This guide does not ask you to decide what you believe about sexuality. Most people who pick it up already know. It asks a harder question: how do you carry what you believe when you are face to face with someone who disagrees, or with someone for whom this subject is not a debate but their own life? It sets positions aside long enough to examine posture. That means your reflexes, your assumptions about other people, and what your manner tells them about their worth.
The material comes from a Jude 3 Project podcast conversation between Lisa Fields, founder of Jude 3 Project, and Cammy Hodge. Hodge had spoken at a heated public meeting in Greensboro, North Carolina, over a contested state law. She has also sat in church carrying the attractions the sermon was about. Her summary of what she wants Christians to learn is short: “we can disagree, but still live in love.” The work of this guide is to find out whether that is true of you.
You can use it alone over several days or in one or two group sessions. Either way, you will need a pen and paper. Nothing in it requires you to tell anyone your personal story.
Start with your reflexes, not your reasons
Before reading anything else, take five minutes for a reflex inventory. It works best if you are quick and honest rather than careful.
- Write down the last time sexuality came up in a conversation you were part of. Who was there?
- Write the first thing you felt, in one word. Irritation, fear, defensiveness, sadness, eagerness to win and relief when it ended are all common answers. None of them is the right one.
- Write what you actually said or did. Then write what you wanted to say and didn’t.
- Finally, write one sentence describing the other person as you thought of them in that moment. Do not describe who you know them to be. Describe how you pictured them while the conversation was happening.
Keep this page. You will come back to it at the end.
Two boxes, and who builds them
Lisa Fields named a script that arrives before anyone speaks. In many people’s minds, she said, “there’s only two boxes for people.” She described them bluntly: “You’re either conservative bigots or you’re liberal free thinkers pro justice.” She noticed that the sorting runs in both directions. Many people on the left assume conservatives do not think critically, and many on the right assume liberals only think in theory.
Hodge described what being boxed does to a conversation. “You’re branding me in a wrong way, and now I have to fight that,” she said. The result, in her words, is that “we’re no longer talking about the issue.” All the energy goes into defending your character. None of it goes into the question.
Here is where this becomes a discernment exercise instead of a complaint. Christians who object to being boxed can build the same boxes for other people. A gay coworker becomes “the other side.” A transgender student becomes an issue. A Christian who reads the texts differently becomes a compromiser. None of them got to speak first.
Look back at the sentence you wrote at the end of your inventory. Did it describe a person or a category? If it was a category, which box did you put them in, and what did that box let you assume about them without asking?
Fields raised a second habit worth testing. Many people, she said, read a take on an issue and “develop an opinion on the opinion piece” without reading the thing itself. Proverbs 18:13 names the problem: “He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.” Ask yourself plainly how much of what you think about people who disagree with you comes from people who disagree with them.
Reading Romans 1 through 3 as one argument
Romans 1 is often quoted in debates about sexuality. It is far less often read as the opening of an argument that keeps going. That is a reading problem as much as a posture problem. When a passage is pulled out of its argument, it tends to be used as a weapon.
Read Romans 1:18-32, then keep reading straight through Romans 2:1-4 and Romans 3:9-24. Read it aloud if you can, or have different people in the group take each section. As you go, notice two things: who Paul is addressing at each point, and where the reader who has been nodding along at chapter 1 ends up standing.
Paul’s turn at the start of chapter 2 is sharp: “Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things” (Romans 2:1). By chapter 3 the conclusion covers everyone: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). No one ends this argument standing above anyone else.
Fields brought this kind of level ground into the conversation. She said every person carries inclinations they wrestle with. One may lean toward lying, another toward stealing. Then she turned it on herself: “there’s so much wickedness in me.” That sentence is a posture before it is a doctrine. It is hard to look down on someone while you are honestly saying it about yourself.
Now read Psalm 139:13-16. Fields mentioned hearing an argument that because we are fearfully and wonderfully made, nothing about us needs to change. Hodge did not brush the psalm aside. “God took the time to make you the way he wanted to make you,” she said. She also said that “sin comes in and starts to distort that.” The psalm’s praise is real: “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Psalm 139:14). The same Bible also describes a human nature that needs restoring. Both things are true of every reader of this guide.
Pause on that for a moment. Which half do you find easier to say about yourself? Which half do you find easier to say about people you disagree with? If those answers differ, write down why.
What the person in the pew hears
Jude 3 Project holds the historic Christian sexual ethic: sexual intimacy belongs within the marriage of one man and one woman. It also holds that this conviction has to be carried with real welcome, with honesty about where the church has failed, and with God’s love spoken first. This part of the guide is about why the second half is not optional.
Hodge told Fields that years earlier she had a brief relationship with another woman. She said she kept struggling with those attractions after she was saved, and that over time the Lord showed her who she was and showed her grace. She described sitting in church and hearing someone “talk about it in a way that seems demeaning.” Inside, she was thinking that this was who she was and that she could not help it. She heard the message as a demand to deny herself.
From there she explained why many LGBT people resist Christian messages so strongly. In her view, it is because “it’s an issue that deals with who they are at the core.” Or, more simply: “It’s so personal.”
Her point does not change the conviction. It changes how you should picture the room. In any gathering where this subject comes up, assume someone listening is carrying it privately. It might be their own attractions, or a child’s, or a friend’s. Hodge also warned about the opposite pressure, from the wider culture. In her campus ministry work, she said, “society automatically labels you as gay” the moment a same-sex attraction appears. That happens, she said, “without giving somebody time to really figure out what is and what isn’t.” Both the careless pulpit and the quick label skip the patient work of knowing a person.
Two things follow for posture. First, a person’s attractions are not a choice they made, and they are not something you can promise will change. Hodge’s own story included years of struggle, not a switch. Second, a person’s worth is not up for debate. “But our value is in God,” Hodge said. People may devalue one another, she added, “maybe to man, but not to God.”
The practice: one conversation, three checks
Hodge left that public meeting determined to speak more, “not because I wanna fight, but because I believe that there’s a need for a balanced Christian view.” She wanted people to “see people who can disagree without going to the lengths of the hate that I saw at that city council meeting.” This practice is a small, private way of becoming one of those people. Plan to do it within the next two weeks, with one real conversation.
Choose someone whose views on sexuality or gender differ from yours and with whom you already have some relationship. If the subject is close to your own life, choose someone safe. Do not set out to bring the topic up. The goal is to be ready if it comes up, and to notice yourself either way.
Before. On a card or in your phone, write two sentences. The first should state what you believe about sexuality, as plainly as you can. The second should state what you believe about this person, beginning with “God made them” and finishing honestly. If the second sentence is harder to write than the first, that is the information this practice is looking for.
During. Hold one instruction in mind, from James 1:19: “Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.” Ask at least one question about their life, their reasons or their experience that you do not already know the answer to. When you feel the urge to correct, notice it and wait. Hodge’s test was whether you can “listen to somebody else’s opinion without being offended or confrontational.” You do not have to agree in order to pass that test. You do have to listen.
After. Within a day, answer three questions in writing:
- What did I learn about this person that makes them harder to put in a box?
- Where did I feel the pull toward contempt, and where did I feel the pull toward going quiet to avoid tension?
- If the subject came up, did my words match both of the sentences I wrote beforehand?
The two pulls in the second question are both real failures. Some people need to repent of contempt. Others need courage, because they have let fear keep them from ever saying what they believe. Ephesians 4:15 asks for both at once: “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.” Notice which half you tend to drop.
If you are leading a group
Before the first exercise, say out loud that the group is examining posture, not voting on positions, and that no one will be asked to disclose anything personal. Then keep that promise. Do not ask for testimonies, and do not let anyone guess aloud about someone else’s story. When the discussion turns to “those people,” gently ask the speaker to describe a specific person they know instead. When the reflex inventories come up, invite people to share the one-word feeling only if they choose to. The rest of the page stays private.
Expect the session to end without everyone agreeing. If people leave having read Romans 1 through 3 as one argument and having planned a real conversation, the session did its work. If someone stays afterward wanting to talk about something heavy, listen first. Offer to help them connect with a pastor or a trained counselor you trust. Seeking that kind of help is not a failure of faith.
Questions for discussion
- Fields described two boxes that people get sorted into. Which box do people usually put you in, and which box are you most likely to put others in? What does each box let someone skip?
- After reading Romans 1:18 through 3:24 as one argument, what changed about how Romans 1 sounds to you, if anything changed?
- Fields said “there’s so much wickedness in me.” What would be different about Christian conversations on sexuality if more people started from that sentence?
- Hodge described two harms: demeaning talk from the pulpit and quick labels from the culture. Which one has your church or community been closer to? What would correcting it look like in practice?
- Is “we can disagree, but still live in love” a real possibility or a polite slogan? What would you need to see in a Christian’s behavior to believe them when they say it?
- Which comes harder for you: telling the truth when it is unwelcome, or staying in a relationship when you disagree? What would growth in your weaker direction cost you?
Return to your first page
Take out the reflex inventory you wrote at the start, and read the sentence you wrote describing the other person. Then read Romans 5:8: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Hodge drew the same order out of the gospel: “God is not asking you to fix you.” God’s love came first and did not wait for anyone to be cleaned up.
Rewrite your sentence about that person, if it needs rewriting. Keep every conviction you hold. Change only what was untrue about how you saw them. Then ask yourself which version of that sentence the person would recognize from the way you treated them.