Cosper's Canard
People Often Do Deconstruct Over The Question Of Sex
I am happy to announce to the wide world that I have cleaned my office. I know, when I mentioned I was engaged in such a rash and reckless act you probably shook your head and said to yourself, ‘That’s not even possible.’ But how wrong you were. It took me the better part of a week, but, in the end, I was triumphant. I was as brave and dedicated as Frodo on Balin’s Tomb. As I said, it was Matt’s birthday yesterday and as a special treat, we let him read The Lord of the Rings to us—not the whole thing, just a chapter.
Anyway, also over the weekend Mike Cosper, of Mars Hill Podcast/Christianity Today fame, tweeted in the way so many do—a bit provocatively, in order, probably to get some traffic, but also with the air of reasonable thoughtfulness. Here is what he said:
I’ve talked to dozens of deconstructing Christians and heard from hundreds in the past few years. A sizable majority of them are happily married and deeply committed to their spouses. Those who are questioning the Christian sexual ethic are almost all doing so out of concern for LGBT friends and loved ones. I’ve literally never met a deconstructing Christian where deconstruction preceded a shift in personal sexual ethics. I have seen a few cases where a fallen leader or Xian celebrity deconstructed as part of their post-fall persona. But literally I’m talking about 1 or 2 out of hundreds of stories. Saying people want to deconstruct to sleep around strikes me as a stupid canard that allows conservatives to remain incurious about problems in their own community.
What I like so much about this tweet is that it appears, to me, an almost perfect representation of the nature of Christian discourse and disagreement going on today. At first glance, it is a mild observation. Cosper has interacted with “deconstructing Christians” and has accumulated some wisdom. Let’s just enumerate his points so that we know where we are.
They are happily married and deeply committed to their spouses.
Some are questioning the “Christian sexual ethic” but mostly because they have concern for LGBT friends and loved ones.
They never deconstruct from Christianity because of a shift in personal sexual ethics.
Fallen leaders and celebrities sometimes—rarely—deconstruct post-fall.
Upon relating this list of evidence, Cosper makes a big, and we cannot fail to notice, judgmental leap about “conservatives.” But let’s leave that for a moment. What is his evidence?
There is a division about what people believe about sex. The people Cosper has heard from either hold to a “Christian sexual ethic” or a “personal sexual ethic.” Also, there are people who fall, one assumes, since it is the subject under consideration, sexually. Also, there are people who have relationships with “LGBT friends and loved ones” and sometimes these people deconstruct. I’m not trying to be pedantic, but obviously we are talking about sex, in one form or another.
This is curious because, I have personal, anecdotal evidence of people who have deconstructed, though I honestly prefer the word “apostatized” because of their desire to be with people—both emotionally and sexually they knew the God revealed in the Scriptures forbids. Actually, I know so many people, personally, who have done this that I have lost count. More than on one or even two hands. These people decided not to be Christian anymore sometimes because they wanted to live with people without getting married, because they wanted to marry a non-Christian, because they found themselves attracted to a member of the same sex and had the intellectual integrity to know that nothing in the Bible made that relationship ok and so they walked away. In fact, a lot of people I know have walked away from Christianity, and I would say that at least fifty percent of them have been over what Cosper calls the “Christian sexual ethic.”
Some of the people who have so apostatized have plainly said that they don’t believe in God anymore because they wanted to have sex with someone to whom they were not married.
What is so interesting to me about Cosper’s tweet is that he is trying to carefully define the parameters of deconstruction so as to exclude all the evidence of people like me who have testimony of many leaving the Christian faith over matters of sex and sexuality. This testimony is irrelevant because he has never encountered it. Therefore, “Saying people want to deconstruct to sleep around strikes me as a stupid canard that allows conservatives to remain incurious about problems in their own community.”
It isn’t a canard. And it isn’t at all to be incurious about anything. It is, in fact, to be able to listen to what people are saying and accept them at their word. It is also to take seriously that there is a vast chasm between a “Christian sexual ethic” and what Cosper calls the “personal sexual ethic.” I have long complained about the anemic term “sexual ethic” as if what the Bible says about human sexual activity is embarrassing or deserving of some apology because of all the harm. What the Lord God says in his holy and perfect Law about how his creatures may enjoin themselves with each other is good. It doesn’t need to be spoken about with humiliation and sorrow.
The “personal” sexual ethic of this age has produced a wreckage, a ruin, a dystopian hellscape. And worst of all, a lot of people are leaving the church, abandoning the scriptures, and not even ever hearing the Gospel because of it. It is by no means a “canard,” and I beg that Cosper, who has to be smarter than this, will listen a little more deeply and with a little more curiosity than he is showing in this shabby tweet.
So anyway, have a nice day!
A couple months ago, Cosper went after Meg Basham and called her dishonest over a picayune mincing concerning the definition of a word. I realized then that he was problematic and this only serves to further cement that impression. He reminds me of a pastor I used to be in church with who joined a mainline denomination and spends inordinate amounts of time bashing conservative evangelicals on social media. They're all a sad bunch.
Don't know much about Cosper but do love the irony of catering to a left-wing audience with anecdotal evidence. The same people would probably scoff at anecdotal evidence of, say, the decline in child literacy, attention spans, and life satisfaction brought on by smartphones. It's all about demonstrating the right sort of curiosity about the right (invariably conservative) social phenomena, consistent evidentiary standards be damned.