Becoming Whole
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Becoming Whole
Same Sex Attraction Part 3 with Elizabeth Woning
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What happens when a seminary-educated lesbian pastor encounters the Holy Spirit in an unexpected way? Elizabeth Woning never planned to question her gay identity or theology. As a gay-affirming Presbyterian minister, she believed the church needed to change, not her sexuality.
Then came the moment that shattered everything. During an awkward visit to a Pentecostal youth service, a teenage boy approached her with a prophetic word that answered a private prayer she'd never shared. "Does God know me specifically?" she wondered. "And if He does, I have no idea who He is."
This realization launched Elizabeth on a years-long journey of reexamining Scripture without her postmodern filters. What she discovered challenged everything she believed about identity, sexuality, and the human body. As co-founder of The Change Movement, she now offers a provocative perspective on why labels like "gay Christian" might actually limit our human experience and separate us from the full work of redemption God wants to do.
Elizabeth's story raises several questions: Can same-sex attraction be viewed more like depression - something experienced but not identity-defining? How does Christ's incarnation speak to the unity of body and spirit in ways our culture misses? What happens when we stop letting our desires define us and instead allow God's love to become our primary identity?
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Should Christians adopt a gay Christian identity label ? Can our sexual desires really change ? How does the Holy Spirit use scripture to reintegrate our sense of self and our sense of our body ? Friends , welcome to the Becoming Whole podcast . I'm James Craig , director of Projects and a spiritual coach here at Regen , and today I'm so honored to be with Elizabeth Wanning , who is the co-founder and co-executive director of the Change Movement . Elizabeth , thanks so
Introduction to Elizabeth Wanning
Speaker 1much for being with us today .
Speaker 2My pleasure . I'm excited about our conversation .
Speaker 1Yeah . So we're kind of continuing this theme , sort of a series throughout the month of June around stories of navigating same-sex attraction in the church and what does it mean ? To see transformation , or is there transformation ? Is there healing ? So I just want to start out this episode with the somewhat brief version of hearing Elizabeth's story . I'm sure she's shared the 40-minute hour version before . I'm sure she's shared the 40-minute hour version before . I'm sure she's done the two-minute . But , elizabeth , would you share with us I don't know the five-minute-ish or more version of your journey around same-sex attraction and what brings you to this place you are in today , seven years into the change movement leadership change movement leadership .
Speaker 2Wow , thank you . Well , it can be a long story , so I'll try to try to keep it narrow , but just to give it a little , give everyone a little context for my angle and where I'm coming from . I came out as a lesbian in my early 20s after questioning my sexuality for several years .
Elizabeth's Journey Through Seminary
Speaker 2But I grew up in the church . I grew up as part of the Presbyterian church and became part of the gay affirming church movement . I ended up going to seminary . I went to seminary openly gay and was one of probably , I think , fewer than 10 , definitely fewer than a dozen in my seminary who were open . So this was way back in 2000 . So it wasn't a normal thing , it wasn't super typical . I think it's much more common today .
Speaker 2And I and my peers , we felt the call to ministry and we found ourselves kind of blocked from our calling . So you know , I don't know if you can imagine , but imagine being or feeling called to ministry by the Lord and then not having avenues to do that . And so imagine , you know the gravity of that is . You know , I feel that service to the Lord is a major part of why he designed me , and so then to find myself in the predicament of having no place that would accept me in ministry and all of us believed that we had been born gay and that we couldn't change that . We couldn't change anything about our sexual orientation and therefore what we could change is the church . And so we set ourselves to kind of engaging the church and trying to open doors for LGBT-identifying people , identifying people , to enter in . And I try to reinforce that . We weren't antagonists . We didn't consider ourselves activists per se . We weren't trying to harm the church in any way . From our own life experiences we just felt like the Lord wanted to meet the LGBT population and we didn't have any other vision than that . The church had to change .
Speaker 2And so I finished my master's degree in theology and graduated and then began parish ministry . And as I was first beginning parish ministry , I was trying to get to know kind of other church leaders . I was in a small rural area and as I was trying to get to know other church leaders , I found another youth pastor . So I was starting in youth ministry . I found another youth pastor who loved to hike and so I asked for some guidance on good trails and we struck up a relationship and began connecting and he ended up inviting me to his church and he was a Pentecostal pastor . Pastor and I had no experience with the Pentecostal movement and , as you know , my background was highly academic , very intellectual .
Speaker 1A little Presbyterian here , so I get you and mostly we had made fun of Pentecostals .
Speaker 2I would say in my academic circles , but I was very curious because he had a large and successful outreach to teens in this area , where I was , and so he invited me one evening to their service , and in the midst of that service then the Holy Spirit showed up very powerfully . And so then suddenly I was faced with kids laying on the ground and some of them weeping , some of them laughing , some of them speaking in their prayer language , others running around , and it was when I share
Encountering the Pentecostal Movement
Speaker 2, I like to say it was a Presbyterian's worst nightmare . It was .
Speaker 1I was going to say it sounds like a trauma for a Presbyterian . It was .
Speaker 2It was super expressive and of course it was contemporary music . And here I was . It dignified him singing Presbyterian and and so it was . It was way , way out of the box for me . But a 17-year-old boy approached me and he said to me I believe I have a word from the Lord for you , and I had never heard of anything like that , and I have to admit I didn't believe God worked like that . I didn't believe people could individually access the Lord and get downloads for people and be able to release something super personal or private . But he proceeded to tell me about something . It came to me as a direct answer to something I had been praying about for years , something no one else could have known , and I found myself thinking . I remember thinking does God know me specifically ? And if he does , I have no idea who he is .
Speaker 1And this is a seminary trained youth pastor . It's profound . This is right , you know , I had never honest question . Yeah .
Speaker 2No experiential knowledge of the presence of God and how to interpret what I was experiencing . And so I mean , in that moment , I wasn't convicted of of sin relating to homosexuality , I was convicted of unbelief , wow , and which , in my opinion , maybe is the graver sin , particularly as a seminary grad entering into parish ministry . And so I did what I only needed to do , which was to begin rereading the Bible and , over a couple of years , reread the whole thing in the context , now that I found myself exposed to the charismatic , the pentecostal and charismatic movement . They're slightly different and , and um , still in the reformed movement .
Speaker 2So I've got john calvin and luther here on one ear and then I've got Azusa Street coming out the other , and I isolated myself from everything I knew and sat with the Bible and re-evaluated what I knew based on what I was now experiencing , what I knew based on what I was now experiencing . And so I was faced with now a population of people that I was getting to know who claimed to hear from God . They claimed to have intimate connection with God , like a daily conversation that was interactive . They claimed to experience the love of God and their lives were beautiful , and I was provoked . I was provoked , and so I began rereading scripture to discover their God . Not that I believe in a different God , but it was so different than anything I'd ever seen . And in the midst of that journey then re-evaluated the biblical anthropology and I understand .
Speaker 1That's a big word . What does anthropology mean ? Some of our listeners probably have heard us say it too , but it might be a good place to define it .
Speaker 2The way men and women are created and how they live together and , ultimately , their design and um . I started looking at womanhood in scripture and I mean , I remember among the first things that I began questioning was queer theology , because I didn't see male and female as interchangeable . The longer I spent in scripture and then less and less saw lesbianism represented in scripture , and so I began questioning how gay theology as opposed to lesbian theology , how gay theology had influenced my feminist beliefs . And so , okay , I went down that big rabbit hole and we don't have to go there . But the outcome was . The outcome was I began questioning why I rejected biblical femininity and biblical womanhood , which I did , and began questioning whether God's structure for male and female together , whether I could accept that . So here I was , longing to experience the love of Jesus that I was being exposed to , seeing that my lifestyle , my theology , my queer theology and the life that I was living , my routine that's what I mean by lifestyle didn't correlate with those beliefs , and I began to wonder how they limited me from experiencing the love of God . And I remember thinking , you know if I so ? Meanwhile I had picked up a new Bible and I began highlighting every passage in the Bible where God describes himself . So this wasn't a journey on am I sinning or how do I get over unbelief . It was literally who is God , who is this God ? And I began highlighting every passage where God described himself and I began realizing this incredible , this beautiful picture of relationship and longing and faithfulness and mercy and generosity and complexity and beauty that I wanted . I wanted to be connected to , and I realized that it was the ultimate . It was the ultimate good , it was the ultimate love , it was the ultimate of experience , and I thought I need that If I could have communion with God . I need that If I could have communion with God , then I could have purpose ,
Rereading Scripture with Fresh Eyes
Speaker 2my life could have meaning , but especially , my life would have value . And because I began to see how valuable he was and that became the hinge pin for me on what I was going to do next regarding lesbianism and LGBT identity and how I regarded that community , because I recognized that lesbianism , I had sought to use that to give my life meaning , to give my life purpose , my life value , and none of those things had given me the Lord , as I was now seeing him . And so that was the pinnacle of where my house of cards began falling apart .
Speaker 2So then the subsequent years were rebuilding theology and rebuilding a sense of why had I rejected womanhood , what was behind that , building a sense of why had I rejected womanhood , what was behind that ? What kind of ? Why did I feel so insecure in my body ? Why did I feel so insecure among normal women ? What was my breakdown relationally with men ? So I had a lot of abuse in my past , lot of abuse in my past , and all of that came to the surface as I was re-evaluating my faith . So ultimately , I resigned from ministry and left the Presbyterian Church and did a deep dive into an entirely new expression of faith and an entirely new sense of purpose and identity . It wasn't like I had an instant transformation . It was a years-long process , but I wouldn't trade that process for the world because in the whole journey it was a discovery of God and his beauty , as well as a discovery of me and my own beauty and who he created me to be and what could be the highest expression of my personhood personhood .
Speaker 1Man , I'm noticing , like what you just highlighted , this wasn't a confrontation that you had of someone saying , hey , your theology is wrong , you know you need to repent , but it was this really powerful like personal journey of repentance with the Lord . And actually , if you've been listening along for the listeners two weeks ago Kyle's story who aired kind of a similar thing of like falling in love with the Lord , recognizing a different type of community Not , yeah , not starting with the kind of confrontational thing , but like who are you really God and who am I really ? Yeah .
Speaker 2And that's a little of you know . You and I were talking about Presbyterianism . I mean , that's John Calvin . When you see the Lord truly as he is , then you suddenly realize who you are and you get a very sobering view , typically , of yourself . The greater your understanding of who God is understanding of who God is .
Speaker 2But I think the identity journey requires that vision of God , that connection of an understanding of God , because that's what makes it all , it makes it worth it . I think the discovery journey and the healing journey becomes very valuable when the goal is knowledge of and intimacy with God . When the goal is I'm going to fix myself for the sake of my parents , or I'm going to fix myself for the sake of the church or so that I can belong , or because I think that's what I should do , then it becomes a very confusing journey . But when the bullseye is , wow , I could become everything the Lord has desired for me , then that becomes much more worthwhile .
Speaker 1I could become the true human . I can kind of live into the fact that Jesus was the new Adam . Like I get this , this new sense of purpose , and I noticed that that word purpose kind of came out in one of the many probably factors that we could spend undoubtedly hours unpacking . That contributed to your journey with same-sex attraction . Like purpose , sounded like that . That kept kind of coming up for you . And interestingly too , one other thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on that . But you even had a call to ministry before
Holy Spirit and Body Integration
Speaker 1you knew God in this way . What do you make of that Like what ? And because you're in ministry today in a certain type of way you're not a pastor right now or anything but like what'd you make of the fact that he still used that call to ministry even way back in your 20s ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean , I think that's very telling . Honestly , I think I had this deep longing for something that I couldn't fully understand and couldn't fully articulate , and so I was trying , I was trying to follow that inner compass and then suddenly got a major redirect and I mean this would be a larger , deeper conversation on kind of , how do we even follow the Lord , how do we even find the lord , how can we trust that he's guiding our lives ? And what does that look like ? And you know , um , I the the longer I'm on this journey , the more humbled I am by the sense of groping in the dark in a bit and and trusting , trusting the lord , trusting the lord to the philippians , promise to to complete my journey to make sure that I arrive at the end .
Speaker 2But because I kind of started on one , on one tangent and then flipped to another , I have a very , very cautious view about doctrine . Deeper faith , deeper certainty in my faith . Because of that , because it for me it's quite frightening to believe that I was on a trajectory I believed before God and in fact I wasn't . And and I don't want to claim , you know , to claim all of my peers were in the same boat as me . I can't claim that . I can't claim that LGBT-identifying Christians were my ministry journey and I was very short-sighted and very misdirected in the way I was pursuing it .
Speaker 1I started my recovery around age 21 , maybe into 22 , 23 . And I can relate to that idea that and I wonder if our listeners can too that at the age of 20 , I really did think I knew everything there was to know about God and people . And as I've gotten older it's like I realized how little I know . And it's like that idea of if you believe you're wise , you're actually a fool , but if you recognize you're a fool , you might have some wisdom , you know , something like that .
Speaker 2Right , I mean yeah .
Speaker 2Let me just close with this , which is , you know , I couldn't claim before , but I claim now , that my journey towards the Lord is an effort to honor and glorify God . Glorify God and the choices I've made , the choice to repent and desist from lesbian identity , and the choices I've made to better understand the formative factors , the developmental factors involved with my sexuality and then adopting that identity . That journey that I've been on , I have gone on it because I believe that that is the best way for me to glorify the Lord . And you know , I stay that course because I want to , I want to be someone , I want to give the Lord a gift , the gift of my life , um , out of a posture of what I believe is obedience , Um , but I I'm hesitant to um to say that , absolutely , I've walked the way that everyone else should .
Speaker 1There's kind of an open-handedness about some of the mysterious ways God works .
Speaker 1One of those ways that you did highlight was you really got into scripture ways God works . One of those ways that you did highlight was you really got into scripture Like there was something new , even though you had studied the Bible in seminary , like the Holy Spirit was doing something , not only through the witness of these Pentecostal friends in your town , but he was using scripture to transform some stuff . And I know that we're recording this the week after the Sills Conference , where we got to meet last year and got to see each other this year , and part of your breakout talk kind of raised the question , or you kind of raised the idea that God can use the Holy Spirit , can use his word , to bring a deeper integration , bring a deeper kind of and we talk about a lot sexual integrity . Is this integration of the person that God wants to do , this restoring of the soul , bringing it back together ? How have you found that in your walk , this idea that scripture can be a big part of this journey ?
Speaker 2Yeah , well , the breakout session that I led last week , I focused on secular humanism and the role that post-modern philosophy plays
Identity Labels and Self-Limitation
Speaker 2within it , and and so , as a , as an intro to that um , what your to your question , I think I need to say that so my , my transition from , maybe , queer theology into evangelical um , or even , yeah , I would say , evangelical theology , um , was releasing myself from post-modern , a post approach to scripture , and so a postmodern approach to scripture looks at personal experience , locates truth in my interpretation and how I am affected . So a postmodern reading of scripture would say okay , the Bible says this how does that make me feel ? Or how does my life experience , how can I use my life experience to understand what this passage is saying right now ? So it locates truth in me by this experience that I had in this charismatic setting . Now , suddenly I couldn't trust my truth to know the truth , and so then I turned to scripture and I had to say , well , maybe scripture is the truth or scripture has something to tell me about what I just experienced . So the Lord kind of flipped on end this postmodernist approach that I had taken to scripture . It fell apart because I couldn't use my own life experience to understand what now is happening of my journey of rereading scripture was offloading a lot of this postmodern , this postmodern hermeneutic , and relocating God in scripture and saying God is going to speak to me now through scripture and I'm going to say it is the source of truth , not my life circumstances and not my personal opinion .
Speaker 2And when I did , then it forced me to reckon with the body in a different way . First , you know what does it mean to be a woman in the context of scripture , and you know my reevaluation of the patriarchy and the oppression that I had understood through feminist theology and scripture . I had to strip that away now because I was experiencing the love of the Lord , even through these stories that might have been misleading for me . And so as I began evaluating or grappling with Jesus , then I had to understand that his incarnation was speaks to the human condition , and so our postmodern world separates our psyche from our bodies and locates truth and the ultimate of our personality in our intellect or in our reason . You know this ethereal aspect of human identity and kind of discards the body , like my body , becomes less relevant . The most extreme example is the transgender identity . Right now I'm gonna . I feel one way inside . So I'm just going to change my body to reflect that .
Speaker 2But the incarnation says something different . The incarnation and then jesus's crucifixion and resurrection point to the redemption of our whole selves . And so if Christ , if my moral purview was the most important part of my life and personality , then Jesus wouldn't have had to be incarnated and he wouldn't have had to have been crucified and his physical resurrection wouldn't have mattered . But in fact the Lord is saying no , you are your whole body and your whole body is implicated in sin . Sin and not just your actions , like not just I had sex , but the impulse to have sex and the thoughts and emotions I have around it . All of that is one big hole , right , we can't separate them . In fact , you know the truth is , our emotions and our thoughts are the product of our body . We can't , we don't have those separate from our body . And so you can't know me . Apart from my body and all of my sexual desire , even my attraction , all of that is a product of my physical body . And even , believe it or not , even the reason and intellect that I shape around that is a product of my body . It all comes in my brain and through my body . And so our postmodern worldview doesn't know that .
Speaker 2But the scripture says something completely different . Your whole body matters . Like Paul says , your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit . Well , we're not just although he uses this language of you're a clay pot in some places . But in reality we're not just a clay pot . We're an incredibly complex , uh , intersection or interface between the spirit realm and the physical realm . The human body is miraculous because of that , like and and just realizing wow , there are not other creations that are interfacing with God , like a human interfaces with God , walking and talking and seeing and hearing , and then also feeling love , expressing love , praying privately but then praying aloud like the voice . All of it , the whole human self , is what God redeemed through Jesus's life , death and resurrection .
Speaker 1You're speaking our language , because we are deeply steeped in what has been known as theology of the body . Is that , like so much of our education as Christians is like is what's the easiest word to use ? I'm trying to think they're all kind of big philosophies , you know , platonic or Cartesian or Gnostic , but we fall in . A lot of us as Christians fall into this trap of spiritual realm , including , like the mind and like our thoughts , is good and above and our physical realm like like the mind and like our thoughts , is good and above and our physical realm , like our bodies , is bad .
Speaker 1And what's wild to me , elizabeth , is somehow I mean that might've been , just be in the water of our Christian worldview Sometimes seminary might've encouraged that but something about encountering the love of God and reading his word in a fresh way . You actually started to see through some of that . I'm just kind of blown away by that . Like you're getting your own like theology of the body
Sexual Fluidity and Lasting Change
Speaker 1journey through scripture I mean , it's all in scripture , so it's not that surprising in that regard . But like you were unlearning some of this disconnect that you had initially had .
Speaker 2I mean it's interesting . So Romans 12 says be renewed in the spirit of your mind . But then another place is , paul speaks about sin being in the flesh right , and so we start to think that our bodies are really bad and so only our mind can be renewed . But the resurrection speaks something completely different . So the resurrection points to the complete renewal of our bodies , and all anyone who's ministered to or done research on porn addiction knows that actually that addiction and the process of kind of restoring your mind involves restoring your brain , the neuroplasticity of the brain , and so you know , we think a thought , it affects our body , our bodies affect our thoughts . That whole cycle is one big reality . And so I mean the ultimate Jesus came healing physical bodies and declaring the goodness of the Lord towards our physical wholeness and our physical well-being , not just coming to talk about how to have relational wholeness , to talk about how to have relational wholeness and so realizing the whole Christ event . It's the whole package of being renewed to .
Speaker 1I mean we were talking about the early church being renewed to the reality of the Garden of Eden . It's no coincidence that , whether it was before Christ , with Plato , whether it was around the time of the scriptures being canonized with the Gnostics , or whether it was , you know , a thousand years , 1500 years later , with Descartes , like the enemy seems so hell bent , if I can use that term , on this idea of like , this misunderstanding of body and spirit , this misunderstanding of the unique place we have as humans , as angel moles , as I jokingly say I think I got that from Christopher West Like we've got this spirit , we are spiritual and physical and we're unique in all creation in that way , and that is good . That is by design . Idea of identity Elizabeth , one of the questions that we sometimes wrestle with at Regen is or those you know who come might be wrestling with this idea of like .
Speaker 1Okay , I might agree with you all , with having , you know , orthodox theology , that you know I shouldn't act on same-sex behaviors or I shouldn't have sex outside of marriage or whatever , whatever it may , porn is bad , whatever it is . But I want to bring up this concept of a label like gay Christian , this idea of deeply identifying , to the point of it being kind of a core label , you know with with that term , like gay Christian , lesbian Christian or whatever , or whatever it would be . In particular , at Sills last year in one of your talks you kind of got at that a little bit that there might be an issue with trying to uphold that orthodoxy while still putting your subjective desires almost on par with that . Like not just I'm a Christian but I'm a gay Christian . Not just I'm a Christian , but I'm a gay Christian kind of puts those on some sort of I don't know level of them being part of the same kind of identity package . And so how do you think about this concept of labels or identifying as a gay Christian or things like that ?
Speaker 2Yeah well , I've grappled with that a lot . Yeah well , I've grappled with that a lot . And I believe that it really redirects your sense of okay , god can't or won't touch my sexual identity or my sexual experience , and so I'm going to isolate that from the Lord and somehow it gives me . Once again , going back to what I was saying , lesbianism gave me a sense of value , me a sense of value , and so , whether it was I'm communicating to someone about my deepest self or whether it was my own self-perception of value , adding lesbian or gay to my sense of Christian faith somehow gave me a different sense of identity than without . Like it .
Speaker 2It was at first very challenging to just be a woman , and and when I , when I thought about that and and reasoned through that , I I found that very problematic . Like so I , I realized that lesbian kind of separated me from other women , and so I the . The longing that I was , that I had to belong , um , and be a woman , couldn't be fulfilled as long as I considered myself a different kind of woman permanently um and there are a lot of .
Speaker 2There's a lot that I could say there . But in for the matter of time , um , lgbt identities force a person to stay in that silo for life , so permanently outside the human experience of every other man and woman , so that somehow I have a unique life experience . Well , I , I do have a sliver of a different life experience , but so long as I elevate that sliver , then the whole rest of my life experience gets re-evaluated . I don't get to just be a woman among women or you , a man among men .
Speaker 2I still have this extra caveat , and so I see it as self-limiting , because it just never self-limiting , and even to a degree dehumanizing , because it allows people to objectify me or pigeonhole me into a certain persona and not see my whole self , whole self . But then I add to that the belief that God must not have , he must not be able to redeem my sexuality or somehow as part of my salvation and the trajectory of my salvation . It won't be redeemed in this life , only in the next . And so I have have . I don't have to look at it closely , I don't have to scrutinize it , I don't have to deeply understand why it's there and understand the formative or developmental factors that could be involved with it , and so , then , that means that there could be elements to my understanding of being a lesbian or being gay that impact my ability to be whole in other places , and that can be problematic too .
Speaker 1I love that word self-limiting when I think about my own journey with unwanted pornography struggles like I wanted it and I didn't want it . You know it was like this internal back and forth . It's really really hard work . I mean , recovery from any habitual struggle is hard work . There's reasons we're going to these coping mechanisms . There's reasons we're going to this release of chemicals in our bodies or , or you know if it's drugs or alcohol , external chemicals . So there's actually like you're calling us to this harder path . Perhaps we can think of it as the journey , you know , carrying our cross , like we've all been through stuff throughout our lives and not everyone who has same-sex struggles has abuse in their background , but we've all .
Speaker 1We all have so many formative things that impact what you might call our arousal cocktail or our our , our mixture of desires , and one of the things that I've noticed in my own life is that God's in the business of making us to use another classical philosophy idea making us virtuous , like actually , I think a lot of Christians , elizabeth , struggle or settle for okay , god wants me to do the right thing , but I'm never going to want to do the right thing .
Speaker 1But I think one of my favorite thinkers , dallas Willard , along with going all the way back to Aristotle , and you see this throughout church history , the concept of virtue is actually wanting to do what God wants you to do , like I want to do this , I enjoy this , my desire is for this . Dallas Willard would say it would have been hard and he's kind of using that tongue in cheek but it would have been hard for Jesus to sin because his desires were so perfectly aligned with virtue , with his father's desires . Right , this is my biggest takeaway from everything you've shared is like the love of God comes in and transforms us in places perhaps that are even unexpected , including at the deep levels of our desires . And I think what you're highlighting postmodern , the air we breathe in this culture , in this world , is that our desires define us , our feelings define us , and you're saying actually the love of God began to define me and that made all the difference .
Speaker 2Yeah , I mean it , definitely . It is still the sustaining factor . You know , if I I wish that we could reclassify same-sex sexual feelings , because that has become so politicized , like lgbtq has become so politicized and culturally defined , if we could redefine same-sex sexuality or same-sex sexual desires , um , I would want to relegate it into a category like depression . Now , um , someone will freak out that I'm putting it in a category of psychology , but bear with me for a minute . I'm not saying specifically that homosexuality is a mental illness , but what I am trying to do is give you a different illustration , and so many of us who have experienced clinical depression have gone to great lengths to understand what it is and how it affects us and how we overcome it . And for many of us , there is a temperament factor , there could be a genetic factor , there certainly is an environmental factor , all of those things together , and so , because of that , that makes it very similar to same-sex sexuality . It could be genetic . It's not fully genetic , but there are elements of it that could be . There are elements of it that are involved with your temperament and your personality . There are elements involved of it , that have to do with the environment that you were raised in , et cetera . Okay , so that's how they correlate .
Speaker 2So a person who experiences depression , we don't put them in a silo and say , oh , you're a depressed person and so the trajectory of your life is this depression and you should expect to struggle with it your whole life . Now , many of us who experience depression might think , well , this could be , today I don't feel depressed , but tomorrow I might . But that doesn't redefine my sense of wellbeing or who I am or the trajectory of my life , or at least it shouldn't . When it does , then we categorize that as a mental illness , right . When it becomes so life-dominating and so controlling , then we put it in that category and we seek help for it . But otherwise it's in and out of our lives .
Speaker 2Wouldn't it be nice if same-sex sexual feelings were in that same category ? And for most people it is . It's not . The majority of those who identify as LGBT did not have exclusive same-sex sexual feelings . In fact , population-wide the majority are bisexual , and women in particular experience quite a lot of sexual fluidity . Even so , you know , the popular discussion around homosexuality is that , let's say , today I don't feel compelled by those feelings , but someday in the future I might . The same as with depression . Does that mean then , I'm forever a lesbian or forever gay because of that ? I don't think so , and so , ideally , we would be able to categorize same-sex sexuality as something that isn't life-dominating , or something that doesn't separate us from the rest of humanity . It doesn't characterize me as a different kind of woman . It characterizes me as someone who has this experience , but that it doesn't have to be the defining element of my life .
Speaker 1And instead the defining element that you've described , that Kyle's described , is the love of God , like regardless of our past sin , our desires , that are all over the place . Man , I hate that we have to close out this conversation . I'm tempted just to keep stringing you along and make you late for your next appointment or whatever , but we do have to close out , friends . I'm going to give Elizabeth the last word in just a moment , but I just want to highlight the great work that she's doing over at the Change Movement . There's kind of this equipping side of their ministry and there's also a cultural engagement side and one of the pieces of equipping for individuals and for churches is this tool that they have . We'll have it in the show notes called Navigating LGBTQ . It'll be on their website , it'll be in our show notes .
Speaker 1But this gives testimonies , doctrinal insights , discipleship approaches , slash guidelines to those who are trying to bring that care to those struggling , trying to bring the love of the Lord to those who are struggling . So I want to encourage you guys to check that out and check out just the incredible work they're doing . I'm super grateful , as a California resident , that Elizabeth here , uh , fighting for the good of you know , families and future generations to be able to be less , maybe pigeonholed in this , in this way , and to be more I don't know have more opportunity for truth and the love of the Lord to come , come into their lives . So , elizabeth , is there any last thing you'd like to share or pray over us ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I would . You know , recently I had a time with the Lord where I felt his love in a fresh way than I had ever felt . And you know , as I've been reflecting on it over the last couple of weeks , it didn't have to do with what I was accomplishing , it didn't have to do with the kind of person that I am or my character . I didn't have the sense that his beautiful presence and love and affection for me in that moment had to do with me at changed or me doing anything at all . I couldn't even put . I couldn't put my finger on why . I would even say it was love . Honestly , as I was thinking about it , it wasn't like affirmation of something , it was just the deepest sense
Prayer and Final Thoughts
Speaker 2of being known and valued and cherished that I have ever had in my life and it it way beyond . Like all the everything that we've been talking about feels superficial in comparison . And you know , at the cross God reconciled himself . In Colossians , paul says God was reconciling himself to humanity , and a lot of the times we evangelize and we say be reconciled to God , but at the cross God was reconciling himself to us and so he's done all of the work needed for us to be able to access him if we'll just turn our hearts to him . And so I just want to pray that the Lord would meet all of us and no matter .
Speaker 2Maybe you've listened to this and this is the most offensive interview you've ever heard . Or you've listened to this and you feel hopeful . I hope it's the latter , but , irregardless , I want you to know that the Lord loves , loves you deeply , he knows who you are , he knows you personally and he cherishes you . And it's not about any of these other things , it's about his desire to know you and for you to know him . So let me pray , lord , I just thank you that you love us and that your love is so defining , and in fact , I think we love because you love , like maybe that's the most important part of the Imago Dei , that we love . And so , father , in this season and through this month , lord , this confusing month , I just ask that you would meet everybody in your love , so that all our hearts would turn to you and we would be able to faithfully and beautifully glorify you . Jesus , thank you for your sacrifice , but thank you for your commitment and faithfulness to us . Amen .
Speaker 1Amen . Thank you , Elizabeth .
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