When Culture Rejects God’s Design (Juli Slattery)

Dannah Gresh: Dr. Juli Slattery says before we look at problems all around us related to gender and sexuality, we need to get the logs out of our own eyes. 

Dr. Juli Slattery: When I become complacent about the sexual brokenness and sin in my life, I become complicit with the enemy’s destruction of holy sexuality.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast for June 20, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh. Our host is the author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Today’s program is going to include some straightforward terms related to gender and sexuality, so if you have a little one nearby, you can decide how much they’re ready to hear. Although, as we’re about to hear from Dr. Juli Slattery, sadly, parents are needing to discuss things related to gender and sexuality with their kids at younger and younger ages. 

It seems like every day we’re hearing stories about things that would have been unheard of just a few years ago: school counselors who are helping children transition to the opposite gender without their parents’ knowledge, or bizarre changes in the world of sports allowing biological men to compete in women’s events.

Of course, those are in addition to the heartbreaking problems that have been around for generations but seem to be on the rise, things like: pornography, adultery, premarital sex, abuse, and so on. Well, there’s nothing new under the sun. None of this comes as a surprise to God.

But how should Christians respond when so many around us are rejecting God’s beautiful design for men and women? That’s what Dr. Juli Slattery is here to address today. She gave this message as part of our True Womanpreconference last fall.

Juli is the author of many books related to sexuality, including the one we’re offering this month for your donation of any amount. It’s called Rethinking Sexuality, and it’s an important book at this time in the conversation around us.

If you’re able to, why don’t you pull out your Bible and turn to Romans chapter 1. Now, let’s listen together to Dr. Juli Slattery.

Dr. Juli: My husband Mike is here with me. He’s one of the few brave men who are at the True Woman conference. He and I are the parents of three sons who are now young adults. When our boys were in those preteen years, around the ages of ten to twelve, Mike had the task of taking them out for “the talk.”

He took them each away for a weekend to go through Passport to Purity, which is a FamilyLife resource, and he came back with lots of stories about what happened on those talks. My poor middle son . . . Accidentally, Mike put in the CD for girls. My middle son was about to melt down, “Dad, I’m going to menstruate?!”(laughter) So, talk about gender confusion there! We got through that one.

There is a four-year gap between my middle son and my youngest son. In those four years my middle son, Andrew, had a heyday hazing his younger brother. He kept telling Christian, “Some day, Dad is going to take you away for ‘the talk,’ and you’re going to become a man!”

And so my son Christian was very concerned about this and wanted to know what “the talk” was, and how you become a man. So we had to kind of tone down his brother a little bit. But eventually, Christian was eleven, and Mike took him away for the weekend to go through “the talk.”

I still remember when Christian came through the door after he had “the talk.” Some of you moms can identify with this. Do you remember how your son looked at you right after he first heard about what sex is? 

They don’t say it out loud, but you know what’s going through their mind: “My mom did this three times! Like, I’m grossed out by this!” 

And so Christian said to me, “You know, Dad told me all about sex. He actually says that in your job you talk about more than even he knows. But Mom, I gotta tell you, I feel weird knowing this! I feel too young to know this!”

And I said, “Well, Christian, I understand that it can be a little bit awkward, but your Dad and I want you to hear about sex from us before you hear about it from the culture, from media, from your friends.” So apparently that satisfied Christian, and he went off to play.

Well, about four hours later I was in the kitchen cooking dinner and Christian came up to me. (He’s my thoughtful one.) He said, “Mom, I’ve been thinking. The way things are going, I’m going to have to have this talk with my kids when they’re like four years old!” (laughter)

Now, friends, eight years later, he is absolutely right. If you were to ask me, “When should I begin talking to my kids about sex?” I would say, “About four years old . . . because Blues Clues certainly is!” 

We live in a day and age where our culture is bombarding the youngest of children with messages that create sexual confusion and brokenness. I know that many of you as parents and as grandparents, you’re looking at what’s happening in our world and you’re asking, “How did this happen!? How did we get here!?”

In my job for the last decade, God has called me to talk about biblical sexuality. So every day what I do is, I address all kinds of issues related to sexual brokenness and confusion—not just questions about gender and homosexuality but all forms of sexual brokenness.

Many days I ask the Lord, “How did we get here? How did we get to a place where it’s normal for an eight-year-old to be exposed to pornography and to where pornography is considered the most popular form of sex education?”

How did we get to a place where we’re not disturbed by the fact that approximately 25 percent of girls and 20 percent of boys will be sexually abused before they reach their eighteenth birthday? How did we get to a place where an additional 25 percent of women will experience unwanted sexual contact on a college campus?

How did we get to a place where one in five Gen Z-ers consider themself within the LGBT frame? Twenty percent! How did we get there? How did we get to a world where we’re saddened—but no longer shocked—when we see headlines of another Christian leader who has been exposed as having been sexually abusive. What happened?!

Even as I mention those statistics, I know that for some of you, this is your story. This is your pain. You or someone you love is walking through some of these very things. You say, “We're in deep trouble! How did we get here?”

I’ve heard so many of you say—those of you who are like me, aging—we’re like, “Man, I’m so glad I don’t have kids in this generation.” But some of you do, and some of you have grandchildren in this generation. And even if you don’t, our heart has to break for what we’re seeing!

Now, has there always been sexual brokenness of every kind? Yes, there has, but we’ve never seen it accelerated the way it is today. We no longer know how to define what’s even healthy. There’s no agreed-upon marker of what wholeness actually looks like.

Now, Mary [Kassian, a speaker preceding Dr. Juli on this topic] mentioned that we’re going to be looking at Romans chapter 1 in our time this afternoon. This was not planned, but as we had a speaker call a few days ago, Dannah asked us each to share what God had put on our heart, and at least three of the four of us said, “God led me to Romans chapter 1.”

Which, that’s the way that God works, right? He orchestrated this day. And for some of you, even as we turn to Romans chapter 1, your stomach is in knots, because Romans chapter 1 has been referred to at times as the “clobber passage.” Those of you who have experienced this, you know what I mean.

So I want to say a few things about Romans chapter 1 before we go deeper into it. First of all, even though we are spending time in Romans chapter 1, I want to let you know we’re not going to end there.

Aren’t you glad the apostle Paul didn’t stop writing Romans after Romans chapter 1? Like, that would be very depressing! He spends the rest of the book of Romans and so much else of his teaching on, “How do we get out of this place of where we are today?”

But second of all, as we look at Romans chapter 1, I want to tell you that this passage is not a passage primarily about homosexuality. Now, yes, this is the most clear passage we have in Scripture that defines what homosexuality is and puts it in context of our culture. But Paul is not writing here as a teaching on homosexuality.

What Romans chapter 1 is really about is worship. It’s about what happens when a people, a culture, walks away from the worship of the one, true God and denies Him and begins to worship created things.

And so, as Mary walked through Romans chapter 1 (and I’m not going to read the whole passage again to you), I want to remind you that what Paul starts with and what he’s talking about is that God has revealed Himself through His creation so that we all are without excuse. 

Instead of worshiping God, we denied Him, and we chose instead to worship created things. Then he gives examples of things that the Roman culture was worshiping. And you say, “Well we don’t worship idols. We don’t worship reptiles. We don’t worship animals (unless you’re in PETA; that’s not my thing!).”

Friends, we live in a day and age where we worship humanity, where we have become our own god! We live in a culture that consistently tells you what you deserve: “Live your best life! You do you. If that works for you, fine!” This is everywhere.

It’s in our advertising slogans, it’s in our songs, it’s in our television or streaming shows, it’s in our movies. It’s in our water! “It’s all about you!” What we have to realize, ladies, is that the idolatry of every culture will seep into the church, and we will begin mixing our worship of God with the idolatry of our culture. And friends, this is really the case for us today.

When I’m struggling with something, I will often have somebody just ask me the question, “Well, what does your heart want?” You know what? It doesn’t matter what my heart wants. The better question is, “What does God want?” We are not to trust our hearts!

We live in a day and age, I’m sorry to say, where many Christian books that come across my desk to review have the message of sanctified adultery of self. Now, what I’m going to tell you might surprise you and it might offend you, but sometimes we need to say things that are offensive.

There is nowhere in the Bible that tells you to work on loving yourself. Now, you may have heard the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30–31 NIV). People will say, “See! You’ve gotta love yourself first before you can love anyone else.” Those are the words of Whitney Houston, not the words of Jesus Christ!

When we read that in context, what Jesus is really saying is (and this is fleshed out in Ephesians chapter 5), “Everyone knows how to love themselves. Everyone is naturally bent towards thinking about themselves.”

Even if you are living in self-contempt, you are drenched in self-focus. You can’t get out of yourself enough to love somebody else. And Jesus is saying, “Take that same devotion you have for yourself and extend it to other people.”

We see Paul saying in Scripture that at the end times, we will be what? “Lovers of self” (2 Tim. 3:1–2 CSB). I know that some of you in this room, you battle insecurity, and you battle low self-esteem. I will tell you as a clinical psychologist, you know what the answer to that is? Not to love yourself, but to believe and receive the love of Jesus Christ!

How deep, how wide it is! How much He loves you! The answer’s not found by looking inward, it’s found by looking upward! And so, we have to realize that we live in this culture that doesn’t primarily have a problem with sexuality. We have a problem with worship. We don’t know God!

What Paul begins to describe to us helps us understand what happens in our own hearts, in our own culture, when we move from a worship of God to a worship of self. He gives us a progression of what happens.

So let’s look at this passage and see the progression that Paul lays out for us. He says, first of all, their thinking is going to be distorted. When that worship of God isn’t there, it affects our view of everything, including sexuality. We need to understand that our thinking, our view of sex, begins with our view of God.

There’s this progression of how we think. Now, do we live in a culture that is living in distorted thinking? You know, my husband and I sometimes when we see what’s happening in the transgender movement, we’ll just look at each other and say, “Have we lost our minds?”

Have you said that? “What are we doing?” 

That’s an obvious example of how our thinking has become distorted, but there are more subtle examples, like this whole idea that you need to have romantic love to be satisfied as a human being. That’s the world’s thinking, that’s not biblical thinking.

Or even the whole idea of our sexuality determining our identity. In the Word of God, you will never find words like, “homosexual, heterosexual, bisexual, asexual.” These are terms that we’ve created within the last hundred years. 

What is translated in our modern English as “homosexual” is really describing behavior of men who lie with men and women who lie with women (see Romans 1:26–27 CSB). And so, this idea that we identify ourselves through our sexual experiences is a modern term. And friends, it is distorted thinking.

After distorted thinking, what Paul says happens is our desires become twisted, what we want becomes twisted. I have women that will say to me, “God is so unloving! Why would He give me these desires and then tell me I can’t act on them?” 

And I want to say, “Friend, the desires you are experiencing are not from God.” 

Yes, God created sexual desire, and it’s a beautiful thing when it’s in its place. But because we live in a fallen world, because our flesh is sinful, because we’ve been impacted by things like pornography and abuse and all kinds of evils, what we want is not healthy. And that’s not just true for the woman who experiences same-sex attraction.

I have rarely met a woman—or a man—who does not at some level struggle with twisted desire, with lust, with not desiring your spouse, with not knowing what to think about in order to experience sexual pleasure. Those are all ways that our desires become twisted.

And then, Paul says, our actions become destructive. We begin acting out of those twisted desires and thoughts. And Paul, yes, describes homosexual actions very graphically in this passage, but he doesn’t leave it at that. He calls us all out.

He talks about strife and deceit and slandering and gossip. Have any of you ever done that kind of thing? He calls us all out. And then, finally, he says that you won’t have discernment. You not only will do these things, but you’ll heartily approve of those who do them.

How did we get to the point where it is considered more courageous and praiseworthy for a teen to identify as LGBT than for teenagers to say, “I’m going to walk according to God’s design for sexuality and gender.” We don’t have discernment.

We can see all the signposts in our culture that things are breaking down. If you ask Americans, 50 percent of them will say that U.S. morality is bad or poor, and 78 percent of them will say that things are getting worse morally in our country.

We’re concerned about things like an epidemic of loneliness, we’re concerned about pornography, we’re concerned about the fact that almost 20 percent of LGBT youth tried to commit suicide last year. That’s a problem!

But the wise people in our day and age cannot connect the dots that, “maybe this has something to do with walking away from God’s design for sex and gender.” They have no discernment. Now, that’s a heavy message, that’s some bad news. But we’ve got to turn to, “Well, what do we do? What is our response meant to be?” 

I think our response is three-fold. First of all, we have to have compassion. I think it’s tempting in our day and age to respond to what’s happening with anger, and to respond to what’s happening with fear. But God’s response, when He looked over Jerusalem, was compassion. He cried over them. And this is something we have to be really careful about.

Friend, the LGBT community is not your enemy. Even those who are involved in creating pornography, they are not your enemy. The Enemy is our enemy. Paul would tell Timothy that those who are caught in sin, they’re held captive by the Enemy. They are captives of war! (see 2 Tim. 2:26; Heb. 2:15 KJV).

When is the last time you wept over the brokenness represented by the sexual revolution? We are not ready to speak until we have first wept, and so God calls us to be moved with compassion.

The second way we need to respond is, we need to respond with courage. Mary began reading that passage in Romans chapter 1 by saying what Paul said: “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16 ESV). First of all, why would Paul say, “I am not ashamed of the gospel”? Well, apparently some people were, because the gospel is offensive.

What we need to realize is the Bible is not primarily offensive to us because of what it says about our sexuality, it’s primarily offensive to us because of what it says about our humanity—that we are lost, we are helpless, our hearts are deceitful beyond all wickedness. We are hopeless! Our only salvation is to trust in Jesus Christ, to lay down our life. 

That’s an offensive message, and it will become more offensive with every day that we live on Planet Earth. Now, our temptation (and I’ve been tempted to do this) is to kind of be like Jesus’ PR firm. Like, “Oh, we don’t have to talk about sex. We don’t have to talk about the things that are really convicting. Let’s just get more people in the church first.” 

Peter tried to do that when he wanted to talk Jesus out of dying on the cross. And Jesus didn’t say, “Peter, that’s so nice of you.” Jesus said, “Get behind me, Satan! Because you have the things of men in mind and not the things of God” (see Matt. 16:22–23). 

Sisters, we have to be very careful not to gut the gospel of its offense, because when we gut it of its offense, we also gut it of its power. We will have a form of godliness, but denying its power. So we need God to give us the courage, not only to be moved by compassion, but also to speak the truth without compromising it.

Finally, we need to respond with conviction, and in conviction. When my kids were probably around those same ages of maybe six, eight, twelve, in there, I remember going to the grocery store, and it was like four, four-thirty in the afternoon. 

Moms, you know what going to the grocery store at that time of day is like. You’re just bribing your kids with food the whole time, right? You’re trying to get through. You’re like zoned out. 

We were checking out, and I noticed that my oldest son was standing there staring at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and his eyes were pretty big. I was like, “[Gasp!], this is not good!”

So I grabbed the stack of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, I got up to the checkout counter, and I said to the man behind the counter, “Sir, I am here with my three boys. Can you please remove these magazines? This is not a good thing to have just out in the open.”

He said, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, you’re going to have to talk to the manager.” Well, let me just tell you that this is not my personality. I’m really kind of a peacemaker, kind of quiet. But Mama Bear came out that day!

I went up to the manager (and I’m so thankful that there were not smartphones or YouTube back then because I’m sure I may have gone viral), and I said to the manager, “I come here to buy bread and milk and eggs for my children! And this filth is there!” I mean, I really let him have it!

My kids now when I tell them this story are like, “Mom, you were a Karen!” (laughter) I was a Karen! Well, the manager didn’t budge at all. He said, “Well, I’m sorry, Lady. Maybe you don't have to shop here.” 

And I said, “I won’t shop here!” 

And he said, “Well, you’re going to find this same magazine in every grocery store in Akron, Ohio.”

I went home, and I was so mad. I was so upset about it, because I knew what this could lead to in my kids’ lives . . . and not just my kids, but in our society. It drove me crazy! And then when I began to pray about it, you know what the Lord started to show me? He started to show me my own sin, my own sexual brokenness.

At that time in my marriage, I would say that our sex life was not the greatest. I did not have a good attitude at all related to that aspect of our marriage. There were a lot of unexposed wounds and a lot of healing that needed to happen. The Lord began to convict me of this, among other things. I just began to confess, and God began to show me.

When we look at the spiritual battle of sexuality in our world, there’s a lot of territory that we wish we could fix. There are a lot of things we want to change. We want to take the swimsuit edition out of the stores. We want to change our school system. We want to change the laws. We can work and pray toward those ends, but there’s only one place where God has given me spiritual authority, and do you know where it is? It’s in my own heart, it’s in my own life. When I become complacent about the sexual brokenness and sin in my life, I become complicit with the Enemy’s destruction of holy sexuality. 

And you might say, “Well, Juli, my sin isn’t like that.” Like, “Yeah, my marriage is broken.” or “I kind of sleep around a little here or there,” or “It’s not like that.” I’ve felt that way, too. I’ve said that or thought it but probably haven’t been bold enough to say it out loud.

Then God reminds me of that story that He told about the two people that went up to pray, the Pharisee and the sinner. And He says, “Two men went up . . . to pray.”And one of them was on their face, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner!” (see Luke 18:10).

And the other one was, notice this, he thanks God. “God, I thank you that I am not like this sinner!” Then he goes on about fasting and tithing. In our language, in our day and age, let’s be honest, “Lord, I thank You that I’m not like that gay person. Lord, I thank You that I’m not addicted to pornography. Lord, I thank You that I’m not that broken!”

And you know what Jesus said? He said only one of them will go home justified. “Only one of them will have truly met with Me” (see v. 14). And ladies, we cannot make a difference in the lives of others until we first invite God to do a radical work in our hearts. We are all called to be that person who regularly is confessing before God and saying, “Lord, I want You to have it all!”

The last time I was at a True Woman conference was in 2012, I think it was here in Indiana. I can’t quite remember. But I do remember that we were in the big auditorium and that the theme was revival.Nancy had asked us to gather in triads, or in small groups, to pray for revival.

I was sitting right over here. Dannah, I don’t know if you remember this, but I was sitting with you, We were getting on our knees, and we started to pray. I’m one of those people who I don’t cry for a year, but when the dam breaks, it breaks. So, I began to be so moved, I wept ugly, snotty tears as we prayed.

The prayer was over and everybody got up and sat down, and I couldn’t contain it. I was so overcome with grief and the sense that God wanted to bring revival that I sat there and sobbed in the chair for probably another ten minutes. Then I just had to get up and leave.

But what God began to show me is that He is a God that doesn’t just play defense. When we pray, we don’t just have to pray, “Lord, stop the immorality!” He’s a God that takes ground back! He’s a God that restores broken marriages. He’s a God that heals wounds. He is a God that heals and redeems! We need to begin praying that way.

But I also remember what Nancy said. She said revival starts with us, and if we’re going to see a sexual revival in our country, in our cities, in our families, ladies, it has to start with us! Would you invite God for that to start with you?

Nancy: And how I thank You, Lord, for the truth of what Juli Slattery just said, that you are a God who restores and heals and redeems! Thank You for this reminder that revival has to begin with us. So Lord, for my own heart—for the hearts of friends who are listening to this conversation—I pray that You would start the work in us! Would you shine the light of Your presence, Your glory, Your holiness into my heart, into our hearts? And would You revive us, that we may reflect Your glory and Your holiness and Your beauty to those around us? I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

You know, it’s so easy for us as Christians to become alarmed and to feel panicky when we see confusion everywhere around us, especially in this whole realm of gender and sexuality. But Dr. Juli Slattery has been helping see the spiritual causes behind the symptoms that we’re seeing in our culture. 

I hope you found her message to be helpful as you process your own thinking related to gender and sexuality. Juli has written a wonderful book called Rethinking Sexuallity: God’s Design and Why It Matters.

In this book she helps us shift to a different paradigm from what is the popular perspective. She shows us that sexuality is something holy, and that when it comes to sexuality, we need to think biblically and act compassionately.

This month we’d be glad to send you a copy of Juli’s book in appreciation for your donation of any amount to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts. As we often share, we’re listener supported, and that means that we depend on the faithful prayers and gifts of friends just like you to continue our outreaches day-in and day-out around the world. 

So, thank you for praying and thank you for your gift to Revive Our Hearts. We really appreciate it!

Dannah: Yes, we really do appreciate it! To contact us with a donation and request Dr. Juli Slattery’s book, just head to our website, ReviveOurHearts.com. Be sure to check out the additional resources listed in the transcript of today’s program, or you can always call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we’ll hear the testimony of Laura Perry Smalts, who turned away from what she knew to be right and lived for nine years as a man before God began to gently draw her to Himself. You won’t want to miss it. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is inviting you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. 

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