The Church of England Living in Love and Faith
‘Before we ever are the object of our own gaze, or the gaze of those around us, we are the objects of God’s gaze. God’s gaze is deeply loving, but it is also perfectly truthful. To know ourselves as God knows us is to know ourselves as deeply loved, but also to face up to our scars and sinfulness. God affirms us, but God also challenges us to discover and inhabit our identity differently. God sometimes challenges us to let go of things we thought were core to who we are, and sometimes to take on things we had not considered before. But those challenges are never an imposition on our true selves; they are always about being freed from the narrow confines of lives turned in on themselves in order to find our true flourishing with others, and pre-eminently with God’. Such words give a taster of a rich Christian document as it sets forth the transformative good news of Jesus and its relevance to identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage in a context where many are looking to the chur