Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we're looking at engaging with hot topics.
SPEAKER_03The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you. With Andy Brinkley and Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_04Welcome to this anniversary edition of the Evangelist Podcast. Happy birthday. Is it? Is it an birthday? Well, it's not really. It's uh it's fifty-two episodes we've done now. Oh, okay. A year's worth. A year's worth. Yes. Uh our first one was actually on the twenty-fifth of March 2013.
SPEAKER_01Ah, so we've only skipped a couple of weeks along the way. Yeah, about three months. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's not bad.
SPEAKER_04Uh and as we listen to this podcast, we'll cross over two hundred thousand downloads. Is that goodness? This morning it was at 194,247.
SPEAKER_00Okay. So very exciting.
SPEAKER_04So maybe you, the listener, will be the two hundred thousandth.
SPEAKER_01And you will get for that nothing at all.
SPEAKER_04Just imagine a big red badge on I was the two hundred thousandth listener, too.
SPEAKER_01Wandy's smiling face on.
SPEAKER_04Well, we've we've done quite well so far. We've uh we've looked at big questions. Yes. Uh atheism. We did a four four-part course on atheism. Mm-hmm. We looked at what's stopping us from evangelising, yeah.
SPEAKER_00We looked at three two one. Okay, yes. We're always looking at three two one. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And then we interviewed Graham Miller, Greg Gavin Tite, Matt Rich, Tim Chester, Di Woolridge, Andy Tovey, Martin Durham.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Those were good. And I really enjoyed the uh the the interviews. We should do more.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So today we're going to be looking at engaging with hot topics. Yes. And more specifically, looking at homosexuality.
SPEAKER_01That's right. Yeah. Not because this is in any way the first thing you ever want to say, and it's not even something that you sort of have up your sleeve for saying, but it is something that today you'll be asked about. So it's it's worth having thought about it and worth having some responses.
SPEAKER_04Okay. Uh well before we go on, I just want to tell you about our daily prayer bulletin. It's a small twenty-four-page booklet that tells thirty-one stories of what God is doing around the world. Find out how a Muslim sought Allah but found Jesus. That babies are born with a moral sense, and that God is at work despite persecution in North Korea. You can hear more about it by going to revivalmedia.org/slash bulletin. Okay, so so homosexuality, Glenn, uh, is this something that you bring up often in your evangelism?
SPEAKER_01Uh no. Only if I'm ever asked to. But it's something that that comes up because people want to ask about it. And in fact, whenever you do a sort of a QA session with people, one of the first questions that always gets raised, because I guess it's where the culture and the gospel kind of clash most strongly. Not because it's at the center of the Christian gospel at all, it's it's right on the periphery. But as as the culture bumps up against uh Christianity and a and a culture that uh increasingly, you know, doesn't want to have a Christian heritage, it's gonna bump up against us and and disagree with us at different levels, but perhaps the hardest edge is gonna be about sex, which I I don't think says that Christians are obsessed with sex, but I think it does say that the culture is obsessed with sex, and so that's where that's where the friction comes from. I I remember I was uh having lunch with somebody a couple of years ago now, and um she didn't know I was a Christian. As soon as it as it came up that I was a Christian, she put down her fork and she spat across the dinner table. She said, I will spit on anyone who says homosexuality is a sin. And uh we we ended up having quite a nice lunch, you know, eventually. Eventually. But that just goes to show the the heat that 'cause it gets generated about this topic. You know, I I hadn't mentioned anything about the topic, and yet it it got mentioned to me, you know, instantly. And I think what was in her thinking is I think she she sort of looked on from the outside at what Christians are saying, and and she thought Christians are saying basically sexually righteous people like us will go to heaven. And sexual sinners like the rest will go to hell. Um but but you know, here here's the sort of the the truth that I tried to get across. You know, only sinners go to heaven. Only sexual sinners go to heaven. You know, Mark Mark Mark chapter two verse seventeen applies as much to to sex in the bedroom as as as it applies to anywhere. Jesus in Mark chapter two verse seventeen says, I've not come to call the righteous but sinners. I'm a doctor for the sick. I've not come to call the righteous but sinners. And therefore, you know, I I think that applies sexually as as well as everywhere else. That that actually we need to be a sinner if we want to come to Christ. We don't we don't need to come to Christ as straight or gay or bi or queer or anything else. We need to come to Christ as a sinner, uh which means all of us need to come to Christ as as as people who get things wrong in every department of life, including the bedroom. Those are the sorts of things I was trying to say.
SPEAKER_04We did sort of discuss sexuality in the previous podcast episode, and we were one of the things that uh we talked about was that you know, being known as Christ as our identity. Yes. Rather than our sexuality being our identity. Yeah that's basically what you're saying, is that you know our identity is in Christ, regardless. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that that can really happen. You know, I I got into some great conversations uh about some of these issues on on Twitter recently with with a guy who I I really like his his tweets. I've really liked interacting with him, but just very, very sort of prominently, you know, the first descriptor in the bio, gay. So so sometimes th those sorts of primary identity issues are there. And it it's okay to have an identity. I'm an Australian, I'm a male, I'm married, you know, I'm a cricket fan. There's lots of there's lots of things that are particular about me, and I might bore people to to death talking about cricket, for instance. And that's okay, but but you know, when things do get to the level of I am straight, or I am gay, or you know, I am born this way, and that's who I am, baby. You know, when when it gets to that level, I think yeah, there there are definitely sort of identity issues going on.
SPEAKER_04Is the Bible anti-gay, though?
SPEAKER_01Uh I think the Bible has very little interest in our sexual orientation. In fact, I'd say it has zero interest in our sexual orientation. And to define our identity in terms of our sexual preferences is an incredibly modern Western fascination that's known only to us, really. It's not known to the rest of the world even today, and it wasn't known in the West prior to 150 years ago or even a hundred years ago. People were not talking in these terms about gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender. We didn't have these sort of categories. And so to read the Bible through our modern lenses, trying to figure out, you know, what does it what does what does Jesus think about the LGBT community? And you're like, well, there are things that you can say, but it's it's a bit like claiming that Jesus was Labour or Liberal Democrat or Conservative. Like, is is Jesus conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat? You're like, well, um that's a bit of an anachronism, isn't it? Those categories don't make sense in first century Israel. But Jesus has things to say to the Tories, and he has things to say to Labour, and he has things to say to the Liberal Democrats. But to to kind of read the Bible through these lenses that are so novel, that are so new, I I don't think we really realize how modern these labels of LGBT and straight and queer and all these sorts of things are. Even like I was just reading online uh last week um an LGBT anthropologist called uh Dr. Esther Newton, and she was, you know, doing work trying to find are there any other cultures in history that have ever divided up humanity the way that we do into straight, gay, bi, you know, and and the rest. We like labels, don't we? We love the labels. But she says, you know, different cultures have so many different understandings of sex and gender and desire that are so specific to their old own world views. And she says she knows of no non-Western cultural system that divides people into the categories of men who like women, men who like men, women who like men, women who like women. The way that we do. There's just no no other culture in the history of humanity. That should give us pause for thought, shouldn't it? Um so is the Bible anti-gay? Well, I don't think it I don't think it's particularly pro-straight, that's for sure. You know, you cannot imagine Jesus in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount turning to his disciples and s and and saying, Let your sexual desire be unto the multitude of women. Not to the uns to the multitude of men. He w He doesn't want our sexual desire to be unto the multitude of anything. It's inconceivable that he would want heterosexuality to be the point. Um heterosexuality is not the point, which is you know, I I don't consider myself straight, for instance. I you know, I I hate the term straight. Lusting after you know the opposite sex en masse is not a particularly righteous thing. Being being oriented sexually towards female kind is wicked. It's wicked. And yeah, well, I'm I'm meant to be straight because I'm a Christian. No, no, no, no, no. These categories of straight and gay are are so modern and they they do not help us to read the Bible. The Bible's not interested in my orientation at all. It is interested in my behaviour, but that's that's a different thing. And we do need to differentiate between behaviour and orientation because orientation and desire and my inner life have become the be-all and end all of everything. Whereas the Bible's just interested in okay, what do you do with your sexual desires? It doesn't really care about the orientation.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So where do these labels of straight and gay come from?
SPEAKER_01Well, all sorts of theories, but you know, they they weren't around 150 years ago, or really a hundred years ago. But one theory that seems to make sense to me is that in in a society that is moving away from religious categories, and the church in particular, and it's moving towards sort of psychologized categories. Freud is kind of rising up, and he and he, instead of having categories of sin and behavior and and th those sorts of things, he's looking into the you know the ego and the superego and the id and the subconscious and taking that journey within. And so, in a culture that doesn't have the same categories that the church used to, but it still is uncomfortable with homosexual behaviour, it starts to seek an explanation in psychology. And you start to go down into yourself to kind of figure out, you know, who am I? Oh, I I am, you know, this sort of mess of desires. And of course, Freud was sexually obsessed, absolutely, and everything everything was about sex for him. But, you know, it's it's it's very interesting. You know, if if if listeners know the the term Gnostic, you sort of hear about Gnosticism every time Dan Brown is mentioned. Um, because the sort of the Gospels that he thought should have been included in the canon of Scripture were the Gnostic Gospels. It's it's this idea that says, you know, the physical yuck, but the internal, the mental, the spiritual. That's that's where where stuff is really happening. And it's interesting how we've become quite Gnostic about sexuality now. Because we're so into psychology rather than the categories that that scripture gives us. Now my sexual ethics is not determined by my physical reality. My sexual ethics is not determined anymore by the fact that I'm a man and that I'm in a one-flesh union with my wife. Those kind of physical facts are now irrelevant. What's really true of me is if I go deep within myself, it's what I desire. It's what my sexuality is is doing deep down. And I think it's it's all about these sort of psychologized categories that that really sideline, the flesh, really sideline physical reality. The fact that I'm a male, the fact that I am married and have and have this concrete relationship with my wife, suddenly that's that's not what's really the issue. And our culture just loves to descend into this hall of mirrors. But what's what's interesting about it is as as soon as you descend into this hall of mirrors, the the categories start to multiply. And and pretty soon gay and straight aren't the only labels, and then you've got to expand it. You've got, you know, LGBT, you know, which is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and then you need to add to that. Well, what about queer? What about questioning? What about intersex? What about asexual? There's this ever-increasing categories that keep going on. And I think what it's showing to us is that the journey within, which the you know, Western culture's loving, the journey within to figure out who I am, is not as illuminating as you think it might be. Um and it and it doesn't it doesn't really I don't think it really fits I don't think it even fits my experience of sexuality here in the twenty-first century West. I go to I go to India, I go to Africa, and men are walking down the streets hand in hand. They're on the trains together, they've got their hands on each other's thighs, arm around each other, whispering in each other's ears. And you think that would never that would never or if it did happen in the West, we'd think, oh, they're gay. But you uh you ask them, Are you gay? And they say, No, of course not, you know, here's my wife and kids. They they just have a very different understanding of of sex and sexuality. So it's just it's just worth figuring out that that these things are culturally located. It doesn't mean they're not real or true or not really the way that we experience the world. They are, but they are very culturally defined.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I suppose the the labels, you know, could could mean different things to different people. Yes. Um would you say people aren't really gay?
SPEAKER_01Oh no, I th I I think absolutely in our culture we genuinely experience ourselves and the world in these sorts of categories. Without doing too much reflection on things, we genu you know, I I've genuinely grown up thinking in terms of being a straight man. And I have no doubt that gay men, gay women growing up in culture think of themselves in those terms. Of course, they're not hard and fast categories, but they're very, very powerful and they really have shaped how we see the world. And, you know, I can't imagine experiencing the world not as an Australian male living in the UK, because I've been culturally conditioned in those sorts of ways, which means I would find it incredibly difficult to think like a Chinese person or like a Brazilian. I would find it really, really difficult. So it's it's not that it's not that being gay or straight isn't real. It's it's as real as my Australian 21st century experience of the UK is real. Um but it's it's just it doesn't go all the way down to who I really am.
SPEAKER_04So Glenn, if there's a gay person listening, uh they may feel that you're not taking their feelings into consideration.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I guess the first thing I'd want to say is I love you, Jesus loves you, and my message is not one of you need to change your sexuality. Uh my message is you need to meet a saviour, the same way I've met a saviour and confess to sin, the same way I confess to sin and still confess to sin, and and you know, my my sins in the sexual realm remain and your sins will r remain in the in the sexual realm. But what Jesus calls us to is something that's beyond both heterosexuality and homosexuality. And I will admit that in today's day and age it's easier to be a straight man in the world. It just is. And um and I think that's true, whatever you believe um about life and that sort of thing. But hand on heart, I am committed to repenting of yeah, my sexual sins, and and what Jesus is asking for us all to do is to repent of our own sexual sins, no matter who we are, no matter who we fancy, and to come to him. But but this message will always will always sound jarring in a culture. You know, e even in the in the Old Testament, for instance, the you know, the the Israelite view of sex and sexuality was markedly different from the Assyrians, markedly different from the Egyptians. It just it just was. Um in the New Testament, obviously New Testament ethics very, very different from the Greco-Roman world that's around it. If you know, people people sometimes say, you know, we need to get with the times. We're no longer in bible times now. We need to we need to change because the culture has changed now, and now we need to, you know, mimic what the culture say. Well, but I I say, well, the Bible was always against the culture. Um really it was really uh came home to me one uh one evening. I was at a Chinese restaurant, and Emma and I go there quite a lot, and it's unfortunately it's it's closed now, but um it's a very, very good Chinese restaurant, and uh they knew that I was a preacher and they they asked me. There was the Chinese owner who whose partner was uh an English man, and uh he asked me, What are you preaching on on Sunday? And uh actually I was I was preaching on 1 Corinthians 6, uh, which talks about um those who will not inherit the kingdom. And included in that list is is the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, those who practice homosexuality, and also thieves and greedy and drunkards and revilers and swindlers and um it talks about idolaters as well. And it was just it was just very interesting because he was appalled that homosexual practice could be on that list. She was appalled that idolatry could be on that list, because she had lots of Buddhas around the around the restaurants. So what was interesting was this passage was confronting and shocking and horrible in both cultures, but for very different reasons. And she was okay, homosexual practice, okay, I understand that that's that's excluded, but why idolatry? He on the other hand was saying, Well, obviously idolatry should be excluded, but why homosexual practice? And it it really sort of came home to me that the Bible's always going to confront everyone at some level. But if you really wanna if you really want to deal with God, then he's going to be he's gonna have to confront you. And maybe he'll confront you on sex. Surely in the in the 21st century, he is gonna confront us on sex because surely we have made that such a God. Surely we have made that such a huge thing. So of course he's gonna confront us. So what but what I'd say to anyone from the LGBT community is hand on heart, I want to hear the challenge myself and hear the Bible speak against me as much as it speaks against any kind of practice, because it does speak against heterosexuality, it does speak against being straight, it does speak against every one of my sexual sins, and I've got loads. So we're all in the same boat of being challenged. We're also in all in the same boat in terms of receiving a welcome if only we'll come as a sinner.
SPEAKER_04Would you say that uh Christians are anti-gay? I mean, you see sort of people doing like a protest or something. Are Christians anti-gay?
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, so often. So often. And you know, I I've read, you know, shocking reports just the other day read a r read a report of um a gay pride march in Chicago where the where the protesters who, you know, claim to be Christian would try to grab hold of people in the parade and tell them, You're going straight to hell, you're going straight to hell, you know. And and just I I don't think I'm aware because I haven't been uh on the receiving end of that kind of homophobia. I think there is such a thing as homophobia, and I think it is disgusting and I think it is utterly unchristlike. Yes, many Christians have been motivated by an irrational fear and hatred of homosexuals. And for for such unchristlikeness we can only apologize, absolutely. And it's easy for me to say on this podcast, I am anti-heterosexual and I'm I'm not straight and all those sorts of things. It's very easy for me to kind of have a go at those labels because I haven't faced heterophobia, you know, and because there's there's really no such thing. But there is such a thing as homophobia, and it is real and it is ugly. Uh and there is a yuck factor that's involved in in a lot of people's responses to to homosexuality. There there really is, and and uh you can kind of get a gauge for that kind of yuck factor when just reading the Bible. Like uh reading through the Bible at the moment, I'm in I'm in Samuel, 1 Samuel, and uh here here's Jonathan and David. Jonathan and David in in 1 Samuel chapter 18, verses 1 to 4. Like, how do you feel as a modern reader who wouldn't identify as gay? And yet, sort of uh verse 1, Jonathan became one spirit with David, and he loved him as himself. From that day Saul kept David with him and did not let him return home to his family. And Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic and even his sword, his bow and his belt. Later on, when we read about Jonathan's death in 2 Samuel chapter 1, verse 26, David says, I grieve for you, Jonathan, my brother. You were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful. Wonderful than that of a woman. And you read that and and you know, we've been educated by Freud in the West to go gulp. That seems really unnatural. In the same way that we go gulp when we see two Indian men walking hand in hand in the streets, or when you know, when we see that kind of same-sex love. But but I think so much of the origin of homophobia is really that uncomfortability that wasn't necessarily taught us by the Bible, but it was taught to us by these psychologized sort of categories that we have been taught a kind of a yuck factor, and it does inform the spirit of some Christian responses to the gay question, and and for that we we can only apologize and say no, that's unchrist-like.
SPEAKER_04Do you think also we've we've kind of missed out on quality same-sex friendships because we've been sort of worried that people might perceive us as homosexual or you know, we kind of stay away from from close same-sex friendships.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Perhaps on the show notes we could um link to a uh a blog post that has a hundred photographs of male friendship, but it's from pre-World War II. And you've got men with sort of all over each other, physically speaking. Topless all over each other, hugging, and and th there's absolutely no no question that there's like homoeroticism going on or anything like that. It's just that's what friendships have looked like in the past. And that's what friendships look like all over the world today, but not in the West. I was um speaking with uh someone online who identifies as as a gay Christian, and he said, Well, what I value about the gay community and the Christian gay community is that we he he said, Look, I I take the Bible's view on no sex outside marriage. I'm a celibate gay man, but I want to pursue something like the Jonathan and David thing. And I guess like my my thought to that is, well, I think we should all aspire to the d David and Jonathan thing. The trouble is these categories that have split us off from one another and split us off from from a biblical experience of of this kind of discipleship that involves close friendships and and these kinds of things. So this the sexualization of everything has ruined so much of just normal friendship. So that we can't even read about David and Jonathan without going, Oh, that's homoerotic. No, it's uh it is same-sex love. It's nothing to do with homoeroticism. But we've lost that. All over the world in different cultures they have it. In the past, in the West we've had it, we don't have it today.
SPEAKER_04Are Christians necessarily homophobic when we disagree about sexual ethics?
SPEAKER_01No. No. And and Christians should be feel free we don't always, but we should feel free to be able to disagree about sexual ethics without being labelled, you know, homophobic. Um and I always use the illustration of Buddhism. You know, if I was a Buddhist and I said, look, this is our view of the world, this is our view of karma, this is our view about the the um the intrinsic value of all life, and therefore I'm a vegetarian. And in fact, I think eating meat is wrong. Okay? If I if I'm a Buddhist and I say that, surely the response from other people is, well, that's nice for you. I like my bacon sandwiches, thank you very much. You don't accuse the Buddhist guy of being a carnivore phobe, a carnaphobe. Like like, how dare you, you know, my brother works in an abattoir, but he's the most Buddhist-y guy you'd ever meet. How dare you, you know. Meat eating is who I am, you know. I tried to be a vegan for a while, but I got very pale, and you know, it's just who I am, I know it. You wouldn't you wouldn't make that kind of response to the vegetarian, to the to the Buddhist. You'd just say, Oh, okay. Within your world, that's what makes sense, fine. And even as you sort of bite into the burger and you've heard that the Buddhist has told you that meat eating is wrong, okay, I might feel a little bit judged. I'll also feel that's a tasty burger, you know. And you get over it. But why when a Christian just says, Look, this is our view of the world, this is our view about what gender means, what sex means, what marriage means, this is what sexual desire means in our world, therefore we don't believe in sex outside marriage. Like, why on earth are we we're suddenly labelled as homophobic just for having a different sexual ethic? We are often labelled as homophobic simply for having a different different sexual ethic to the rest of the world, and I think at that stage it puts its finger on we've made a god out of sex.
SPEAKER_04So, how should we explain the Bible's view of sex then?
SPEAKER_01I think in that in that same way, it just as you know, when a Buddhist says don't eat meat, you go, Why not? It's tasty. Then the Buddhist says, Let me tell you a story. Let me let me tell you how I think the world works. Let me tell you what life is and what death means and what feeding on something else is all about. Let me give you that bigger understanding, and then you'll see that not eating meat makes sense. In the same way, when we say, we don't think sex belongs outside marriage, we think marriage is we think marriage is a man and a woman. Sure, the world might think that's weird. Yeah, absolutely. Throughout civilization there's been all different kinds of configurations of marriage. There have been. There have been all sorts of different ways of viewing sexuality, there have been. So, yes, the Christian view is weird, it always has been, and it always needs explaining. But what we need to do is say, can you s can we step back and can I give you the grand tour of Christianity? Can I tell you what Christians believe about the world, about God, about the meaning of our bodies, the meaning of our gender, the meaning of sex, and in that context, it'll make sense. And so obviously you do three, two, one with them, you know, and and you kind of say, Well, listen, the the Bible is a love story. Um, and let me tell you this love story. In the beginning there was love, and that's three. God is three persons united in love. And then as you teach three, there is your foundation for gender. Because uh just as the three persons are different but equal but united in love, so God, this this triune God says, Let us make humanity in our own image, male and female. And so the genders are different but equal expressions that together form the image of God. So you've got different persons united in love. That's the Bible's picture of gender, and that'll be important. Then you go on in 321 and you say, Well, look, there's the story of the two men. Adam takes us down, only in Christ are we raised back up. And and at that point, you you talk about how everything in Adam gets twisted. Everything. Heterosexual desires, homosexual desires, whatever kind of desires you've got in every aspect of our lives. If you want to talk about being born that way, I tell you how we are born that way. The way in which we are born is we're born in Adam. Born far from the father's house. We're born dysfunctional. All of us. All of us. And that's, you know, and and sex is one of the last things to consider as you're as you're thinking about these things. But it's it's another thing in which we are all dysfunctional, no matter what configuration of marriage we happen to be in. And then you move on to one, that uh we are born one with Adam. Will we be one with Jesus? And as soon as you're talking about being one with Jesus, you're actually talking about marriage. Because marriage is this picture of oneness with Christ, in which you've got two different parties who are united together in love and share all things, and that's that's our picture of marriage, and and we believe that marriage is one flesh, and one one flesh, the physical act, belongs within the one flesh covenant union. And so just as Jesus doesn't play the field, but commits to us, we don't play the field, we commit to our spouses. And and and just as you know, Jesus gives himself utterly to us in in that oneness, we give ourselves utterly to one another in sex and in marriage. And that's that's our picture. Our picture is that we are male and female, and that means something. Our picture is that we are fallen, and so we all need to go on a journey of discipleship. Our picture is that there is this marriage union of Christ, and that should be reflected in our marriages. Marriages between different parties, complementary parties, male and female, who are united together in love. That's our picture, and you you know, you might not buy the picture, but if you don't buy that story, then that's the first thing that needs to be talked about. Not the sex. Like we can we can talk about sex later. If you don't buy the story, then of course the sex thing doesn't make sense. If you don't buy the sex thing, come in and listen to the story, and maybe, maybe you'll get converted by the story. Um and once you're converted by the story, then you, along with everyone else with all our sins, we come to Christ as the sick, as the sinners. You know, Jesus Jesus says he's the friend of sinners, and we sit down at his table, not as a heterosexual person, or a homosexual, or a bisexual, or anything else. We simply come as a sinner, and at Christ's table we have a place that's equal to every other sinner. And and even though we fail to reflect this gospel in a thousand ways, he knows how to lead us step by step into greater and greater freedom from from sexual slaveries, but also he knows how to lead us into into freedom from the really dangerous sins like greed and unforgiveness and moral self-righteousness. But that's that's the good news that's for all of us, whatever however we identify sexually.
SPEAKER_04And as Christians, it's not so much our job to enforce sexual laws as it is to proclaim.
SPEAKER_01Proclaim the gospel story. Yeah. And and the world is never gonna be convinced about our sexual ethics if it doesn't understand our story, our love story. Within the love story, it makes sense. Outside the love story, it just sounds priggish, prudish, homophobic, nonsense. In the same way, the Buddhist guy is missing out on a bacon sandwich. What a fool. But the Buddhist guy then says to me, Well, come on, let me let me tell you a story, and within the story it makes sense. I think in the same way, we wouldn't we don't want the Buddhists to be legislating the diets of the nation. We don't, right? And I don't think we need to be legislating the sexual ethics of the nation. But I do think we need to be inviting people in to hear the story, and within the story, the stuff about sex makes sense.
SPEAKER_04Uh before on the the podcast that we had previously, we also talked about the website that was called Living Out Living Out.org.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. Yeah, some great great stories on there of of people who experience same-sex attraction. Some of them are celibate, some of them are married with kids now. But it really puts flesh and bones on their lived experience of, yeah, I have these desires, but these desires don't shape me. Jesus shapes me, and and I can live a fulfilled and happy life living within this story and not living within the enslaving categories that Freud has kind of foisted on us all. Um it's a liberating uh listen if you if you go and and and hear their stories, living living out.org.
SPEAKER_04Okay, we'll put that on the show notes. And uh also on the show notes we've got uh you you wrote a post recently on your blog about uh saying I am not straight.
SPEAKER_01I am not straight. As a Christian, I am not straight, and neither should you be. That was really in response to a a a YouTube video that I'd just seen. It's got about four million views at the moment. It's basically people asking folks on the streets, um uh what's the first question they asked? They asked, um, do you pe do you think people do you think being gay is a choice, or you're born that way? And I think most people said it was a choice, I think, on the on the Vox Pops, or at least that's how they edit it together. And then they ask a follow-up question, when did you choose to be straight? And you've got a whole lot bunch of people just sort of flapping and going, oh, I don't know how to answer that, but I guess I never did. And then they say, Well, do you do you think it might be the same for for homosexuals that that they never chose chose to be homosexual either? Um so yeah, my my blog post is just a kind of response to that. And just saying, Yeah, I didn't didn't choose to be straight because I'm not straight. I'm not. I'm twisted in in a thousand different ways. Um it's that's that's not really the point. And I don't I you know, I don't really think that choices is where the conversation is at. And that's another thing to say, like, evangelistically, when people say, But it's not a choice to be gay or straight. Well, like, come on, we're Christians. We don't believe in choices really anyway. Like we believe in the bondage of the world. Come on, we believe in two, we believe in born in Adam. Like, come on. Like, yeah, so we we don't we don't put choice at the centre of all things. Of course, sexual desire is very deeply ingrained, and actually the point of becoming a Christian is not to change your sexual desires, but just as as Titus chapter 2 verse 12 says, just to say no to ungodliness, actually ungodly behaviour. That's what we're called to. We're not we're not called to kind of do this Freudian psychoanalysis of ourselves to straighten ourselves out. We're really not called to that. We're just called to follow in the way of Jesus, whatever our desires.
SPEAKER_04Okay, well uh there's uh before we start a recording.
SPEAKER_01Andy said there's 23 hours left on the battery. Do you think that'll be enough? There's now 15 minutes left.
SPEAKER_04We better leave it there, Glenn. Thanks very much if you've listened to this point.
SPEAKER_01You do deserve a prize for that.
SPEAKER_04Good. Well, you can uh see all those show notes at the web address for this episode, which is revivalmedia.org slash tepfifty two. And thanks to you for listening to the Evangelist Podcast. If you like listening each week, we'd really appreciate a rating and review on iTunes. It helps us get seen by more people. We had a review from Bumbling Follower. And they say Top Banana. Top podcast really gets you thinking, not just listening, really helpful. So thank you very much, Bumbling Follower. It's very easy for you to do, just go to revivalmedia.org slash iTunes. That will take you directly to the podcast page where you can leave us a review. The link for that, if you can't remember it all, is uh just revivalmedia.org slash tepfifty two, and there's all the links there, including signing up via email. Thanks very much for listening and see you next time.
SPEAKER_00See ya