Next Generation Discipleship in an LGBT+ World

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Betsy Childs Howard
Hello and welcome to this last breakout session. We’re very glad that you’re here. My name is Betsy Childs Howard. I’m an editor at the Gospel Coalition. I have written several books, and my most recent book is called Arlo Takes Off. It’s a picture book for children, but you’re really here to hear from Rachel Gilson, and I’m looking forward to asking her all my questions. Rachel serves on staff with Crew, and she is on the leadership team of Theological Development and Culture for Crew. She’s written a couple of books that I highly recommend. The first one is called Born Again This Way, and that includes her story. And then the second one is called Parenting Without Panic, which has been helpful to me as a mom of little boys age four and six. So please look for those in the bookstore. And Rachel has just finished a PhD from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. So that was done in May. Would you start by telling us the story of how you became a follower of Jesus? Yes,

Rachel Gilson
I would love to, as long as my mic works. Yes, it does. Great, excellent. I hope you’re all caffeinated because of the time of day. So, like some of you in this room, certainly I grew up not going to church. I grew up in a non-Christian household, so Christianity just wasn’t really part of my life. As I got older into high school, I did start to be curious about, you know, what was true, what was what was real in the world. But when I was talking to my Christian peers, because there were a lot of church goers that grew up around me, I just didn’t find their answers particularly compelling, and I eventually kind of developed this point of view, like ah, Christians aren’t people who really know how to think for themselves; they’re kind of dummies who need a crutch. And the other thing that I realized in high school was that the way that my female friends felt about other young men was actually how I felt about other young women, and this is very-it’s very different generationally. So I was born in 1985, and at the time when I was recognizing that I was more attracted to women, I didn’t experience these attractions to men. This was at a time in our culture where no state had yet legalized same-sex marriage. It was back when the sitcom Will and Grace was still considered edgy. You know, it was a very different world than the world we live in now. You know, if I had been born either in 1965 or in 2005, probably certain things would have been very different. But when I when I started having romantic and sexual relationships with other young women, you know, right after the turn of the century, I remember sort of thinking, “Is this wrong? Like I’ve I’ve sort of heard that it’s wrong, but I hadn’t grown up with any Christianity in your religion, so I thought, well, it’s not hurting anybody, so probably it’s okay. But what also developed at that time was a point of view that Christianity was full of bigots, because even though I’d never been mistreated by a Christian because of my sexuality, I just sort of understood. Well, that’s part of the deal. Like they’re not for these relationships; they would be against me personally. So when I went off to college, I brought that baggage about Christianity with me. I like to joke, not joke, that I got tricked into moving to New England. I grew up in Southern California, which is what the new heavens and the new earth are going to look like, and all the promotional material for Yale College is from October. You know, where there’s this like gold and light and red trees. I’m like, oh, this is going to be so nice. And actually, it’s like snow, cold all the time, and that really mirrors my social and emotional experience of my first year in college. On the one hand, I thought I was really smart, so sophisticated, and then I was at a world-class university, and everyone was smarter than me. Oh, sad, ouch, that hurt. And then the other thing that happened was that the girl I was dating at the time broke up with me. She left me for this guy who lived in a van and hadn’t graduated high school. And you think that’s just embarrassing? Like nobody wants to be left for that guy. So that I took that personally. That hurt, and I was mopey and looking for lots of things. I was not looking for Jesus, but luckily, Jesus was looking for me. So I happened to be taking a course in philosophy, and there was a lecture on Descartes. You guys know him; he’s the old dead French guy who invented the phrase “I think, therefore I am. And the lecturer was explaining how Descartes got from that statement to a proof for God’s existence. And I was in the audience thinking, that’s kind of dumb, but I was curious if there were many any proofs of God’s existence that were good. And so, I mean, like many of you, when you have a vulnerable question, because I wasn’t going to ask people, I asked the internet. You know, I Googled it. Now maybe you chat. I don’t know, but.

Rachel Gilson
I just started typing in lots of random religious search terms, and over and over again, I kept reading about Jesus. And Jesus, in my mind, had been a cartoon character, like not someone to take seriously, not someone to respect. But these stories I was reading about Jesus, I was like, “Oh, wait a minute, he’s quite compelling. Like, ew, I can’t be, I can’t find Jesus interesting. Like, that’s, I’m a self-respecting atheist, and I want to marry a woman someday. Like this is not this is not the thing. And the only two people I knew at Yale with me who identified as Christians-I mean, I met some later-but the only two I knew at the time who identified as Christians were these two young women who were dating each other, and one of them was training to be a Lutheran minister, which in my mind, sounded like varsity level Christian. I didn’t really know anything, but that’s. And so I remember thinking, how can they reconcile their sexuality in the Bible? That doesn’t make any sense to me. So I went to them, and they were like, “Oh yeah, it’s all been a big misunderstanding. You know, if you if you actually interpret the Bible correctly, you’ll see that God affirms monogamous gay relationships, and I remember thinking that’s interesting. So I took their packet explaining their point of view, and I remember finding it interesting and compelling. But then I thought, oh wait, I shouldn’t just read this. I should probably read the Bible, but I didn’t have a Bible, so I just pulled it up on Google again. And as I was reading the Bible verses and then reading these interpretations, it was pretty clear to me quickly. Like, oh, these girls are really sweet, but I don’t think that’s what the Bible is saying. Like, I just the only thing I’m good at is reading, and I don’t think this passes the test. So I thought, okay, fine, we’re just not going to worry. I should be focusing on my homework anyway. So a little while after that, I happened to be in the room of a friendly acquaintance of mine who was a non-practicing Catholic, and I was standing in her doorway. She was further in her room, and she had a bookshelf next to her doorway. And one of my favorite hobbies is looking at people’s bookshelves and judging them. I hate, I hate on Zoom calls when you can see the bookshelf but you can’t see the books. It just aggravates me. So I was checking out her titles, and she had a book on her shelf that read *Mere Christianity* by C.S. Lewis. Yeah, and I didn’t know to make the yummy noises because I hadn’t been raised on Narnia. But the title of the book was really good, and I thought, of course, I should be reading a book and not the internet. But I also didn’t want to ask my friend for the book because I didn’t want to admit that I was interested, so I just stole the book and put it in my bag because I had no moral compass, you know, and it’s that big, not not a problem. I mean, a big problem, but you know. So I happened to be so I was working through that book and I was reading it one day in between classes, and there wasn’t like a particular chapter or a sentence, or anything like this. But while I was reading that book, I was suddenly, I really had like a religious experience where God revealed to me Himself. I, I realized, oh, God is real, and not, you know, like Zeus or some store brand type God, like the God who made everything, including me, and the God who was perfect. It was like I was feeling the outskirts of God’s holiness, even though I didn’t know that vocabulary word. And I also was feeling myself. I’m gonna. I’m gonna owe him an account. And I’d met me. I was arrogant and unkind and sexually immoral, and I lied for fun. And I was reading a stolen book. Like it wasn’t, there wasn’t like a question, like, “Gosh, what’s going to happen to her? You know.

Rachel Gilson
So I really got confronted with the bad news of the gospel first, and then I think the Lord revealed to me that part of the reason Jesus had come was to place Himself as a barrier between God’s wrath and me, and so that the only way to be safe was to run towards Jesus, not away from Jesus. And I remember thinking, I don’t want to become a Christian. Christians are really lame. But I was also like, This is a pretty good deal. I should probably take the deal. I can’t pretend it’s not true just because it’s like inconvenient for my life. So I thought, I guess I should probably pray. So I closed my eyes and I was like, okay, fine, I’ll become a Christian. And then I went to class, and really quickly I got connected with the Campus Crusade movement at Yale, and I started getting a Christian community and learning the things that you need to know to be a Christian. But it was also very clear early in my walk. Well, I’ve said yes to Jesus and I want to obey Him, but I’m still attracted to other women that didn’t just disappear because I said yes to Jesus. And so a lot of my, especially my early walk with the Lord, this wasn’t an academic question. It was a survival question. Like, how am I going to thrive as a disciple in the midst of these experiences? And God’s been very patient with me, you know, over the years. Those means of grace, God’s Spirit and God’s Word and God’s people, have. Helped me to walk faithfully with him, but it-I think probably like for so many of you in this room, it’s not an academic question. You’re here because it’s personal in one way or another, and I think that’s an important thing to acknowledge at the front end. Like this involves real people, real emotions. It’s not just a subject in a book.

Betsy Childs Howard
And now you’re married to a man, and you have a daughter. So, since you spend so much time talking and writing about sexuality, you probably came into parenting absolutely confident about how to teach it to your own child, right? Yeah.

Rachel Gilson
Oh, yeah. What a breeze. No. Especially if I’ve met my my daughter, she’s spicy. So she’s she’s 12 now, and I live outside of Boston. It’s a very progressive place, you know. Functionally, June Pride Month is like it’s like gay Advent. You know, it’s just sort of like everything is out, Everything and I was like, okay, well, you know, I I wasn’t raised in a Christian household, so I don’t really know what to do exactly with her. And my husband had become a Christian as a little guy at VBS, which is why we love VBS. But he hadn’t really been discipled till he got to college, so he was sort of like, okay, we’re we’re just sort of how do we do this exactly? And so I remember thinking, well, what if we just start talking about things early, like naming body parts, these kinds of you know naming the biological processes before she even knows to be embarrassed because I don’t really know what to do. Because part of what I, you know, I kind of put on like an anthropologist hat and talked to my friends who grew up in the church, and I got a lot of interesting reviews. Like, so when did your when did your parents start talking to you about sex? And I got some really funny reports. You know, people were like, “Well, right after I hit puberty, my mom left a book on my bed. At this particular age, that seemed too old. My parents had a very nervous conversation with me. Now, actually, some people’s parents did a great job, but plenty of us actually maybe didn’t have a great job. So it was funny coming into that as a parent, and I thought, okay, I can do this. I can do this. Until I hit a point when my daughter was about to go into kindergarten, so I was going to send her to the public school because it’s a fantastic neighborhood public school. But I know, you know, it’s also got these different things we’ve got to watch out for in terms of what it’s teaching. If my daughter is very contrarian, like anywhere you put her, she’s going to be like, nah, I don’t think so. So if she had been very naive and believing anything, maybe I would have made a different decision when schooling. But I’m like, she’s just going to say no to all this. But I was like, okay, getting ready. And I had a neighborhood. Oh, she’s still my friend, Laura, and she had older kids who were in this school. So I was asking Laura, like, oh, can you tell me about the kindergarten teachers getting ready? She was like, oh yeah. So there’s three different teachers. They’re all great. One of them’s a woman who’s married to another woman, and Laura, my friend, is like she’s a passionate follower of Jesus. She was just mentioning this to let me know, and I remember thinking, “Oh no, what am I going to do? And I was like, “Oh no, I’m thinking that. Like this is like what I do for a living. Like this is what I’ve had to do to survive as a disciple. This is what I written and taught on, and in that moment I was like, “Oh Lord, please let my daughter not get into that classroom so I can avoid the conversation. And God, in His mercy, said, “No, she’s going to be in that one. So it was a great reminder to me that even having walked this personally and having taught other adults how to think about these questions and walk through this stuff, I’m like, oh, talking to kids is a very different proposition, especially because I think we’ve all experienced you tell your kid one thing, and then when they report what you said, you think I couldn’t be further from what I said, you get these horror pictures,

Betsy Childs Howard
and I know that a lot of us feel that anxiety. But why is it important to present as calm and confident when you talk to your children? Yeah,

Rachel Gilson
that’s right. So we’re going to hit different points where we’re like breathing into a bag, panicking. But one of the most important things we can give our kids is the knowledge that they can bring anything to us, because if they don’t think that they can learn from us about their bodies, about sex, about relationships, they will go to bad places. They will ask Claude and ChatGPT. They will ask their friends on the playground. Who knows what? Who knows what they’re going to hear? But if they know that mom and dad are safe and competent, that mom and dad will never shame them for asking a question. They’ll never be in trouble. They’ll never be. Ridiculed, and that we know what we’re talking about. That we can talk about biology competently. That we can talk about the theology competently, with that calm-not in like a, all your neighbors are your enemies, but like like this is this is how we understand what’s happening because we belong to God. Our children receive that from us. It’s not just the words, not just the message, but it’s the manner that’s very important. They’re like, right, my mom knows, my dad knows. So even if I do hear something weird on the playground, or I hear, I see something in a TV show, I

Betsy Childs Howard
accidentally Google something and the wrong thing comes up.

Rachel Gilson
Yep, that they’re not they’re not going to punish me, and I can go to them and say, “This is what I saw. This is what I heard. Can you help me? Because you, if you’ve established a rhythm of calm confidence, you at least lower the barrier. I mean, it’s always weird talking to your parents about this stuff, but if we can project that, it’s so helpful. It’s for our kids to actually go there.

Betsy Childs Howard
Yeah, and I’m half joking when I say that we need to pretend to be calm and confident, even we’re not, because you do sort of have to fake it sometimes. But where should that calm and confidence come from?

Rachel Gilson
Yeah, well, I think of it primarily. It comes from our relationship with Jesus Christ. He loves us, and He loves our kids even more than we do. And we know that all truth belongs to Him, and we know that He loves to cover mistakes. I’m often praying that the things I say, if there’s anything not true in them or unhelpful, that God would just block ears from hearing it, and so that works with our children as well, right? Like I, surely we will make mistakes. We’re not going to get everything right, but we have a God who forgives and heals and equips, and so as we continue to do the work of trying to train up our children, even if we do make mistakes, or if you’re an, if you’ve got an adult child, and you think back on things, you think I’ve really made some mistakes. There is always time for a fresh beginning because of who Christ is. We can always own and talk to our children and say, you know what, I used to approach this this way, and I’ve been thinking and learning, and I think this is a better way. Will you forgive me for maybe some of the ways I wasn’t equipped, and so gave you some not great things? There’s, I mean, we can even ask forgiveness from our littles, right? Like when we when we need to.

Betsy Childs Howard
Yeah. Well, when it comes to biblical sexuality, what’s the good news that parents can give to children and teens about that.

Rachel Gilson
Yeah, well, I think of. I’m going to break this down into two different categories and answer them sort of. When I when I think of this topic, you know, talking to our kids about LGBT questions, I kind of think of it in three different buckets. I think there’s a biology bucket, there’s a theology bucket, and there’s a missiology bucket. I’ll maybe leave that one for later down the road. But part of the good news is actually even begins in the biology bucket. Well, here’s what I mean by that: God designed our bodies very good, like He’s made us good. So part of the good news is just celebrating. Oh, like it’s really good to be a little boy. It’s really good to be a little girl. Like there’s something. I mean, our world is very confused and confusing about gender and sexuality. And so, if we can be people that give our children and grandchildren assurance, like it is so good that God made you a little girl, and we know who you are because of your body. Like we know it, we don’t have to doubt it. Like what God has given you is so firm. That’s really, really good. And this is part of why we just we start early using actual proper names for our body parts, is to help people know that these are good parts of our body. We should be able to say penis. We should be able to say vagina with our kids. Also, as a side note, the more our children actually know the proper names for their genitals, the better protected they’ll be from predators. I wish that wasn’t a true part of why we need to do this, but it’s good. Like when we when we’re able to talk honestly early with our children, like here’s your body, here’s how we know, here’s what the parts are, like that ends up being good and solid and helpful. That’s good news for them to know, like oh, it’s good. And then before I get well, there’s always a little bit of theology mixed in these different places, but another good part of biology is that there is something beautiful about the fact that when male and female come together, it creates new life. Like that can just be really good news, even for kids. And it’s amazing to me. I mean, I guess I’m a city mom, you know, and. I would read so many kids kids books with my daughter, where it’s like they were obsessed with making sure my daughter knew what chickens sounded like or what the sounds that sheep and cows made. And I’m like, we’re actually more familiar with the sounds of raccoons fighting over trash, you know. It’s sort of, but animals end up being a good illustration for so many things, and it’s amazing how with mammals, including us, it’s just like you know what’s awesome. Like, how do we get new little kittens? Well, a mom cat and a dad cat come together, and then you get these kittens. Like, male and female makes new life. There’s something that’s just-I mean, it’s obvious and it’s right there, but it’s powerful and it’s beautiful, and it’s actually really good to talk to our kids about how that happens, and you could do it in age-appropriate ways. You know, talk about like, oh, well, how, where does this new life come from? Well, the man, the dad, the husband, whatever term you want to use, like husband’s pretty good, right? The husband, he contributes a seed, and the wife contributes an egg, and new life comes, and you’re like, well, how does the seed got to the egg? And then you breathe into a bag again. You kind of got to practice it, right? You got to find your own way. Talk about, but actually describing the sexual relationship is good news for our kids. It establishes this calm confidence, right? You’re like, oh, well, what happens is husband inserts his penis into his wife’s vagina. The seed travels through his penis to the egg in her body, and the new baby grows there. And you might be like blacking out, passing out. You might pee a little. I don’t know. But sometimes these conversations feel so weird. But mostly, your kid’s going to be like, “That’s weird, and then move on.

Rachel Gilson
You want to have these kind of biology conversations earlier than you think, even before it gets weird, so you can just establish it. And they’re usually conversations you’ll have to have multiple times because kids, they just forget things, right? And some of us ask question askers, and that’s great. You’re just like, oh, you can vamp a little bit. Like, where do babies come from? I’m so glad you asked. This is amazing. And then you practice the little line you practice. Some of us have people who don’t ask questions, and you kind of have to force it. Like, have you ever wondered where babies come from? Let me tell you, it is amazing. But it’s good news. the The fact that God made things to work this way is really good for our kids. So that’s the biology bucket. But biology is also true, like we said about kittens or piglets or whatever. Right? There’s a theological element to this conversation for Christians that adds a whole new beauty to what we can offer our children, and we can offer this from the earliest ages, and it gets more advanced as your kids get older. But even when you’re saying you were born a little boy, and that’s good because you’re like God made humanity. God made people, male and female, and that is so good. He said, male and female together, made in His image. Together, when we’re together, boys and girls and men and women, somehow we we picture God to the world. That’s really good news, and there’s theology of that. It’s not accidental who we are. It’s something really beautiful that God has given us. And when we think about relationships, I mean, this shows up in all kinds of books, you know, about marriage. There’s all. I mean, there’s different stories today that are popular in different channels, right? But there are classic stories of the prince who rescues the princess, and it’s a it’s a grand story. But we can talk over and over again when we see healthy marriages in our church, healthy marriages and stories, different relationships, and be like, you know what’s so beautiful? Every single good marriage is a picture of God’s relationship with His people, and that we only even need that sentence-a different little spot. So you take your little kids to a wedding, you say, “This is actually a picture of how God is going to win His bride in the end, the church. You just like you sprinkle it in. There’s something really powerful, and it’s not just arbitrary why marriage looks the way it looks. Like marriages are supposed to be faithful because God’s relationship with His people is faithful. Christ has been faithful to us. We’re called to be faithful to Him. It’s it’s a place for new life for adopting children and producing children from the fruit of our bodies. Well, because God’s relationship with His people is fruitful. Oh yeah.

Betsy Childs Howard
No, no. Oh,

Rachel Gilson
I was going to say like this. It’s male and female because the husband represents God and the wife represents the church. Is this two this picture of these two non-interchangeable parties that come together, and so we give our kids these little drips over time, like marriage is a picture of the gospel, and singleness is a picture of the gospel. That there’s something beautiful about singleness, because if these little marriages, even the best ones, well, they don’t fill the hole in the heart that we long for with our relationship with God. If anything, they just make us ache for it more. If these little marriages. Are all pictures of the big marriage? Well, someone who’s single for the sake of Christ might look at marriage and think, “Well, yeah, I would want that. Maybe God hasn’t given me yet, but I’m not going to miss out on the real thing. In the new heavens and the new earth, we’re all going to be single and we’re all going to be married. And so, the person who’s faithfully single for Christ in this life is like a living, breathing picture of hope in the resurrection, and a picture of how our truest family, our fullest family, is in the local church. And so, as our kids see in our churches healthy singles and healthy marriages, we can say, like, look at all these gospel pictures. Look how marriage points. Look how singleness points. Because biology is good and it’s real and we should insist on it, but when we add the theological picture over and over, just these practicing in our own ways, it really helps enchant the world for our kids. They understand that these are things that are pointing to deeper, fuller realities, and it helps give them a positive sense of why we believe what we do, God has said this is all about something so much more.

Betsy Childs Howard
So that’s the good news.

Rachel Gilson
That is the good news.

Betsy Childs Howard
How do we talk to children and teens about the sexual brokenness all around

Rachel Gilson
us? Yeah, and this is really important because I don’t know if you’ve ever met another human, but every single person experiences and expresses their sexuality in some way that falls short, and our kids are going to be included in that. That includes sin, and that also includes just things that have occurred to us, like sins that have committed against some of us, right? And so we need to equip our children to think about those realities as well, so we know that God created male and female good. We know that God created marriage and singleness to be practiced in holiness, and we also recognize that’s not how it goes. If we are honest and repeat with our children. Yes, God created everything good, but we have fallen, and this world is marked by sin and brokenness. It’ll help them not be surprised. We don’t want them to be surprised by sin, and part of how we do this is actually just by owning our own sins in the normal part of our family life, right? So, I’m a campus minister, and I often, when I meet young women like 18 or 19 year olds who grew up in Christian households and seem to have really good relationships with Jesus, I ask them, “How did you get here? Because I, you know, I would want that for my own child. I can’t tell you the through line that I mean, there’s been lots of things, but over and over again, I’ve heard how oh I knew the gospel was real for my parents because they would ask for forgiveness, and that made me think maybe the gospel really was real, and so if we make it a normal family practice to be like yeah, even people who belong to Jesus we fall short. We need to ask for forgiveness. We need to look for healing for Christ. It helps prepare our kids for when the brokenness touches male and female or touches sexuality. They know the grammar of the gospel, which is I don’t have to pretend it’s not sin, and I shouldn’t embrace it. I need to go to Jesus with it. So that kind of normal family discipleship actually really helps and prepares for this conversation as well.

Betsy Childs Howard
We know the world preaches a lot of false gospels about sexuality. Have you encountered any false gospels about sexuality in the church?

Rachel Gilson
How much time we got?

Betsy Childs Howard
Give me your four minute answer. Yeah,

Rachel Gilson
yeah, because as much as we want to be faithful to God, we are all sinners, and things enter in. I would say perhaps one of the most harmful ones is the heresy I would call salvation by romance, which is where we functionally act like you’re not a real and full or healthy Christian unless you’re married, and then you know having like a beautiful sexual relationship. So we don’t set up people who struggle with sex and marriage, and we really don’t set up the singles who are faithful to God and God hasn’t brought them marriage, because part of we, the culture believes this too, right? Like you are completed by either having a lot of sexual partners or having this one relationship in the church. We call it marriage. We think, oh, here’s your here’s your reward for being a faithful Christian. You are tied to this sinner forever. You’re like, can I get a different prize? I don’t think this is a good deal. What can happen is we accidentally we do this funny little line where it’s like, well, God wants you to be happy, and marriage will make you happy, so God wants you to be married. And if you’re very faithful, that will be your reward. So we get all kinds of things messed up. So then you have people who live faithfully who don’t get the reward. Well, if we put words in God’s mouth that aren’t there, we make Him out to be a liar. That’s on us. And also, when we repeatedly teach people God wants you to be happy, He wants you to be married. We accidentally set up a perfect on-ramp to affirming theology, which is the theology where God blesses gay relationships, which is not biblical. Because here’s what happens: kids have heard over and over again, “Well, God wants you to be happy. He wants you to be married, and you have a young man or a young woman who are like, “Well, I seem to only be attracted to people of my same sex, but I know God wants me to be happy, and I know to be happy I need to be married, and I I I probably need to follow my feelings, and so maybe this is the route I need to go. So we have often put the bait on the hook, and then yelled at people when they take it, which is really not fair. God does care about our joy, but that’s not what marriage is about.

Betsy Childs Howard
Falling on from that, how does teaching kids a theology of suffering influence how we disciple them about sex and holiness? Yeah,

Rachel Gilson
that’s right. We’ve got to want to be just as biblical as we can possibly be, and when we look at Christ in the scriptures, we see he warns. Right, he does say, when we follow him, you know, there’s after the rich young ruler approaches him and he leaves sad because Jesus says, “Well, give up all your wealth and follow me. And then Peter, being Peter, is like, “Ha ha, we have given up all to follow you. You’re like, “Dude, okay. And Jesus, like, yeah, no one who has given up father and mother and children and sons and lands will not will not receive even now mothers and childrens and sons and daughters and lands and persecutions and eternal life. You’re like, wait, what?

Betsy Childs Howard
One of these things that’s not with the other?

Rachel Gilson
What’s with the persecutions, right? But Jesus is very clear. Following Him does include. He does give us so many blessings, and we should not expect to be treated any differently than He was treated. And He wasn’t always well received. And this can be-it’s really important for us to teach our children, especially because right now we live in a context where Christian sexual ethics is viewed as evil. I think for those of us who are millennials, Christian sexual ethics looked like kind of weird and outdated, but maybe it wasn’t quite evil. And for those older than us, Christian sexual ethic was just normal. But what Gen Z and Gen Alpha is walking in is like people think you’re evil for this, and that can make us afraid. We’re sort of like, I don’t want my child to walk away from the Lord because the biblical sexual ethic makes them stand out, and that’s where we have to. I mean, this is so hard, right? We have to entrust our children to the Lord, teach what the Bible teaches because it’s true, teach it to them positively, but help them understand. Like there is, there are going to be parts of Christianity that look beautiful and palatable to the world, but there are always going to be parts of the gospel message within any culture it lands in are going to be offensive, offensive enough that people. I mean, luckily this isn’t happening here, but offensive enough around the world that some of our siblings die for their faith, right? So we need to educate our children that following all of God’s word could bring them pain, but God always sees us when we are faithful to Him, it matters to Him. He sees it. He will reward it. He is with us in it, even if it has an outcome that’s really difficult. And that, just because of how sexual ethics is viewed right now, that’s very important for our kids to understand.

Betsy Childs Howard
Yeah, and some of that suffering and persecution comes to parents of children who reject that teaching, and you may suffer greatly in your relationship with your child. But there are verses that is not outside the realm of biblical experience. It’s right there in the center of it. Yeah,

Rachel Gilson
we were told, right? Jesus, like, there’s going to be division within your families. There’s going to be division within your family, so we think you probably didn’t mean that, but it comes up here, doesn’t it? It really does. And so some of you do have children who have walked away from the faith and maybe embraced one of these identities or embraced a gay relationship. This is desperately hard, and if that if that’s you, so much of this conversation is about talking to littles, but I know some of you here have adult kids in that camp. You really do make sure you have people who love Jesus and love you, who you can process with. Be really helpful to not go it alone. You really need that community, and also to remember. Your children surely know what you think; they know what you believe. What the secular world’s going to try to tell them is that you’re a bigot who doesn’t love them. So, part of the role of a parent in that situation is to show radical love, not with compromising your beliefs at all, but just showing radical love, and it opens up a space where the spirit can introduce doubt into that narrative that your parents are evil, and that I mean we can’t force anything, right? Jesus moved through the world with perfect motivations and perfect tactics, and he was murdered. Sometimes we can do things. We think my motivations were good, my tactics were good. It’s not in our hands, but that’s also good because it means we don’t have to bear it. We pray, we love, we’re clear, and we leave it to the Lord.

Betsy Childs Howard
Let’s talk about some sort of practical, real life situations, and these are these are ones that I personally just don’t have a clue what you should do. So one of the hardest situations to me is when you have someone living in a way that the Bible doesn’t condone, but they’re they’re claiming the name of Christ. Like say that your niece decides she’s a boy, and her church attending parents support her fully in that, or a neighbor moves in next door who’s a lesbian? They talk all the time about how much she loves Jesus. How do you talk about that with your kids?

Rachel Gilson
You don’t. You move to a new neighborhood, buy a new house. Hiding is always the way. No, I’m just kidding. That’s not it. So this is one of the things I think can be really helpful. Well, actually, let’s talk first about non-Christians because then it’ll help us talk about Christians. So, one of the things that can happen with little kids, they can just sort of good-bad split everything, right? They’re like, “Oh, we go to church, and we’re good, and our neighbor don’t go to church, so they must be bad. You’re like, “No, okay, that’s not it. Like, that’s not it. We are all, we are all born in desperate need of salvation. The only difference between our family and our next door neighbor’s family is we’ve said yes to Jesus already, and they haven’t said yes to Jesus yet. So part of what we’re trying to this is the missiology bucket sneakily coming in. Part of what we’re trying to do with our kids is talk about it matters that Jesus is our King. It matters that He’s our King. Mom and Dad have said yes to Jesus, and that’s not ticket to heaven. Yes, that is He is our Lord. He’s more than that. He’s our brother and our friend, but He is surely our King, and so everything His Word says we need to live up to, and so he said that we think about our bodies in a certain way, we think about our relationships in a certain way, we think about money in a certain way, and our neighbors, well, they haven’t said yes to Jesus as their king, so of course they don’t follow his rules. The least surprising thing ever is when an unbeliever acts like an unbeliever. We want to help our kids with that. Like, why do we do what we do? Because Jesus is our King. And the other thing that I think has been really important is talking about the gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, “It’s good that I’m going away, so I can send the Comforter, the Helper to you. We have to be transformed by walking with the Spirit, those fruits of the Spirit, even even when we desperately want to obey, sometimes it’s so hard, right? Because we we still struggle with our flesh. We need to say yes to Jesus and to receive the Spirit, who can convict us, and strengthen us, and help us, and give us the ability to run away from temptation. We need that to obey Jesus everywhere and truly in sexual ethics. So if my neighbors haven’t said yes to Jesus as King, they’re not going to care about His rules, and they don’t even have the Holy Spirit. So how could they possibly live up to it? Because we’re all born In sin, but this is where it gets tricky with what you were talking about. What about the people in our lives who do say they belong to Jesus and teach something that’s outside of God’s word? This is much more complicated. Like we were saying, we’re not surprised when unbelievers act like unbelievers. It’s much harder in this scenario, especially if it’s in your family, but even if it’s in your neighborhood. And this is why it’s so important. If we’re thinking under the label of kingship, well, Jesus has given us His Word. We have to do what the Scriptures say. And so, at any point with my children now, sometimes your kids are little, and so it’s hard to know how to have the complex conversation. I think I never had to do that when when Enna was really small. That’s my daughter. But you’d probably say, like, you know, it is important that we take people seriously. When they claim the name of Christ, and when we take the name of Christ, it means we have to live up to what God says. So, if we’re ever confused, we go back to the Bible. So we try to make that movement right. So we’re not trying to make weird statements about whether someone is or isn’t a Christian. I mean, they might not be, but what we’re trying to teach our children is no matter what someone claims, whenever we’re confused, we go to the Bible.

Rachel Gilson
And as our kids get older, they will encounter some complex arguments, some complex situations where the Bible is used in certain ways. And so, it’s good of us to be prepared and understand what some of those difficulties are, you know, 15 years ago there were no affirming arguments-not really-that were appealing to those who have a high view of the Bible. A lot of them were just-they weren’t things we would take seriously. They’ve really changed in the past 10 to 15 years. There are now more affirming arguments that look more attractive to those of us who have a high view of the Bible, so it can be really important to get a handle on what’s happening with those arguments. I would highly recommend Rebecca McLaughlin’s book, “Does the Bible Affirm Same Sex Relationships? because she just deals with some of the most popular affirming arguments, and the tone is really great in terms of how to approach them. So, especially as you have older children, that’s great to just educate yourself about why these Bible arguments fall short. Because the Bible is where we have to go when we’re adjudicating between people who claim Christ.

Betsy Childs Howard
Another hard one. I have several friends whose adult children have decided they’re trans. Do you there? Do you know anybody walking through that in a way that you would recommend? Can you sort of describe? I’m not saying that there’s one way to walk through that, but can you describe anybody you know walking through that situation with an adult child?

Rachel Gilson
Someone whose adult child has decided to transition.

Betsy Childs Howard
There’s no need for permission from the parents.

Rachel Gilson
Yeah, no, that’s right. In my current community, so oddly enough, the the only person that’s coming to mind is one of my friends who she was born female and she was living full she she socially and physically transitioned, and so she lived as a man for a long time. She passed in many ways, but through crashing out and various things, she rediscovered Jesus, and so she’s been on a long, slow process of coming to terms with her female embodiment again. So she’s, you know, rejected that male identity. She’s living as a woman. She’s retaken her birth name. She’s undone all the legal things. She did obviously there’s certain medical things you can’t ever quite undo, but what really ministered to her in that place was she found a Christian church that loved her and wanted to make sure the gospel was first. And so, if I’m thinking about her experience of these men and women who just drew close to her and gave her even the vision for what it could look like to accept her body. I was thinking with with parents, it’s got to be a similar, it’s got to be a similar walk. If our there’s basically the question is, if our child has taken a trans identity and has walked away from the Lord, our first goal is let’s continue to share the gospel, because the trans identity is a problem, but it is not as big of a problem as their unbelief. What our child needs is to be reconciled to their Creator and their Redeemer, and once that happens, we know that grace and truth can flow to start. Well, allowing that child to make peace again with the body God has given them, and people adopt transgender identities for a variety of reasons, some of them really because of deep gender dysphoria, and that’s going to require a different walk. That’s like my friend I was talking about; she’s really struggled with this her whole life. Some people adopt a transgender identity for political reasons or other reasons, and if that person comes to Christ, a reintegration with the body God gave tends to be easier and quicker, but there’s patience there, right? So we’re thinking, I want to prioritize the gospel. That’s what I’m going to pray for. That’s what I’m going to try to speak for. Now, obviously, if your child wants to talk about God’s view of gender, we should be prepared to give a good answer. We should be prepared to say, like, Yes, I see in Scripture God has said. He created us male and female. I also see that because we live in a fallen world, it makes sense to me how we can feel, even at odds with our own body. But the answer to that isn’t to manipulate the body. The answer to that is to flee to Christ, and to ask Him to help us carry our burdens.

Betsy Childs Howard
And if your child who was trans said to you, “The only way you can love me is if you accept who I am. What would you say to that parent?

Rachel Gilson
I mean, I think we all sort of know in our hearts, right? That’s not how love works. If we only could love people we agreed with 100% we wouldn’t even love ourselves. Because I fight with myself half the time, but it’s a very popular narrative, and we have to challenge it through radical love. So your kids are going to say all kinds of things to you, and you’re thinking, “I am, without wavering, I’m just going to continue to show this child love, because they’re not. It’s going to be harder for them to deny that the love is really there if they can see it happening over difference, and if they can see us loving other people over difference in our lives as we love non-Christians in our lives, that can also be a witness to them that they’re close enough to see like, oh, my parents can love people across difference. Or sometimes you get situations where people will claim like, oh, if you don’t fully support them, your child will harm themselves. The statistics on that don’t actually reflect it. That’s a scare tactic that is unfortunately very brutal.

Betsy Childs Howard
And that makes me want to be careful with how I talk about other people around my kids while they’re still young and while they’re teaching, so that you can show that you can love people you disagree with. Well, I was

Rachel Gilson
just about to say that. So, because we’re talking about some people who have adult kids in this situation, but this starts early. How you talk about LGBT identifying people in front of your four, 711, 15-year-old is going to tell them everything about whether you’re safe with love across difference, and it’s not about pretending that we agree with everything the world does. Surely we don’t agree with everything the world does, but if you have a habit of, you know, maybe a gay relationship comes up on screen, and you had-I remember I’m talking-I was talking to a friend, he’s a disciple who experiences same-sex attraction, and he couldn’t tell his dad about his experience for years because every time a gay relationship came on a screen, his dad would go gross and change the channel. And he was like, “My dad is not safe. We’ve got to find a way to communicate to our children that yes, God has said certain things about how we live, and also our neighbors who don’t agree with us, our neighbors who live differently than us, our people for whom Christ died, and they’re often like wonderful, delightful people. So let’s get to know them so we can share our lives together and share the gospel with them. And if our children are in fact the ones who later realize I feel some of these things, and they’ve seen that in us. They’ll have a better shot of being able to walk with their parents instead of keeping it a secret, or they’ll be better equipped to minister to their own friends who are feeling this way because they’ve seen you with that calm confidence, that non-adversarial approach. Say, like, we don’t have to be threatened by. You don’t have to be threatened by what’s happening in the world. Our enemy is not flesh and blood; it’s the spiritual forces of evil, right? And so, my our neighbors’ kids-they’re not our enemies. They are always potential brothers and sisters in Christ.

Betsy Childs Howard
Unfortunately, we’ve got to close there. But Rachel, would you please pray for the people in this room who are facing hard situations.

Rachel Gilson
Father, we thank you so much that you see us and you know us. In this short amount of time, we could barely scratch the surface. I pray for those in the room who have wrestled for a long time with their own questions of gender and sexuality, I pray that you would comfort them and help them. I pray that if there’s any areas where they need to repent or confess, that you would lead them to a person who loves you and loves them to do that. I pray for those in this room who have children or grandchildren or nieces and nephews or other family members who have walked away from you, and who have embraced one of these identities, or embraced a gay relationship, or something like this? I pray that you would give them a healthy place to grieve. I pray that you would give them hope. You would encourage their hearts. That you would remind them of your delight in them as parents and grandparents and and friends. I pray that you would give them extraordinary grace and wisdom to minister to their children and grandchildren and others with your grace and truth. That we would. I pray. That you would make each of us in this room bold to speak the goodness of what you’ve said about our bodies and our relationships with clarity and generosity, and bold in our love of those who who are not convinced. Well, love of everyone, God, make us overflow with that love and with that truth, so that we can be the aroma of Christ around us. I pray that for these women in this room, that you would comfort and draw them near and be their close help and friend in all that they walk through. I pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.

Betsy Childs Howard
Amen. Thank you.