Chasing Love: Sex, Love, and Relationships in a Confused Culture w Sean McDowell- Podcast Episode 55

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Welcome to the Got Questions Podcast. On today's episode, we have Sean McDowell. He's an author, professor, apologist, podcaster,

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YouTuber, etc. And today, specifically, we're going to be talking about his book, Chasing Love. So, Sean, welcome to the program.

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Thanks for having me on, Shay. So, Chasing Love, it's a great book, very much needed.

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You cover so many hot topics that all people are asking, but especially young people. So, let's just jump straight into it.

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So, what would you say, what is the importance of having a biblical worldview on matters related to sexuality?

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I think there's few issues, if any, in which there's more anti - or unbiblical ideas coming to everybody today, and especially young people, through Netflix, through TikToks, through the educational system, through television.

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I mean, a nonstop barrage of ideas about sex, love, marriage, relationships.

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And so, in my experience, and I think research backs this up, that the vast majority of Christian young people have a far more secular worldview, especially as it relates to areas of sexuality, than they do a

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Christian worldview. And if we want people to truly flourish and live out the good life, so to speak, they're going to have to understand why

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God designed sexuality, why God is good, and what his plan is for a biblical view of sexuality.

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So, that's why I think it's most important to set people free, to experience the good life that Jesus talked about, and just to counter a lot of the myths and bad ideas that I think just pervade our world and our culture today.

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Exactly. So, I think both of us, we're probably approximately the same age. So, we grew up when we were being told to just kiss certain things goodbye and embrace other things.

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One of the things that I remember from youth group, youth pastor, the sole focus was, just don't have sex before marriage.

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And just don't do that one thing, and then you'll be good to go. It's a message we would agree with, but why do you think solely focusing on just that is a mistake?

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Well, a lot of those ideas of what's been called kind of purity culture started in the late 90s into the 2010s.

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And there's a reason for this, that the internet really hit early to mid -90s, so there's rampant pornography.

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All of a sudden, there's all these voices speaking into a generation that weren't there before.

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And so, I understand why people became somewhat consumed to that issue, because it was one of the primary ways our culture was speaking into young people in unprecedented ways in the 90s.

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But unfortunately, instead of responding in many ways with a biblical worldview, we kind of bought some of the script of the larger culture and played by that script.

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So, the way I put it is, and this is actually how I start my book, is I say how we act in terms of sex, love, and relationships is just one expression of the larger question we have about does

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God exist, whom am I serving, and what is my life about? It starts with God, our relationship with Him, and is expressed in a range of different ways, including through how we approach sexuality.

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I think what purity culture did sometimes is say how we respond to sexuality is the one defining issue, apart from any others, about how somebody's living their spiritual life.

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And I think that's reductive, and I don't think that's really a biblical approach as important as sexuality is.

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So, I think we need a wider lens. And I think my other critique is where purity culture went wrong amongst...

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I actually think it went wrong in a range of different ways. But our culture was basically saying sex itself is the means to a fulfilled life.

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Uninhibited sex. Do what you want. If it feels good, don't let anybody tell you how to live is what it means to live a fulfilled, happy life.

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We still hear that today. And the Christian response, rather than saying no, the true

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Christian life is found in loving God and loving other people and in following Jesus, what was often said was, you think the world has good sex?

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Come to the church, we will offer to you the best sex. So, it's almost like the church played by the same playbook as the culture, rather than challenging the playbook itself and talking about why

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God is good, why God can be trusted, and why his commands are actually meant for our flourishing.

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Yeah. So, one thing that's on my bucket list to be able to do at some point is to have my wife and I take a couple through premarital counseling, and hopefully

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God will provide us with that opportunity. Not being in pastoral ministry, that seems to kind of limit that, but still hoping.

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Because one of the things I really want to communicate is that if you are not, in a sense, satisfied with your life, with God, not being married, being married is not going to fix that.

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If you're looking at getting married as solving all of your problems, you're going to eventually find it empty once the honeymoon phase wears out, once all the endorphins stop pummeling your brain all the time.

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You're eventually going to find marriage isn't the solution for everything. And one thing I've often run across with young people, they think, well,

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I really struggle with porn and everything that goes along with that, but I'm sure once I get married, that'll take care of it.

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I know you addressed that someone in your book. So what is the best way to approach someone who has that mindset?

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Interestingly enough, just this morning, I was teaching a high school class. Three mornings a week, I still teach high school students.

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And my full -time job is at Biola with undergrad and grad students. But I'm taking a group of high school students, about a dozen students, through Chasing Love.

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And we were talking about the chapter on freedom. And we're talking about how our culture says freedom is doing whatever you want as long as it feels good.

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And I was trying to point out to them that actually freedom comes through restraint. So if you want to be a good piano player, it's not sitting down and just banging pianos without restraint.

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It's cultivating the discipline through restraining your time, restraining your energy to learn how to play piano.

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That's true for sport. Anything valuable in life, we only accomplish by restraining ourselves.

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And then I shifted. I said, this is also true for relationships. You can't have a healthy relationship if you don't learn to have proper restraint fitting for that relationship.

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Then I made the point, I said, for example, if you think that you can just sleep around or look at porn before you get married, and then when you get married, magically these things will stop and you'll have restraint.

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You don't understand how the brain works, how habit works, and how character is formed.

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What we do at 8, 10, 12, 15, 18 years old is forming our character.

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And so if they can't restrain themselves now, they're not going to get married. And then all of a sudden when their spouse is sick or their spouse is giving birth or their spouse is shipped out to war for a few months, all of a sudden they're magically going to have restraint.

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It simply doesn't work that way. So I helped these students realize that in some ways they've got to learn to restrain themselves now through the spiritual disciplines.

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This is why we pray. This is why we have solitude. In fact, I talked to them this morning, this is why we fast.

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And I said to my students, I said, if you don't fast and learn how to say no to potato chips or junk, how are you going to say no to other urges that your body wants?

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So the point being, freedom comes through restraint. And restraint comes through practice.

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It's true for a sport. It's true for playing an instrument. And it's also true spiritually speaking.

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Of course, the difference spiritually speaking is I'm not saying it's all our effort. It's the Holy Spirit working through us and cultivating us.

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But those disciplines are the mean by which God works through us. And I guess to convince these students the contrary,

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I told them a story about a student that I had met. And the student was basically looked at porn all the way through college, was convinced that when he married somebody, this would just go away.

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And he married somebody beautiful inside and out. Six months into their marriage, what happened?

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Stress, loneliness hit. And he reverted right back to his early habits and coping mechanisms because he never developed healthy restraint.

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Yeah. I've heard similar accounts all the time. And it's painful, but it's one of the things that if I were to base this entire episode on things

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I loved about your book, we need a much longer episode. I really love how you explain it and how achieving that restraint with the help of the

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Holy Spirit before you get married is so key, so important. Another point

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I really liked in the book is your emphasis on understanding the goodness of God and how that should impact how we view sexuality.

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So explain that further. Yeah. I was also talking to my students this morning about this very thing is

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I try to ask them of all the commandments that God gives in the Bible. Why is the first commandment to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit?

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Why that commandment? Why didn't God say, Adam, don't murder Eve? Like that'd be easier.

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And then there'd be not all the Pandora's box of sin. And slowly, as I discussed with these students, they started to realize that what

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God does from us is that we be in relationship with Him. And if God is the infinite, all -knowing, self -existent, eternal creator, and we are finite, dependent, created beings, we're going to have to trust

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God, even when things don't fully make sense to us. The only way we can be in relationship with an infinite, all -knowing, all -good

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God is by us looking around, not fully understanding things and saying, you know what? I'm going to trust you, even if I don't understand.

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That's why God gave the kind of command that He gave. It's very clear in Genesis 3, when

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Eve picks up the fruit, it looks good to her eyes, appeals to her senses, appeals to her mind.

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The author of Genesis wants to make sure we understand this is a real, genuine temptation.

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So God gives a tree with fruit meant to be eaten, puts it in the middle of garden, not to set them up for failure, but to set them up to be in a relationship with Him based upon trust.

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And what Satan does is implies that God can't be trusted. Satan does say, Adam and Eve, you were dreaming.

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God doesn't exist. What he questions is the goodness of God, that God is keeping you from all the fun.

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God is a cosmic killjoy. Satan was trying to undermine

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God's character and God's goodness. That's why the key question

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I said to these students, I said, is who are you going to trust? Are you going to trust some TikToker? Are you going to trust the public educational system?

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Are you going to trust your friends? Are you going to trust Hollywood? You're going to trust the media? Or are you going to trust

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God's word? The scriptures in Psalms 105 say God is good.

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His commandments stem from His good character. So when it's all said and done, the decisions you and I make, and especially young people make on sex, love, and relationships is really going to come back to who do they trust?

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And do they believe the Bible is an antiquated, old, bigoted book? Or do they realize that God is good and His design is good?

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And we're only free when we trust His good character and follow His good commands.

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Yeah, absolutely. And trusting in the goodness of God impacts so many more issues other than just sexuality.

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But in sexuality, the problem is, exactly as you said, that people are thinking, well, God is keeping me from something that is good.

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Because all of society, everything in culture is telling them, sleep around. You don't want to get married and not know what you even like sexually and all these things.

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Yet, even among couples who aren't Christians or are nominally Christians, if you ask them, the percentage of people who say they regret their sexual activity before marriage is extremely high.

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Finding out, no, I really didn't need to sleep around in order to be able to enjoy sex with my wife or husband after I got married.

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And all the lies that culture feeds us, we discover later, when it's too late, that God's plan was best all along.

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I think that's a powerful reminder that more young people need to think of. But I was a teenager once, I vaguely remember what it was like to have one message coming from parents, the church, youth pastor, et cetera, having another message coming from everyone else, and then including my own hormones.

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So I get it. And I know how difficult that can be. So it's interesting that two of the topics you brought up are conversations you've had recently.

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How do young people typically respond when you walk them through that process? What objections do they have, or what have you learned through how they typically respond to the message you share?

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Well, it's going to depend if these are Christian or non -Christian kids. That has a lot to do with it.

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Non -Christian kids are going to be like, why should I even trust the Bible? They'll probably have more deeply entrenched beliefs that the biblical worldview is bigoted and closed -minded and not good.

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So it's going to take a lot more work to get them there. I think Christian kids as a whole,

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I found most young people want to have conversations. They want to think Christianly. I don't have a problem engaging and motivating students if I make it interesting, if I tie it to culture, and I don't treat them like seven -year -olds.

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So today they were like, wow, I hadn't thought about that. That makes sense. I've had that question before.

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I want this kind of answer. So I think probably a lot of kids who are in the church today are softly affirming on, say,

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LGBTQ issues. They want to be loving. They've heard the cultural narrative.

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And yet somewhere they want to hold on to their faith but aren't sure how to blend the two of those together.

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They don't know how they can believe the Bible without being a bigoted jerk and homophobic to their friends.

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And I think when somebody points out to them, actually, it's God's design that's good. It's God's design that sets free.

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And you can be faithful to Scripture and loving to your friends. I found an awful lot of Christian young people are hungry for that kind of information because I don't think we've done a great job in the church as a whole equipping young people to navigate those waters well.

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Excellent. So I've got a few more practical questions for you. And just for people who might be just tuning in, this is the

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Got Questions podcast with Sean McDowell. We're talking primarily about his book, Chasing Love. I definitely recommend it to parents, to anyone in youth ministry, and also just to young people who want to understand what a biblical worldview on sexuality looks like.

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I think in your book, approximately maybe the first two -thirds of it are more setting the table for what is a biblical worldview on sexuality.

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And then the last third is more dealing with some more practical issues. And you just mentioned the LGBT, LGB, whatever.

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To me, that's the biggest issue that young people are facing in that now it's not like the percentages of people who identify as though this has really gone up that much.

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But the pressure to be not just accepting, but affirming of it.

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So how do you guide, and I would love more guidance on this, to speak the biblical message that no,

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God's plan is best, God's plan is good, but without coming across as bigoted, homophobic, et cetera.

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That's a great question. So you've got the overall structure of the book. What I would say is the first third of the book is clearing away faulty ideas that young people have about freedom, about truth, about love, about commitment.

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There are so many cultural ideas that I think are unbiblical and secular today.

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I needed the first third of the book to strip those away. The middle third then is God's design for sex, marriage, and singleness.

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The last third is when I start talking about issues like sex abuse, pornography, divorce, cohabitation, and LGBTQ issues.

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So in some ways, we sometimes want to jump right to LGBTQ issues. But unless young people understand how we have a faulty view of love and freedom and identity, we're not going to be able to ground them in why a biblical worldview even makes sense.

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That's why I deal with it later within the book. That's my unique approach here.

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And really what I want students to see is that God's design as a whole is for our flourishing and for societal good.

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So in chapter three in the book is one of my favorite exercises to do with students is I will write on the board.

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I'll say, what would the world be like if everybody lived the sexual ethic of Jesus?

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And of course, I have to explain what the sexual ethic of Jesus is. And the sexual ethic of Jesus is there's two equally

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God -honoring and people -loving ways to be in relationships, singleness and marriage.

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Both have their benefits. Both have their challenges. But marriage is one man, one woman who become one flesh for one lifetime, whether single or married, ways to honor the

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Lord. What if everybody in society followed this? Would society be the same?

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Would it be better? Or would it be worse? And very somewhat quickly, students start to go, guy, there'd be no divorce.

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There would be no unwanted pregnancies. Or even if somebody's married and they're surprised, kids will grow up with a mother and a father.

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There'd be no sex abuse. There'd be no pornography. There'd be no sexually transmitted diseases.

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There'd be no coarse sexual humor. There'd be no need for the Me Too movement.

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There'd be no dads abandoning their wives for younger trophy wives. On essentially every metric, the world would be an objectively better place.

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That's because God is the one who designed us and who created sex and gave us the commandment to multiply and fill the earth, but also the blessing of sex.

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He's the one who made it pleasurable and good and beautiful in the first place.

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So it makes sense that it's for our good and societal good when we actually live out that truth.

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So what I want to do with students is take them from what scripture says about God being good and apply that to the real world and say, do you see how this plays itself out?

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Kids need a mom and kids need a dad. It's God's design, the sexual ethic of Jesus that is meant to ensure that kids grow up in the safety of a loving mom and a loving dad.

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Now, doesn't mean every kid's going to go, wow, I totally get it. I mean, if some people are entrenched in a deeper worldview, it's going to take a while to get there, but that's the process that I go down and opens up the door to help reframe the way young people tend to think about sex, love, relationships, and even the larger

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LGBTQ narrative. Yeah, for sure. I mean, I occasionally fill in at our youth group and at our church and just hearing some of the questions or the pressure of not being a bigot or a homophobe, it's be overwhelming and it's like they know what the

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Bible says and they even agree with it and they'll even understand why it's better, why God's way is good.

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But the societal pressure can just be so overwhelming that I think if a child, a homosexual child was bullied at school and so now the whole school is going on a parade to celebrate gay love, it's like, well, and any students who didn't go on the parade are viewed as bigots.

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What do I do? It's like, wow. I can't have imagined that being the case when

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I was in high school, but it's a powerful reality that a lot of kids face right now. Yeah, it is.

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And that's why it's more important than ever that kids need models of people who believe a biblical view of sexuality and are living it out.

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So when young people come to me or parents say, I have a son or daughter with same sex attraction, what do

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I do? I say, introduce them to people like Christopher Yuan, people like Rachel Gilson, people like Sam Albury who have same sex attraction, but are following the

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Lord and experiencing meaningful relationships and a meaningful life going against the narrative of our culture that you have to be married to have a meaningful, significant life.

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The example of people living it out helps them counter the larger narrative that can feel very personal and overwhelming to many young people today.

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So Sean, we're about out of time. I want to hit you with the last question that I had for today.

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If you could say one thing to young people about sexuality, what is the one main point you would want to get across to help them to understand what a biblical worldview on sexuality looks like?

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I've been married over two decades to my high school sweetheart.

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And my dad said to me over and over again when I was growing up, he'd say, son, God's commands are not negative to steal all our fun.

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God's commands are actually to set us free, to protect us and provide for us.

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And I pretty much believed him. But I also experienced the narrative of the world and was like, am I missing out on something?

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All I can say to these young people is the older I get, the more thankful I am that my parents taught me that God's commands on sex, love and relationships are good and they're true and they're beautiful.

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So I would say to any young person, if you've made mistakes and have regrets in this area, God absolutely, unequivocally forgives you and will put your sins behind you if you simply ask.

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Don't let your past determine your future. You can have a clean slate. You are a new creation.

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But I can tell you from my own life and my experience that God's design is for your best.

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It's for your flourishing. I've met an awful lot of people who regret being sexually active and not following God's design.

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I've never met anybody who said they followed God's real design for sexuality and look back and regret it.

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Maybe that person is out there. I've never met him. So God's plan is for your good.

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And despite what our culture says, with the help of the Holy Spirit and the body of Christ, you can do it.

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No question about it. Amen. So thank you, Sean. I really enjoyed this interview. Obviously wish we had more time that we could talk, but it's been the

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Got Questions podcast with Sean McDowell, author of Chasing Love. We'll include some links to where you can follow

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Sean, learn more about him, purchase the book, et cetera, in the show notes. Also at podcast .gotquestions

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.org. Also on the description field on YouTube. So this is the Got Questions podcast.