How To Fly
On July 5, 2025, the Presbyterian Church USA will incorporate into its Book of Order (governing polity) language that blurs the line between God’s good created order and the fallen human condition. This language was adopted by the 226th General Assembly in 2024 and ratified by a majority of the presbyteries in the spring of 2025. As a teaching elder in the pcusa, I participated in the debate and vote in my presbytery. What follows is an adaptation of the speech I gave in opposition to these changes.
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My family likes to fly kites. You need only a few things to fly a kite- you need a kite (with a tail), you need wind, and you need string. When you fly a kite, and I mean when you get the kite really up there, the only thing that appears to be holding it back is the string. One might be tempted to see just how high the kite could fly if you free it from the string’s restraint. But do you know what happens if you cut the string? It does not fly higher; it falls. It turns out the very thing that appeared to be holding the kite back was the very thing making it fly.
Scripture teaches that every human being is made in the image of God and deserves dignity, respect, and love. Every human being, period. Scripture also says that BECAUSE we bear the image of God, we are not our own. As John Calvin says, we are God’s (the apostrophe here is important). Question and answer #1 of the Heidelberg Catechism says it like this: my only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul, in life and in death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. In pride, our first parents decided to belong to themselves rather than God. God’s boundaries restrained them from who THEY wanted to be. However, cutting the connection from God did not lead to human flourishing, but to the fall. It turns out that the Bible’s restraint does not restrict our freedom, it actually enables it.
Our Confessions declare the Bible to be the Word of God written; the rule of faith and life. It serves as a restraint, even from things that I think of as good. Restraint is not discrimination, it leads to freedom. My counsel for those I minister to who are hurting and struggling with sin is NOT for them to not worry about it, because God has forgiven them. Certainly God has. But the reason they are struggling and feeling like their life is crashing around them is because they have cut the string that God had given to them so they could fly! They sought their own way rather than submit to God’s commands in Scripture. A number of years ago, I sat with a couple who came to me for premarital counseling. Both had been married previously. We studied the Bible and what God said about marriage and the boundaries Scripture places around the beautiful and powerful gift of sex, which is to be enjoyed exclusively in the covenant of marriage between one man and one woman. This was the first time this couple, who was living together, had ever been invited to let Scripture restrain this part of their life. By our next session, they decided to live separately until they got married. They willingly surrendered themselves to the restraint of God’s Word and found a freedom they didn’t know Scripture could offer them. Doing things THEIR way left them hurting. Yet when they willingly let God restrain them by the Word and they flourished. The string is what enabled them to fly!
I believe our denomination cut the anchor of God’s Word in 2014 when it decided to change its definition of marriage. Until this overture however, I have been permitted to continue to minister according to the bounds of the Scriptures. To lovingly call people to repentance from seeking their own desires and let God’s Word lovingly restrain them is labeled by this overture as discrimination. These changes would require me to cut my string too. We don’t belong to ourselves. We belong to God. Marriage, sex, gender, are NOT human constructs but are created, ordered and blessed by GOD. We bear God’s image; male and female. Jesus said therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and two will become one flesh, let no one separate what God has joined together. Hold on to the string of Scripture because it connects us to Jesus. This is what will enable us to fly.
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