1 Conservative Christian vs 20 Liberal Christians | Surrounded (ft. Allie Beth Stuckey)

Do you believe that gay people are supposed to be celibate?

I think that we are all called to deny what the Bible calls sin. I don't believe it's a sin to be gay. The Bible does condone mean that does not mean that instituting slavery.

You are very good at this. You should keep moving the goalposts. Okay.

How how the claim you made was that the Bible does not go around about slavery.

I'm not going to I'm not going to let it. What we're suffering from right now on the right and on the left is a massive lack of empathy for each other. We're being fed algorithms that show each other these crazy versions of the other side. And we don't look each other in the eyes and and feel for one another.

Hi, I'm Ally Beth Stucky. I'm the host of the podcast Relatable and I'm author of the book Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion. And I'm surrounded by 20 liberal Christians. My first claim is the Bible says marriage is only between one man and one woman.

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Yay. You got it. Good job.

Okay. So, I am an independent, but on this issue, I do lean liberal.

Yes. So, I don't disagree with you that the Bible doesn't show same-sex couples in in a marriage. That it's just not there.

Yes. My view is that it's because it wasn't going on culturally at the time.

Okay. And I do understand, you know, that Jesus talks about in the beginning, right? Like God made the male and female. And there is a lot of Old Testament examples of marriage that aren't always just one man, one woman.

But I do understand what you're saying. My question to you, Ally, is do you think that it's okay if we preserve those principles that are in a marriage between one man and one woman, two same-sex couples, you know, considering that they are honoring each other for following 1 Corinthians 13, right? That they honor each other as themselves, especially if the man is authentically gay like me and has no attractions to women.

What do we what do I do with that? You what I'm saying? And so if I can find a partner in a monogous coven covenantal marriage and be with them even absent until marriage. Okay. Giving all of those things. How do you feel about that?

Yeah. So what we see in scripture is that it's not actually cultural how God defines marriage. We go all the way back to the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible and we read in Genesis 1:27 that God made us male and female. Male and female he created us. In his image he created us. So the definition of marriage is not only rooted in creation reiterated throughout scripture like honor your father and mother repeated by Jesus Matthew 19:4-5. But here's an important point why what you're saying can't be supported by scripture. Because in Ephesians 5 we see that marriage is not just an earthly physical reality but it is actually representative of an eternal reality. The marriage between Christ and the church. Christ is described as the groom. The church is described as the bride. And in Ephesians 5, we read that marriage on earth is actually a reflection of that eternal reality. The Bible starts with the marriage between Adam and Eve, but it ends with a marriage between Christ, the bridegroom, and the church, the bride. And so, earthly marriage and the gender designations that we read in scripture actually speak to an eternal reality that is fixed and cannot be changed because as a man and woman reflect that eternal reality. Two men can't do that and two women can't do that.

So eternal. So is it your view that marriage goes into heaven?

It's an earthly reflection of the eternal reality of the marriage between Christ and his church. No, we actually read that we are not married or given in marriage in heaven. But no male, no female on earth. This earthly union between one man and one woman reflects the eternal reality that Christ the groom is married to his church, the bride. That is what it is supposed to reflect here on earth and only one man and one woman can do that.

Do you believe that gay people are supposed to be celibate? Do you think that they should be called to celibate?

I think that we are all called to deny what the Bible calls sin and that looks different for everyone. And I know that that is difficult to hear. Um, I've talked to a lot of people that have heard that and it's difficult to hear. All of us, every single Christian in one way or another is called to take up our cross, to deny our flesh, and to follow Christ. We're to repudiate all forms of sexual immorality, not just homosexuality, but all forms of sexual immorality. That goes for all of us.

Okay. So, if I am a gay person, you believe that I should be celibate. And there are a lot of us, correct? How do you feel about mixed orientation or lavender marriages? In other words, if somebody's like, "Well, I have these feelings, right? And I can't engage with him. I have no healthy way to express them with another man. What should I just marry a woman? Is that fair to her? How do you feel about

I'm not saying that you must marry a woman. I think what I would want for you, what I want for myself, what I want for everyone is to deny our flesh, deny our sin, and to follow Christ. And I can't say what exactly that's going to look like for you. But in Christ, no matter who we are or what our desires is, we can have the fullness of satisfaction and fulfillment. Marriage is not necessarily the ideal of holiness for every single person.

But is your understanding?

It's nice to talk to you.

Nice to talk to you. Thank you so much.

Tim, I know who you are.

I know who you are.

I see a familiar face. It's nice to meet you in person.

Pleasure. Um, I want to hone in on this claim that the Bible um only supports the idea of one man, one woman in marriage. The Bible doesn't though, unless you think I mean, for example, David, he had eight wives. That's what the Bible says.

So, there's a difference between prescription and description.

I understand that. But the Bible still says that someone had multiple wives.

That's a description of something. That's not God saying that is good and holy.

Well, I mean, David's a man for God's own heart, right?

Yes. And David also committed murder and he also committed adultery which we know he repented of over those things and was sorrowful over those things. But that's very different.

That does not mean that does not mean first of all we don't know that David consummated the marriage with all of Saul's wives. And it's true we don't know that you said wives plural. So again you're proving the point that I'm making is that theible Solomon had a lot of wives too. Mo wives problems actually is what we see over and over again.

Still in the Bible is my point.

Yes. There are a lot of things in the Bible that the Bible only says prescribes no. What's the original claim that you made?

That the Bible says that marriage is only between one man and one woman.

But the Bible says that Lamech took two wives that Jacob married his uh first cousins right and married that they were sisters as well that's where the whole line of Israel comes through right.

Existed that that doesn't exist. Well, the Bible doesn't condemn Jacob's marriages. So when we read the Bible, this is where I'm coming from. But I take your point. Maybe I should add a descriptor in there that the Bible says.

What I am claiming is that the Bible says that holy marriage, that good marriage, that right marriage, the marriage that God condones and calls holy is only between one man and one woman. And when I read the Bible, I'm not just saying, okay, what can I get away with? What did all these bad sinners do? And can I do that, too? And God won't condemn me. I'm also looking at what God calls good. And when I look at the definition of marriage, like I just talked about with the uh with Gilbert, it's rooted in creation. It's reiterated throughout scripture. It's repeated by Jesus in Matthew 19. It is representative of Christ in the church in Ephesians 5. And it is reflective of the gospel as we see in Revelation 20. And so it is more than just saying, "Well, yeah, a lot of people had a lot of wives." A lot of people did a lot of bad things in the Bible. That doesn't mean that God accepted that.

You keep saying bad things. The Bible does not explicitly condemn the marriages of multiple different people. Though.

There was only one kind of marriage, good and holy. And the example for us to follow that in the first and last chapter of the Bible.

So Genesis 1, right, also prescribes eating vegetables only.

Yes.

So do you believe we shall be vegetarians?

No, I don't believe it's in the creation order, isn't it? By your by your own logic, it's in the creation order of Genesis 1 that we should only or Genesis 1 and 2.

I believe in reading every piece of scripture in all of context. I totally agree with you.

And I think that there are some things that we would probably agree that existed and were the case prefall that were the case postfall. So for example, walking around walking around naked.

Walking around naked, that's not something that we typically see today. Maybe that can be another claim that I make that y'all would disagree with. But so there is a reason for things to be prescribed pre and postfall. But what we see because I didn't just say it's rooted in creation. I also said it is reiterated throughout scripture. I also said it's repeated by Jesus. I also said it's representative of Christ in the church. So it's not just about Genesis 1.

But even the idea of Christ the church is multiple people with one person.

Yes. But it's multiple people singular. Church is not the brides of Christ. Church is the one bride of Christ. The collective bride.

Yeah. The collective many people. Right.

Are you saying that the Bible condones polygamy?

What I'm say the Bible absolutely condone it. It absolutely does. Look at Solomon's life. Mo wives mo problems. We do not.

That's one example. David was a man of God's own heart. Lay problems. Lay had two. Again.

David had big problems with the wives that he took on.

That is I would argue that one more question for you. Do you believe in Genesis 1, do you believe that that that's a a literal account of how the earth was created? Is that correct? So, Adam and Eve were the first two people ever.

Yes.

Right. So, how did they and their kids hold on I want to finish. I want to finish. How did they and their kids have more kids without breaking first off the rule of incest, which we know we would deeply deplore, and also multiple partners?

Yeah. Well, they wouldn't have had to have multiple partners.

I don't know how how that would work.

Everything was populated. But that's also not the claim that I'm making. The claim that I'm making is that the only holy definition of marriage in the Bible is between one man and one woman. It's not just about Genesis 1. Every scripture.

It's the logic of Genesis 1, which you rooted, that was your first point in creation. It's rooted in creation.

It's betrayed by the logic of having to populate the entire earth out of one couple. It doesn't work.

That's not necessarily true.

So God set things up so it's only one man and one woman for life, right, in a marriage and then set things up so they had to pre or procreate.

Assum assumingly possibly with their own children.

We don't know how many children they had and we don't know how exactly it was populated.

Well, I mean we we know how kids are made, right? So at some point kids were or then adults that.

You are not undermining my claim that the Bible only calls one kind of marriage holy that we should be representing today.

Because it's not just about Genesis 1.

Pleasure truly. Nice to meet you.

Oh.

Hey. What's your name?

Paul. Um.

Paul. Nice to meet you.

Where in the Bible does it condemn homosexual marriage or homosexual acts? Homosexuality. We could look at both the Old and the New Testament, but I prefer to look at Romans 1 because it doesn't just say the word homosexuality. We can contend over when that was added to the Bible. I know that's a claim that people make, but it actually describes the behavior of homosexuality and says that God gave them over to the impurity of their hearts, gave them over to their lust, and said that women exchanged natural relations with men for unnatural relations with women. Men exchanged natural relations with women for unnatural relations with men. And this is condemned in scripture, not only there, but also in 1 Corinthians 6. And so, yeah, we see it condemned multiple places throughout scripture.

Okay. Yeah. Let's talk about Romans 1 real quick. Let's get that out of the way.

Do you understand that Romans 1 is speaking about how the Gentiles have do do all this as a rhetorical trap in Romans 2 to go ahead and say to the Jews, you're all actually guilty as well, and you all need Christ?

H where are you getting that idea?

Have you read Romans 1? Yes, of course. I read Romans 1. I have it in front of me. I can read it for you if.

Right before right before 26, right before 25 uh right before 27. All about idolatry.

So why is it why is it that this is not about idolatry all of a sudden?

Yes. Actually 1 Corinthians 6 does the same thing to flee from idolatry, flee from all forms of sexual immorality. And then it lists specifically men who practice homosexuality as one of the practices that's condemned. And so idolatry and sexual immorality, all forms of it, we do see are handinand throughout scripture, including in Romans 1. So I'm not seeing your point that this is some sort of rhetorical trap or that he's not speaking literally here.

So this is the only reference of lesbianism in the New Testament. You would say that, right?

That I can think of. Sure.

Except St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Gregory, all of them said it wasn't. Because what's actually happening here in Greco Roman times is that women are having anal intercourse as part of ritual taboos. That's why it's idolatry. Do you want to go back to the Old Testament? You want to go reference 1822?

Uh because we can go there too.

Um I'm not sure that I know what you are referring to when you say 18:22, but I also don't see any evidence for.

Yeah. Oh, you're talking about Oh, I thought you meant the year. Leviticus 18:22. Yes. But again, it's Old Testament. It's New Testament. And not only is it condemned in multiple places, but again, we certainly can't say, and I don't think that you would be able to say that homosexual relations are ever talked about in any sort of positive or holy sense throughout scripture. So, as a Christian, when I'm reading scripture, I'm not saying, okay, what can I get away with? I want to know how can I glorify God most? And I want to look at what does he talk about positively.

What word is used in the Old Testament to talk about male-on-male relationships? Um I'm not I don't remember the Hebrew term.

Kadeshim, which is actually male prostitutes.

And you're talking about do you believe that it was just pedarasti or it was pedophilia that they were condemning at the time?

Kadesh literally means male prostitutes.

But in the New Testament the Greek words used are just male lies with male. There is no denotion whatsoever that this was not consensual or that this was a man and a child. There's a different word for that.

Arsenotai.

Arsenotai is one of the words that's used for that. There's also another word that's used in Romans 1 to condemn homosexuality. We don't actually see that this denotes any sort of pedarasti or pedophilia. It's very clear that we're talking about two adults.

I'm not talking about pedophilia here. I'm talking about pedarasti. Uh arsenotai, do you know the earliest usage of it?

I don't.

It was actually used as economic exploitation of men because back then the only homosexual relationships you had, keep in mind the word homosexual came in the 1860s. Yes, which is exactly why it wasn't added added to scripture till 1946, not because the act was not uh described in scripture.

Yeah. So, arsenai has been used for economic exploitation in its earliest usage. And above that, Malachy was used for effeminate men that were castrating themselves for the goddess Athena. When Christianity first came around, there's a huge pantheon of Roman gods and people in Ephesus were worshiping them as well. And they were saying, "Oh, there's actually multiple gods." And all around scripture that's that's exactly the case that's happening. There's actually no usage at all. We actually have Greek words that Paul likely knew about that were uh reference homosexuality. Why didn't he use them? Why did he only use two words that mean effeminate men which were he was describing for men that castrate themselves for Athena and arsenotai which refers to men that take advantage of smaller men like sex slave trades. So your is your argument that the Bible never condemns homosexuality anywhere and that homosexual relations as long as they were consensual and between two adults is actually elevated to a place of morality in the same place that a man between of marriage between a man and a woman is. Is that your argument?

I'm saying the Bible has no condemnation of it.

No condemnation. But when we look at scripture, what is the one kind of relationship that we see described as holy, as representative of Christ in the church, as having the ability to go forth and be fruitful and multiply? All of us are born with our full digestive systems, our full circulatory systems, but all of us are only born with half a reproductive system. Don't you think that science tells us a little bit of something about how human beings are supposed to join together?

No, because not all human beings join together. Uh, many don't. Many people don't even have sexual.

In principle. Well, by nature.

In principle, sure, that that's to multiply, you know, if that's your natural law and interpretation. However, Jesus teaches us that we're not our body parts. We're a lot more than them. Jesus also teaches that in the beginning he made them male and female and the two shall be come together and become one flesh.

What is that about?

Matthew 19:4-5. That's.

No. What is it about?

He is answering a question about divorce. And instead of just saying God hates divorce, he goes all the way back to the creation ordinance and the definition of male and female and marriages between one man and one woman.

He does not do that. He doesn't Matthew 19:4-5. He does he goes all the way back explicitly.

I know he does that. I know he talked about creation order. Creation order is not condemnation of homosexuality. You keep talking about and keep postulating that just because of these descriptive parts of the Bible as you used in your last argument. All of a sudden that's prescriptive that homosexuality is outward.

No, but it is prescriptive because it says that these people will not inherit the kingdom of God in first Corinthians 6 and that includes men who practice homosexuality. Romans 1, it's also condemned and described that he is giving them over to a depraved mind to do what ought not to be done. That is a prescription to not do something.

Except. Thank you very very much.

Pleasure meeting you.

Yeah.

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Hey, how are you? What's your name?

Danny.

Danny. Nice to meet you, Danny.

Yeah, just to say you're doing a wonderful job. I really appreciate every job so far.

So, you had made a comment earlier, I think maybe with Tim or one of the other conversations about um more or less you said the fruit of relationships, right? The fruit of people. You would kind of imply it at least, but I think scripture talks about the fruit of the kind of Christians that we are, right? This idea that we grow into that.

I don't know that I brought that up, but it's a good point. You can go on that.

I think you said it maybe not explicitly, but you the heart of it was there.

Okay.

So, I'm a pastor of a church that is growing and not just with straight individuals, not just with people that look like me, but queer individuals that have some of like the greatest fruit of the spirit that I've ever seen. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control, all of those things. First, I just would love to hear your thought on how someone so sinful could produce such wonderful fruit. Um, but I'm really happy to talk about this, but I just want to hear that because yeah.

You've given really interesting and good arguments, but that's one that I have a hard time reconciling.

Well, all of us sin and all of us struggle with sin and I've met lots of people from all different walks of life that are joyful and kind and God gives us what we call the gift of common grace. That there are people who are not Christians who might exude some of the characteristics that we want to embody as Christians, but that doesn't mean that everything they do or everything they believe or everything they say is in alignment with scripture. And so that's what I would say there. I have no doubt that the people that you know who identify as LGBTQ are also really kind and really patient and really joyful and might have characteristics that we all want to emulate. But that doesn't mean that every part of their life is in alignment with what we see God say in his word.

And because of that, they wouldn't inherit the kingdom of heaven like pretty much every one of those things.

All of us if we don't pick up our cross and follow Christ by the grace of Christ, by the way, it's not our own merit. None of us bring.

None of these individual. Yeah. Nothing that we could do could ever deserve salvation. God gives it to us in Christ. But because of that grace, because of that love that he has given us, all of us are told to deny sin. All of us are told to repent. And so I think when we tell someone who says, you know what, this is how I identify. It's not in alignment with with what God God calls good and holy. That we are actually burdening them with more sin.

Whereas we all need to be free of our slavery to sin.

I would agree with that. So, one of the biggest critiques I hate about progressive Christians, we don't believe in sin. Uh, we certainly do. We actually reject it, sin and brokenness everywhere we find it and try to push it back. I would not argue that being a queer person is a part of that. But I would go back to Genesis, and you made a great point, like it's not all in Genesis, but Hebrew scholars, rabbis, and people that study this would not read this as literal. They would read as an archetypal story.

So, you could probably find Hebrew scholars that would, and there are probably a lot of competing theologians when it comes to the literalism of the.

Let me rephrase it. Uh, all of my friends who are practicing rabbis across the board would not read it as literal. And so I'm sure you could certainly get someone. They would view it as an archetypal story. Like the idea that we are put together uh and there's a helper and that there is an idea of us together and that the helper is not just the woman. The helper is together in this collaborative relationship. And so I think understanding Genesis is something that's read to be literal, which again the people that author that text are siblings in faith, our Jewish brothers and sisters, like wouldn't have read it as literal. So I just I again another thing I have a hard time.

I'm a Christian and so I want to read the Old Testament also in the context of the New Testament believing that Jesus is God himself. So the Old Testament and the New Testament Jesus is in Jesus agrees with I would not separate those two things. I read Genesis 1 also in the context of Ephesians 5, also in the context of Matthew 19, in the context of Revelation 20 where again we see marriage is a reflection between Christ the bridegroom and church the bride. Those gender design uh designations are fixed.

Can I ask so where does Jesus a first century rabbi tell us to read that literally?

To go back and do.

We see that Jesus seems to take it literally. For example, when he's answering a question about divorce in Matthew 19, he doesn't say, "Well, metaphorically female."

I don't know that everything Jesus said was recorded, but that's not what you asked. You asked, "Where do we see that Jesus took Genesis literally?" So, what does he say that we should take it literally? Not where does. Well, he takes it literally. Implying that that's not there's a lot of things that you might not say that we should do today, but I think that you would call yourself a follower of Jesus and we're to follow his example. And if he takes Genesis literally, or it seems like he does from Matthew 19, then I think my best bet is to take it literally, too.

I would say he takes it seriously.

Okay. Thank you very much. Surrounded is coming to Dallas. We're currently casting undecided Texas voters who are eager to discuss and unpack the issues that matter most to Texans. All undecided Texas voters are welcome to apply using the link in the description. Spread the word to friends and family members who might be interested.

My next claim is abortion is a grave moral evil. Hello, my name is Jared. What is your.

Jared? I'm Ally. Nice to meet you here. Yeah, if it's okay with you.

I'd like to start with a couple yes or no questions and then I'd like to hear your response fully without interruption.

Okay. Can I define our terms first and then I'll let you go and I won't interrupt you. Absolutely. Okay. So, because these terms are so contentious, I just want to make sure that we agree. So, abortion, the intentional killing of a human being in the womb. Can we agree on that?

I don't agree that abortion is murder.

I said killing. Can we agree on that?

I believe that it is killing life in the womb.

Killing a what species of life?

A human.

A human. Okay. So, we can agree that abortion is the intentional killing of a human inside the womb. Um, grave just obviously I mean serious, moral, right versus wrong, evil, bad, wrong, sinful. So, I believe that the intentional killing of an innocent human being is evil. Do you agree?

No.

You don't? Okay.

I don't.

Go ahead. Yes or no? Is abortion murder?

Yes.

In Matthew 5:28 when Jesus says that if I look at a woman lustfully that I've already committed adultery with her in my heart.

Yes.

Do you agree?

Jesus doubles down on so many moral laws of the Old Testament. Yes or no?

Um do I agree with what.

That if I look at a woman lustfully that I have already committed adultery with her in my heart. Do you agree? Yes or no?

Yes. In your heart. Yes. In Matthew 5:22 when it says that if I'm angry with my brother or sister then I have that then I am guilty of the same judgment as if I had committed murder.

Yes. Spiritually. Spiritually.

Would you.

Not necessarily legally.

Would it be fair to say that Jesus is implying that lust can lead to adultery and that anger can lead to murder?

Yes, I would agree with that. But he is also saying that actually following the law is not just about what you do outwardly but what you do in your heart and what you think and feel inside.

Absolutely. Are pregnant women angry with the baby when they undergo an abortion? Yes or no?

I have no idea. I don't think either of us can say how every single pregnant woman feels when she has an abortion. Do you know what every single pregnant woman is feeling when she has an abortion? Maybe some of them are angry at the baby. Maybe some of them are scared. Maybe some of them are desperate. Maybe some of them just don't want to be pregnant anymore. But ultimately, it still leads to the same outcome that an innocent human being is being killed.

Yes or no? That's all I'm asking. So you would say I gave you more than that.

That's fine. I just just trying to one more. Then how can abortion be murderer if they do not share the same intention? How can an apple seed grow an orange tree?

Jesus doesn't say that anger is the only thing that leads to murder. As we saw in the case of David, it was lust that led to the murder of Beth Sheba's husband. So murder can still be murder even if the intent does not start with anger. And that is what I believe we see with abortion. What about Matthew 26:24 when Jesus says that it would be better if Judas had never been born? Why do Christian conservatives believe that each conception deserves to be birthed when Jesus says otherwise?

Well, Jesus doesn't say that Judas should have been murdered or that he should have been aborted. It said that he should have never been born, which we can deduce probably means never been conceived. And he is speaking figuratively there that it would have been better for him to not be born than endure the judgment that he's going to endure because of what he did. That is not condoning killing the innocent people that Jesus defends. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Hi. What's your name?

Steve.

Steve. Nice to meet you, Steve.

My concern about the way that you present the abortion issue.

Okay. Um is you have claimed in the past that the liberal pro-choice position.

Is that we don't give the whole truth about the abortion issue and you as violent. You've described it here as killing.

Abortion is violent.

And painful.

Yes. For the child. Absolutely. My problem, my concern is that you are doing the same thing by not telling women the truth that when the majority of abortions happen, which is in the first 6 weeks of pregnancy, that fetus has not developed pain receptors. That doesn't happen till maybe at the earliest 10 weeks. Ally.

So are you saying 22 to 24 weeks?

Is killing only wrong if someone can feel pain? It's wrong for you to characterize it as violent, painful when it's not.

It is violent. Of course, it's violent. Even when you take the abortion pill, you are starving that human being. If you want to call him or her a zygote or a fetus, that's all fine. Those are all stages of development that all of us went through, that all children go through. It is still the killing of a human being. And when you take the abortion pill, the two-part abortion pill, you are starving that human being of the nutrients that he or she needs to survive. That is violent that they can't feel. Are you saying there are a lot of people who are murdered who can't feel it? Are you saying that that murder is justified because they can't feel it? No, we're talking about abortion. We're not talking about something else. We're talking about abortion.

But I'm trying to understand your logic. You are saying that abortion is okay cuz babies don't feel it. So I'm asking you is killing another innocent person when they don't feel it, is that justified?

Abortion is healthcare for women who need it, who have unwanted pregnancies.

Another case is killing girls. Who have been raped, who have been have experienced incest. Ally.

That's less than 1% of all abortions. Can we agree?

So, most abortions happen within the first six weeks. If I said to you, painful and violent.

If if I said to you, okay, fine. We will only allow, which this is not my position, but if I said we will only allow abortion in those 1% of cases in which it's rape or incest, would you agree with me to ban the rest of abortions? The denial denial of abortion healthcare to women is 100% harmful to the woman who absolutely needs.

Abortion is 100% harmful to physical healthcare, physical healthcare.

Killing an innocent person is not healthcare. Can you tell me another situation in which killing a person intentionally is healthcare?

Here's the problem with the whole prolife movement. You talk a lot about look at look at the evil origins of these movements. Look at your movement, Ally. The religious right movement started with the southern strategy and it didn't start with abortion. They figured out abortion was a great issue to raise a lot of money. No, no, no. This is your issue. My argument is that abortion is a grave moral evil. You say it's not because babies in the womb don't feel pain until a certain point in gestation. I'm asking you to apply that logic to people outside of the womb. Is murder okay when the victim doesn't feel pain? And why or why not?

Here's the issue. Was Jesus a.

Apply your logic to people outside of the womb. Tell me why.

You you don't want to listen to the logic that that.

I listen to your logic. You won't support your logic. You won't support it.

Jesus was a Jew, Ally, and Jews believed that life begins at first breath, not at conception. So this whole idea that life begins at conception, it's not biblical. It's not Jesus.

I would love to answer that before you get voted out because I think that's really important. And I've heard that a lot that life begins at first breath. First, we don't actually see that throughout scripture. That's number one. We can see in Jeremiah 15. We can see in Psalm 139 that God actually consecrated people. God God actually knitted them together in their mother's womb with intentionality and purpose and love. That's what we read in Psalm 139. That your eyes saw my unformed substance before any of my days came to be. That's what we read in Psalm 139. The other thing is people say that life starts at first breath. First of all, breath is not an indicator of moral worth. There are people that depend on a ventilator to breathe. That's not a justification to murder them. And then the third one is that babies actually do breathe inside the womb. They're not breathing air. They're breathing in amniotic fluid which is practicing those breathing motions. And so I still am not understanding your logic or the science behind what you're claiming.

Yeah. So the abortion issue. Thank you.

Hey, what's your name?

Hi, I'm Katrina.

Katrina, I'm Ally. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. Um, I've loved all the points that you've said. You've really stood your ground. I could not do what you're doing. So, big props. I'm glad you're here. Um, I just wanted to talk about how for me as a progressive Christian, many behind me, I I think we often talking about the conservative side relate to the fact that there seems to be a hierarchy of sins and abortion and LGBTQ issues seem to be at the top of that. That that's really just like targeted a lot. It's really villainized. Um, and so I would like to bring up an example, a biblical example where there is a hierarchy and abortion falls underneath adultery. Uh, I don't know if you've heard of numbers five in the Bible.

Yes, I have.

When it talks about that.

If a woman cheats on her husband.

If the husband suspects that the woman has cheated, not if she's cheated.

Right? If he even suspects that she's cheated on her husband. Yes. Um that she is to go and have a ceremony performed by a priest where the priest um it says that he mixes the sand from the tabernacle ground, puts it into a holy water. Yes. And that water says that if there is a a curse, if if she's done the wrongdoing, there will be a curse and there will be a a miscarriage, which what it sounds like is like an intentional removal of the child.

I don't see how someone would get that. Although, I would say that all of us could probably agree this is a very strange and complex passage. And every theologian that I've read.

That phrase, her thigh fell away, is very confusing. I think what we can read from this is that God is providing a way for a woman to prove her innocence if she is innocent and escape the punishment of her jealous husbands because back then a man and a woman who were caught in adultery they had there was the death penalty actually the same penalty that it is for murder. So I would not agree that's a hierarchy. The punishment for adultery and the punishment for murder was death.

Still a fetus is the one who's going to be removed from that situation. I don't think that we know clearly that this is a miscarriage. I think it is pretty confusing and that we can actually just see that this is a way for God to provide a woman to prove her innocence. It's certainly not condoning abortion.

But I think we could look at every verse that way that every verse is nuance and complex. And I think that's the biggest thing for from the progressive side that there's a lot of nuance to biblical verses and you can't speak.

Thou shalt thou shalt not murder is an absolute. There's no and those verses for sure. But all the verses that we're talking about surrounding like this particular one you refer to it as strange. Yes, it is very strange because there's a lot of nuance around it. Saying this, the verses about homosexuality, there's a lot of nuance. There's different context going on. I think we can agree there. And I think it gets dangerous when we speak in the black and whites and villainizing.

Some things are black and white, but I'll agree with you that some things are complicated. Sometimes we as finite Christians are like, "Okay, I don't really know what's going on here. Let me do my best to try to understand within context. However, when it comes to murder, when it comes to killing an innocent person, I think that you would say, put the abortion issue aside, would you say that killing an innocent person, a defenseless person is always wrong?

Yes, always wrong. But I don't I don't agree that the removal of a fetus of a group of cells is murder. I think that's where the language is really happening inside the womb. When does a human being become a person? Because you're saying that this is not a person inside the womb. Correct. Okay. So, when does a human become a person?

I think that when you can actually visibly see the little feet, the little fingers, the little body.

Okay. So, you're you're in favor of abortion only before 9 weeks because at my at my 9week ultrasound, I saw the little buds in the wiggling little baby. So, you're only okay with abortion before 9 weeks.

I think early early on before 6 weeks because it's just a group of cells. But also let's talk about.

It's still a human being. Own DNA. How abortion disproportionately affects those who don't have access to it. People who are in low-income situations and if you look at the juveniles who are in the jail system, 75% of juveniles in the jail system come from low-income situations where a woman could have otherwise said I cannot give this life the best chance that it deserves and then they're in jails and then we're talking about euthanizing people in jail. Sad, but killing a person doesn't heal that woman. Killing a person doesn't make her better.

A targeted thing that everybody is so passionate about when there are so many people.

Okay, even if you don't agree with this, can I just help you understand our perspective? I know that you. No, I don't think that you do because you said it's the removal of a fetus. This is okay. No, whatever you think about when a person has value and rights, this is a human being. From the moment of conception, it's he or she. It's XX or XY, their own DNA. They are going to have their own fingerprints. They have their entire genetic makeup that with time and with sustenance will grow into what you and I look like.

But why so hard versus the children that are here that are in.

Care about murder? No, no, no. That's a red herring. We can talk about what we should do for children outside of the womb. I'm with you on that. We can unite on that. Our desire to help those. But I don't see why your compassion for kids outside of the womb stops just based on a child's location or size or age.

Completely different.

A group of cells versus a living breathing human being in front. It's just completely different. It's something that disagree and we were all we're clumps of cells too. And I think it would be wrong to murder you.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. Hey, what's your name?

Hi, I'm Angie.

Angie, nice to meet you. Thanks for being here.

Yeah. So, the first thing that I want to bring up is uh we can go back to the Bible and but I will say clearly I do have personal convictions about abortion um that uh may not everyone in this circle may agree with. I was raised very conservative Texas Bible belt. Like I was homeschooled, all of that. And so I understand the idea of like how horrible it is to kill like an innocent life, but I think we need to go and talk about Exodus 21.

Okay.

Because that I I don't know if you know which passage I'm about to talk about because that is describing where um if two men are fighting and they hit a pregnant woman.

If she has a miscarriage, and again there is debate on if it's miscarriage, if she has a a premature birth, but the child survives.

Yeah. The man has to pay only a fine. But if it says if there's further harm, that's when it goes to life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, all that stuff. And that is in regards to the woman, the harm caused to the woman by the men who have hit her. So I think that like if we're talking about how the Bible defines personhood, it's clear that in that law, the unborn child was not it like killing them or, you know, causing their miscarriage is not considered murder.

It's been considered manslaughter, which it sounds like because it was accidental. The passage that you're describing is not intentionally killing an unborn child. That is what abortion is. And so what you're talking about is accidental. We also if someone accidentally killed someone today, they would be charged with manslaughter. They wouldn't be charged with murder. So I don't think that but still even still if they are fighting and they hit the woman and she and she dies, they pay the penalty for the death of her. That is not manslaughter. You as exactly how you just described it. You said that the causing the miscarriage would be mis would be manslaughter. But in the same case, it's it's viewed the same way. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because it was it was accidental to you. Believe that that passage proves that a woman's value is more is more important than the child's value because the punishment for accidentally killing that child was not as severe as the punishment for accidentally killing the woman. Is that correct? Is that the argument?

That would you say that's fair?

That would be fair. But but I'm trying to talk about the the val the how the Bible defines personhood. Okay.

The Bible defines as in this I mean again of course in context we need to talk about every all the other verses etc. talking about you know how you knit me how you knit me and my mother.

What.

Do you think about that? I'm curious what you think about. And I think that is important, but also it's beautiful prophetic language. It's or prophet, it's poetic, poet. Yes, poetic.

But then whenever it gets to, I think it's what is it? Jeremiah 5. Yeah. Whatever it's talking about, "Before I formed you." I mean, this is talking about how God knows each and every one of us and he cares for all of us. It means that you are not forgotten. That's kind of that's that's how I view that.

But again, as I said, I personally have reservations against abortion for in some ways.

>> Can you tell me why you have reservations against abortion?

I have reservations because it's per it's my personal beliefs. Again, but listen, let me just tell you this. This is what I have done as a person. I've been on multiple Jubilee videos that as >> because I am, as some of y'all may know, but I am a virgin. I am saving myself for marriage. That is awesome. I spec like this. This is what I want to do. But and not just because I think it's a purity thing or whatever. Uh, it just is beautiful. It is beautiful. But I'm saying just a good decision. That's what it is. I do think it like it is a smart decision because again, it saves me from ever having to be put into the possibility, the the realm of even thinking like, "Oh, is abortion a possibility?"

>> We can agree there. I have often said that most of our problems in the world would stop if people stopped having sex outside of marriage.

Not necessarily that. I'm just Well, yeah, sure. But also what I want to get to >> these are my personal beliefs. These are your personal beliefs. We should not be using the law to enforce our personal beliefs on people who are not who are not Christian.

Every law enforces a personal belief on everyone.

>> But this but this is Yes. But this is like these are those are more universal laws. There are laws.

>> Should we have a law against murdering you?

No. No. Let me let me finish this point. A lot of these are common sense universal laws that are actually reflected in many different religions, not just Christianity. About murder, about stealing, about theft. These are things I think the Lord founded our laws based on the principles of humanity.

>> I'm sorry, I missed that.

Our our founders founded our laws and wrote our laws specifically with the principles of scripture in mind. Not created a theocracy, but on the values of the principles. And so they weren't saying, "Well, let's just pick the laws that sound good to Buddhists, too." That's not how they formed those laws.

>> I mean, I'm sure they have limited access to Buddhists. I mean, let's be let's be real and what their theology or, you know, but that's I think we need to get back to the point that with Christians really trying to force our personal beliefs on non-Christians throughout the throughout our country because we have these personal convictions. I think that is incorrect because it because it can go to so many different ways, especially if it was a different religion that came into power. Christians would be upset about that. We see that that laws that allow abortions, laws that allow abortions is enforcing your personal belief system on that child. We don't see it as enforcing a personal belief system.

>> Again, I'm going back to protecting the right to go back to Exodus 21. I'm Exodus 21 where again the personhood of an unborn child is not defined. It is a fine talking about purposeful killing of a child. Do you think killing an innocent person intentionally is always wrong? Do you think it should be illegal to murder murder? We talk about Jeff Tat's daughter. She ran out. No, listen. We are talking about innocents killing innocent people. Jeff in Judges, do you remember this? He made this promise to God and said that, you know what, whoever the first thing that comes out of my home, I'm going to sacrifice that. And that ended up being his daughter.

>> He knew he was wrong and he agreed. But he still went through with it. He still killed his daughter. If we're talking about David and Basha, if we're talking about David and Basheba, their child, yes, he mur murdered. Yes, he murdered and he committed adultery and probably was forceful on her, but he didn't he didn't experience that that uh the wrongness. The child did the murder should not be illegal.

>> I'm No, no, no. I'm just telling you, you just said that innocent life every time it's intentionally taken is wrong. And there are cases in the >> He was wrong.

>> I'm tell Yes. I'm not No, no, no. Of course. Of course he was wrong. I'm not saying that. I am saying that the result of David and Ba Sheeba's uh adultery or coercion cuz I mean he was a man in power um and the the baby was killed. God it says that God struck the child and the child uh was like they lived. She had the baby seven days later the baby was killed. Okay, that is the case where innocent life I mean was taken. The baby had no had no like they they didn't do anything to deserve that, but it was what his father did. And so I know but and I will to kill innocent life. This is what I want to get to. This is what I want to get to because a lot of times Christians will say that two wrongs don't make a right.

>> In that case, it kind of seems like that's what God did.

>> What do you What do you mean? I I'm not >> taking an innocent life. David took an innocent life. But the baby was wrong in taking an innocent life.

>> I understand David was wrong in taking an innocent life. But also God let God took the innocent life of his child as recompense for what he did to Uzziah or Uzziah, Uriah, what you know, whatever Basil husband was.

>> Hey, thank you so much. That was fun.

>> Thank you.

>> Surrounded is now a podcast available wherever you listen. Search Surrounded, plug in, and stay part of the conversation anywhere, anytime. My next claim is empathy can be toxic and lead to sin.

>> Hey, what's your name?

>> I'm Paul. Nice to meet you.

>> Another Paul. Nice to meet you.

>> Another Paul. Let's start if we can on what your definition of empathy is.

>> Thank you for saying that. I agree. The etymology of empathy means to be in someone's feelings. Whereas sympathy means to feel for someone. Compassion means with suffering to so to suffer with someone, but empathy literally means to be in someone's feelings.

>> Do you think that when God became flesh and dwelt among us dwelt among us that he was taking on the idea of human feelings on some level?

Not the idea of human feelings, he actually did feel human feelings. He didn't just he wasn't just in our feelings. He didn't just have empathy for our weakness, but he actually felt much of that weakness himself, which is amazing. Do you believe that empathy may not be where we want to end, but empathy is definitely where we should start >> as Christians? Okay.

>> That we as people have the ability to be able to start and think if we are to love our enemies, >> if we are to love our neighbors, if we are to love those around us in our community, we first have to be able to feel what they're feeling. And if you look at the way Christ lived, he tried his best in every opportunity to first see where they were coming from, asking questions first, making comments later. Is that a possibility that we start with empathy, but we just don't end with empathy?

Okay, I love that distinction that she said that we shouldn't end with empathy. We definitely agree on that. Here's where I would probably caveat what you said. I would say we can start with empathy. So my argument is not which you're not saying this, but just to clarify that empathy is always toxic or always sinful or always bad. I think it can lead you toward kindness. It can't lead you toward love, but it doesn't have to be where we start. I think that you can love someone, sacrifice for them, be kind to them, be generous to them out of virtue, out of the desire to follow Christ. You don't necessarily have to feel how someone feels in order to be kind. And actually, I would argue that that kind of love is a lot more powerful because even if I can't understand someone's circumstance or where they're coming from, God calls me to love them and to serve them. Really, empathy doesn't have to have anything to do with that.

>> I would completely disagree. In fact, I would even go as an example of the woman caught in adultery.

When that woman was brought out, right, John Yes. and all the men were ready to stone her.

>> Yes.

>> What did Jesus do? He got down on her level, lowered himself so that he could see the perspective from her point of view. He then looked at everyone and said, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone," saying to them, "Remember when you sinned? Why did you sin? Do you remember the time in which you did something maybe you weren't completely agreeing with? Maybe this is the time for you to step back and say, why would someone sin?" as opposed to immediately going and just calling it sin, looking at and saying, "What's the road to get us there?" And from there we begin to understand them. From there we begin to love them. From there we begin to be able to cherish them and honor them and see them as the human beings they are, not political movements. The way that the evangelical right has turned every single thing into a political movement on every podcast.

>> This is a different claim. Okay, let's get there because I think that's a really interesting claim. But let's go back to the empathy piece because we could maybe agree that you can start with empathy. My argument is that you don't have to start with empathy. And actually empathy if we always start there has the possibility I would say Jesus always did the potential to lead us to sin. And I would say God always did.

>> Jesus is God. First John 4:8 says God is love. So Jesus embodied love. He showed us what it looks like. It can mean when Adam and Eve sinned. What's the first act God did after the curse? Empathy. He gave them clothes. He covered their nakedness. It's not necessarily empathy. You're reading empathy into the text. It's not necessarily there in their naked.

>> Let's go back to my claim. Let's go back to my claim and see and see if you agree with it.

>> Empathy can be toxic and lead to sin. Do you think it's possible to feel so deeply how someone feels that you can end up affirming something bad and wrong and harmful and sinful in their life? That is my claim. Well, do you think it's possible?

>> Well, anything's possible. But that doesn't mean that doesn't mean it's irresponsible, but that doesn't mean it's irresponsible.

>> It is irresponsible to affirm someone's sin or behavior that is harming them because you feel so deeply how they feel. It is much better to be tied to virtue and truth and love which is rooted in Christ on the cross. Corinthians 13:6, not empathy, which is >> when Christ was on the cross, he didn't ask what everyone's sin was. He said, "Just forgive them."

>> "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." That's not necessarily empathy. But again, we're not going back to my claim. I'm asking you to address my claim. Do you think it's possible to feel so deeply how someone feels that you end up affirming their sin? That's my claim. Then we agree.

>> Some people could.

>> You did great. Good job.

>> Hi.

>> Hello.

>> What's your name? Kyle. Nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you. I feel like if you're going to completely cut out empathy, you're also going to include uh toxic individualism and toxic apathy because you're completely cutting out empathy. I'm sorry, an element.

>> I don't think we have to cut out empathy altogether.

>> So, what is toxic about empathy? I'm sorry.

>> So, it's not that empathy is always toxic. It's not that there is a perpetual component of empathy that is toxic. It's that empathy can be toxic and lead to sin. So if I feel so deeply how someone feels that I end up validating a lie, telling them something that's not true to make them feel better or affirming what God calls sin, or I would argue if it leads us to support destructive policies, policies that are bad for the individual, bad for society, then your empathy has led you to a really dangerous place, even if you started with good intentions.

>> But I think you can empathize with somebody and not agree with the things that they're doing.

>> I agree. Yeah, I agree. So in that sense, I don't think that toxic or I'm sorry, empathy can be toxic because I think by your logic also, you can say love can be toxic. Love can be toxic, right? Because >> yeah, I would love to distinguish between empathy and love if I can, and you can tell me if you agree with me. So empathy means to feel how someone feels, and I think that could e either lead you toward kindness or like you said, you described what I like to call like empathy that is in submission to truth. So I can feel how you feel and still say, "Hey, what you're doing is not right. What you're believing is not true, right?" Like you would say that that's possible.

>> I think that's possible in a lot of cases.

>> Yes. And I think you and I would agree with that. Where I am saying empathy can lead us astray is when we feel so deeply for someone and we feel so deeply how they feel that we end up telling them the lie that they want to hear that leads to a destructive behavior.

>> But I don't think that's true empathy. I think what you're doing is you're you're create you're using the word empathy and you're creating a structure of manipulation when true empathy is actually caring about somebody. It's it's you're not saying if you care about me x amount, you would do this for me.

>> Okay. Let me give you an example of what I think is toxic empathy, and this will probably unleash a can of worms, which will be fun. If I feel so deeply that someone who sits across from me says, "You know what, I was assigned male at birth, but I am trapped in the wrong body and I am I identify as a girl." I would say that feeling so deeply how that person feels that you get to the point of affirming their identity and saying, "Yes."

>> Why can't we the Bible, the Bible doesn't condemn transgenderism?

>> Let's get there. Let Hang on. That is an example of what I would say is empathy that has turned toxic because you are affirming something that is not true and is destructive for the individual.

>> If it's not true, then you're saying that God is not sovereign because he is. He made their body with purpose from the moment of conception. Their mind is their identity.

>> Their mind is their identity. Their consciousness because biology is not an individual. I mean >> that's not a biblical idea. To separate your identity and your spirit from your body is dualism. That's more of a kind of a Gnostic idea, not a biblical idea. We see in Genesis 1:27 that God created us male and female. We don't see any other category or a possibility to identify as something other than what you biologically are. So I would say it is toxically empathetic to feel so deeply how someone feels that you affirm the lie that you can be born in the wrong body. You're right. God is sovereign. He does not make a mistake. If you are born a man or a woman, boy or a girl, that is what you are.

>> Okay. Board.

>> Hey, you did really good. Thank you.

>> Hey, what's your name? My name is Jaden.

>> Hi Jaden.

>> Um, so your claim is that empathy can be toxic and lead to sin.

>> Yes. Yes.

>> And you described a scenario in which it can be uh toxic and lead to sin.

>> Yes.

>> So do you think that so Brené Brown said that empathy leads to connection and sympathy leads to, I believe disconnection is the word that she used.

>> Okay.

>> So if you're able to say, are you familiar with Brené Brown? Yes. I love her work. Um, but would you say that if you had somebody that came up to you and said, "You know, listen, I've struggling with body dysmorphia."

>> Um, if you're able to sympathize, you're saying, "Oh, geez, that's something over there. I'm not I'm not really going to feel where you're at because that sounds really hard and I can't understand where you're coming from." Does that sound right?

What I would say to that person because here's what I believe. It's not that I necessarily believe in choosing sympathy over empathy. I believe in choosing love. And again, empathy could lead you to love, but love should be the endpoint for the Christian. And God gets to define love. 1 John 4:8, God is love. So, he gets to define it. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 13 what love is. He defines it for us. And one of the characteristics that we read in verse six is that love never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. So if I am to love the person who says, "I'm struggling with this identity crisis. I feel like I'm born in the wrong body." I don't think it's wrong for me to say, "Wow, I've never been there, but that must sound really distressing, but let me tell you about the God who loves you and did not make a mistake with your body. And what we can do is we can help you as much as possible and I can love you and I can be your friend, but I am not going to sacrifice for the truth just because I empathize with your feelings."

>> Do you think it's possible? So God lets things happen that may not be uh what you might call perfect. I guess >> moral will. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

>> And we're all sinful.

>> Yeah. No, absolutely. But like if somebody is born, do you think there is a possibility that they could have been born into the wrong body?

No, I don't think it's possible. I think it's possible that they could feel that they are. I don't think that makes up most people who identify as transgender today. But all of us have feelings that are disconnected with reality. And that doesn't mean, you know, if your little child says, "Hey, mommy, there's a monster in my closet." The loving thing to do is not to say, "Yeah, it is. Sorry." It's to turn the lights on and say, "No, that's not a monster in your closet. That's okay." The loving thing to do is to tell the truth.

>> Or to go in and see if there's a monster. But there's not.

>> But but the empathy here, right? The empathy might be to actually try to understand where they're coming from. And I'm not saying, you know, I wouldn't jump into it and say, "Well, then I feel transgender." Absolutely not. But to understand where somebody else is coming from and to have the love, I believe empathy and love go hand in hand. And I cannot love that person if I cannot try to understand where they are coming.

>> You can try to understand where they're coming from and still tell them the truth. Do you agree with that?

>> Oh, absolutely. But I guess where we differ on that is is kind of where the where the truth lies.

>> That is definitely where we differ.

>> Yeah. So if if I believe in my understanding of the world is it it is entirely possible for somebody to be born into the wrong body.

>> What does that mean? Can you explain that to me? Like what is telling them that they're born in the wrong body? How can it be wrong?

>> Well, I believe that uh gender is a a characteristic male and female in heaven. As spirits, we have male and female. I believe that. Okay.

>> Okay. Do you identify as a Christian?

>> I am a Christian.

>> So where do you get where do you get that idea that we have spirit gendered spirits in heaven before we come to earth? I've never heard that before.

>> Yeah. Sorry. I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we tend to have some ideas that some people wouldn't even conflate with Christianity.

>> Oh, okay.

>> Hey, you did good. Nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you.

>> Wow, that was that was impressive. Nice to meet you.

>> What's your name?

>> Shane.

>> Shane.

>> So, here's I'm going to kind of like lay out my argument and then tell me the issue you might have with it. Okay, I'm ready.

>> So, my argument is empathy in it of itself cannot be sin because it is a biblical statue. can lead to sin.

>> I would say it can't lead to sin either.

>> Okay?

>> Because sin uh I'm going to say sin kind of thinking of like a concupiscence kind of way here. I don't know if you're familiar with the word. Um, not that you're not. I just it's weird. But the idea simply is when we affirm things that are sinful.

>> Okay?

>> It is by our fallen nature and desire, not by the empathy itself.

Empathy, right, is the thing we use to enact care and love for people. Romans 12:15, I think it is, where it says, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Right? We step into that just as Christ stepped into our humanity. We step into that with those people. And then from there, if we as corrupted fallen beings mess up and in some long way, twist it to then affirm something that is sinful, that is on the sin, not on the empathy itself. Does that make sense?

>> Yes. And I understand what you're saying. I think we agree on a lot. My argument is that empathy because it is so powerful can initiate a path to affirming sin because you feel so deeply how someone feels because you don't want to hurt their feelings because you don't want to make them feel bad. That deep empathy that ma might be well-intentioned could lead you to saying something that's not true or affirming sin. So I would just disagree. I I would think that the empathy can lead you there. That doesn't mean all empathy is always bad or dangerous. My hesitation is just going to be it's still going to be on the labeling that empathy as toxic, right? It's toxic because it led to this conclusion. Well, that's not really how that worked. What worked within that is the fallen human nature, which we all participate in as fallen people, right?

>> Well, do you think it's possible because we are fallen humans for any feeling that we have for love to be perverted into lust or for empathy to be perverted into unhealthy and sinful affirmation?

>> Right? But the perversion of the thing. So love is a great example, right? If I love improperly as a result of me being a sinner, not saying that love itself is now sin. It's not saying that that love or that love itself can become toxic. It's the way that we use love is seen as toxically.

>> I wonder if we're splitting hairs. I wonder if we basically agree that we're sinners and that we can pervert things that started out really good or that we can start with good intentions and we know what the road to hell is paved with. And so I think we actually probably agree. Maybe it's just a manake argument.

>> I wouldn't disagree. Here's my hesitation. The calling of empathy to be toxic is where I'm like very much the law needs or the line needs to be drawn >> because when we do that, when we see something that is necessarily a biblical principle and we say, well, hold on, this biblical principle is toxic or we can it can be toxic. We are then now saying, well, there's steps and we have to back up here and maybe we shouldn't be empathetic in these cases. And then that leads to I think what this divide is evidently showing, which is that people end up on different nuances and different applications.

>> So my argument is that we don't need to pursue empathy in and of itself. That we should be pursuing love, and love is different than empathy. Love never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Whereas empathy really, I say it's neutral. It really is not considered.

>> You don't think empathy is like a biblical statue? You don't think that like the Bible can lead you to love? I think what we see a lot more in the example of Jesus that whether or not we can see someone's circumstance or feel someone's feelings, we are called to love them anyway. In the story of the Good Samaritan, for example, the Samaritan was a stranger. He was an outsider. He was someone that people rejected. And the Good Samaritan was the person who stopped on the side of the road to help this person who was bleeding and dying. Not because necessarily he could see his circumstance, but because he was doing a righteous deed, because he was glorifying God and loving. So you would say that's empathy.

>> Yeah. I would say remember why that story is being told. That story is being told because I I believe I'm reading the context right. That's Luke 10 if I'm remembering correctly. The lawyer uh goes to Christ and he's like, uh, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Inheriting eternal life, right? What must he do to do that? Jesus then says, "Love God and love your neighbor." And then the question the man asked back is, "How do I love my neighbor?" Yeah.

>> Right. So the way that we love our neighbor, right, is by when they're in that lowly place, seeing them, recognizing them, and stepping into that, just as like I said, Christ steps into our humanity, and then we we uh be bibl b biblical from there, right? It's not a >> and I would call that love. I wouldn't necessarily say that's empathy.

>> It can be, but I think and I make the argument in my book that empathy can lead you towards sacrifice and kindness, which is the ultimate goal through love. But I still believe that empathy can also lead you in a direction that is not biblical or healthy. And I think that's where we disagree.

>> That's definitely I think the law.

>> Hey, you did great defending your side. Good job.

>> Hi.

>> Hi. What's your name?

>> John.

>> John. Nice to meet you, John.

>> Nice to meet you, too. I think the immediate reaction, you said you guys are going to love this when you said the claim. And I think the reason is because it immediately is it puts people illities >> on edge.

>> On edge. Exactly. And I think I think the reason our heart feels that is because I think what we're suffering from right now on the right and on the left >> is a lack a massive lack of empathy for each other.

We're being fed algorithms that show each other these crazy versions of the other side and we don't look each other in the eyes and and feel for one another.

>> I understand that it can be um manipulated and that that you can as a response >> Yeah. to empathy. Um, make some poor choices. Like the first thing that comes to mind is like a drug addict who's like, "Oh my gosh, I need something." Yeah, we agree. You Yeah. Okay.

>> So, uh, but that that's a response to something. And my fear with with what you're talking about is that it's going to be misinterpreted and harden hearts more than open them up. The the risk is not worth what you're trying to get at in my sense.

>> Yeah. So what I'm arguing is not that we necessarily have to kill empathy, but that there is something deeper and better. Because I might not be able to understand the thinking or the circumstance of someone who is across the aisle from me or someone in a totally different situation than me, but whether or not I can feel for them, whether or not I think they've been cruel, whether or not they have supported things that I don't like, God has made them in his image. God has died for them as Jesus on the cross, and I am called to love them. Regardless of how I feel. So what I see a lot I see a lot people say, "Well, I can't feel empathy for that person," or "That person wasn't empathetic, so I don't feel empathy for what they went through." And see, that to me shows the superficiality and the kind of just the lack of strength, the weakness of empathy as a driving force. I think love >> I would agree with that >> and virtue are a lot more powerful.

>> I understand that. I think I think that the average Joe isn't going to download all that. I think they're going to get from your message.

>> I wrote a book on it.

>> Well, great. Is everybody going to read it though? They hear they see that title and and I hear it too. It's not just you. There's this thing and you know it's it's it's a quip. It's quick. It's easy to say and tweet. But the issue is um I I think I think the problem with a lot of these hot button topics we talked about like the hierarchy of sin.

>> Yeah.

>> I think it's because a lot of times on the right it's the things you're not able to identify with that you're feeling. Why do you think homosexuality is it's it gives people on the right the ick in a lot of ways cuz they don't get it. They're not they're not entering into that. And so it's easier to say, "Oh, that is outrageously God is frowning on that as opposed to um as opposed to pride um as opposed to the disparity between >> we should look at all of those as sins. But I'm probably the only one in this room right now that would say that both of those things that you just listed are sins." And that's really kind of the disparity and the disagreement that we see is that even if I have empathy for someone, that does not mean I am going to affirm a sexual identity or so-called gender identity that does not align with the Bible. And that's what I see a lot from my progressive friends. And that's why I wrote the book, not as a quip, not as just a hot take to put out there, but actually because I see very well-intentioned, compassionate, deeply feeling people use empathy to justify things that I think are not only unbiblical, but destructive for society, whether it's immigration or gender or marriage or social justice. All of that starts with, "Well, I feel how this person feels." And that leads, I believe, to supporting policies that are bad for that person and bad for >> I understand where you're coming from. It's it's it's the parent who's not going to let their kid do things that are going to hurt them out of love. It's it's I totally get it. I don't draw the lines in the same places as you. But >> but you get the >> But I get I know I understand the the essence of it. I think what's what's upsetting is that we need to lean further into identifying with one another and loving each other. Jesus talks about us being the vine and the branches. Your pain should be my pain. And we shouldn't just go, "Oh, you're on the right and you're on the these these these labels." Like Jesus actually wasn't either party. That's not what he was doing. He was breaking down all these divides of neither neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female. To me, I think today he would say neither right nor he's he's trying to break us into some sort of shared humanity that is transcendent of of our our our left-right argumentative mind that takes control of these so often and leads people into an actual place of transformation with a real living spirit. Right? That's what we're talking about here, right? We're talking about if you go inward, you're going to find something that's going to change you. >> So where we disagree invite people into that place as opposed to drawing lines and labels that make people harden immediately. Then God will take care of the rest.

>> We agree. We agree on so much and I love so much of what you said and I hope that people hear it because it's really important. So thank you for saying that. I actually think that when empathy leads us to sin and to validate lies that it leads us to very harmful places. So, I argue that this form of toxic empathy, not all empathy, but this form of what I argue is toxic empathy, blinds us to reality and morality. It makes us forget about the victim on the other side of the moral equation. So, not that we're going to rehash abortion again, just to give you an example of where I'm coming from. So, when we have so much strong empathy for the woman, her plight, what she's going through, and we say, "I have to support her right to choose because I feel her plight." What we've done there is we've ignored the humanity and the need and the rights of that child inside the womb. We have sacrificed on the altar of empathy, a living human being. When it comes to the gender debate, because we feel so deeply for this person over here who says they're born in the wrong body, we forget about all the women and girls over here who are now denied their fairness and their right.

>> Sure. But without digging in, >> you did great.

>> Thanks. Yeah, you too. Thanks. My final claim is progressivism and Christianity are at odds.

>> Hello Danny.

>> How's it going?

>> So good.

>> Should we define progressivism?

>> Yeah. Thank you so much. I would love to hear kind of where you're going on kind of an ideological >> Okay. So I was thinking about this and it's so broad. I don't know if we're going to be able to agree on an answer and a clear definition. So I'm happy to workshop it with you. But I kind of define progressivism as the belief that morality and truth evolve with culture and the human experience and that that would kind of encompass a lot of the what I would call progressive views on sexuality and gender, even economics and justice. Um, what do you think about that definition?

>> I think it's fabulous stuff. I think it's I think God is pulling us into greater levels of understanding of God's grace and justice and story and all that. So, I would agree with that.

>> So, what do you think our authority is when we're trying to figure out what's moral and what's not? Well, I think so, we're going to use the word authority maybe differently. I look at scripture, but I think you and I look at scripture certainly differently.

>> Yeah. How do you how when you're looking at scripture, how do you decide, okay, yes, this is right. I need to listen to what Jesus says about praying for my enemies, but when he talks about the definition of marriage, I don't think that's literal. How do you work with that?

>> Yes, I imagine we're both talking about the 66 book Protestant Bible as well. It's a lot of different compositions of scripture and all that, but I mean, I would look at it in terms of context. I try really hard not to prove text in anything. I try really hard not to pull something out and say, you know, the Bible says it, that settles it. I think if any Christian, progressive or conservative, tells you that they're a liar. The Bible is not a parlor trick and it's not something that ought to be proof texted. So, I think in the whole totality of scripture, the story that God is weaving and the story that God is writing, which is a story of God and us, like both of us. And that's not because we agree. It's because God loves us, both of us. God is telling a story of greater levels of justice and redemption. We look at this through you talked about America being founded on Christian biblical principles, right? There were a lot of my friends of color that were up here that the Bible would have condemned their personhood. The Bible would have >> con people how people interpreted the Bible may have condemned their personhood, but the Bible didn't change and God didn't change. Hebrews 13:8 says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So, he and his word don't change, but I agree. I think we both agree that human beings are fallible, that we're finite, and that we don't always get it right. I would say there's one correct interpretation of scripture, and that we do our very best to do exactly what you said, to read everything in context to try to understand what that correct interpretation is.

>> I don't have a lot of time. Can I ask you a question?

>> Sure.

>> Where do you think maybe you were getting it wrong?

>> Where do you think when >> when you're interpreting scripture? Because who gets to be the arbiter of what's right and wrong? Like the people that thought slavery was just, they felt certainly right. The people that have oppressed women have felt certainly right. I feel certainly right that the Bible doesn't condemn queer people and I would affirm that there are things I probably get wrong. Would you say that there's anything you think you have missed the mark on or that you're open to?

>> Oh, I'm sure because I'm a fallible person and so I could never say that I am the infallible interpreter, but of course I want to take the word of God as seriously in context as possible. And you know, there were Christians who tried to justify all kinds of things using scripture, as you I'm sure would agree with. But also the abolitionist movement was motivated and led by Christians who were inspired by that very same Bible. In it is the gospel, of course, which says all people are made in God's image and equally dead in sin apart from Christ. By grace through faith you have been saved. And so yes, human beings get it wrong. God does not get it wrong and God does not change.

>> I agree with that. So, I would say I would love my friends across the aisle to have more humility. I don't think there's toxic humility. I think that when I look at scripture, I try really hard to come at it with humility. I take the Bible really seriously enough to dive into it and deconstruct it and find places that are not congruent with the story that God is writing, places that don't make sense, that are out of context, places that affirm the stories that are being said. I am certainly not right 100% of the way. And when I get up and preach in front of my congregation, I say that to them. I'd let them know like, "I am a person diving into God's word with you."

>> See, I would argue that you're making yourself the authority because you could read clearly for example that Romans 1 condemns homosexuality, but you're saying I find that congruent with the rest of scripture and you are deciding that that's not true. Whereas I might read something that, hey, is a little jarring for me. Wives submit to their husbands. That's important. That's Ephesians 5. Women should not be pastors. That's also in scripture. And those things, you know, as a woman, as a strong woman, I still have to submit myself to God's law and to God's word, even when it might feel difficult because I'm a sinful person in my flesh.

>> Yeah.

>> Thank you.

>> Hi.

>> Hi, Ally.

>> What's your name?

>> Colby.

>> Colby. Nice to meet you, Colby.

>> Nice to meet you. Progressive is a complicated term.

>> Yeah, it kind of is. It was hard for me to hear over there next to the fan. Can you redefine how you're using it?

>> Yes. So, how I'm defining it is the belief that morality and truth evolve with culture and the human experience, which I think encompasses probably the justification for a lot of progressive views on things like sexuality.

>> Okay, here's where I struggle with measuring that against Christianity.

>> Okay.

>> Progressive can be used as a noun, as an identity. Like, there are some people in this room that might identify as progressive.

>> Right?

>> That's kind of a moving target. Um, even >> progressivism is Yeah,

>> for sure. Progressive as a verb I think I'm far more interested in like an orientation, a way that you a posture that you approach the world.

>> I submit to you and I wonder how you feel about this, that in his context, Jesus would have been seen as a progressive as it related to, if we're going to use modern labels, the conservative uh religion of second temple Judaism. He had a posture of, "Look, there are some things that have gone astray. There are some things that you've heard it said, but I say to you." There's a belief, you know, progress is built into a progressive. There's a belief that we can do better, like things can get better. And so, there's a part of Jesus that I see had a posture as not a progressive, but just as being progressive. So, thoughts on that?

>> Okay. So say every single person in this country believed that transgenderism was right, that homosexuality is right, something to be celebrated, believed in gay marriage, okay? Except for this one person. And this one person started saying, "Nope, we've got it wrong. We need to change what we're doing here. I know that we've been doing this for a hundred years, but I don't agree with this, and I'm going to speak a different message." Would that person be progressive?

>> I didn't hear your your thoughts on Jesus. Oh, you are saying that I'm I'm trying to understand your logic. You are saying because Jesus was saying something different than the Pharisees and the Sadducees, saying something different than the message that a lot of people heard at the time that he was progressive. Really, what I would argue is that no, he was going back to what God's heart always was. When we see in Hebrews 11, for example, by faith Abraham, by faith Moses, we even read that by faith Moses considered the reproach of Christ more important to him than the riches of the Egyptians. So we actually see from the very beginning it was always faith in Christ. In the very beginning, God's law was always about heart posture obedience. So God wasn't bringing Jesus wasn't bringing something new. He was saying, "Hey, I am the Alpha and the Omega. I am the Word." As John 1 says, we're going back to how it was always meant to be.

>> Okay. But he was bringing new things. And I and I feel like in a different context you would bring foreign things different things.

>> Leviticus, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Jesus, "You've heard it said, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." He was he was adding. Okay. So there's not >> he doubles down. He says, "I don't think that's a doubling down." Ally, I think it's a I think it is a a progress of, "Hey, we live in a new world, a new time. Let's do things differently." So here's why I think >> I don't think so at all. Like in Matthew 19, for example, when he's asked about divorce and Pharisees are like, "Yeah, what about divorce and who's the wife in heaven and all of this stuff trying to trap Jesus as they did." He doesn't say, "I bring to you something new." He says, "Oh no, have you not read that in the beginning, he who made them male and female said the man will join the wife and the two shall become one flesh?" He goes all the way back to creation. And Jesus says, "I've not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law." Do you believe that Jesus is God?

>> I think you're misreading me. I'm not saying everything Jesus was teaching was a a a move forward. I'm saying he had a posture of saying, "We've gotten off track. We've lost the plot on some things." My point is this. the people in this room who identify liberal Christians, progressive Christians, I don't know what labels they use. Labels are helpful up until they're not. Like we at some point we always hit a point where it doesn't really fit anymore. For me, but I feel like we all have a a posture in this room of saying we

live in a different world now and could have ever been anticipated 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, except for by God because he knows everything.

Oh, sorry. You did great though.

Oh, yes. Great to meet you. Thank you. Oh my goodness, that was wild. Are you okay there, Paul?

I'm I was so desperate. Just so desperate to talk to you, man.

Oh, awesome. Well, you're here. Good job.

Let's go.

Are you okay with my definition of progressivism?

I'm not. And I was actually just

Okay, you're going to contend with it. Okay.

Yes. I believe progressivism is the unraveling of traditional ideas.

Unraveling is a great way to describe progressivism in my book, too.

Yes. Unraveling through discovery. We discover things over time. At one point slavery, uh, abolition of it was progressive. At one point

what did we discover?

We discovered through a moral truth through natural law of reason.

Where did we get that moral truth?

Through rationale.

Oh, really? Well, rationale rationalized slavery for a long time.

Yeah, I know. And then as

and rationalize child sacrifice and rationalize child prostitution. How can we trust our rationale to tell us these universal moral truths that we need to build our lives on?

As a collective, we use rationality as a tool to unpack logic that we see all the time. Now, what I want to ask. That's our rationale. You're in and my rational disagree so much.

Exactly. So we look over and we use rationality as a tool to unpack these things. What I want to get to you for example is how can you read anything right and you can't look at it in in the contextual or you can look at it in the contextual. A lot of people didn't think of the ideas we have today. You think for example, you said earlier that a woman should not be allowed to preach, right? Because you know, First Timothy says that.

Yeah. Now, there I will say there are Christians that are truly Christians that disagree with me on that. But yes.

Paul never said that. That's the thing. Paul is actually writing to Ephesians to tell Timothy to go ahead and tell the Ephesians to stop letting all their pagan worship get in there. That's actually the point of it because women were standing up in church and saying there's more God worship, materialism, all the gold.

I make that argument, but he goes all the way back to creation again. He says, "Cuz Adam was formed first, and then Eve." So, it seems to me like it's not cultural or circumstantial. He's going all the way back to Genesis to justify his reasoning for why women shouldn't lead in churches or why they shouldn't be pastors and preachers in churches. So, I don't see it as just something that had to do with women shouting at the time. Although maybe they

I'm not sure how you get from "he was created first, she was created second," and then "women can't talk in church."

Yeah. Well, I think that's a question for Paul, and I think that's something that we could debate. But my point is that clearly he's not just talking about something circumstantial. He's going all the way back. And I might have paraphrased that wrongly. He might have said that Eve sinned first, and then Adam. Someone out there can correct me, but he does go all the way back to creation.

Yeah. What's interesting about that is you're saying we can ask Paul, but that's your interpretation. I have a different interpretation. Now, what I want to ask, going back to you, is how do you know that you're correct? How do I know that I'm correct?

Yeah.

We use rationality to unpack these things. For example, there's no Jew nor Gentile. Uh, we talk about what is natural, what is unnatural. Even so, Aquinas and Augustine, right, and a bunch of other church fathers actually said that women were below men in order. Do you not believe we have equal roles in society?

I don't know that I think we have equal value, absolutely, as people who are made in the image of God. But I don't think that I have the perfect interpretation because I'm not a perfect person. But I do look to the word of God to be my authority and humbly, in humility, try to do the very best I can to understand all of it in context and apply it to my life. And I just find rationale, while really important, it's part of being made in God's image. He gave it to us. But to say that that is the determinant of morality, that's a really scary world. Think about what our rationale has rationalized for so long. But if we all just rested on this amazing fact that we are all made in the image of God, we all have innate rights. Well, that's how we get to the idea that we should abolish slavery. That's how we get the idea that we should treat people under our law with dignity and respect. Not rationale, but natural law that's rooted in scripture.

I never said that.

Hey, you did good. I know. Hey, what's your name?

Joseph.

Joseph, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I actually grew up Church of Christ, which is

Theological cousins of the Baptists. Okay. As I

Got it, maybe. So, I'm not sure. I haven't done that genealogy yet, but I'll trust you.

Um, well, we came out of the the Campbellite, Alexander Campbell movement. About that this prompt that progressivism and Christianity seem to be at odds with one another.

To me, feels like a, it's a repackaged, um, statement of of something that I've heard multiple times growing up that if you're a Christian, you have to vote a certain way.

Okay, that's not the claim that I'm making, but maybe I can come back and make that claim because I might. But I'm really talking more about the philosophy, the worldview of progressivism, that our morality, that our interpretation of scripture is constantly evolving based on how we feel and based on what the majority of society thinks. I just don't think that that's a good basis for deciding what's moral and what's right and what should be legal or illegal.

Do you think that our definitions of of certain ideas change over time? And would you say that that's wrong that they change over time?

For the Christian, I think we should be getting closer and closer to scripture. So I would argue, for example, when you had Christians who were justifying slavery using the Bible, and then we had Christians later who used that same Bible to fan the flame of abolition. William Wilberforce, for example, he was a great warrior for the truth and the dignity of people using the truth of the gospel. That that is people moving more into what the Bible says, not away from what the Bible says, based on society. Really, for all of time, most of the world had no qualms with slavery. Still today, slavery exists, uh, in non-western countries. So, I think if we change, we should be changing to be more in alignment with what's with what God's word says.

Right. And I, I think I, I would agree with you on that. And I think what our

You, you'd asked a previous person, "What leads you to that movement?" I, I believe that it's our, the Holy Spirit that we have that can lead us to justice, right? Micah 6:8, "Walk humbly, seek justice." And I think the question would be, which we probably disagree on and we don't have time to get into it now, is what justice looks like. And we know that God is one, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit in our hearts is not going to disagree with what God says in his word. And so if God says the justice or whatever is defined one way, then the Holy Spirit agrees with that. If we are feeling, "Ooh, I don't like what the Bible says," that's not the Holy Spirit.

Bob, thank you so much. Let's go talk to you.

Okay, let's go. Tim,

Do you believe that slavery is wrong?

Yes, of course.

Do you agree with John MacArthur's statements when he says that slavery can be great if you have the right master?

No, I don't. I don't know that statement in context. He's talking about slavery.

John MacArthur is a great teacher or was a great teacher.

But he said that. So, is he wrong on that thing?

But I've never read that quote. And so, I would have to know for sure exactly what he's talking about. But of course, I condemn all dehumanization and all objectification of people who are all made in the image of God. No person should be owned. It comes from the same belief that I have about abortion, that it's wrong to kill babies inside the womb. Do you think it's always wrong?

The problem with that though is that your evangelical fundamentalist tradition was on the other side of this conversation all the way. Bob Jones, the founder of Bob Jones University, used your exact same framework of how he saw the Bible to justify why the racist should say separate. And then he said he used all kinds of frameworks to justify all kinds of bad things. He used really imperfect people. He

used your framework and he kind of used my framework. He said that people, he said that people who wouldn't who would not see it his way are liberals are progressives trying to distort the truth of the gospel. This is the white evangelical tradition.

I think we should go further into scripture. I would say that he was unbiblical.

Paul says, "Slaves, obey your masters." Oh, it absolutely does.

It does not condone child slavery. I think it acknowledges that it is a part of society. Move the goalposts. I think it is acknowledges that it is a part of society, regulates it. The Torah regulates the image of God. I would argue prohibits the ownership of

And you would be on the side of the progressives if you were back in the day when race-based child slavery happened because you know what the argument was against that? Word of God has not changed. Yes, it's our different conversation, but the argument that's my argument. The argument would be this, um, if you were around during race-based chattel slavery, show me in the Bible where it condemned slavery, and they couldn't. That was the whole point. Saying that we are made in God's

image. Paul says, "Slaves, obey your masters." You agree with that statement.

Of course, I agree with the Bible.

Okay. So, you agree with the statement. The Bible does condone slavery.

Does not mean that does not mean that instituting slavery.

But that's not what I said. I said the Bible condones slavery. You said no, it doesn't. I brought a passage where Paul says, "Slaves, obey your masters." You said, "I agree with the Bible." In the book of In the book of Philemon, what happens in the book of Philemon? Do you know?

I'm asking you to I'm I gave you a passage. Book of

Hold on. You keep You are very good at this because you keep moving the goalposts. Okay.

How How am I moving the goalposts? I'm not going to let it go. Paul says, "Slaves, obey your masters." Is do you agree with Paul? "Wives, submit to your husbands." And this is all in the context of children submitting to their fathers. That does not mean that as an institution that he is condoning slavery. You're saying it's good. I think we can read God's heart behind that. Well, that's a, that's a, that's a deep interpretation that's not in the text.

What was not in the text?

Well, like I said, I'm, I'm going to hammer it again. Paul says

Saying that slavery is good.

Paul knew what was going on. He could have condemned it. Yes.

You think he's saying that slavery is good because Paul's a part of the talk about a different kind of slavery that existed, which was bond servant, for example. So people were in debt and so to pay their way out of debt, sometimes they would have bond service for a certain amount of time to pay their way into freedom. It was not always the same as the chattel slavery that we see in the 19th century in America, for example. And so it was a different context and it was a different time. That does not mean that any of us should condone slavery.

All I want to say is that you perfectly gave the framework for why we don't believe that homosexuality in the Bible is the same thing as it is today.

We see it over and over again.

No, no, no. It's the same thing. You can't say slavery in the Bible back then was contextual and different than what race-based child slavery is and then not do the same correct way. The Bible has prescriptive and descriptive allegory and poisons and literalism. And so we have to read everything in context. And when we see homosexuality not only explicitly condemned, but we also see again from creation all the way to Revelation 20 that it's an earthly reflection of an eternal reality, the marriage between Christ and the church, which is gendered, by the way, as we see in Ephesians 5. We see that reiterated over and over again. So, it's not only that the Bible condemns it again. It is the only relationship that God calls good.

I'll let it go. I'm fine with that.

You did great. You did really good. A lot of fun. We're out of time. So, thank you.

Can I just say that y'all all did really well and I've really enjoyed this and there's a lot of people that I want to bring here to continue to have productive conversations. Um, I'm going to go with Gilbert. The reason why is because I enjoyed our back and forth and I think that you have a very kind and sweet countenance and I think that we can have a conversation at least from a place of hoping to understand even if we don't agree.

Yay. Well, first of all, thank you Ally for choosing me.

So, my claim is the church's condemnation of same-sex relationships causes profound damage and unnecessary suffering to gay people. Okay. Can you please define damage and suffering for me in this context?

So, gay kids are 8 to 12 times more likely to commit suicide, especially if they come from religious homes. And it's because they have no way to express and I know we keep talking about sex, right? But I, I, what the conversation piece that I think is always missing is that it's more than just sex. It's about love. It's who you love with. It's the way that you're wired. And I know we'll disagree with this, but I really feel that in my mother's womb, God designed me this way. I'm not just born in sin principle this way. It's the way that I'm designed. It's the way that I kind of see the world. And I don't want to affirm a lot of stereotypes, but there's markers. You can tell when someone's gay. You don't have to watch them having sex, right? So, there's different ways that you can spot a gay person. And I think there's a reason for that. And I've noticed so many pastors' kids come out as gay. And I really feel like there's this movement. And when you were talking about how there was the, you know, the abolitionists who use the same Bible to come against slavery, there's also an affirming movement where the same people that love, like me, love the Bible, revere the Bible, are using that same Bible to say, "Hey, maybe we've misunderstood something. Maybe we were condemning same-sex behavior." Because in those circumstances, it absolutely was idolatrous, abusive, right? It wasn't about them being in committed, monogamous, covenantal relationships. And the whole totality of scripture tells us that if you love God with everything, your heart, your mind, your strength, your soul, everything, and you love your neighbor as yourself, you are keeping the whole law. Which is why when Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, they thought he was breaking the law. But see, he went full circle and said, "You don't understand. The law is made to show us how to love." And so, I think what really hurts me when I see myself, I see gay people, they want to fall in love. They want to be in love. They're terrified to tell their parents about what it is that I'm going through as a gay person to say, "Well, you just need to stay single because if you act on it, if you love someone, you're going to want to have sex with him. And if you have sex with him, that's evil and wicked and you're going to hell." When I see the LGBT community sometimes kind of, you know, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, kind of getting really, really rebellious. I kind of envision like the the good Christians that are all heterosexual are kind of guarding the well and we all have a God-shaped hole in our heart. We're all thirsty for something. And if you're saying you can't drink here with me because you're wicked.

Well, they have to satisfy that thirst somehow. So, they're going to go out and well, I can drink this. It's, you know, a deserted pool water or sewage or whatever it is. And I'm not trying to shade the gay community, but some people are like, you know what, Gilbert, I don't care. I don't care if I go to hell. I welcome going to hell because I have no healthy outlet. I can't wait until marriage because I could never even get married. And I think that that pushes people into promiscuity.

Okay. Well, thank you so much for explaining all of that. And first, I want to acknowledge that for people who are not attracted to the same sex, that it could be very difficult to understand the pain that someone would feel to hear, "Hey, it is not biblical for you to get married. It is not biblical for you to be in a relationship. It's not biblical for you to love in that way." I imagine that that is extremely difficult, extremely confusing, extremely distressing from an early age, especially if you are raised in a home that says, "Hey, this is what the Bible says about marriage and sexuality." And it's not that. So, I think we should acknowledge that while also acknowledging that each and every one of us sins, each and every one of us has a disordered desire. Each and every one of us has a feeling that is not in congruence with scripture. And God does not say, "Hey, well, you know what? If that feeling that you have, whether it's homosexual desire or whether it's desire to have sex with someone outside of marriage, if that feeling is strong enough, then you can just go ahead and do it." He asks us to do really difficult things. He literally asks us to take up a cross, which is a form of execution and to carry it. And I know Christians who lived openly as gay for a long time. that I'm not giving you some "pray the gay away" motto here, but people who truly have said, "I am living in repentance because everywhere I see holy sexuality described in scripture, it's between one man and one woman. I see the condemnation of homosexuality," and they have chosen, painfully yet joyfully, to take up that cross and deny themselves and to follow Christ. And that is what we are all called to.

But they're still gay.

I don't define people as that. I would say that they are Christians, maybe they struggle with same-sex attraction. And they, the problem, the word "same-sex attraction," it really is a way out of this conversation because it's erasing everything else that goes with it.

I think being having your identity tied to whom you want to have sex with is wrong. And I think that that, I agree that it's not the totality of who you are, but it's part of you. You're heterosexual, I'm assuming. Right. Right. Is that part of who you are? It is part of who you are. The same way that my being gay is part of who I am. It's not all of me.

But it is part of me and it will not change. So, I don't think that I'm making it my identity to just stress, "Hey, there's something going on with me that I want to talk about," because it's not just me ignoring something. And again, the whole ex-gay movement. The reason why that has even gone somewhere is because they've been successfully culturally able to redefine what gay means. It doesn't just mean, you know, that's why I have an issue with same-sex attraction. They're saying that if we redefine what gay is and make it about behavior, then we don't have to deal with the orientation part. And that's, I feel, what the bigger issue is, the orientation part. You're gay whether you act on it or not.

All of us are oriented towards sin in one way or another. But then we have people who, I'm not saying that these people who I'm talking about, I'm thinking of Rosaria Butterfield and Christopher Yuan and Becket Cook. And, you know, I don't know where all of them stand when it comes to their own feelings. And they wouldn't say necessarily that those feelings are going to go away in the same way that my desire to sin in other ways may never go away until glory. But we're saying that following Jesus, even when it's difficult, is worth it. And it might mean designing something that denying something that we really want.

I agree with you that we should avoid sin. But see again, there's I don't believe it's a sin to be gay.

How do you define sin and where do you get that definition?

Right. So, if we want to talk about the word "abomination," which a lot of people use for Leviticus.

Leviticus, right? To which is to go against ritual, right? And then the words, is it "chattah"? I can't pronounce the Hebrew, which is to miss the mark, right? Right. So, the difference. I believe that sin is to commit something that is unloving, right? To go against God's will and

How do you define love?

That's a great question. Um, well, love is an action. Love is a choice. Love is a decision, right? I love you. I just met you, but I love you. Um, I don't really know that any really anybody really has a strong definition. It could be different for different people.

Yeah. So, God is love. 1 John 4:8. When he says that, 1 Corinthians 13:6, that "love never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth." And when we see in separate parts of scripture that he calls homosexuality wrongdoing, it seems to me, well, he does in Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6.

Okay. Romans 1, then men were straight. They they abandoned their wives to be

I don't see that. I don't see that in it. Literally says that they abandon their women. Straight men don't have or gay men don't have women. They abandoned natural relations with women. It didn't say natural relations with their abandoned women.

Natural relationships were inflamed with lust for one another for one another. Lust is not love. They were inflamed with lust for one another. It goes on to say that they were God-hating, that they, uh, were murderers, that they were God, right, a lot about disorders. When you apply Romans 1 to gay people, that's my whole point. You're reading Sodom and Gomorrah and you think that gay people all want to gang bang each other and rape each other. Yes. I've never said that.

But so do you think that Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed because of homosexuality?

Well, let me read you Jude. Is it one?

Well, I know that they're they're comparable, but but with respect, a lot of people do.

Did Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire? So, actually, we read in the New Testament that Sodom and Gomorrah were actually because of that unexceedingly wicked. Do you think if you're exceedingly wicked, you're like, "We'll do everything but have weird sex"? They did it.

Why do you think that God called that out?

Because what are you calling weird sex?

Rape. That's pretty weird.

Yeah. I mean, of course, that's more

Trying to rape people is weird.

But they're intentionally calling out the homosexuality and that's not calling out homosexuality desire vague there.

No. Okay. We'll disagree on that part. Okay.

But and I will, I will say that on Romans 1, I really find it offensive that people think that that of gay people, that we all are we hate faith. We hate our parents. We're murderers. We're gossip. Somebody sat me down and told me that. They're like, "Look, Gilbert, this is this is you." I said, "Really? That's

You think that I'm this person?

Because Paul's describing who this kind of person is. And I think that, you know, earlier you were talking to somebody who, uh, you, you allowed context, right, about slavery.

I would hope that the church would be more open to hearing context about why these same-sex behaviors were condemned and not just think it was because they were the same sex.

Can I ask you a question that actually doesn't have to do with that? Do you believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven?

I absolutely do.

You do? You believe in John 14:6, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. That no one goes to heaven of dark. I'm so glad that we agree on that. So often I see when people deny Genesis 1:27 or they deny Romans 1, they also end up denying John 14:6. And so I'm glad that we agree on that.

State because I know people will read this be like, "Wow, Gilbert, I didn't know you felt this way." Um, it's because you won't have a savior. We're all going to be judged at the end of our life. And it's not that you're being punished for not believing in Jesus. It's you just won't have a savior. We're all going to be judged. So that's what it is. I want to have a savior. I, I had to learn what that was about. So I don't want people to think that I'm just being like, "Oh, Jesus will punish you for not believing him." It's because you won't have somebody on the final day to vouch for you.

Well, I think that's an interesting, an interesting way to say it. And I'm glad that we agree on John 14:6. That's really, really important. So thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you.

We did it.

We did. Yes.

Good job.

Thank you. Good to have you.

I thought Annie did a good job. I thought Danny did a great job. I thought Gilbert did a good job. Both Paul's tent, like I had honestly, a lot of people did a really good job and were civil while not backing down off of their point and I respected that.

I felt like she listened to me a lot. I have these conversations with conservative Christians all the time and they don't always listen as much.

Generally pretty respectful of the people that were talking with her, which I think was refreshing and I'm thankful for that.

I thought she was a very dishonest debater. I didn't interrupt her at all. She interrupted me eight times. Uh, I had a counter, you know, in my pocket the whole time and she spoke the entire time. She was speaking to a brick wall.

I thought that she was on top of her stuff and she was actually really good at doing kind of a circular conversation and getting away for when the points were getting really good.

I mean, she obviously knows her positions, but she can't really pivot, is my opinion. I think Democrats and Republicans could come together more than they do right now if we can agree on some fundamental things. For example, that political violence is always wrong, that you should be free to speak your mind no matter how controversial your opinion is, that debate is very healthy, and that we should get out the things that we think and duke it out in the battlefield of ideas and let the best idea win. I hope to show you that truth and love can and should coexist. That you can see someone's humanity, have compassion for them, understand where they're coming from without wavering on the truth of God's word at all.

There's actually a lot more, I think, things that we have in common than that that we have in in opposition.

Do you think we'll ever fully come together?

I hope so. One of my favorite songs is Michael Jackson's "We Are the World." So, yeah, I kind of live that way.