Here's an email from a pastor who writes in to ask about one of those tricky pastoral dilemmas that pop up from time to time. He asks this, "Is it appropriate for pastors to hug female members of his church, and single women in particular? What does appropriate pastoral affection towards the opposite sex look like for a pastor?" Good pastoral question, or any Christian question, I suppose.

And let me start with three Bible pointers, and then I'll talk from my own experience what I've learned. Number one, the Bible speaks of a holy kiss, from which I infer at least this, there is such a thing as a holy hug. Second, the Bible also says treat younger women as sisters, older women as mothers.

In other words, the atmosphere of the church should be a safe family place for healthy, wholesome family affection. Number three, the Bible says, "To the pure, all things are pure," which means that we need to know ourselves. If our thoughts are impure, and our hearts are impure, then a hug may be impure.

So the issue is a deep heart issue, and we need to be doing work there before we start getting strategies in our head about doing the right kind of hugging. Okay, on the basis of those three, and from my experience, here's what I've learned. I've hugged, goodnight, what, thousands, hundreds of women, most of them right in front of the church after a service or after a speaking event.

I mean, lots of women with tears in their eyes, having been transformed by something I wrote, say, "Can I just hug you? What are you going to say?" And I have talked to a lot of women and a lot of men about the experience of being hugged. And here's some things I've learned to take into consideration.

Number one, there are lonely people in the church who don't have a spouse. They don't have many friends that are close. One woman told me, she said, "There are women in this church who have not been hugged by a human being for 10 years, and they need to be hugged in a holy way by a holy, mature man, simply to feel fully loved in a holy way." I think that's right.

We are family, and families have bodies, and bodies are not just sex instruments. That's important. And it's probably more true for women than for men, but it's true for men too. It ought to be anyway. Bodies are not just sex instruments. They are instruments of trust, instruments of affirmation, instruments of holy affection.

That's number one. Number two, all of us should grow in our ability to discern what the other person needs and wants and is accustomed to. Don't force your way of hugging on others when they are uncomfortable with it. That is a very delicate balancing act as you meet a person for the first time.

This calls for extraordinary discernment, right? In split seconds, you're making a judgment call here. In general, I would not, not take the initiative to hug a woman who's not taking that initiative with me unless there were significant relational precedents that established that's what we do when we meet. And there's a kind of mutuality understanding of what it means.

So there may be a long friend that you haven't seen for ages, and when you see each other, you don't need to ask, "I wonder if a hug would be appropriate here." Well, it's a given. Because you know her, you know, you got a long history together. In general, though, I would say let the woman signal that a hug would be appropriate or welcome.

Number three, adapt to the kind of hug being offered. Now, this too is a gift of sensitivity. There are all kinds of hugs, right? Face hugs, lean over hugs, one arm hugs, two arm hugs, minimal contact hugs, lots of contact hugs. Let the woman set this. Don't ever communicate as a man any kind of aggression or any kind of sexual attraction unless she's your wife.

Number four, learn quickly from the kind of hug that just happened what's going on. I have sometimes gotten hugs that felt to me very inappropriate. Learn from that and put your guard up and don't go there again. She comes to see you, don't go there. Don't go there. Don't give her the opportunity for that kind of hug.

Now that's a delicate judgment because maybe she didn't mean that, but we've got to learn how to discern. Don't welcome it, avoid it. Number five, take the setting into account. I'm always more at ease hugging another woman when my wife is present. In private, say she comes to see you in your office, you leave the door open or there's a window.

In private, I'm very wary about putting myself in a position of hugging and I wouldn't offer it. I wouldn't offer it. She may ask for it and you may grant it, but you would be very wary and very careful about the setting and you would minimize privacy in those settings of counsel.

The last thing I would say is don't be so stiff and so wary and so cautious that you can't hug. There are cultures and there are persons who feel treated badly without a hug. If you let your principles or your prickliness hold you back in those settings, you're not as free as you should be.

We should speak other body languages sometimes besides our own for the good of another culture or another personality. So all in all, I would say this, establish a principled and emotionally healthy and happy place at your church where people feel safe, especially women, safe to hug or not to hug.

Thank you, Pastor John. You may remember the practice of hugs actually emerged in an unlikely episode, episode number 124, which we titled Mealtime Prayers, Necessary or Optional? In there, Pastor John, you develop this point about how habits of the body nourish habits of the soul, even when the physical acts feel forced in the moment.

It's worth checking out. That's episode number 124. Well tomorrow is Christmas Eve and next time on the podcast, Pastor John and I will be joined by Noel Piper to explain what Christmas looked like in the Piper home for the last 40 plus years. I'm your host Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.

Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow.