Does God Care Who I Sleep With

Author Sam Allberry and Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?

on June 17, 2020

Here’s my interview with Sam Allberry, an Oxford trained pastor and international speaker with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. He is also a contributor to The Gospel Coalition and to blog sites Living Out and Desiring God, and author of such books as Why Bother With Church?, Is God Anti-Gay? and 7 Myths About Singleness. One of his most recent works is Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With?, a joint project of the Zacharias Institute in Atlanta and the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics in the UK.

I talk to Allberry about his new book, and especially how the impact of the MeToo movement on Western culture has created a “teachable moment” regarding sex and marriage. Not only for an unbelieving world, that often considers sex to be nothing more than physical recreation, but also for Christians who have secularized their own beliefs.

His book has fresh interpretations of the stories of David and Bathsheba and the Woman at the Well (one of my personal favorites), as well as thought-provoking quotations from C. S. Lewis, Tim Keller and the Bloodhound Gang. In addition to its being a resource for evangelism, apologetics and catechesis, Allberry also hopes it will aid in pastoral care, so that those who have sinned sexually (all of us, really) will come to know the forgiveness, love and grace of Jesus.

Enjoy our conversation! And make sure to read Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? Even better, give a copy to your pastor.

  1. Comment by Gary on June 18, 2020 at 5:09 pm

    Karen, the interview was informative and encouraging!
    What sexuality resources are available to teachers who instruct K-12 students in an evangelical-orthodox school setting?

  2. Comment by Karen Booth on June 19, 2020 at 11:17 am

    Gary, I am really sorry but I don’t have any expertise in that area since my work has been mainly with and for adults. I haven’t seen or reviewed any resources for children that I could personally recommend.

    But I encourage anyone reading this post and thread to jump in with recommendations.

  3. Comment by TERRY WILES on June 22, 2020 at 10:44 am

    An interesting resource is “Theology of the Body” by John Paul II. I has a simplified version for teens. I recommend educators check it out.

  4. Comment by Lee D. Cary on June 19, 2020 at 8:51 am

    If I heard this interview correctly, its implied premise is: “God cares with whom I sleep”.

    Neither participant got close to engaging the topic in the context of the current LGBTQAI+ debate going on the UMC (split bound), nor note the recent SCOTUS BOSTOCK v. CLAYTON COUNTY, GEORGIA decision (which may not have happened before the interview).

    Consequently, the exchange happened in a closet; interesting, but cloistered.

    It would have been interesting to hear these questions addressed:

    “Does God care about the gender of the person(s) with whom I sleep?”

    “Does God care if – as a female – I sleep with someone able to impregnate me resulting in aborting an unwanted/unintended fetus?”

  5. Comment by Karen Booth on June 19, 2020 at 11:30 am

    Thanks for your comments, Lee, and I agree that your concerns would make for an interesting conversation with Allberry since it’s well known he has experienced same-sex attraction and written a book about it – Is God Anti-Gay? But I was asked to read, review and interview him about his most current book.

    And Allberry does address the gender of sex partners in the chapter he devotes to marriage. Maybe that wasn’t made clear in the interview.

    More importantly, I think that Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? provides a resource to meet one of the most pressing and unmet needs in the UMC and broader church – a winsome teaching about why God created sex and marriage as He did, to reflect His image and perfect will and to insure human flourishing. We’ve neglected to do that teaching and now we’re paying the price.

  6. Comment by Lee D. Cary on June 19, 2020 at 3:26 pm

    Ms. Booth, IMHO it’s not merely in sex and marriage that the liberal protestant denominations have neglected to teach. The range of educational failure is spread across the full venue of Biblical knowledge.

    Not only in the Sunday School model of Christian education, where there is some residue of success with K-8, but, also, in pulpit sermons that too often reflect the academic laziness of today’s seminary educations.

    (Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I witnessed it in two different UMC seminaries, over five years of classroom work, and three years of exam prep, dissertation research and writing, ending with dissertation defense. It wasn’t long after that when the Social Justice Warriors’ movement captured the academe.)

    As a consequence, there is widespread Biblical illiteracy, not just among the laity, but among seminary graduates since the 1970’s, at least.

    You are spot-on when writing that “We’ve neglected to do that teaching and now we’re paying the price.”

  7. Comment by Richard Bell on June 23, 2020 at 2:49 am

    It is God’s will that one’s full expression of sexual desire occur only with one’s spouse. That is the principle of God’s moral law for sexual behavior, the Seventh Commandment. God’s moral law for sexual behavior makes no distinction between male and female, no distinction between techniques for satisfying sexual desire, no distinction between heterosexual desire and homosexual desire. The applicable rules and principles of sexual morality are the same for all these.
    It is God’s will that the church marry homosexual couples just as the church marries heterosexual couples.
    I prove what I have just asserted, from Scripture interpreted according to traditional methods, in an essay that has been read critically by many learned and mature Christians, including conservative seminary professors. They have helped me improve my essay, but have not refuted any of its main lines of argument.
    If your mind is even slightly open and if you can tolerate scholarly writing about God’s will revealed in the Bible, ask me for a copy of my essay by email to rsbell@ameritech.net

  8. Comment by Mike on June 23, 2020 at 3:03 pm

    Sorry, Richard, but you’re telling us that the church has gotten this issue wrong for almost 2,000 years, and suddenly you’ve come up with the biblical evidence for same-sex marriage. My, my, aren’t you a smart lad!

  9. Comment by Richard Bell on July 13, 2020 at 11:41 am

    You may well disagree with the church’s almost-2000-year-old opinion after reading my essay. Without reading my essay, you are sure to remain smug.

  10. Comment by Karen Booth on June 23, 2020 at 4:28 pm

    Richard, you say: “God’s moral law for sexual behavior makes no distinction between male and female … no distinction between heterosexual desire and homosexual desire.” I simply don’t believe that is true.

    I’ve also been reviewing the Presbyterian Church in America’s new report on human sexuality for Juicy Ecumenism. (https://juicyecumenism.com/2020/06/16/calvin-vs-wesley-review-presbyterian-church-americas-report-human-sexuality-part-one/) Though some of their teachings on sin are not completely compatible with Wesleyan belief, their arguments on behalf of God’s design for male/female marriage are spot on.

    For one, it is the only sexual relationship that is naturally capable of creating new life – a reflection of God’s creative power and also of new life by the Holy Spirit. And second, its gender difference is a model or mirror of God’s salvific act through Jesus Christ.

    This is how the PCA committee puts it: “As union with Christ is a relationship between deeply different beings (God and humanity), so sexual intimacy is only to be experienced in a union across the deep difference of gender … Paul says that when God created the marital union he was doing so to give us a mysterion—a sign pointing to Christ’s love and union with us. The male-female bond can only serve as an analogy to the Christ-Church union if the parties are significantly different.

    The wonder of our union in Christ is that humanity and deity—alienated by sin—are now united, first in the person of Christ himself, and then in our union with him through the Holy Spirit. And one of the great accomplishments of marriage is that the genders—also alienated by sin (Genesis 3:16-17)—are brought together in a loving union.” (page 41)

    If anyone would like to read the full report it’s here: https://pcaga.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/AIC-Report-to-48th-GA-5-28-20-1.pdf.

    Sam Allberry addresses this very issue in his book and I encourage readers to take a look at it. Or, he’s also done an excellent teaching that addresses your claims by answering four related questions: 1. Did Jesus say anything about homosexuality? 2. Can’t we just agree to differ on the issue? 3. Aren’t same sex relationships OK if they’re faithful? and 4. Is a traditional Christian sexual ethic deeply harmful?

    The link to Sam’s video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnVskwil3Z4

  11. Comment by Richard Bell on July 13, 2020 at 9:56 pm

    Dear Karen,
    You believe that God’s Moral Law distinguishes between homosex and heterosex, permitting the latter but forbidding the former. What reason do you have? You mention the fertility of heterosex, but this is no proof of an invidious distinction. Although God designed man and woman to populate the earth by sexual reproduction, God’s command to reproduce is not timeless and universal; Jesus and Paul taught that God prefers celibacy. You mention the analogy of man-woman marriage and Christ-Church marriage, but this does not prove that sexual difference is essential. God recognized that beasts were not fit companions for Adam, so God made a clone for him and Adam, appreciating the wisdom of that, rejoiced at Eve’s flesh-of-flesh-and-bone-of-bone similarity, not at Eve’s great difference from him.
    My essay exposes in detail all the confusions and false premises and fallacies that conservatives have advanced to support their opinions about God’s moral will for sexual conduct and marriage. Because you say that he addresses my claims, I have listened to the lecture of Sam Allberry, who asserts, “The Bible’s teaching about marriage alone is enough to settle the issue.” Mr Allberry relies entirely on Jesus’ statements quoted in Matthew 15 and Matthew 19. As for the first, he agrees with me that God forbids sexual intercourse outside marriage. As for the second, he takes Jesus’ explicit reference to the creation story as implying that “marriage is predicated on gender” and then infers that God forbids same-sex marriage. These interpretative leaps are reckless. (I had a long exchange of email with Darrell Bock, who made the same kinds of leaps but came to repent of them.) My essay thoroughly exposes conservatives’ misuse of Matthew 19.
    According to Mr Allberry, “What you have to do to the Bible to make it approve of same-sex relationships is profoundly unevangelical.” Actually, what traditionalists have to do to the Bible to make it disapprove of same-sex marriages is profoundly unevangelical. You should be eager to read my essay. I beg you to read and refute any of my arguments. I am a conservative evangelical Christian very unhappy to advocate same-sex marriage by the Church. If you show me my advocacy is wrongheaded, I will rejoice and abandon it. You know how to ask me for a copy of my essay.

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