Pope Francis made another controversial announcement about sexuality yesterday, suggesting surrogacy should be banned.

A bit confusing, at least for some, right?

A couple of weeks ago, he gave priests the freedom to informally bless people in same-sex unions. Then this surrogacy announcement seems like a pivot the other direction.

Conservative Protestant Christians are confused by both. They're alarmed the Pope is being too progressive on legal gay marriage, and they're confused why surrogacy is even a theological question.

Here's the problem: most of us Protestants have a fairly shallow theology of sexuality.

A lot of us believe in "save sex for marriage" (and then sprinkle in a little clarification that marriage is only between a man and a woman). But then we believe everything else is fair game.

We use God or the Bible as a litmus test for a couple of cultural questions. We use God or the Bible against people we disagree with, when it's convenient for us.

But most Protestants aren't actually interested in letting the God of the Bible inform how we think about all of our sexuality and all of the ways we engage our mind, body, and spirit in relationships of all kinds.

We don't want to think about the biblical morality of divorce/remarriage, contraception, plastic surgery, surrogacy, IVF, casual romance outside of marriage, or celibacy.

So when Catholics like the Pope slide into our feeds with seemingly random takes about all kinds of questions of sexuality, we're confused.

Ohh, and here's a quick explainer about the Pope's two announcements:

A few weeks ago, the Pope was merely recognizing that priests can informally bless imperfect things (including legal marriage that the Church doesn't believe God has joined or is sustaining).

When someone asks, "Will you bless me? Will you bless this thing I'm connected to?" they're recognizing their need for more of Jesus in their life and asking the priest to pray that God would draw near.

So the Pope was merely telling priests, "Hey, don't be weird. You've already been informally blessing lots of things we know fall short of God's best. Blessing doesn't mean it's God's best. It just means they want more Jesus. Don't hold out on that for gay people. Bless them too."

Then this week, the Pope pushed against surrogacy because he's still the Pope and the Catholic Church is still the Catholic Church.

Catholics still believe that God very intentionally made each of us mind, body, and spirit. Catholics still believe that God has very specific wisdom for the best ways to connect in the context of community, including openness to the gift of children in sacramental Christian marriage.

The Pope is urging faithful Christians not to forget God's wisdom and misuse our bodies (or the bodies of others) in attempts to overcome the brokenness of this world.

If there are God-honoring ways to fix something that is broken, go for it!

But sometimes, there isn't. Sometimes, the best we can do is draw near to our brothers and sisters in Christ, mourn together what's broken, and care for each other in our mourning.

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