Responding to Homosexuality: Culture of Care versus Culture of Cure

Apr 25, 2022 by

by Hans Madueme and John Wingard, The Gospel Coalition:

Review of ‘Still Time to Care’ (Greg Johnson).

As professors at Covenant College, the Christian liberal arts college of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), and ruling elders in the PCA, we’ve had countless conversations with students and fellow church members about issues surrounding identity and sexuality. Like the rest of us, they’re trying to understand our cultural moment with all its complexities.

We both read widely on these issues for our teaching and counseling, and thus were eager to read Greg Johnson’s Still Time to Care: What We Can Learn from the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality, a book by a brother in Christ and a fellow elder in our denomination…

…Johnson charts a way forward for Christians who struggle with their sexuality and for those seeking to love them well—a way that reembodies the paradigm of care rather than the paradigm of cure exemplified by the ex-gay movement. The book is well written, full of pastoral warmth and hard-won wisdom. Johnson writes with verve and models a winsome orthodoxy that Christians everywhere should emulate…

…while Johnson’s book is consistent with some of the key emphases of Side B Christianity, he doesn’t apply this language directly to his own proposal.

In our judgment, the concerns of Johnson’s critics are not tilting at windmills but rather reflect the genuine dissent of sincere Christians across the globe. Massive shifts in sexual mores have turned the Western world upside down, not least in the normalization of homosexuality, queer theory, and the transgender movement….

…Johnson needs to communicate a more carefully developed theology of sanctification in the book. His constant emphasis on the improbability of losing one’s propensity toward certain sexual desires and temptations after coming to faith in Christ might encourage resignation about one’s condition that inhibits real growth in sexual holiness.

Read here

 

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