based on a skewed idea of worth that we can only correct by acknowledging a higher truth.
Consider carefully, don’t consumer carelessly or accept mindlessly:
When we say things like “the problem is in society or culture or whatever” what we are often trying to communicate is that something has been “normalized” over time to a point where it is accepted. If we do not pinpoint those “accepted lies” and reveal them, they will hide in our hearts forever. That is why I encourage the boys to look and think a little deeper whenever I get a chance.
At a recent school prizegiving, a Gr 7 girl in The Elder’s class received an award for taking the most wickets in a cricket match at provincial level. Even though my kids attend a wonderfully integrated and dynamic school, there was still that ripple of suprise that went through the audience, and it made me chuckle a little. But it also presented a great object lesson for the boys. Why shouldn’t a girl perform well on the cricket field, or any field? Look, I’d be the first to tell you I don’t enjoy watching women play rugby, for example! Because frankly if I wanted to watch women shoving and bumping at each other aggressively I’d much rather just go to the Woolworths Quality sale, am I right? But that doesn’t mean women shouldn’t play rugby, or go to space. I don’t want my boys to just mindlessly go along with what societal pack thing dictates as the “norm” and so I look for opportunities to challenge that thinking and to put forward this truth:
Roles, jobs, positions and participation should be based on gifting, not gender! Always. Everywhere.
Our words reveal our attitudes and so I am pretty brutal when it comes to blond jokes, the use of phrases such as “women driver” and I strongly discourage the boys from listening to music that objectifies women. As an Afrikaans speaking female I am deeply horrified at how often in my culture songs contain those types of messages, but they serve as great object lessons to explain to the boys:
Make sure that even to the level of the content you consume and the jokes you tell you are reflecting the honor and respect that you yourself would like to be on the receiving end of.
Recognize and respect:
I tell the boys to pay attention to the contributions of not only the women in their lives (there are some epic ones!) but also the women in our world. Reading female authors, watching female athletes and considering the specific strengths and traits of the girls and women in their world that they admire. Not in an “anything boys can do girls can do better” kind of way, then all we are doing is swinging the pendulum the other way. That also doesn’t reflect respect or value. But in a way that sensitizes them to recognize and respect women equally in a culture and society that is possibly not set up for that to happen naturally.
We have the power to change things.
In a world of man-bashing (mostly rightly so), we as boy-moms should try to encourage positive masculinity and chivalrous behaviour that has nothing to do with long-dead ideas about men and women, but has everything to do with the heart attitude that there is never a reason to be mean, that kindness is always the best response, and the golden rule of putting others first that helps our kids to shine a light in the world.
When we sensitize our boys to inherent biases I believe we are actually empowering them. It equips them with an understanding of the world that helps them make sense of things, and an understanding of themselves that helps them grow. The power for real change lies not in the pressure we can put on a government or system or institution. Because at a fundamental level it’s not society, history or culture that govern what we do and don’t to, it’s what we have accepted as true, have bought into on a belief/ heart level.
It is only change at a heart level that helps us see things differently. Only then can we do things differently.
The purpose of a test is to assess our ability to apply what we’ve learned: 
