The Sex Blog, Part 2: Beyond Abstinence

In Part 1, I addressed a debate about pre-marital sex that sprung up on the internet, set off by a young woman who wrote about dealing with incredible guilt because of the way her church addressed the subject of sex and marriage. The many blogs by Christian woman that have been written in response do not address what I believe is the core issue: the church is horrible at talking about sex. To do this better, we're going to have to open our doors for some potentially uncomfortable conversations and be a safe space for subjects that people may be afraid to talk about.

I often don't know how to address these issues either. I can't personally relate to Pugsley's experience. But here's my shot at some key points of the conversation. This is not a complete, systematic Christian theology of human sexuality. I won't address everything, and I'm not under any illusion that I'm saying something new, so please point me to any sources that may have said any of this before me and better than me.

© 2010 B.S. Wise, Flickr | CC-BY

1) We need a holistic approach to sexuality based on personhood more than abstinence. To be clear right off the bat: this does not mean that I approve of sexual activity in young people. On the contrary, I'm quite traditional when it comes to this value. There are actually a lot of good practical and emotional reasons for unmarried young people to avoid full sexual intimacy. It's not just an abstract, pretentious religious rule. But to focus on abstinence is to focus on a "don't." This is a constant problem with Christians on all social issues. We're known for what we're against, not what we're for. A full understanding of personhood extends beyond our young, pre-married life and speaks to what it means to value ourselves and another human, whether we're married, single, divorced, etc. A Christian view of personhood, that includes sexuality, is about honoring ourselves and others as a fearfully and wonderfully made creation of God (Psalm 139:14), treating each others' bodies as the temple of God's Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and offering ourselves as a "living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God" (Romans 12:2). Instead of authoritatively telling people what to do and not do, can we instead affirm who we are? Let's teach these life-giving, value-affirming principles, and tell young people how and why we have lived this out in relation to our desires. Instead of asking questions of indulgence ("How far can/will I go?") we can ask questions like, "How will I honor myself and the other?" Such values desperately need to be promoted in our culture, which has especially been a hostile place for women and girls. The problem of sexual harassment/assault that some face every day is still largely misunderstood and even denied by many men.

We talk about first-time sexual intercourse as "losing one's virginity," but is it always a loss? In what contexts are we actually gaining something? I, for one, believe that sex is experienced in one of its most beautiful and meaningful ways when it is one part of our whole selves that we give to another person in a lifelong commitment. In marriage, we merge our lives and souls, submitting everything to the other person (Genesis 2:24; Ephesians 5:21; Matthew 19:6). It is such a serious and permanent decision that Jesus' teaching on marriage left some of the disciples saying, "It is better not to marry" (Matthew 19:10). We need to think twice before "yielding our body" (1 Corinthians 7:4) with someone to whom we haven't yielded everything else. There are similar problems with cohabitation--living together before marriage. When couples do this, they are living as a family without having made the commitment of a family. Rob Bell has a great video about the 3 major Hebrew words for love in the Old Testament and how these "3 flames" were meant to "burn together." I affirm all of that.

However...

2) The Christian abstinence movement is falling very short. If it worked for you, I'm happy to hear that. But you're in the minority.

Any parent knows what happens when you put up a boundary for a child and say, "Don't go past this." The child will either blow right through the boundary or, at best, see how close they can get to it without going over. Adults aren't much better half the time. This is basically where religious abstinence teaching has gotten us. There are lots of youth ministers out there who can tell you about the "how far is too far" conversations. It produces questions that have no good answer. 'Does God get mad at me at 2nd base, or is it 3rd base?'

We're facing some pretty embarrassing statistics about teens who take abstinence pledges. In a study done by Janet Elise Rosenbaum, pledgers waited longer before having sex but were no more likely to abstain all the way until marriage. They were also less likely to use contraception than those who had never taken such a pledge. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping statistic was that 82% of those studied--more than 8 in 10--denied ever having taken the pledge 5 years after the fact.

3) The Christian abstinence movement can be repressive. In some circles, abstinence means "don't acknowledge or express your sexual desires in any way." This is unhealthy and harmful repression. We were created with these desires. Any time after puberty, they can become preoccupying and overwhelming for either gender (in different ways). Boys develop a particularly strong drive and often face ridicule and belittlement from females for having a primal urge which they are given little guidance for handling. Both genders reach some high levels of their respective hormones long before the average marriage age, which is now around 27. Although both women and men have a fundamental need for companionship, such emotional needs tend to have a more complex connection with physical intimacy for women, who disproportionately bear the consequences of ill-advised sex (up to and including pregnancy).

4) The Christian abstinence movement misses a lot of people. There are many groups to whom abstinence has nothing to offer. What about single adults or divorcées? It doesn't appear to me that God turns off a person's needs when there's no partner available. The problem with the call to abstinence for single people is that it tends to come from married people. Some single people feel a call to celibacy or to stay totally away from romantic relationships. That's fine...the point is that it's between them and God. I as a married man would have a lot of chutzpah to tell them, "God will get you through it." From the stance of personhood, a single person can start with the same question as the rest of us: "How do I honor myself as a fearfully and wonderfully made temple of God?" A focus on abstinence bypasses other groups of people as well, like an unmarried person who has already had sex (with or without regret) or those who are experiencing same-sex attraction or gender identity issues. And it can be a downright painful subject for those who have been the victims of sexual abuse or rape, losing part of their sexual self against their will.

In addition, a church that has no sexual teaching other than abstinence has nothing to say to married couples who face many complex and disorienting changes to their sexuality (among other things) during their life together. Not that married couples are chomping at the bit to discuss such things in church, but I've seen how it works. A church focused on abstinence has only one thing to offer married couples: "Be sure to teach your kids abstinence."

© 2013 Natesh Ramasamy, Flickr | CC-BY

5) The Christian abstinence movement has made irresponsible promises. Christine J. Gardner conducted a qualitative study of teen abstinence efforts, and one of her conclusions is that the movement unrealistically romanticizes that future relationship (via stereotypical gender roles) and promises that everything will be wonderful if you wait. Gardner's book includes several interviews with people who managed to wait but were blindsided by issues on the other side of the vows (remember Samantha?) or for whom it simply took months to years before sex became enjoyable. She also concludes that abstinence is primarily sold to Christian teens through...well, sex.

Organizers argue that chastity is sexier than its alternative, more ultimately alluring and more gratifying. A young person says no now so that he or she can say yes to marital satisfaction later. The formula goes: early restraint plus godly partner equals great marital sex. Organizers promise that “good sex” is worth waiting for, and that those who wait will be well rewarded by God in sexually fulfilling marriages. (religionandpolitics.org).

Books like I Kissed Dating Goodbye and When God Writes Your Love Story gained a lot of traction in their day. They certainly had some good things to say about faithfulness to God and the divine purpose for marriage. But they rely on a popular Western idea that is found nowhere in the Bible: God has one person and one person only in mind for us. God never promised us a mate, but many teens take an abstinence pledge having been told otherwise. The concept of one single soulmate is a product of later Calvinism and Western romance, not anything in scripture. Matt Sturtevant, a friend and colleague, says that these fanciful expectations have set many people up for failure. "As soon as these couples start to have problems, they think it is a selection issue and not a hard work issue," he said, "so they start the selection process over again."

Although there is much to critique about the current dating scene, one of Joshua Harris' arguments against dating is the heartbreak and confusion it causes, as if we can somehow shield young people from this by telling them to "wait on God." We can say that all we want, but to a love struck young person, oxytocin feels a lot like the Holy Spirit.

6) Christian leaders and parents need to be a safe place. Teens and young adults especially have to be able to talk to us (but only when they want to). Boys are statistically very likely (more so than girls) to view sexually explicit material before high school. What is our response? Do we have something in our arsenal besides shaming or avoiding? What would empathy and understanding look like? What about the daughter who wants to be with that questionable boy? Do we just jump into protective mode, or are we able to put anxieties to rest long enough to listen to and understand the deep longing she has? Chances are, society had already handily chipped away at her self-esteem long before the boy puts her on cloud nine. (These examples are not meant to reinforce gender stereotypes but simply address what is most typical).

Somehow we have to find a way to affirm sexual thoughts and desires as normal while still addressing the poor choices to which they can lead. The same book of the Bible that warns us: "Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires" (Song of Songs 2:7) is the same book that contains lines like, "Your breasts are like two fawns" (Song of Songs 4:5). Not surprisingly, the prudes of the abstinence movement have tried to spiritualize Song of Songs and claim that it's not saying what it's clearly saying.

Of course, the problem I face with affirming the need for sexual exploration is that society doesn't really offer any healthy options for doing so. This is where brave Christian leaders need to come together for some honest, uncomfortable conversations, and realize there's a lot more to intimacy and sexual expression than whether we would check "have" or "have not."

I hope it goes without saying that Christian leaders can be part of the problem. We still haven't dealt with the sexual abuse scandals that continue to rock the church. It's interesting, though. So many of these horrifying stories have come across the airwaves, yet we still don't seem to be asking deeper questions about what repressed sexual struggles may lie at the root of these acts of abuse. Our society is very punitively oriented and has little interest in understanding the offenders. A Christianity Today survey found that nearly 40% of pastors struggle with pornography. Take the amount of shame a normal person might have about this and multiply it many times for pastors. The issues we're not addressing run wide and deep, and I'm not sure we've tapped into what offenders could teach us about helping prevent future cases.

7) While we're talking about the Bible... Let's be sure we understand that scripture is a great place to go for principles, understanding original purpose, etc., but because of cultural differences, it has limited usefulness in practical matters. In Biblical times, marriage was little more than a transfer of property between the girl's father and her new husband, and a man could have as many wives as he could afford. Women had no say in anything, including when to have sex, and their purpose was to bear children and continue the man's lineage. A woman who had sex with a man to whom she wasn't married was stoned, but a man who did the same only had to make sure he married the woman after the fact (Exodus 22:16). In the New Testament, some of Paul's practical advice on marriage was "a concession, not a command" (1 Corinthians 7:6), and within the context of expecting Christ's imminent return. He saw no point in worrying about family life, advising against marriage and telling people to stay the way they were, unless they "cannot control themselves" (1 Corinthians 7:9).

So needless to say, we need to be careful with the Bible on this issue, but it also contains the key to affirming our personhood and value to God as a guiding force for all our decisions.

8) Public policy check. I hope it comes as no surprise that we can't control others' choices (or heat-of-the-moment decisions). As with many other issues, we have to affirm policies that promote public well-being but still allow people the freedom to make their own choices. The current fight over contraception is political and all about control. Rick Santorum once (accidentally?) revealed what it's really about when he said, "[Contraception is] not OK, because it's a license to do things in the sexual realm that are counter to how things are supposed to be." In other words, you can't have contraception because you'll have sex with it. Christian schools like Wheaton College previously had no problem covering contraception, including emergency contraception, until doing so was mandated by the ACA. The root problem of abortion is unintended pregnancy, and banning abortion does nothing to address that. It's time for Christians to stop the hissy-fit and get behind comprehensive sex education that includes contraception. Research does not support the Christian claim that contraception encourages promiscuity, but it does show that people who receive comprehensive sex education are less likely to end up with an unintended pregnancy...60% less likely.

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We are fearfully and wonderfully made temples of God, sexuality and all. Let's keep working to find better ways to model and teach that.

The Sex Blog, Part 1: The blogosphere is talking about sex (and it's not going well)

On Monday, August 4th, a young woman named Samantha Pugsley published a blog entitled, "I Waited Until My Wedding Night to Lose My Virginity, and I Wish I Hadn’t."

It has spread through social media like wildfire. I first saw it on the profile of a 17-year-old girl. 24 people have reshared the article from her profile alone.

© 2013 Starla E. Rose, Flickr | CC-BY

In the article, which I encourage you to read, Pugsley gives a very honest and vulnerable testimony. She talks about how she had grown up in church and had taken a True Love Waits pledge when she was 10 years old, a pledge she kept. But then, upon getting married, she found herself unable to enjoy sex and dealt with intense feelings of guilt and dirtiness afterward. She shares that she has had to go through therapy to be able to embrace her sexuality, and says that she has given up her Christian faith. "I realized that I couldn't figure out how to be both religious and sexual at the same time," she writes. "Every single day is a battle to remember that my body belongs to me and not to the church of my childhood."

Cue the jaw-drops of Christian women everywhere. Bloggers: on your mark, get set, type!

To be sure, a quick response was needed. Pugsley's blog was admirably honest and vulnerable, but her conclusions are toxic. For starters, her own testimony reveals an important distinction that she herself does not seem to recognize: the cause of her guilt was not her decision to wait but the unhealthy way in which she was taught to think about sex. From even the title of her article, it's clear that she believes things would have been different (for the better) if she had not waited until her wedding night. But based on what she says about her upbringing and early influences, I am fairly certain that any decision on her part to have premarital sex would have produced more guilt, not less. The way she felt upon coming home from the honeymoon is telling: "When we got home, I couldn’t look anyone in the eye...I was soiled and tarnished." I fail to see how these feelings would have been averted if she had chosen pre-marital sex. Many other people have taken and kept this same virginity pledge and did not have the negative, guilt-ridden experience that she had. The problem was not the wait itself.

It's also interesting to note that Pugsley elsewhere describes herself as bisexual, something she doesn't reveal in this particular article and that probably represents many other complicated layers of sexual repression and confusion that have been going on even though she publicly pegs all of it on her church. Many people of all sexual orientations and backgrounds (religious or not) can experience confusion and guilt about their sexual desires and identity at some point in life. Such things are not exclusively the consequence of religion.

Because Pugsley framed her experience in the way she did, countless teenage girls are liking and sharing this post and saying to themselves, "See, I can do what I want, and that church down the street is just trying to control me." That same 17 year old later commented, "It's your body, and if you don't want to wait, it's perfectly okay. But if you do, that's okay too, just don't let others make your decision for you." She has joined the staggering numbers of teens and young adults who actually think that your beliefs and decisions are right and good so long as they are yours. In the real world, it doesn't work that way, which leads me to wonder how sheltered today's privileged kids really are. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "'I have the right to do anything,' you say—but not everything is beneficial" (1 Corinthians 6:12). I'm always puzzled when people assert independence they have always had. Am I as a minister supposed to shrink back in shock and shame when someone tells me that they can make their own choices? Trust me, I know you can...that's what makes my job so challenging! Most churches are simply trying to lead their young people into healthy choices as best they know how. Unfortunately, Pugsley's church apparently made her fear sex, pushed her into a decision that she didn't understand, and made some shaky promises. ("I was told over and over again...that if I remained pure, my marriage would be blessed by God and if I didn’t that it would fall apart and end in tragic divorce.")

I've read several blogs written in response to Pugsley that are heartfelt but ultimately unhelpful and miss the core issue.

Blogger Savanna Hartman wrote a response that contains something that many others were probably thinking, including me. Addressing her article directly to Pugsley, she writes:

Do you know how many young impressionable girls have read your blog?...Please consider that somewhere tonight a young (or not so young) girl made the decision to give up her virginity to someone who didn’t deserve it, won’t appreciate it, and won’t be there in the morning...

Hartman shares that she experienced the same shame and guilt because she did not wait, and now regrets it. I found myself saying a few silent "amens" to her points above. But Hartman is ultimately quite dismissive of Pugsley's experience. She offers a few insincere-sounding condolences for what Pugsley experienced, but ends up preaching to her and ends by saying, "I am sorry you aren’t glad you waited, but I sure am glad you did." In dealing with what Pugsley expresses, we cannot be so dismissive of her genuine experience, nor can we fail to see the larger, unaddressed problem here:

The church is horrible at talking about sexuality, so much so that Pugsley's experience is not uncommon, nor does it surprise me.

Hartman's blog was actually one of the better ones I ran across. Another blogger named Phylicia wrote her own response. While she shares a short story or two of feeling used by past boyfriends, etc., her blog is really just a sermon. I can tell you this: whenever young people are forced to choose between an abstract sermon and an honest personal story, they will gravitate to the personal story. Phylicia writes about how a decision for purity is not something we do for ourselves but out of loyalty to Christ. Yes, but I can pretty much guarantee that Pugsley and many of her readers have heard all of that before, and they have long since decided that such theological mantras offer them nothing of practical value.

If you're feeling especially brave, read the comment section below some of these posts I've mentioned. In short, all of this has once again exposed the church as one of the most unhelpful, impractical, and unrealistic places in our society to talk about sex. There are exceptions of course, but by and large, Pugsley's experience is a natural outcome of a church culture that has little more to say than "don't do it" and suggests, if only implicitly, that sex is bad. The conversation that Pugsley has spurred is an important one, but because the church is so often either silent or repressive, it's happening on social media in a lot of unhealthy, immature, and uninformed ways. Pugsley's article was posted on styleite.com, a website that calls itself "home to the freshest fashion and culture content for millennial women on the web...dedicated to delivering smart, original commentary and news to keep our readers informed of the latest trends, from fashion and style to music and television."

If that's not the forum in which we want our young people talking about sex, it's time to kick our prudish silence out the door and get ready for some real conversations.

In Part 2, I try my hand at starting one.

Communities, Borders, and "Persons of Peace" [excerpt]

Persons of peace...know they’re never going to [achieve peace] by exhibiting an exclusionary stance toward others. The fact of the matter is that there are persons of peace in every neighborhood, city, and nation. The trick is for these people to come together across society’s dividing lines (in the face of the cries of infidelity or impropriety that they inevitably face for doing so). The community developers I met this summer have all settled and invested into communities which they were warned not to enter, and in so doing they have been able to form incredible and unlikely partnerships that were the catalyst for neighborhood transformation.

This is not how we normally operate. Most of us are conditioned to see the world in terms of the good guys vs. the bad guys; us vs. them. It’s almost as if we approach real life the same way we do a sports event. Think about how it goes: All the fans gather together with their team’s regalia and cheers, and are there to rally behind their team in a defeat of “the opponent.” When a call is made against our team, we boo, hiss and lash out, regardless of whether the call was correct. When our team makes a mistake, we either say nothing or blame it on the opponent.

Does any of that sound familiar? The team sport approach is how we seem to run a lot of things...

[Read the full article on the Associated Baptist Press blog]

What of the Potential?: Our Samuel moment at the border

Most of us have heard about the influx of children at the southern border of the U.S. Responses run the gamut; anything from the protesters who block the buses from entering their town to calls for compassion and an open door.

Of course, unaccompanied minors coming across the U.S. southern border is not a new problem, it's just that so many of them have been coming within such a short time span. Reports are that the vast majority are coming from violence- or poverty-stricken areas of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.

In some admirable attempts to move to higher ground, bloggers like theologian Roger E. Olson have encouraged us to look at the underlying cause of this influx. In a post that purports to identify "the underlying problem no one seems to be talking about," he points to "our American affluence, including conspicuous consumption and luxury, promoted to the world via movies and television as the result of 'the American dream,' combined with our boast to be a 'nation of immigrants.'”

I think there's truth to this assertion of partial American responsibility, but he later suggests that the only solution to the problems in these Latin American countries is for the U.S. to go in with our resources and expertise and fix them. Given that the U.S. government and CIA have been doing some shady business in many Latin American countries for more than a century, I'm not sure we have the credibility, even if that were a prudent approach.

But even these "other" perspectives--those that seek to go above the partisan divide--still fall into a similar trap. All the commentaries I've read or heard, even the ones calling for compassion, fail to grant these immigrant children full human dignity by recognizing their potential.

It's more obvious coming from the right. Sometimes it seems that anything except for "send them back" is seen as irresponsible policy. Texas governor Rick Perry decided to send in the national guard, apparently unaware that these children are giving themselves up to the first adult they see, rendering such a strategy totally useless. Others are blaming President Obama and don't seem to be aware that current protocol comes from a law signed by George W. Bush. (Obama, who has deported more immigrants than any other U.S. president, actually wanted to amend the law to make it easier to deport the children). The anti-immigrant sentiment is so unbridled among some that a group of protesters in Arizona mistook a bus full of YMCA kids for one filled with immigrant children. One must wonder how immigrants have so egregiously stolen the life and liberty of these "real Americans."

Among others, there's something more subtle but no less ingrained. Though some of us may look upon immigrant children with compassion, we still subconsciously maintain a giver-recipient distinction. They are the poor, helpless kids who have come so that we can take care of them, quote the Bible, and feel like good Christians because we have served "the least of these" (Matthew 25:40). We have so much, they have so little. We give, they receive. We feel good and it gives us a sense of dignity.

What about their dignity? Have you ever noticed that we look at these immigrant children as somehow different from our own children? Our own children deserve the best. For the young people in our own families, churches, etc., we are willing to bust our butts to make sure they have what they need, and then some. Our own children get bedtime stories, pictures on the refrigerator, trips to Disney World, and adults asking them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Who is reading these kids a bedtime story? Whose refrigerator has space for their work?

Most importantly, who is asking them, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Perhaps you saw the viral video of an interview with a homeless man named Ronald Davis. He poignantly communicates the realities of poverty, like an inability to escape the cycle and, most notably, the lack of dignity. These immigrant children and families lack dignity, and that's something that we have the power to change.

© 2009 Mahmoud Eghtedari, Flickr | CC-BY-SA

What no one seems to be talking about is the potential of these children. Oh, we hear plenty about other kinds of potential. We hear about potential disease, potential cost, and potential criminal behavior. Is that really all we can see? Due to everything from the giver-recipient distinction to outright hatred and racism, we seem totally incapable of seeing immigrant children as having the same potential that our own children do. What if there was a future doctor on that bus you blocked from entering your town? What if there's a future chef or a nutritionist in that child that you only see as hungry and thirsty? How do we know that they have nothing to give us? Maybe they could teach us some humility. Maybe one of them might find a cure for cancer. Like any other children, their opportunities are limited to what we afford them. We could care for them and educate them and give them the opportunity to become contributing members of our society, or we can send them back to the hopeless life they left, and probable death.

Undocumented immigrants already contribute more than we think. According to Stephen Goss of the Social Security Administration, they pay about $12 billion into that system per year...a system many of them won't ever benefit from.

We have to be willing to invest in these children...spend time and energy now for the sake of a better future down the road. But recent public discourse and congressional budget battles have left me wondering if we even understand this concept. Think of it as a loan. When you loan money, your pockets are emptier at first, but through interest you may stand to get back more than you started with. Sure, sometimes you end up losing, but an unwillingness to invest is why the U.S. has a crumbling infrastructure and is quickly falling behind other countries in many categories. Anti-government and anti-taxation sentiments have left us with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the solar system but electrical grids that can't withstand a typical thunderstorm.

Garrison Keillor once said, "Nothing you do for children is ever wasted." When we see those pictures of children coming across the border or being crammed into makeshift facilities, my prayer is that we will not be filled with hatred or even pity but with wonder at their potential. What could they give and contribute, both now and down the road? Why is it we assume they can't or won't? We are already a country full of accomplished immigrants.

The U.S. gives out something called an O-1 visa. It's given to immigrants who demonstrate "extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics." We gave one to Justin Bieber, and he's already caused more trouble than most of these Latin American children would. We have a broken immigration system that prices most people out, even if they could manage to figure out the forms and requirements. Whenever people say something like, "They should just come here legally," they are revealing a lack of basic knowledge about what it takes to do so. It's not possible for most. You have to have connections, money, and time. Most desperate immigrants have none of those. If it were me, I'd sneak in too, especially for the sake of my children.

Precious few people know what is engraved on a bronze plaque inside our Statue of Liberty. It's a poem called "The New Colossus," written by Emma Lazarus. Here it is in full:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Did you see that part near the middle? "Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!...Give me your tired, your poor..." According to this poem, the U.S. not only welcomes immigrants, but would rather have those who are currently hopeless and beaten up by life than those who come with fame, expectations, or entitlement. Lady Liberty might be onto something.

This is our Samuel moment at the border. In the Old Testament book named after him, Samuel is sent to Jesse's household to anoint God's chosen king. In the well-known story, David the shepherd boy is not even in the line-up. It seemed so unlikely that he would amount to anything that no one even considered it. But God said to Samuel, "The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart" (1 Sam 16:7).

Christian singer Ray Boltz once wrote a song inspired by this story: "When others see a shepherd boy,
God may see a king."

"They have diseases," some say. "They are a drain on our resources," some say. "They just want handouts," some say.

What if our ancestors had been turned away for the same reasons? What if, as we see only risk, God sees dreams waiting to come true?