What is true wellbeing?
There are few topics of tea-room conversation that send Christians into greater spasms of panic than sexuality and gender. It’s not just explaining our thinking that can be hard. Many of us are committed to following God’s way for our sexuality and gender, but the way we talk about it makes it sound like a list of arbitrary ‘do nots’ we grimly adhere to. Many of us might even have the lurking doubt that perhaps God’s way on sexuality and gender really is oppressively contrary to our true wellbeing. We’re tempted to apologise for it or cover it up.
Either way, our view of sexuality and gender has become disconnected from our confidence in God’s resolute goodness to us. Why that disconnect? Is it that we need to reflect on biblical sexuality and gender more deeply? Probably. Could it also be that we too easily lose sight of God’s perfect goodness — especially when our own feelings, experiences and convictions speak different messages that seem, to us, so true, appealing and good?
Before we talk specifics about God’s design for sexuality and gender, let’s slow down and ask a vital, baseline question: What is true wellbeing? Or even more foundationally:
Who is the most trustworthy voice on our wellbeing?
In our cultural moment, we most naturally turn to our own internal voice. We trust ourselves to work out what is best for us. Who else has the authority to tell someone what is truly best for them? I need to ask myself what feels good, right and true to me. What gives me a sense of safety and security? What helps me work at my best, mentally and physically? What needs do I find within myself that I should prioritise and attend to? Apparently, I know best.
However, we must remember we don’t exist in a vacuum. When we feel most sure we are thinking independently, we are most blind to the way our family, culture and history profoundly shape our assumptions. It has only been in recent decades that Western society has come to believe each individual person’s feelings, understanding and convictions are the best authorities on his or her wellbeing.
What does this take on wellbeing look like in action? For example, we might develop strong feelings for someone. They understand and care about us. They make us feel alive and secure in a way no one else does. We find ourselves deeply attracted to them. The big message we hear is that no other person or external authority should stand in the way of us pursuing our feelings — it is essential to our wellbeing.
Are we really the experts on our own wellbeing?
Jesus has a habit of turning our most basic beliefs about life upside down, and wellbeing is no exception.
One of the most striking things about Jesus in the Gospels is his magnetic authority. When he speaks, he leaves no room for rival voices. At the end of his Sermon on the Mount, the people are captivated by the penetrating power of his teaching. Here is a man who ‘knows’ like no one else. He speaks with God’s authority (Matthew 7:28).
Jesus also embodies the goodness of God’s design for humanity. He is pure in his devotion to his Father, despite intense temptation (Matthew 4:10). He loves every man, woman and child he meets with perfect insight, compassion and purity (Matthew 8:3; 14-16).
In fact, he must be the expert on us in every way because ‘He alone is the foundation of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom are all things’ (Colossians 1:15-20; WCF II.ii).
There is no more trustworthy voice on human wellbeing than Jesus. Satan’s call to Eve, and to us is that God is too constraining, so follow your own heart and fulfil your potential (Gen 3:4-5). That thinking can sound so natural and right to us. But when we see and hear Jesus, the very idea of following our own hearts rather him is sheer hubris. God has made us to flourish, not by listening to ourselves, but through hearing his life-generating voice and responding with a willing ‘Yes Lord. Here I am, ready to obey’.
What does Jesus say about true wellbeing?
If Jesus is the expert on our wellbeing, what does he say is truly good for us? Let’s turn to his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5:2-12). He begins with a famous series of statements about ‘blessing’. But at first glance, Jesus’ idea of blessing seems alarmingly counter-intuitive, even harmful. He doesn’t say ‘Blessed are those who look within, love themselves and pursue what they cherish’. He says, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’(v3). In other words, blessed are those who come face-to-face with God and realise their profound dependence and deficiency. Blessed are those who realise their greatest offence is not failing to love themselves but failing to love God. Blessed are those who realise their minds and hearts are enslaved to darkness and they stand in deep, deep trouble before God. Blessed are those who mourn (v4) over their shame and guilt. Blessed are the meek (v5) who know they are not the experts on life or themselves. Blessed are those who desperately wish they could get rid of their destructive, self-absorbed wiring and be who they ought to be (v6).
Is Jesus’ teaching on blessing just a poorly disguised call to self-hatred? No! True blessing is the heart and rhythm of these verses. True flourishing is there to be found — but only in dependence on our life-giving God. To access this flourishing, we need to be set free from our pretensions to independent expertise.
To be blessed by God is to know there is a deeper, more lasting layer to reality than what we see and feel in any given moment. Our experience is not definitive. The greatest truth of all is God has moved towards us in Jesus. He is for us. He has taken up our cause. Jesus has walked ahead of us and done everything needed to fill our empty hands with the eternal riches of his heavenly kingdom. We will be truly comforted when Jesus has the last word of mercy and welcome over our lives (v4,7). Four million years after Jesus’ return, as we buoyantly explore the earth we have inherited (v5), we will be glad we found our wellbeing in God rather than scraping happiness together from long since defunct materials. In heaven, our hearts will bear no trace of our current anxiety, shame, dividedness and blindness. We will be filled with righteous splendour (v6), secure in God’s care (v8), all because Jesus died and rose to make us his own (1 Peter 1:3-5).
Stop and listen to those blessings afresh. It is easy to treat them lightly, even dismissively, as the tensions of the here and now press in on us. But because we possess these promises now in Jesus, we also taste their goodness now. When a race winner stands on the podium, fervently awaiting her medal, she knows it is hers already. It has her name on it. Our future in Jesus is real and assured and just around the corner.
We can also sit at Jesus’ feet and know the blessing of hearing his voice now. All the life hacks in the world can’t match Jesus’ authority and wisdom. There is real and present attractiveness, pleasure, satisfaction in attending to Jesus (v7-9). In him we gradually gain new lives, minds, hopes, desires, acceptance, intimacies, perspectives, friendships, family and safety (Eph 4:22-24). In this life we are called to deny foolish, sinful desires, as gruelling and emptying as that may feel. But we don’t do it for the sake of grim adherence to rules. We do it to drink from the fountain of true blessing. We exercise self-control and sometimes even sacrifice our enjoyment of good things to treasure what we gain in Jesus. (1 Cor 9).
Jesus teaches that we find true wellbeing when we entrust ourselves to him and cling to the life-giving riches he provides.
What does Jesus’ teaching on wellbeing mean for our sexuality and gender?
Questions for Personal or Group Reflection
- What common messages do you hear about what is essential to wellbeing? What do the people around us want most, especially regarding their gender, sexuality and relationships?
- Thinking about wellbeing and gender/sexuality, when might we be more tempted to listen to ourselves or others rather than Jesus?
- Read through the following passages. What do they tell us about true wellbeing?
- Matthew 5:1-12 (you may also like to look ahead and see what Jesus has to say about sex later in the Sermon)
- Ephesians 4:17-24
- Since Jesus is our most trustworthy authority on everything, what does that mean for the way we talk to not-yet Christian friends about wellbeing, especially in relation to gender and sexuality? What do they need to hear most?
Suggestions for Prayer
- Praise God for the ways he has blessed us in Jesus
- Confess the ways you have listened to yourself and ignored his Word
- Thank him for his ongoing mercy to you in Jesus
- Ask him to help you trust Jesus as your most trustworthy authority on wellbeing.