Claymore: Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Claymore: Become Who You Are
#495 The Battle for the Church: When Churches Mimic the Culture What Do We Need Them For?
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Tom Hampson joins us to navigate the turbulent waters of faith and its intersection with evolving societal norms. Our conversation ventures into the heart of "The Battle for the Church," dissecting the contentious ground where love, compassion, and biblical principles collide, particularly within the United Methodist Church's evolving stance on LGBTQ issues. It's not just a discussion about church politics — we're examining the very essence of spiritual integrity and the repercussions for communities of faith when cultural tides pull congregations away from their scriptural moorings.
As we grapple with the ramifications of denominational shifts toward liberal interpretations of scripture, we're confronted with a harrowing question: What is the cost of a church's pursuit of inclusivity at the expense of doctrinal purity? This episode digs deep into the consequences for churches that struggle with LGBTQ acceptance, and we ponder the long-term vitality of faith institutions caught between the pressures of modernity and the call to uphold tradition. Hampson's investigative prowess sheds light on the complex dance between upholding truth and embracing all, inviting listeners to reflect on the spiritual pulse of our society.
Battle for the Church: Read Tom's Article Here
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I am excited, as always, to be with Tom Hampson. Tom's a good friend of ours, works with us and also works for the Illinois Family Institute. Continues to do undercover work. Tom, it's good to have you. How are you? I'm good, I'm glad to be here. So we're going to talk, tom, about your article, the Battle for Churches. Did you call it Battle for Churches?
Speaker 2or Battle for the Church, the Battle for the? Did you call it battle for churches or battle for the church? The battle for the church?
Speaker 1So the battle for the church. I'll make sure I put a link in the show notes because, tom, I'm amazed on how much you can cover in one article. How do you do these deep dives? I know your background in criminal investigation, doing research on, really trying to get you know, get an answer to the truth, what went on. And you use those same tools, those same techniques when you're uncovering something. And I'll just say this to you I love working with you because so many people live on the surface, aren't they? You know, we're discussing things and it's all about opinions and everybody gets into an argument because it's all about opinions, but nobody's really seeking the truth. And the truth becomes whatever we uncover, whatever propaganda gives us or or whatever our opinion is. It's not easy to find. So so how? How do you do this, week after week? So how?
Speaker 2do you do this week after week? Well, my background has been I've been an investigator for over 50 years. So that's my approach is to dig out information and find out what's true, what's not true, what are the facts. Basically, you put facts together and you come up with truth. Up with truth. But my approach is different than a lot of people who are typical law enforcement investigators, probably because I started off in the intelligence community.
Speaker 2I was in Air Force Intelligence and one of the things that you have to understand about intelligence is that you have only a very small number of pieces to try to create a picture that's huge. So you have very, very small pieces of the puzzle. So the thing that you approach your approach in intelligence is to is to, um, develop understanding, to try to recognize patterns, and through patterns you can get, you can see a larger picture. So if you can see little pieces that, that, uh, that, uh you can put together and put into a pattern, you can see the bigger picture, just because you can infer the bigger picture from the pattern. And that's what I try to do when I write these articles. I'm trying to convey an understanding of the whole picture rather than just trying to prove one particular point.
Speaker 1Trying to prove one particular point, and I think, tom, what distinguishes good investigators and people in general that actually can bring the truth forward, like you seem to be able to do week after week, as you're writing an article every week, is that you have to have a foundation yourself in the truth. In essence, what it means to us, you know, as faith-based people, is that you have to be grounded in truth. You know your reason, our reason, our intellect has to be seeking actual truth, and if it's not enlightened, what happens is everything you described is true. I mean, you know the true investigation, right, you know trying to bring the facts out to develop the truth. But if you're, if, while you're taking those small pieces and trying to project it out into a whole, if you aren't grounded in the truth, you'll just start to project your own opinions in there, and I see that all the time with propaganda.
Speaker 1You know, even in our church, tom, they'll take little pieces. Even the Pope himself. He'll take little pieces that sound like the truth, take little pieces. Even the Pope himself. He'll take little pieces that sound like the truth and then he'll incorporate it into things that aren't really the truth and you're as confused as ever. So I think what happens with someone like you is you're grounded since probably childhood, you know, and going through to actually to, your antennas are up. Don't you think for the truth?
Speaker 2Your antennas are up, don't you think for the truth? Yeah well, I've always had a real. For some reason, I've always been focused on truth and justice. I think you can't have justice without truth, and so I think I've always had the idea that our role is to try to bring about a just world, and in order to get to a just world, you have to have truth. You know, they have this chant, which irritates me about some of these groups now. It says no justice, no peace. Well, that may be true, but they're not interested in the truth, because you can't have justice without the truth first, can't have justice without the truth first.
Speaker 2And there's so many different views that people have about what's real in the world, like, for example, in the battle for the church. Churches have become lost. They've fallen because they have misinterpreted compassion and love for inclusion of people who are engaged in things that are contrary to biblical requirements. So loving somebody doesn't mean acceptance. Loving somebody means having the courage to tell them the truth and to interact with them in a truthful way. These churches, they are destroying people because they're acquiescing to the culture rather than the other way around.
Churches Struggle With LGBTQ Acceptance
Speaker 1Yeah, what a great point. And that does segue us into this article. Because you know you start, you open it talking about the United Methodist Church caved into the LGBTQ agenda and at first, when you start to talk about these things, things can be very decisive. But, like you said, and what we like to do when we're discussing these things and you and I have done this in public and in public forums where we've given presentations is always bring it back to the truth. Where we've given presentations is always bring it back to the truth, because what you think is just, you know, to a child say you know you can get it twisted and distorted to the point where we know, tom, that these alphabet agendas and ideologies, at the end what they do. What they do is they steal the innocence of young people, they steal the innocence of human beings to the point where you don't find the truth and you can never heal, you're never free. So let's talk about this article you wrote.
Speaker 1For several years the United Methodist Church has pushed back against and this is astounding to me. Tom has pushed back. So here we got the United Methodist Church pushing back against progressive efforts to embrace same-sex marriage, the ordination of LGBTQ pastors and the full inclusion of those who identify as LGBTQ into all church ministries and activities. Okay, so they're pushing back, but now last week by an overwhelming. This is what astounds me, that they just caved. 667 to 54. They caved and they've accepted this now.
Speaker 1So I mean, how do you see that flip, tom, where you can go from pushing back to a total cave? But let me just add this I just saw this in our own county. So so we live in illinois. Um kane county board just had the lgbtq um they wanted to. The question became up should we declare a whole month coming up of june as lbgtq month? In in the right, push it on the whole county and only one dissenting voice. It was a total cave, just like this. How do we go from that Tom, from zero, to a total cave? Do we finally just capitulate? Do we finally just give up and we can't take it anymore? What happens?
Speaker 2Well, I think there's a you know I don't know specifically what happened in Methodist Church. Part of the thing is that the people that get appointed to go to these conventions, somehow they get packed by people that have what's considered to be squishes already that wind up getting getting into those positions. So they don't want to, they don't want to make any waves and and go. They want to go along with kind of what the prevailing winds are so that they'll get elected again. I guess, yeah, they're not. They're not really. They don't have the courage to stand up for what the truth is. This is, you know, the truth isn't something that is ever self-evident. It requires an advocate. In order to be an advocate for anything, you have to have the courage to stand against attacks, and I don't think people have much courage anymore.
Speaker 1No, and yeah, and Tom, you know, I think if you don't have the conviction that you're talking about for the truth, understand what the truth is, you lose your conviction. When you lose your conviction, you lose your courage. Right? Because without a foundation and I think this is what we see in so many people today without a foundation, how do I stand up against those powers that are coming at me, as St Paul would call the principalities and the powers? You know it would be very difficult to do be very difficult to do.
Speaker 2Well, you don't if you're based here, if your whole um, uh, outlook on life is to get along with people, um, now I guess I'm I'm a contrarian, I don't. I, I would like to get along with people, but I'm not going to sacrifice what I believe to do it. Um, and yet this is what's happening in the churches is that there's this false idea. It's almost like if you have an alcoholic in your home. Of course you're supposed to love that person, but too much, too many times, people think loving someone is to enable the behavior that they're engaged in. That's exactly what the church is doing. They're enabling behavior that's condemned in the Bible. It would be no different than if they enabled adultery or if they enabled, you know, oh yeah, it's good, you know, let's have wife swapping and all these other kinds of things because it makes us feel good. Well, this is just not. This isn't what the Bible teaches at all. Not at all.
Speaker 1Yeah. And so let's just go right off the top of this and say this again you know everybody that comes into the church. We're all invited into the church. We're, you know, we're all invited in. But to become free, to become free from you know all the falsehoods and lies, and to walk into the truth, don't you think, tom, when you start to look at these churches you mentioned in here that the United Methodist Church joined other major denominations that have already caved the Evangelical Lutheran Church, presbyterian Church, episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ and to sell out to these sexualized cultures? And they're all dying, tom, they're all dying, and here's what I want to just mention and then ask you to take it into this. Why wouldn't they die? See, at first and you mentioned I'm just taking words out of the article here you mentioned that parents and the ministers of these churches think that they're going to lose the young people if they don't go along, basically, with this.
Speaker 1The opposite is actually true, because if I'm seeking, as a young person or anybody seeking the truth, what's going on in my heart, at least, I want one place the church that I can walk into and hear the truth. I can always reject it, and here's the point I want to make. This is not about lacking compassion or kindness for people I deal and you work with and I've worked almost my whole life now with people that have same-sex attractions, all these different things, yes, no, I think we all do at this point know somebody someplace right that's dealing with these issues. A lot of times it's in our own families. This is not about not bringing them into the church.
Speaker 1We're all accepted into church, but we're there to learn the truth and then to say, okay, do I reject the church? I can walk away. Do I accept it? Then I walk deeper into what Jesus would call the narrow gate. But here's what happens, tom. So these people are bringing the church, the culture, into the church. And now, if I'm a young person searching for the truth, I don't need the church anymore because they brought the culture into the church. I already have the culture. I already have my own brokenness.
Speaker 2So we're making it what a club of. And that culture is empty. That's the problem. When the church accepts an empty culture, people all of a sudden say, well, hey, this didn't work out. I'll give you an example At the end of this. You know, normally during these general conventions that they have for churches, they sing hymns. And they do, you know, because they're Christians, they sing hymns. They're traditional kinds of hymns.
Speaker 1At the end of this— I was going to say I don't want to interrupt it again, but I was going to say are they Christians, you know? Yeah, well, anyways, that's what.
Speaker 2That's what they say, yeah but well, they claim to be christians, okay, but at the end, at the end of this convention, did they select a hymn to sing after they voted in for this? You know, same-sex marriage and, uh, ordaining same, uh, you know, uh, gay pastors? Um, no, they sang the song love train, love trains. Well, come on, this is what I cannot. That is as far from a Christian hymn as you could possibly get.
Speaker 1You have to chuckle at this and, and if anybody's watching us that hasn't watched before you, you have to laugh once in a while because, yes, if we don't keep a sense of humor, uh, you know, this place can get very, very dark, but this is an old battle. We know that this is an old battle. Um, what, what happens at the end of the? You know we? We find this now in the culture, right, almost. What is it? Tom? 30 percent of of kids today consider themselves LBGTQ.
Speaker 1Yeah, and so what happened? Right, this is the same thing, tom, as I think about the church going from pushing back to all of a sudden caving. Our whole culture to your point has done this, haven't they? We've given up. As I walk around looking at the world wondering what's going to happen, I, you know why do we do this, Tom? Why do we do this? You and I talked about this a lot because we have kids, because we have grandkids, because I see what they're doing and you see what they're doing to those kids to steal their innocence. See, this is really what's really wrong at the bottom line. What they're doing is sexualizing and normalizing all this to kids and we're taking the innocence away from them. You know, this is really heartbreaking. What's going on to people today, to the point where all of these kids are going to be soaked and they are confused. You know they are confused.
Speaker 2Well, it's total. Propagandizing the children is what's happening. Propagandizing the children is what's happening. It's, like you know, I hesitate to say this because I don't mean it to sound like we're turning them into fascists, but in a certain sense, what's happening to our kids in schools now is exactly what happened during the Hitler period, when they had the Hitler youth. They were indoctrinating them into a belief system that was immoral, that there is a superior race, and that's what they were doing then. And now the kids today, starting at three and four years old, they're starting to teach children that they don't really know whether they're a boy or a girl, and they won't until later, until they become older and begin to experiment with their sexuality and determine how they were made, because they could be a boy in a girl's body or a girl in a boy's body. They could be non-binary. They're teaching them this at three and four years old. Well, when you do that, what do you expect when they grow up, other than to have a completely confused outlook on even basic scientific biology?
Speaker 1Yeah. So two points there we're talking about. You know, when we say, okay, well, what is the truth here? As an investigative reporter, basically, right, as you are digging deep into these issues, if we don't get back to the truth, what is nature's law, what is the law of nature? But if we were an alien, you know, I'm just thinking about this If I'm an alien coming in from another planet and I just say, okay, well, I'm going to take notes on I was sent here to take notes on human beings, if I just look at the nature of a human being, I realize, wow, they seem to be made in two kinds, right.
Speaker 1And when those two different kinds come together, there's a third, there's a third. A new human being comes out of this. I could see this, right, as an alien. This natural law, then nature's law turns into natural law, you know, basically. You know this law is written on our hearts, you know. So.
Battle for Culture and Faith
Speaker 1When the family prospers, you know things, there's joy, there's peace. Something happens to the human heart in a good way, right. When we foster this beauty of this growth, when we twist it and distort it, the opposite happens, doesn't it? And so that's one point. This is just something that we can observe from the outside what is the truth. And the second point you're making and then I'll be quiet, tom is that you're connecting this to a really dangerous place. There was always the culture that could be secular and being taken over very easily by the ideologues, the power brokers, the political people, the tyrants and the despots of the world. But the church was that one place of light, and I think this is what I got out of your article the most. And now, by accepting the culture and all these ideologies into the church, we've lost that place of light and I don't see how you recover from that, tom, when we throw our Christianity and our roots out. How do human beings recover from everything that you wrote about here out?
Speaker 2how do human beings recover from everything that you wrote about here? Well, you know, first of all, as a Christian, I know that ultimately the war is already won, yeah, great point, great point. But the fact is that every Christian who still has any common sense left has a responsibility to engage in the battle. He can't just sit back and wait for the end. You know, wait for heaven. We have a battle to fight and we need to engage more people in that battle to take back the churches, to take back the culture.
Speaker 1Tom, unpack that a little bit for people that may think that you're speaking in two different. You know, like a paradox, because you said the battle is won, right, and then you said we're in the battle, the war is won. Yeah, the war is won.
Speaker 2The war ultimately is won because that's been predestined by God. God has determined it. We know, we trust that what he says, that ultimately is won.
Speaker 1And Jesus Christ came into this world to actually defeat sin and death and he conquered it. But the problem is and what you're describing, of course, is that we're in this temporal existence for a very short time and we're here to decide Tom our eternal life, and it is a battle, right. Do we accept the city of God and accept God, or do we reject them and walk away? This is a timeless battle that we're in isn't it?
Speaker 2Well, our inaction, though, is allowing Satan to take control over too many people. Yeah, and so if we don't act, then we're allowing, we're just sacrificing people left and right. Um, to the, to the dark side.
Speaker 1We're not bringing them and we're going to be held responsible, aren't we?
Speaker 2yes, we are our inaction. Inaction itself is a sin and we will be held accountable for it. Uh, we see things that are wrong, and if we don't do anything to fix it, then then that's on us yeah, that's the old edmund burke thing.
Speaker 2Right, the only necessary, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is, to your point, for good men and women to do nothing right and and what we're seeing in the last, uh, especially in the last 50 years, is the acceleration of a culture that's just disintegrating in terms of disintegrating from the standards established in the Bible. Now, before the war, before World War II, I would say that most people in the United States had at least some kind of fear of God. You know, they at least considered God. They considered things. The older it was like 100 years ago it was probably even more so. But today, if you talk to people, even Christians in churches, they give no thought to having any fear of God. I very rarely run into somebody that says you know, I don't fear God.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, because everything's okay, Because what you just said, it's amazing. You know, we've become lukewarm, and Christ said it so clear, right, I'll spew you out and why? Because of what we're describing here. Right, We've become lukewarm, we accept lies and falsehoods. We no longer seek the truth, because it's only my truth, Tom, isn't this amazing how fast a human being can fall?
Speaker 2Well, because who are we to judge somebody else's truth? Well, that doesn't mean anything. There's a truth. There's not your truth and my truth. There's something that's true or false, that's it. It's like there's a male or a female. It's true or false, that's it, and people have to. There's a male or a female. It's true or false, that's it, and people have to. We have to get back to that basic kind of thing. When you start believing that anybody can come up with their own truth, well, now you've got total chaos. The reality is because of the fall. The reality is that normal is for us to degenerate into murderous, self-serving cretins and uh, but that's not what we're called to be, uh yeah, so.
Understanding Human Identity and Truth
Speaker 1So, tom, let's let lead us there a little bit, because when people hear a conversation like we're opening up here, what's? This is not a pretty picture. What's going to happen here? When you, when you know it's not at all. Yeah, because what we're talking about is human beings that lose their grasp on reality, lose their grasp on truth, which is reality, pointing to reality, what's real? You know, we're really talking about the roots, and when I lose my identity to who I am as a human being, when I no longer know my meaning and purpose, or even who you know, what is, what is, what is? Why are we created, male and female? All of a sudden, I start to see other people not as human beings, to to love, which which everybody thinks. You know, I have to be kind and compassionate, but you made the statement earlier, you know, don't? You know, never confuse kindness with actual love and truth, right? I mean, you know, hopefully, if you love somebody, you're kind to them, but the kindest thing you can do is tell them the truth.
Speaker 2Right, you want to tell, you want to speak, the truth and love.
Speaker 1but in reality, if you accept somebody.
Speaker 2Well, you can accept somebody who is, who is a homosexual. But if you begin to affirm and approve of that behavior, then you're not doing them a favor, because they are headed down a path of self-destruction. No matter how you play, no matter how they feel about it, it doesn't make any difference. When a drug addict gets his hit of heroin, he feels really good, you know. But helping him feel good that way is not doing him any favor.
Speaker 1No.
Speaker 2It's destroying him.
Speaker 1That's a great analogy and another one it was happening. I mean, all these things have happened in my own life, but my uh, one of our kids, our youngest daughter, had anorexia and still, kind of even as an adult, uh, still has this, you know, this kind of byproduct of anorexia. But anyways, it would be like me saying you know, know, I picked her up literally, tom, as you know, off the floor a couple of times because her heart was giving out from not eating, and actually picked her up. And when she stood up, one time, after I picked her up, she said Dad, I'm fine, I'm okay. And I said, honey, you're not okay. And she walked away from me, mad Right, she was mad at me walked away and fell again.
Speaker 1This time we had to rush her to the hospital and they were, they were going to put, put a pacemaker and something else in her heart, and so this was a young teenage girl and so so I would say, okay, jillian, her name is jillian jillian. There there's no truth, there's no reality, it's just your reality or my. No, no, I mean, we saved her life, tom, and we saved her life by by, by basically forcing her to, to, to eat, which is not easy to do.
Speaker 2That's right yeah.
Speaker 1Um so, so what we're doing here? Why is it always the sexual sins, Tom, that we accept? You know, you know, in other words okay, I see an alcoholic, I see a guy on heroin, Of course we accept it, but we know, and we're not doing them any favors, Right, Right, it's always the sexual sins.
Speaker 2Well, because it feels, because it feels good.
Speaker 1That's why it's a.
Speaker 2It's a, it's a natural part of the body that there's, there's a, there are chemicals that are released and we can all identify with. With that we can all say well, who am I to judge how somebody else feels? Good, you know, if, if that's what they want to do, then that's fine and it, and to a certain extent that's true. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't keep trying to tell them or show them a better way. There is a better way. The same-sex attraction, same-sex relationships are dead ends.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. And if that alien was looking at these relationships, they're literally dead ends. In other words, there is no third coming out of this relationship. If you want to get back just to nature itself and natural law itself, as an alien we'd be looking at this and say, okay, what's the truth about these human beings? If they come together and they don't complement each other as male and female, then there is no new life to come out of this. And so you say in here, tom and I'm going to shift it just a little bit about the psychiatrist and pioneer Charles what's his last name?
Speaker 2I don't have my glasses on, I don't even know how to pronounce it. Yeah, can you talk?
Speaker 1a little bit about him.
Speaker 2For a long time. Well, he was one of these. He actually was around at the time when they converted, when they took homosexuality off of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a mental illness. They removed homosexuality as a mental illness. Be moved wasn't because the psychiatrist at the time thought it was normal, was it's because, by having it, uh, on in the diagnostic and statistical manual, it gave employers the right not to hire somebody because they were mentally ill?
Speaker 2so they didn't think that was right. They weren't. They didn't have the kind of mental illness that made them um unhirable that they. They could still work, everything was still fine, but they.
Speaker 1Yeah, I and this is more like a twisting and distortion of our desires, right. Our innate sexual desires, to be in relationships, to love people. I mean, these are all true things and all it is is a twisting and distortion. So my attraction, you know, as a man is to another man. So it's, it's more of a twisting and distortion of who we are. Uh, rather, you know, than uh, than a mental illness. I, I think you know right.
Speaker 2so sosorites was one of several psychiatrists back then that engaged in talk therapy with um homosexuals to get them to, to, to untwist this, uh, these desires that they had, and he had a significant success, uh, in in turning homosexuals around and having them say having the opposite sex attracted, wind up getting married, and things like that. There's a current person, that's, that's, uh, this has been happening for years. The idea that you are stuck being a homosexual or a lesbian is just simply false. That's absolutely a lie. There are tens of thousands of people that have turned in, documented case studies that have turned around. Rosaria Butterfield is one that's a Christian who talks about this. She's one that had been a lesbian, really a very activist lesbian, who was converted to Christianity and then, in her own words, engaged in a war on her own homosexuality and wound up getting married and having kids.
Speaker 1So yeah, and I know people like that too. But whether you actually overcome, you know, some twisting and distortion, some people like my, like I said, my adult daughter still has a struggle with this food thing, for whatever reason.
Speaker 2Well, I'm sure.
Speaker 1Still it's across the beer, then yeah, it's across the beer, and still the only great physician out there is Jesus Christ. I don't know any. If we take this away, tom, and you put it in your article here, right, it's not just psychoanalysis who offer hope for healing. The church itself is a place of healing. Not only can Christ empower us to resist temptation to succumb to our prohibited lustful desires, he can heal us of the desires themselves, regardless of what they may be.
Speaker 1Now, sometimes he takes them away totally, and I know people like that, you know and you're describing that, but other people, they struggle, but at the end of the day, either way, it's something that you open your heart up to and God, jesus himself, will lead you into a depth of an intimacy that you will find what you're looking for and actually, at the end of the day, it's him you know, we can untwist this. It's him.
Speaker 2Well, the whole thing is, it's like the passage that I like is be transformed by the renewal of your mind. And there's a friend of mine actually was miraculously healed of his desire to smoke. He has one, he. He woke up one morning and he no longer had it. He's been praying. He had been praying for it. No longer had a desire to smoke. Hasn't had any desire to smoke since then. Well, me, on the other hand, I didn't want to smoke. But even today, over 20 years after I quit smoking, there are some times when I smell somebody. The smoke that somebody is the cigarette that they're smoking around me. I feel like going up and snatching the cigarette right out of their hand.
Speaker 1I still have the desire like oh my gosh, I agree yeah.
Speaker 2It's just terrible. But I don't smoke because I know it's not good for me.
Speaker 1Yeah no, that's a great, yeah, that's a great point. And I feel the same way. I smoked, and not a lot, you know, but I own different businesses and blah, blah, blah, and sometimes I get stressed out. At the end of the day, I grab a glass of wine and a cigarette. If I look at a glass of wine, I feel like having a cigarette.
Speaker 1Now, you know, they just go together, you know it passes over time, but, but but it, you know, the great physician, is the only one. You know my dad, it's just a little side note. So my daughter, who's a doctor, the one I was describing as the medical doctor today, and and she was here visiting from from Houston, and she visited with my dad, an old World War II vet, and she's talking to him and she was describing how she wants to go into counseling, for so she works on cancer patients. She said you know, I think I'll go into counseling for people that are dying, instead of being a doctor and working on cancer. I want to change my career, go into a and be there with people, right, kindness, empathy, whatever. And my dad looked at her and my dad is basically blind, but he looked up at where her voice was coming from, and he goes.
Speaker 1I think you're making the wrong career choice. And she, she got kind of mad at him, right, and he goes. And she goes. What are you talking about? He goes because I'm I'm the perfect person for that. I'm 98 years old, he said, and I'm getting close to dying. So what? Are you going to come in here and tell me that it's going to be okay? He says, no, it's not going to be okay because, jillian, there's no cure for death. There's no cure for death.
The Battle for Truth in Churches
Speaker 1He said you're trying to be a priest or a religious or, you know, you're trying to be a pastor. He says that's what I need now. I need someone to say let's pray together, right, and get me on this last journey home. I don't need you to keep me tethered to the earth because he goes, I'm out of here pretty soon, You're in the wrong career. Isn't that what we do, Tom? And this is what the churches are doing. The churches are pulling back. Now, instead of bringing you to the eternal truth, we are keeping you in this temporal space, you know where? Uh, we just want to grasp for a cigarette. You know we talked about or or something, constantly, constantly, to keep us away from the, the infinite life that we're offered, isn't it right?
Speaker 2yeah, you know it's uh um death is uh.
Speaker 1The death rate hovers around 100 last yes yes, yes, and you know, even when I'm speaking to young people, you know, in which I do a lot, and even in, you know, in I just had one on saturday, a presentation to, to all these young, and when I'm speaking about these things, I said you know, we have all these attractions, I get it. You know, 30% of you in this room right now, according to the stats, have these attractions LGBT, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, plus a million other things that St Paul would bring up. You know, and you're right, you know, lusts and selfishness and et cetera, et cetera. At the end of the day, let's just, you know, let's get beneath the surface. Let's drop all these attractions, you know, to all these different things that want to keep you tethered, and go into prayer. Let's all pray together. Let's open up our hearts to the one that's pulling us into the eternal truth and step into that and see how you feel, instead of you know, this selfishness and sex and oh my gosh.
Speaker 1You know it's amazing how selfish we've become.
Speaker 2Tom well, and the challenge centered, I should say too well, the challenge for everybody is to move from being we're all born um self self-serving yes, we sure challenge for everybody is to move from being self-serving to self-sacrificing, and there's not enough attention in the church today to get people to move towards self-sacrifice.
Speaker 2And self-sacrifice means sacrificing the things you might have desires for, and also to be willing to give up your own life for that of another. That's the thing and that's the model that Jesus gave, and how many people really are willing to risk their life for somebody else?
Speaker 1And that's a good way to wind this down, because the point that I made is you just finished it which is basically how do we live this out today? Uh, you know, uh, on this journey that we're talking about, and it's to become self-sacrificing love. It's, it's, it's to look at what is. The definition of love is to will the good of another, and so that's what you're describing here. So when I'm all tied up in my own attractions, I no longer see other people. They just become objects to use for my ideologies and my attractions. Instead, start to look at them and just love them in their own good, see the good in that person and love them for their own good, what is good for them, and that becomes self-sacrificing love.
Speaker 1And we do not want to do this, do we, tom? You know, and our nature needs to be healed. If you're one of those people that are fighting, well, join the human race. You know. Christ came in to redeem us, and that means to redeem our bodies too. Right and untwist and undistort these desires and kind of end, tom. Maybe I'll throw it back in your court, back to your article, because it's really sad when we take the truth out of our churches, where are we going to go for hope, tom?
Speaker 2Well, there isn't any. The churches are really the last hope of the world. They are the only hope of the world because it is the body of Christ and without that, if we allow the churches to become corrupted and and um really, uh, acting in contrary to what the Bible teaches, then the body of Christ is gone from the earth. And that's the. Our job is to partner with God in bringing about, in fighting the battle so that heaven can be established on earth. We're part of that battle to make sure that heaven winds up taking over everything.
Speaker 1Yeah, thank you so much for that. You know you wrote in here. We're all sinners. We all are stepping into the church to find the truth, aren't we? And that LBGTQ sexual activities are just one of a number of other things that go on. Crime, violence, you know. Violence, the hatred demeaning other people we all need to be healed right. Rape, incest you put in the article abortions, all these things LGBTQ is just allowing you to wallow culture, saying don't worry about it, and you see this, all sin is evil in the sight of our Holy God. You wrote in, and that's beautiful, that's beautiful.
Speaker 2If we try, if we allow ourselves to, to accept that somebody's identity is their sin. What is that? Am I going to be identified? Well, you're, you know you're, you're, you're a lustful person or you're whatever whatever it might be, and that's my identity.
Speaker 1That's what's happening with the LGBT.
Speaker 2Their identity is not their sin. There's no. These different desires are not a person's identity.
Uncovering Evil Forces and Labels
Speaker 1What a great point. But if there's an evil force out there, maybe it's somebody called Satan Tom and he wanted to destroy humanity. What would he do? He would do exactly what you're describing. He would tell you that you are that label and that's how you live. Because what's the problem when we put labels on ourselves is that we have a tendency to want to live out of that label, don't we?
Speaker 2Right and he's taken aim at the church, and five of them have already gone into his camp.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah. Well, let's end it there, because I could go on and talk about this and I know you can too forever. We better unwind it, because we've got other things to do, uh, today. But let's circle back and and talk about this some more. Hey, thank you, tom, thanks everybody. Thanks for joining us today. Talk to you again soon and, and, uh, and and circulate that article again. I'll put the the link to that in the show notes today. Goodbye everyone.