Hello and thank you for downloading episode 451 of the Speak Life podcast. My name is Thomas Thorogood, media producer at Speak Life, and today we have an interview that Glenn recorded with Andrew Bunt about sexuality. Finding your best identity. So Andrew Bunt works for Living Out. He's the Emerging Generations Director. He's written a book called Finding Your Best Identity, a short Christian introduction to identity, sexuality, and gender. And it was great to be able to record this interview in person because Andrew doesn't live too far away from the Sweet Life studios. He's a local and you might have encountered him at various conferences around the country. And he was also on Unbelievable, the show hosted by Justin Briley recently in conversation with Charlie Bell about this issue. Very much a current issue, remains a very controversial issue as Kate Forbes is currently finding in Scotland. Anyway, over to Glenn and Andrew. Oh, one other thing. Stay tuned to the end of the podcast because we have an exciting giveaway, an opportunity for you to win a copy of Andrew's book. Stay tuned for that.
SPEAKER_00Hello, I'm Glenn from Speak Life, and I'm joined by Andrew Bunt, who is the author of this book, Finding Your Best Identity. And given that it's all about identity, Andrew, you better be brilliant at this answer. Who are you, really?
SPEAKER_03I never this is a trick question. I'm being tested on my own my own topic. Well, let me get some descriptions of me, not my core identity, so you can get some, you know, some of the normal kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_00We'll get to the core at some point.
SPEAKER_03I'm a speaker and author based on the South East Coast at Bex Hill. I work for an organization called Living Out, and we exist to help people, churches, and society talk about faith and sexuality. And for those of us in Living Out, that flows from our own experience of being people who are same-sex attracted or gay, whatever terms you want to use, but want to faithfully follow Jesus. And so the book is partly from my own experience of that and my story and kind of identity questions I've had, partly related to sexuality, partly other things.
SPEAKER_00But it is a bigger question, isn't it, than just gender identity and sexual identity and sexuality. Who am I gets to the heart of uh so much today? Do you think it it it sometimes is too important in our culture? That that sense of who I am is almost a question that trumps everything else.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it's true, yeah. Certainly, questions of identity, who am I, are more prominent in our culture than they've been probably in most, if not all cultures historically. But I don't think that means it's not a universal human question on some level. Some people say no, it's a kind of a pointless modern preoccupation. And actually, I think at its core, who am I is a very normal human question, right? And the Bible would point in this in that direction. But yeah, there's a risk we get almost too preoccupied on it, and certainly I think there's a risk in our culture we approach it in the wrong way and unhelpful ways.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and in your book you talk about different wrong ways that we might uh try and find an identity or express an identity. Um you talk about uh others deciding who I am. Uh tell us that paradigm. Like, where am I situated if I'm asking the question, who am I, and I'm letting others decide for me.
SPEAKER_03So, yeah, I think it's a really common way that people in our culture do form identity, by which what I'm talking about there is kind of our sense of self, who deep down we truly believe ourselves to be, and that ultimately has an impact on how we live, so I call it our controlling self-understanding. And in our kind of others decide approach to identity, as I've termed it, that sense of self, self-understanding is shaped by the opinions of other people. Is what people think of us, or in reality what we think they think of us, because let's be honest, so often we don't actually know for certain what people think of us. And really, it's kind of based on this unspoken idea that there's some criteria we've got to live up to, and that people are evaluating us and judging us against those. Could be literal written criteria, like a set of laws. Often it's unspoken assumptions, the criteria for being a successful person or an attractive person or whatever it might be. And we assume or learn people's uh kind of evaluation of us and we absorb that as our sense of self, and our core sense of self gets uh shaped by and based on what people are thinking of us.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so tell me about that for you growing up. So uh you're a you're a Sussex lad, aren't you? We're we're based here uh on the s on the south coast, and you've you've come across uh to Eastbourne to to talk to us. So you you grew up um more recently than I did. Um so earliest memories uh in which decade are we talking? Um the 1990s. In the 1990s, okay. Um in fact because I noticed in your book at at points you talk about I I I felt like a freak, I'm a freak, I'm a weirdo. Which of course you're referencing creep by Radiohead at that point, aren't you? No? Am I?
unknownNo.
SPEAKER_00No, if only classic 1992 something. Ah, yeah, see. At age one, I wasn't listening to Radiohead, I'm afraid. I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo, what the hell am I doing here? It was a it was a wild time in the 90s. It was there was a lot of grunge and there was a lot of identity questions and people feeling like freaks and weirdos. But you're growing up in the 90s, not listening to Radiohead, but watching teletubbies or something. Yeah. Um how how were you processing these these identity questions as you as you're growing up and and into adolescence?
SPEAKER_03I I think, yeah, my I only realised in my twenties that I had been living with this unhealthy sense of identity of being a freak and weirdo, but I think it did start way back in childhood, and it was this others decide kind of thing. I just remember at school there were things that made me feel like I didn't quite fit in. And some of that was true. I was, I think, the only Christian in my class, and I was chosen to follow Jesus, so I was quite kind of confident about that, so people knew that I guess, and that shaped how I lived as well. And that marked me out as different to other people, and other kids in my class used to kind of joke and tease me that I was going to become a vicar because this thing was kind of really important to me. But that joke was talking about difference between me and them. I also just didn't feel I fitted in with the other boys, and so pretty much all my friends were girls, you know, at lunch times, almost all the boys were off playing football. I was with the girls trying and to be honest, failing to do sandstands against the hedge. That also just marked me out as different. So I didn't even realise it was happening, but I was assuming that because in some ways I was different from other people, that made people think I was a freak and a weirdo. I was kind of failing on the criteria for being normal and fitting in, and I absorbed this assumed um narrative what people thought of me, which shaped my sense of self, even without my realising it, to believe I was a freak and a weirdo.
SPEAKER_00And this uh had a kind of a this this had a dimension in terms of gender identity and had a dimension in terms of sexuality as well. How is that playing into this?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, so gender, so a time in my childhood when I very much came to the conclusion that I was a girl trapped in a boy's body. I remember it so vividly, because I remember the day I was struck by the fear that I might get pregnant. Clearly, not working out knowing how these things work, but my kind of fear was wow, that would reveal this big secret. I need to not get married and not leave my parents home and stuff to kind of hide this. And I look back now and I think what was happening was this sense of I was a gender non-conforming boy, so I didn't fit a lot of the stereotypes about boys. And my kind of childlike conclusion of that was well, because I'm not like the boys, and in some ways I'm more like the girls, that must mean that actually I'm a girl. And even though other people don't seem to think that, and my body doesn't seem to think that, that must be the case. And that kind of then fed into an internal sense of, oh okay, actually, I think I must be a girl. And so it's an interesting actually interplay, I think, between it was both an others decide identity, what I thought people kind of evaluated me as not fitting in with the boys, was actually fed into what will come to from I decide identity of what I felt inside. And then with sexuality, see, I come to my teenage years, I begin to realise that my romantic and sexual attractions are for guys rather than for girls. And again, both sides, both forms of identity relevant there. But one of the messages I was hearing from the culture around me and just the world around me was that being attracted to guys rather than girls was kind of one of the worst things possible. Um I remember overhearing a trusted older woman in my life who, when um having just watched something on a TV about a historical character who was gay, turned to another um person in my life and said, Well, doesn't it make you think less of them to know that about them? And all these kind of things, you know, and the fact that friends at school would say, Oh, that's so gay about something negatively, it was gradually telling me this is a really bad thing, and people are gonna think there's something wrong with me or weird about me, or I'm less than other people if they find this out. And so part of my wrestling with my sexuality was what are people gonna think of me on the basis of that? And again, often that was quite a negative evaluation, and that began to feed in as well, I think, to my sense of being different in a in a bad way.
SPEAKER_00And do you think if you had grown up 20 years later and you were having these sorts of experiences today, um, do do you think with our sort of gender ideology and and what people are thinking in terms of trans movements, um do you do you think that would have moved you further towards thinking that you were a girl if if you were around today?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, potentially so. Yeah, it's always hard hard to know it's in hypotheticals. I could see how for someone who was not fitting in, which created this internal, certainly strong discomfort with being a boy and this sense of, well, then do I fit in better as a girl? I can see how some of the trans narratives currently available would have seemed very appealing, would have kind of uh resonated with my experience. I think I look back now and I I wouldn't say I had gender dysphoria because actually the the actual clinical diagnosis for that is quite kind of a high bar. There's kind of eight characteristics, that's how six out of them. But then I look at the world today and think actually it looks like actually many of the stories coming out, many of the young people who have been diagnosed gender dysphoria and actually fast tracked through certain treatments wouldn't actually really have met that clinical um parameter. And so as I wonder today, actually, if I had started to ask those questions, if I had gone to a gender clinic, say, I think I could easily be in one of those numbers, even though, technically speaking, in a sense that wouldn't have been the right way of helping me in that. But I can see how my experience mixed with, you say, kind of narratives and culture could easily have taken me down a certain path.
SPEAKER_00But that is an interplay between what others say you are and who you say you are. And I and I guess uh nowadays we're into expressive individualism, and who I say I am is kind of almost the final word on the subject. Um tell me how that works out at a personal level as you're trying to navigate who you are, but tell me also what that means at a societal level, if we're all trying to discover ourselves and name ourselves.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean it means some problems, I think, on both sides in a sense, because this is yeah, the other form of identity, an either side identity where that sense of self gets shaped by what you're finding inside, feelings and desires, and particularly in our culture, we're told it's our sexual desires and our feelings around gender, whether we're a man or woman, neither, both or somewhere in between, which are the most important about us. On an individual level, I think it turns out to be really unhelpful for people in two ways. One is the pressure is put on you to work out who you are. And this is what we're seeing, I think, young people hearing, and we're seeing the negative impact of this pressure. Young people are told who you are is who you are inside. Nothing outside matters, your body doesn't matter. What your parents and friends say, no tradition or religion or anything that matters, is what you find inside. Therefore, only you can know who you are. And knowing who you are is so vital because you need to know who you are, embrace that and express that to find your best life. That's a lot of pressure for a young person to carry. Especially because all of us can relate, especially maybe in our teenage years, that we look inside, and let's be honest, there's a whole mess of stuff. We don't know what's going on so often. Feelings and desires that are changing and fluctuating and contradicting. And so I think one of the negative impacts for individuals just actually is this sense of uh incredible pressure and the states being so high. And I do think it's likely that's one of the reasons we're seeing such a mental health crisis among young people at the moment. And then more broadly, for society, you get problems because if we're basing our sense of self and in living out a life from that purely on what's based on what's inside, we're kind of ignoring the things outside, and therefore often, even if unintentionally, you get situations where embracing the internal actually harms things externally. So there'll be kind of um uh local level examples of that. If someone says, let's say someone take out of sexuality and gender, say someone just has this deep desire to be successful in business. That's who they are, they've got to embrace that at all costs. They put all their time, all their money, all their energy into their business. Well, in the process of that, any relationships in their life are gonna suffer. Friendships, spouse, children. The likelihood is their own health is gonna suffer actually, because nothing outside matters. What matters is I've got to be true to myself, and actually, because they're embracing the internal and ignoring the external most, the external kind of suffers. And you expand it out to the cultural level, and we're seeing bigger pictures of that. The kind of huge tension we're having at the moment, like huge debates around, for example, the safeguarding of single-sex spaces, is this thing of there's just inevitable clashes and tensions and problems when we say who you really are is what you feel inside, and we don't consider the potential impact of that on things outside when people follow that narrative and seek to live it out and embrace it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you use the example of Frozen, a great example, yeah, certainly in the let it go song, of someone who, you know, I've I've got to see what I can do to test the limits and break through and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me, I'm free. But I I think actually Frozen does a brilliant job of showing the limits of a let it go philosophy, because actually, she when she lets that go, yeah, it gets pretty self-destructive.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, let it go is this great celebration, this great hero song. Yes, go Elsa, go Elsa. Everyone in Aaron Dead is freezing to death. It's not going well.
SPEAKER_00And not even for her. It's not even good for Elsa.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. But of course, what was fascinating is you get to the end of the film, and the the film kind of notices that, because the end of the film, everything is solved, if actually you've got self-expression embracing the side and mixing a little bit of love. Just mixing a little bit of love, and everything will be okay. Right. If only it was that simple and it's actually not.
SPEAKER_00But but because the story that has gotten into us in the West Um cannot be shaken off. Of course it's self-sacrificial love that shows her who she really is. You know, of course, of course it's that. And therefore, we come from others decide who I am, I decide who I am, and then you say God decides who I am. And we were you deliberately as you come through the book, were you deliberately sort of framing that in a jarring way? Because there's there's something about like if you are if you're living in Frozen World and you're on Team Elsa, what do you tell me? God decides? God decides. Who is who is God to tell me what to do? There's there's something there's something jarring about it, and I think there's something disruptive about it that then you show beautifully how it sort of fulfills our great longings. But to begin with, God decides. That's that's a big pill to swallow, don't you think?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. It wasn't it wasn't deliberately jarring, but you're absolutely right. In our cultural context, it so easily is. But as you say, what I want to do and try within the book is show, even if our instinctive thing is, this doesn't feel like good news, this doesn't feel life-giving, actually, when we think it through and when we step into it and experience it, it is the best form of identity, hence, hence the title, and therefore our best life is found by living out the identity that God invites us to receive from him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So tell me what what does that look like? Because you do a beautiful job of uh taking us to Ephesians 2 and you talk about how we are in Christ, clothed in him, and it's like a morph suit usually. Now, have I got morph suits right? Those are those things that are just all in one spandex kind of yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can't even see the face, it's just like slightly cream. So we're we're in Christ in the same way. You might wear a more in that. God sees us, and of course he knows the shape of us, but he sees Christ when he sees us.
SPEAKER_03That's the really key thing, yeah. Being in Christ isn't kind of a we in our uniqueness, and you know, me being Andrew, that I'm a raised in that sense, it's not that at all. God still sees me, it's still it still is me. But actually, he can't see me and not simultaneously see me clothed in, to use biblical language, Christ. And that's such good news because there's so much about me that isn't lovable and rightly wouldn't receive the the kindness and love of God. Because actually, when he sees me and he generally sees me as Andrew, but sees me clothed in Christ, because of that I can be confident that he always responds to me with love, with kindness of tenderness, all his wonderful biblical promises, not at all based on who I am in my own self, but who I am clothed in Christ.
SPEAKER_00And how does that how does that help me to figure out the particularity? Because there's something beautiful about the equality of all people in Christ, there's something beautiful about oneness with Jesus and being clothed in Jesus and appearing before the throne, just dressed as Jesus and loved with the very love that the Father has for the Son. How does that help me to figure out the particularity of Glenn and the particularity of the gifts that he's given me and the way that he's shaped me and the and the contribution that I can make in the world? It feels like those are two different things. There's the there's the beautiful God-declared identity that I have in Jesus, but then still don't I have to wrestle with all the mess of there's me with the complicated you know struggles that I've got.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, with the good and the bad things in your life, I guess. I think what's helpful is it moves the place of where we find our sense of worth and value. And so actually, we instinctively place that on all these things that are unique about us in the good and the bad. And that's why both in other society and either side identity things get messy, because often you end up with bad identities, actually. People might think badly of us because we're not very good at something, or we make a big mistake, or actually we're honest, there are some bad desires and feelings in us. Actually, if kind of worth and status and value aren't based on this bit, but are based on the bit over here of what God says about us. What God says about us based on what his son has done, how he thinks of his son, because we're clothing him. I always have, I always know that I have worth and value. I always know that I'm fully and totally loved. That can't change. That gives me the freedom to work through the mess over here. It gives me the freedom to recognise the things that I'm really good at and the things I'm really bad at, and actually to be able to healthy acknowledge that, to healthy say, actually, I've been really gifted in this, so I can do this really well. That's an area I really struggle in, but or I'm really not very good at. But that's okay, because my worth and value isn't based on any of that. And also when it comes to things like sexuality and gender, it allows us to generally acknowledge our experience. I can unashamedly acknowledge, yeah, my romantic and sexual attractions are pretty much exclusively for guys, not for girls. I don't feel ashamed, ashamed about that. I don't need to try and lie about that or or repress it in the sense of pretend it's not true. I can be honest about that, but I also don't have to indiscriminately embrace that. I don't have to embrace that and I live that out to find my best life. Actually, because I'm a child of God, my best life is found by living out that identity. And that means taking all of this stuff and kind of putting it through the lens and the uh filter of what does God say in his word? What's he revealed to me about what it means to thrive and flourish? About actually how I honour him with all of those things. And so with desires such as same so sexual desire, I get to acknowledge it's there, but then say, okay, how does God call me to steward this and respond to this for his glory and for my good.
SPEAKER_01Hi folks, it's Thomas Thoroughgood here, media producer at Speak Life. You might recognise my voice as the guy who does the filler bit on the podcast. It's part of my job to think of how we can include you more in the work of Speak Life and bring you behind the scenes, if you will. And so we have a very exciting thing called the Speak Life Discord server. It's an online platform where you can interact with other Speak Life supporters and the Speak Life team. We have bonus content, creative theological discussion, and lots of fun along the way. So if you want to join that, you can just go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash give and just sign up to receive our update emails. You'll get invited to join the server there. Speak Life is supported entirely by the generosity of people like you, and we're so grateful for your support, be it through prayer or financial means. And if you're a regular giver, we'd love to give you access to the members zone of our Discord. In the members zone, you can see early drafts of our videos, you can give feedback, say what you'd like to see from Speak Life, plus there's even more bonus content. So after setting up a regular donation, you can request membership access on speaklife.org.uk forward slash give. Okay, back to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00I always tell the story of uh Greg Leganus, who was an Olympic diver in the States, and he he won every gold medal going, got the world record every time, and he was always known for delivering under pressure. So if he had to give the perfect dive from the 10-meter board and absolutely had to nail it, he would. And down he goes. And he was once asked by Sports Illustrated how do you how do you perform under pressure? And he says, I climb to the top of the 10 meter board, I remind myself my mother loves me, and I dive. And it's and it's this beautiful and and actually when you press into his backstory, he was actually adopted, and there's a there's a really interesting story about the the very sacrificial level. Of his mother, of his adoptive mother. A beautiful story of because of her sacrificial love that he is so assured of and so grateful for, it's liberating. Yeah, yeah. And then it's like, if I barely flop into the pool, my mother still loves me, you know. And I think we we we've kind of got that in Christ, don't we? The the whatever hash I make of like life here. And and that doesn't um that doesn't lead me to be careless about how I live in this life, and doesn't le lead me to um it leads it leads me to lean more into my distinctives and to and to freely live out what God has given me to do. Because all the most important stuff is already secure. And then you can find that identity. And I love that point that you're making about if you take the massive question mark over your identity out of the realm of sexual desire and activity, that depressurizes that level quite a lot, doesn't it? Because you're you're not you're not defined by your sexual history, you're not defined by your sins, you're not defined by your attractions or patterns of attraction. But as you say, you're you're defined by the scriptures. Now, what if someone comes to you and says, okay, but the scriptures have just this restrictive, backward, bigoted view that might have been fine 2,000 years ago, but this is 2023, Andrew Bunt. Why would you ever follow an ancient book like that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is for so many people who recounter the kind of perspective they're they're coming with, yeah. And I think that's because we kind of have to put our hands up to church and say we have done quite a bad job at understanding what the Bible says about sex and marriage and relationships. And understandably, therefore, actually, the kind of historic position this doesn't sound very life-giving and very good news. And I think we've kind of gone, we've we've had a lack of depth, I guess, in our understanding. We've kind of said some of the black and whites of here's the do's and don'ts of the Bible and sex and marriage and stuff, and not done the why. And the why is the really important starting point for seeing this as the good news. And so the the big picture, quick answer to that is the why is why is why does sex and marriage exist? In a biblical picture, ultimately, because of Christ and the church, then sex and marriage are meant to be this picture of the union between Christ and the church. Uh, a union of two, uh a committed union exclusive, um, lifelong representing the eternal union of Christ and the church, and a union of difference. The reason I don't think it'd be appropriate for me to marry a man is actually that wedding, that uh marriage wouldn't be a union of difference as Christ and the church are different. And what that tells us then is our experience of sexuality and the fact we are sexual beings, ultimately the kind of end goal of that isn't actually sex. It's actually meant to point beyond sex and marriage. It's you know the trailer for a film to come where it's a signpost to the end destination. And so for someone like me actually thinks, okay, out of faithfulness to Jesus, I don't think actually entering into a sexual relationship is the right thing for me to do. I'm not missing out on anything of great importance because actually I'm just kind of jumping over the trailer and going straight to the film. Because I still get right now and in eternity to experience great intimacy with Jesus. It's the thing of no, I'm not stopping and setting out camp for a while at the signpost, I'm going straight to the actual kind of destination. And it kind of does that thing of relativizing for us actually where where sex fits, which I think is really good news for a society and a culture where we're solved the narrative of life or the fulfilled life is the sexually fulfilled life, and then lots of people find that sex just doesn't fulfil. It actually leaves them wanting it, it doesn't do what it's promised, and then you can think, well, what what is life about? And actually to kind of say, Well, sex isn't even designed to fully fulfil you, but it's meant to point you to the one relationship and the one union that truly can fulfil you, and that's a really helpful thing. And the other thing I think we've just done badly on is we've focused in on the sex and marriage and forgotten a load of other stuff. So a lot of people look at me and say, actually, the issue for you, Andrew, is to be single and be celebrate is just going to be a lonely existence, an isolated experience, uh a lack of intimacy and such like. And that's because we in the church, like a word the wider culture, have narrowed intimacy down to sex and romance and forgotten the fact that the human experience and history and other cultures show us definitely, and also the Bible shows us that friendship should be a relationship of deep love. Look at John 15, Jesus is redefining friendship as a relationship of incredibly deep self-sacrificial love. And church's family shouldn't just be a kind of a nice slogan we talk about, it should be an experience we we experience in our lives together. And so, actually, where we do have human needs for intimacy, God-given needs for intimacy, I think, we don't need sex and marriage for that. This isn't such terrible bad news for me, because actually I get to experience intimacy, love in other contexts that God has provided. And again, I think that's good news for us to offer to the world around us. That it's not all about finding the one, having sex, having a romantic relationship. That's not the only place and only way you can uh experience that. It's good for single people, it's also good for marriages and relationships, which often struggle because so much pressure is put on them to meet all our needs. Right. And it doesn't deliver because as it happens, even married people need friends as well. We need a broader experience of intimacy.
SPEAKER_00It turns out, yes. People need friends, and and uh I mean, we've just done such a terrible job. I think like like Freud and since Freud has completely sort of sexualized our vision of what intimacy is and what love is to the point where when somebody says love is love, um, we know that they're talking about sex and sexual self-expression. And and you're just like, oh no, I I really now that like either the statement love is love is entirely vapid and banal or it is really destructive because it's just basically focusing all our attention of what love is onto sexual self-expression. And you're just like, oh my goodness, there's so there are at least four loves in in Greek, and let's let's read C.S. Lewis on on that. And and and let's and there's such a thing as same-sex love, and like for even me to say same-sex love, people will think, oh, Glenn's talking about like gay relationships. And I'm like, like, no, I'm I'm talking about there are some fascinating um sort of pictures. Like right up until World War II in the West, pictures of male friendship were just men holding hands, and and this is like go to Africa, go to Asia, go to South America. Men walk down the street hand in hand. And and there is a much more there's a much more comfortability about same-sex intimacy that has nothing to do with sex, nothing to do with sex. Absolutely, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And one of the problems for us uh in our cultural context, and maybe especially for Christians who are single and celibate for whatever reason, is because our culture doesn't kind of really conceive of the notion of non-sexual physical intimacy as though now historically and internationally you would see, is might does make it harder for us to actually world are the contexts in which we experience that intimacy. And the question becomes is do we because of that change Christian teaching to make things a bit more comfortable, or actually do we need to challenge the assumptions of our culture? And my assumption is that actually truth is truth because of God, not because of whether it works or not in our cultural context, and such we've not got the option to change what God says, and it won't well for us if we try and change or go against what God says, but we do need to find ways of gently pushing back against a culture and look at what does it mean to reclaim non-sexual intimacy. And that's an opportunity for us as a church to a hurting world and a world which is longing for intimacy and connection and such like, and looking for it in, you know, the wrong places of thinking sex is the one and only and the be all and end all uh place we can find that. We get to portray this counterculture of what would it be like to have genuine meaningful friendship? And we could be part of the answer to the crisis of friendship and the you know what's we recognize as a health epidemic, a loneliness in our culture by modelling something beautiful to the world around us.
SPEAKER_00So the church has the and the church being church is a massive part of the solution to this as this counterculture. So so what would you what would you say that to Christians about different ways that church can embody a much richer experience of fellowship and intimacy and friendship in following Jesus?
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Various things. One thing would be we're shouting our time. We're in a culture where so many of us are living such full lies, busy lies, fast-paced lives, fast-paced lives, but full of things which aren't about relationship. We're kind of quite a productivity-driven kind of culture, so we see that our time needs to be given to that, or we're just kind of vegging on the sofa watching Netflix, and we don't value relationship enough to give it the time it needs. Every relationship needs time in order to be fostered. So just that is really important. I think also openness and honesty, we deepen intimacy with each other as we are honest to each other. As soon as I start sharing more deeply about my life, you're gonna feel more comfortable to share deeply about your life, and we're connecting more deeply because we know more of each other. And we as Christians, of all people, have the freedom to do that because of the gospel. We don't have to be ashamed about all the mess in our lives and in our hearts because we know, again, this God's decides identity, our worth, our value isn't based on that. And actually, as we share even the dark parts of our hearts and lives with each other, we get to model the gospel to each other in the way that we respond to each other in that. And so I think leading by example in terms of how we foster intimacy through honesty is something that we as Christians are uniquely equipped to do, and then to share a message that can kind of help other people to do the same.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and and I think and that will also help with the God decides our identity part as well, because um I can be taken to Ephesians 2, I can be taught about union with Christ, um but I need to hear and rehear and experience God's love. And you know, you as my brother in Christ can can show me an aspect of Christ. And Thomas, you know, behind the camera can show me a different aspect of Christ, and others can um can help us to experience that as we have the experience um of intimacy with with Jesus together, and then as the body as well, that's where I think we start to figure out the particularity of who we are and what our for instance our spiritual gifts might be, and and and how we are fitted together as this body part together with that body part to form the whole thing. But so in in order to get my identity in Jesus, I I need this this all-of-life experience of the family of God, of the body of Christ. You know, church is really really vital, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it turns out. And that's the important setting because identity can become a very kind of individual individualistic focus and pursuit. Who am I? How do I work out myself? And actually, you're right. Although it is saying on one level, there's both a kind of singular identity, individual identity from God and corporate senses to it as well, but actually, even the individual identity we find in community. And I absolutely agree, we kind of in part experience it through others, and that's why I think I've talked about marriage being a picture for intimacy with God. I think all human intimacy in different ways actually is different levels and extents, is a pointer to that, and so it is in our relationship with each other and what it's like to relate to Christian brothers and sisters, and as we seek to embody the gospel to each other and how God views us in our interacting, we are experiencing something of that in a powerful way. And you know, that's why God doesn't call us to one of the reasons God doesn't call us to lead the Christian life on our own as lone rangers, it's not your saved by Christ, and it's to go off and do your thing. No, it's come and be part of a family because we really do need each other to to experience all that God wants for us and has for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I I love that. One thing I loved in your book as well, you you talk about the experience of shame, um, and especially um for those in the LGBT community and and those who have felt marginalized and those who have felt bullied in the past. And it's almost a shame that the shame that the opposite of shame has become pride. And so we're gonna have a we're gonna have a pride parade. And then, of course, the the knee-jerk Christian response to that is to say, don't you know that's one of the deadly sins? Haven't you read Augustine? Pride's a terrible thing. Um which which might be like the shoe might fit in that critique. But but I think what that sense of pride is getting at is they want an experience of head held high. No longer internal folding and the shuffle and the downward gaze, but a a sense that they want to be able to walk with head held high. Um, and yet in the gospel, like we've we've got that, don't we? We've got we've got the answer to shame. What would you what do you say to someone who just feels ashamed of who they are? Maybe it's because of certain struggles with gender identity, or or who knows? There are a million reasons why someone might feel ashamed. What does the gospel say to such a person?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well, absolutely the gospel is the answer. Um I talked in the book about the gospel being the the invitation to freedom from shame. Because shame ultimately I think tends to rooted in the kind of others decide formal identity, it's others' negative kind of um assumptions of us or evaluation of us, and actually when we respond to Christ and we're united to him, God relates to us based on who his son is, what he's done, not anything that we've done, and that lifts off for us actually all the shame. Because actually, God looks at us and all sexuality and say, He doesn't see our sexual mistake and sexual past, he sees Jesus' sexual perfection. Actually, that gets gifted to us, um granted to us in that way. And so it is the ultimate thing of lifting off the things that make us feel ashamed. And also when people still do say things that might cause us to feel we should be ashamed, and it's much rarer these days as culture has changed, but still occasionally, as a gay guy, I hear people say things that send this message of actually people like me are somehow lesser and not deserving of respect and honour as other people are. It does still happen, but actually, I in that moment get to say, I know that actually my sense of self isn't shaped by, doesn't need to be shaped by what they say. There's a more important voice. I'm gonna listen to the more important voice that has um the authority over me. And it's also the case, I think, that we we need this answer to it because the offer or the answer offered to us by culture is kind of a well, just ignore the other voices and to remind yourself that you are loved. Say these mantras over yourself, you are loved, you are important, all this kind of stuff. Exactly. And the problem is we don't seem to be able to convince ourselves of that because there's no there's no basis to it, there's no foundation. Actually, God's saying you are loved because you're in my son, there's foundation, there's a a reason, a basis, and actually, me just saying it to myself, there isn't. And in the sense actually I say it to myself and there's no basis, it's more likely to make me think, but am I? But I'm so unlovable, how does it work, you know? And just recently actually I heard um Clean Harrison, who's uh emeritus professor of psychology, psych psychiatry, psychiatry, important difference, saying um saying there was a study that was done, and they found that those kind of um statements of I am loved, I'm important, those kind of self-help statements. They did a peer-reviewed study on it, and the people who started with high levels of self-esteem found that reflecting on those statements for 20 minutes a day made a small increase in how they felt. But the people who started with low self-esteem, 20 minutes a day focused on statements like that, actually decreased their emotional wellness. It had the opposite effect. And I think that's probably because there's no foundation to it, and focusing on the things just makes you go, but is it really? I don't how can I who says so, you know? We need an external validator, and God is the one who can do that for us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and in terms of identity, what are the verses I always come to on identity is Proverbs 20, verse 5. The purposes of someone's heart are deep waters, but a person of understanding draws them out. And it's this the sense of like I look down to myself and I don't know myself very well. It's it's deep waters, it's murky, I can't see the bottom. But but somebody else can draw me out. And suddenly I'll say something, and they'll just say, Oh, why did you just say should then? when you just oh oh yeah, you know, and and we again we need each other. Yes, this whole thing.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's why others decide identities are really common still. So it's often said that others decide, or what in some formulations is kind of a traditional form of identity, is historic cultures and certainly not modern Western cultures. And there's there's nuances of it which I don't think we see in modern culture so much. But I know loads of just you know, in friendship, in pastoral ministry, loads of people whose sense of self and their related sense of worth and value is based on what other people think of them because of other things, and even though we're the the more prominent message in our culture is be true to the you who's inside to yourself in that sense, lots of us instinctively are shaped by the opinions of others, and I think that is because we are created to receive identity externally, it's just we look to other people externally, not to our creator externally. So there's a there's a reason why, even though the cultural narrative in so many ways has changed, the actual experience of many people hasn't, and it's revealing actually how we're created and how things are meant to be, but we are looking to the wrong external source rather than to God.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and and God includes the people of Christ in mediating his verdict upon us. You know, so I I love you know Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book, Life Together, and and one of the great lines in it is he says, The Christ in the word of a brother is stronger than the Christ of your own heart. What he means by that is like I I can nurse a sense in my own breast that Jesus loves me, but that's got nothing on you eyeballing me and saying, Glenn, Jesus died for you. Like, oh whoa. And so that that that other centered sense of identity, if it is anchored together with the God decides thing, um, yeah. Who would have thought? Who would have thought that the gospel and and the the gospel of God and the people of God might be the solution? What are the chances? What are the chances? Now, Andrew, what do you hope for this excellent book, Finding Your Best Identity? What's if this book really succeeds, what is it doing?
SPEAKER_03Great question. Two things I think, which really were the two reasons I wrote it. One is I think lots of us know what the Bible says but who we are, we don't experience it, and there's a difference between that, and that is partly because we've not thought through how identity formation works, and partly just there's some work for us to do, some which is in community, as we've said, for us to experience it. And so the last chapter is short, but I thought actually it's so important, and the book was incomplete without it, and that is how do we experience what God says about us and step into it. So, one thing is I hope it helps bridge that gap between I know what God says to actually I'm experiencing that and living in the good of it. And I guess the second would be that would help us to better think about how we navigate experiences of sexuality and gender, and not to be just kind of pushed about and buffed it by the narratives of our culture and the way that both others decide and I decide can feed into uh identity, but actually how a biblical perspective on identity gives us the safe, solid foundation from which to healthily um engage with, respond to, steward our experiences of sexuality and gender, and kind of finds a middle path through a life-giving Christian path amidst all the different things that cultures tell us.
SPEAKER_00I think it does that uh definitely, and uh, if people want to get a copy of this, you can just go and buy one, or if you want to win a copy uh of this book, uh if you share either this video link or if you're listening on podcast, if you listen share our podcast and you tag um at speaklifeuk on your social media of choice. Uh probably that's Twitter and uh Instagram really. Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. If you if you tag Speak Life and let us know that you have shared um this link, then you will go into the running to get uh a copy of this and we'll send it out to you if you are in the UK. Finding your best identity by Andrew Bunt. Andrew, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Well, there we go. Thank you so much for listening to that episode. As Glenn said at the end, uh if you would like more from Andrew Bunt, we highly recommend his book, Finding Your Best Identity. And we do have some copies that we can give out, and just to reiterate, tag uh share the link to either the YouTube video of the interview or this podcast episode and tag us at speaklifeuk. Uh on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, those are the only three platforms we're gonna be checking for this. So I'm afraid if you uh tag us on Reddit or something like that, uh we're not gonna see that. So Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, share the interview, tag at speaklifeuk, and you will be entered into the drawer. If you are one of the blessed uh winners of this drawer, we will uh ask for your address and send the book over to you. So isn't that exciting? Terms and conditions do apply, I'm afraid. So entrants uh must live in the UK. If you live outside the UK, we love you and we're so thankful for you. And you are more than welcome to share the video and the podcast, but I'm afraid we won't be able to send you a copy of the book. And the other thing is there is a closing date for this Friday, the 10th of March. So next Friday. Uh after that point, you will not be considered for the draw. We've got to draw a line at some point. So uh yeah, you're more than welcome to continue sharing the video and the podcast after after the 10th of March, but you will not be considered for the draw if you do so.
SPEAKER_02Oh, isn't that exciting? Opportunity to to win a win a little win a little copy of a book. Isn't that cool?
SPEAKER_01Um thank you for listening to this episode of the Speak Life Podcast. We will be back with some exciting conversations soon, so do stay tuned for those. That's all from me. God bless and goodbye.