Gay and Christian: 2 Views
⭐ This Theology Lab video looks at what it means to be Gay and Christian from two different views. Moreover, it considers what friendship and church looks like across differences. In this respectful and thoughtful conversation, authors and faith leaders Sally Gary and Gregory Coles share two distinct perspectives on LGBTQ+ identity, Christian faith, and the Bible. This video is ideal for those exploring theological learning, curious faith, and more nuanced conversations around sexuality within the church. Perfect for folks looking for a different kind of conversation being gay, Christianity, and the church, or those looking to engage Scripture and identity with honesty, compassion, and depth. If you're navigating questions of faith, sexuality and how two thoughtful Christians who care about the Bible and deep thinking life speak into these topics, this video offers a space for thoughtful reflection and respectful dialogue.
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Description
This Theology Lab video looks at what it means to be Gay and Christian from two different views. Moreover, it considers what friendship and church looks like across differences. In this respectful and thoughtful conversation, authors and faith leaders Sally Gary and Gregory Coles share two distinct perspectives on LGBTQ+ identity, Christian faith, and the Bible. This video is ideal for those exploring theological learning, curious faith, and more nuanced conversations around sexuality within the church. Perfect for folks looking for a different kind of conversation being gay, Christianity, and the church, or those looking to engage Scripture and identity with honesty, compassion, and depth. If you're navigating questions of faith, sexuality and how two thoughtful Christians who care about the Bible and deep thinking life speak into these topics, this video offers a space for thoughtful reflection and respectful dialogue.
Resources
📚 Check out Greg's book, Single, Gay Christian: https://www.gregorycoles.com/book-single-gay-christian/
Check out Sally's book, Affirming: https://www.eerdmans.com/9781467460880/affirming/
Check out Sally's organization: https://www.centerpeace.net/about
Generated Transcript
speaker-0 (00:00.28)
Greg Cole, Sally Gary, thanks so much for joining Theology Lab. Let's get started with this question here. What is a reason that it is important for us to have conversations on being gay in the church, conversations on same-sex relationships?
speaker-1 (00:15.052)
Yeah, you know, I grew up at a time when there was absolutely no conversation around faith and sexuality. I grew up in the church, a very conservative church in Texas. And so my church wasn't having any conversations and wouldn't for decades.
If there was anything mentioned, it was sending a message very clearly that this was a taboo conversation. And yet there were people who were gay who were in our church. No one said that. No one certainly used that word back in the sixties or seventies, not even in the eighties or nineties, right? But there
there were always people in the churches that my family was a part of who were gay. And so the very clear message and the belief was that there is no one who is gay in our church. And that was a lie. It certainly sent the message that if you are, you are not welcome here. There is no.
place for you within the body of Christ. And so the most important reason I see, even today, still today, we need to have these conversations because you have LGBTQ folks in your congregation. And we would never want to send the message that anyone is excluded from the body of Christ.
So the more we can have very open candid conversations, if children grow up knowing that those conversations are not taboo in your church, then nobody ever has to get the idea that, if that's me, I don't belong here and there's no place for me with God. And sadly, that's the message historically that we have sent to so many people.
speaker-1 (02:30.186)
over the last several decades.
speaker-0 (02:34.85)
Thanks for sharing that. Greg, how about you?
speaker-2 (02:38.082)
Yeah, I had a hunch I was gonna get to say amen to Sally a lot during this conversation. So it's refreshing to be able to just kick us off by being like amen to everything Sally just said. Yeah, I think the, so many of us try to treat silence as if silence is a lack of information that we're communicating. And I think we forget that our silence communicates in really powerful ways. So that's so significant. I think another reason that I have found these conversations really valuable is that I think ultimately questions about
like how we follow Jesus with our bodies, how we steward our sexualities. There are questions about discipleship. And I think to get to have a really good and thoughtful conversation about discipleship can and should be a gift to the whole body, even in maybe especially in the ways that we find ourselves disagreeing and clashing against one another in tricky ways, because they force us to go back to the question of like, who is Jesus?
And what does the fact that we follow Jesus change about how we live our lives? And so I think to engage that conversation well can be such a gift for the way we understand what it means to be disciples.
speaker-0 (03:50.478)
I appreciate those responses. We had Jonathan Tran on the beginning of the series and he said something like, he's like, if the church, he's like, the church should be the place where both important and interesting things are talked about. And if they're not, then then we should have a lot of introspection to do. Um, so thanks for getting us started and saying, yes, this matters. We should talk about it. Um, I want to go right into, uh, the topic of the Bible and reading scripture. Um, this is this like a charge topic when it comes to the church.
and human sexuality and views on this and how to navigate this topic. So one thing I wanna qualify, wanna begin, preface my question with, right? Is this this affirmation? If you read single gay Christian, if you read affirming, it is very clear that both of you have wrestled with the Bible, that where you are, your position on same sex relationships and being affirming or not has just come.
through a lifetime of journeying and thinking about how do I, how do I think about the Bible? What does it, what does it say? How do I, how do I live that out? so I want to just, I want to note that cause I'm going to be asking you something really narrow and specific here, right? all that said, can you tell me about like a passage or a pattern, a theme within scripture that's been particularly important for the place that you have arrived?
speaker-2 (05:15.47)
Yeah, I'll kick us off. So for me, a really important theme to wrestle with as I wrestled with my theological understanding about sexual ethics was to wrestle with the kindness of Jesus. Because I think when I started this journey, I assumed, I knew Jesus to be kind and some part of me assumed like, well, and because Jesus is kind, that's why I should ultimately land on
of you that affirms same-sex marriage, right? Because Jesus is kind and he would want good things for me. And yet as I came to scripture and read some of the words of Jesus through the lens of his kindness, I realized that he was saying some stuff like when he talked about marriage and immediately went back to the creation of male and female in Genesis 1 and 2.
or when he used the Greek word pornea, which sort of broadly spoke to the ancient world's understanding of sexual immorality, which included among other things, same-sex sexual relationships, I realized it seems like Jesus is either saying these things and not realizing that they're coming across to his audience as not including same-sex marriage. And he just sort of missed that, which didn't strike me as Jesus-like, or he's saying those things and yet, and realizing.
and yet somehow not caring what that would do for people like me to be like, it's kind of a bummer, but maybe in 2000 years the church will figure it out and then, know, and then gay people will be fine. I realized it was one of those two things, or maybe Jesus was so kind that he actually saw and knew how to speak to somebody in my position and actually had a word of kindness for me that just wasn't like the kindness that I had been looking for.
that actually in my case, maybe the invitation to singleness was an even kinder invitation than I had anticipated that it would be. So certainly, mean, as Sally and I will discuss, there are other ways of reading and understanding the theme of the kindness of Jesus, but for me, that through line has been so significant in how I've landed where I have in terms of my understanding of marriage.
speaker-0 (07:21.166)
Yeah, yeah. In a moment, I'm going to ask you guys to speak to kind of what both of you share. Sally, though, can you give us a sense of what's been important to you?
speaker-1 (07:30.166)
Yeah, and amen back to Greg there, particularly on the kindness of Jesus. Genesis 1 through 3 was important to me too, you know, being raised in a tradition that highly regarded Scripture. I needed Scripture to make sense to me in the ways that I had been taught.
while it would take far more time than we have time for from me to fully flesh that out as to how I arrived at an affirming view, I know that the second chapter of Genesis was particularly important to me when God says to Adam, it's not good for you to be alone.
I wrestled with that because that was not in the context of a church potluck. It was in the context of the most intimate of relationships. And for God to say, it's not good for you to be alone. I remember asking church leaders for years, what do we do with that then?
How do we really and truly respond to that, to people who are single, for whatever reason, if it's not good for me to be alone? Another part of scripture that became really important to me was in the book of Acts. It's not really the passages on
you know, the prohibition passages of same-sex relationships. It's the totality of Scripture and in Acts when we see things that by law have been completely prohibited. You've got Philip going to the Ethiopian eunuch when eunuchs were strictly forbidden from going into the temple to worship. And here's the Holy Spirit directing Philip to run.
speaker-1 (09:55.704)
to the eunuch and all of that changes. Jesus comes to the eunuch, right? In Acts 10, Peter's dream in which the fleece is opened up and the things that were forbidden for the Jewish people to eat, all of a sudden, it's okay. God says, and eat and Peter argues with him.
which is typical Peter, right? And then in Acts 15, when the Jerusalem council meets and they decide all of a sudden that Gentiles can be included within the body of Christ. Those are things that indicate a re-examining of law.
a re-examining of tradition, a re-examining of teaching based on the needs of people. And we could name instances of Jesus doing that himself in Matthew 12, when he is with the disciples and the Pharisees get all over them for eating grain on the Sabbath, strictly forbidden by the law. And Jesus says basically,
let's consider the needs of these people, they're hungry. And so all of that combined with getting older and realizing that this was not as easy to live out life of aloneness as I had once thought, all of that combined gave me pause.
speaker-0 (11:50.562)
Hey, it's Scott here. Thanks for watching this Theology Lab video. If you're enjoying it, you can subscribe to the channel below and you'll get more Theology Lab videos as soon as they're released. I want to come back to specifically this theme of companionship and desire in just a moment. But Sally, you have lifted up a different other pattern within scripture, this pattern of kind of a movement to expanding and race. Greg, you know,
I know you've, I'm sure you've thought about this. Can I ask like what, what do you think about that? What do think about how Sally's shared about this notion of embrace and that expansiveness in scripture?
speaker-2 (12:33.07)
Yeah, certainly. I think it's worth noting this really significant shift that happens with the arrival of Jesus in the early church, how rethinking happens. And I also love the idea of us grappling with, how do we receive that in an ongoing way to practice the same things that the early church practiced under the encouragement of Jesus?
It's interesting, so Sally mentioned the Jerusalem Council. And one of the things that's interesting to me about the message that the Jerusalem Council sends as they're saying, like, bring the Gentiles on in. We realize we'd put up these barriers. Those barriers don't belong. But they said, you know, here are a few basic things we want you to teach the Gentiles. And on their list, I think their list only has four things. And one of the things on the list is abstain from sexual immorality.
And so it seems to me that there's a sense that as this expansion is happening, there's still an understanding from the early church leaders, like, but there are core things that have always been true of the message of the people of God that we wanna make sure continue to be true as the gates of the kingdom are thrown wide open to welcome all kinds of people. So I'm a big fan of us practicing all the wide-armed inclusive embrace that Jesus and the early church do.
But I think insofar as it seems to me like Jesus and the early church are inviting people in and then saying, here's what it looks like to walk in the way of holiness, I guess I wanna continue to do the best that I possibly can to try to align my vision of what that way of Jesus looks like with the pattern of Jesus himself. Yeah, I've sometimes joked that when the sheet is sent down to Peter with all the things to eat on it,
Like that I sort of wish the sheet had been lifted down to Peter and there'd been like a naked man on there. And you know, the spirit was like, go for it, Peter. And it's just like, that's not, that's not what happens. Like that's not the way the spirit interacts with, with the early church. And so I just want to try to follow the trajectory in the ways the trajectory seems to go and not extrapolate beyond where it goes.
speaker-0 (14:44.014)
Sally, would you be, I wanna be both mindful of time, but I really do wanna stay with this. So I'm gonna ask, could you respond to one of two things here? Could you either respond to what Greg is saying here about what is explicitly kind of addressed within the Jerusalem council in Acts 15, how you think about that? Or also the other option I wanna put out there is something Greg mentioned earlier where Jesus.
Some people say like Jesus doesn't speak to this. Some people say that Jesus makes a reference that goes back to the Old Testament, Levitical laws. But like, bring up at least the point, like, why didn't Jesus address this more explicitly?
speaker-1 (15:20.298)
that last part is a wonderful question and I don't know the answer to that. I completely agree with Greg that the prohibition against sexual immorality for the Gentiles who are coming in, certainly, I want to live by that too.
I believe in a traditional Christian sexual ethic of covenant and commitment. When my wife and I married nearly five years ago, that was our desire to have a covenant for life, a monogamous covenant for life. And so that idea of sexual immorality to
To me, there were things that were not known. Sexual orientation was not something that they would have been familiar with at that time. And so that's something new that we've learned. I don't equate my sexual orientation as being immoral. And so my being gay and
committing to a woman for life in a monogamous, faithful covenant is, I would not put that in the same category as sexual immorality. So that's the distinction that I would make.
speaker-0 (17:09.452)
So actually here's the reason I want to ask you about desire and longing for companionship. And here's the reason, you both, you, you, you go to different places. I think I'm like, we have this innate desire to be with others, right? Maybe that's friendship. Maybe that's in like a partnership and a marriage. we have that you both speak to it. You go, you, you arrive at different conclusions, but you both say very, I found very
Beautiful powerful things when you spoke about desire and longing Can you give me just can you give us a sense of? Where what do you what is the what role you see playing with? Having a deep and a deep desire for partnership for lifelong covenant partnership with another person And then how you understand that like how you if that's something that you don't feel like you can affirm What does that mean for you if that's something you feel like?
had played a role in coming to being affirming, what did that look like?
speaker-1 (18:15.29)
I'm quite a bit older than Greg. I'm from a different generation. I'll just own that. And so I lived for a very long time holding to the same beliefs as Greg. I know what it is like to
be committed to a life of aloneness. And yet there is certainly companionship through relationships, friendships, church community, and Greg just very naturally draws people to him in that. I did too. And I've...
I've never not had that church community. And yet the older that I got, I realized that there was more to this desire within me, and I can only speak for myself, for companionship that went beyond.
friendship that went beyond intentional community in which you live with other friends because those friends can move, right? They can take other jobs in other places and yet in a committed covenant, you go through life together and that's what I was longing for. I used to ask
church leaders, you know, for so long we thought that this is just about the sexual relationship, that it was just about sex, but it's so much more. It's about having somebody that you sit out on the deck with at night and you plan what you want to plant in the backyard and you figure out what you're gonna...
speaker-1 (20:36.14)
buy people for Christmas presents and you wrap those Christmas presents together and you put up the tree together and when one of you is sick, there's somebody who's just built in and you don't have to make arrangements for somebody to come and stay with you when you have a surgery. There are all those things that sometimes
as good and as wonderful as I have experienced church community. There's not that understanding that at the end of the day, I still go home by myself.
That's what we must have conversations about because if my brother Greg believes that he is called to a life of celibacy and living by himself, then I am called to care for him in that and support him in that. And that means I live differently because of that.
It's so easy for us to get caught up in our little nuclear families who require so much and we forget, but we're very adamant about calling him to live in a certain way. We must also care for his needs.
speaker-2 (22:06.688)
I said to quote my father, that'll preach. Yeah, I love so much the idea that any of us who believe, whether because we don't believe that same-sex marriage is an option or simply because we acknowledge that even if it were, there might still be some people who Jesus calls to celibacy. Either way, if we believe there are people who are called to that, then we dang sure better also see ourselves as
the people who are collectively called as the body to make that vocation livable. It's interesting, Sally, I mean, there are so many things that I appreciate about hearing your reflection. One of which is simply the recognition that though you're still very young, you have lived some more life than me. And so, yeah, I always wanna hold my own story and experience with the humility of saying like, I...
I'm 34, like I just barely passed my Jesus years. And yeah, life has a lot of life-ing yet to do. It's interesting for me to hear you use the word aloneness to describe your experience, because I both honor that that was part of your experience and also that at least doesn't yet feel like.
the word I would want to use to characterize my own experience. I think in part because I've had such like beautifully rich community in my life over the years. And also in part because my own experience of longing, which persists, I'm not suggesting like, I just made some good friends, you know, we spent a lot of dinners together and then boom, the longing was solved. But
For me, the ongoing experience of longing that exists within my singleness, my celibacy, has been not so much a feeling of aloneness as it has been a sort of repeated invitation to find company with Jesus in really sweet and intimate ways. And I recognize that I am an embodied human and my...
speaker-2 (24:27.616)
my intimacy with Jesus is not in this moment an embodied one. And yet I'm also so captivated by reading the book of Revelation and seeing that the thing we're headed to is this fully embodied marriage between Christ and his bride, the church, of which I am not the whole bride, but I'm like a piece of the bride, you know? And so there's a sense in which all of that longing that exists within me currently becomes sort of a driving force toward
toward the marriage that is to come. And so in that way, I think there was a time in my life when people engaged with me as if I was a very eligible bachelor. And yet I think increasingly, I feel like the better way to describe my state is that I feel kind of like I'm betrothed to someone. Yeah, that I've fallen in love with a 2000 year old Jewish dude and I'm just waiting for the wedding.
And there's great beauty in that. There's great longing in it. And yet I think that's appropriate. There's a wonderful, wonderful line from C.S. Lewis's novel, Till We Have Faces, where one of the heroines, Psyche, is describing her sense of longing. And she says, was when I was happiest that I longed most. And I think.
Increasingly, at least in my best moments, my experiences of longing have been experiences of deep happiness in the midst of deep longing.
speaker-0 (25:59.79)
Allow me to say two things back to both of you. One is there are these are moments I'm I'm moderating this conversation. I'm I don't need to share my views here. So these are even if I disagreed with you, things that were powerful to me. And, you know, Sally, one thing I would say on this topic, it was it was reading about when your life was so full of friendship. Right. And yet you still had this desire for the companionship that you just talked about. And I thought, wow, that's
That's really significant. Like that should, that should give anyone who's who can identify as a Christian a moment to pause and to think about what that would mean. And then, oh my, like I just, Greg, the, thing I was going to note in your book, and this is unbelievable because Sally literally just said it to you, uh, is you say it nicely, but in my head, I can only think it in like a wonderfully mean way where you say like, Hey, maybe the problem isn't, you know, having to choose celibacy. Maybe it's that the church just hasn't done a good enough job.
and making that a viable option. But what I heard from Sally was to say, hey, kind of, respect you and the decision you've made. And it's my job as a Christian to love and support you. I don't, Sally, I don't know how you get to a place like that, but it's almost impossible not to see Christ in a statement like that. So I want to get into another difficult topic here of, of.
thinking about a church, I'm going to kind of paint a somewhat ambiguous hypothetical idea of like of a church and then how you would navigate this, where you see possibilities, where you see challenges. Okay. So just imagine kind of a church or churches where there are mixed views, um, views that are affirming and views that are not affirming. And if that church wants to be kind of more encompassing to all of its people, um, I wonder for both of you, could you, could you speak to, you know, what
what would be appealing about that to you, but what might also just be a difficulty, something that would be challenging.
speaker-1 (28:02.728)
So there's a book by Ken Wilson called A Letter to My Congregation that came out several years ago. I'm not sure on the date, but it was from a pastor who tried what was called the third way of a church that had both affirming and non-affirming
staff members and members of the congregation who held to both views. So Greg and I would both be at this church, right? Karen and I would come, Greg would be a member of the church and we would all be there together. I, such a long time, and there's still a great heart,
in me for wanting everybody to stay together. Maybe it's the only child in me that just wants a whole bunch of brothers and sisters and doesn't want anybody to be separated. And yet that's really hard. I have gone to some workshops that Ken and members of his church staff did talking about their experiences. And I have been a part of
non-affirming churches for the vast majority of my life. And I know as someone now in a same-sex marriage that that is difficult because there are always limitations. That view of marriage is such that
there were limitations placed that aren't placed on anyone else. And so even if you view same-sex marriage as being sinful and therefore someone should refrain from roles of leadership or participating in worship, it is not consistent.
speaker-1 (30:27.502)
with the way we respond to other people that we would, we're all sinful. And so the inconsistency there became very problematic for me. It was very difficult to enter into that space. It ultimately became very hurtful to be in a space where what
what I had chosen after deep study of scripture and discernment with leaders in the church, what was then still seen as sinful on my part. That was extremely hard to stay in that. Do I wish there was a way that we could do that without restriction?
without limitations? Yeah. I don't know. I don't know if that is possible.
speaker-0 (31:35.83)
Sally, just before I go to you, Greg, just if can put about to you, Sally, is this, am I right in hearing this to say like the challenge there is that if there's not a full embrace of your spiritual gifts and what you bring to that community, just going to create a possibly insurmountable obstacle or am I not hearing that right and saying, maybe this could be possible with certain.
agreed upon compromises? I don't know.
speaker-1 (32:08.118)
Certainly the inconsistency.
speaker-1 (32:15.35)
the inconsistency would have been the biggest barrier for me in viewing what I did in getting married as a barrier then for my full participation in using the gifts God had given me that I had been allowed to use prior to getting married.
and not applying that same standard to others in the congregation. It made it very clear that my marriage was viewed as a barrier. so not only was it not supported, it was looked down upon.
in that way, whether that was verbalized or not, that was the way it played out, if that makes sense.
speaker-0 (33:19.148)
I see, that's helpful.
speaker-2 (33:20.94)
Yeah, I'll start with my hesitations so as to conclude on a upbeat note. I think my main hesitation and it reflects a lot of what Sally's describing. I think in my observation, churches that are trying to be sort of like truly and categorically third way, we have no bias whatsoever in either direction. It seems that they ultimately end up still functioning.
as if you're straddling the fence, you're sort of leaning on one foot or the other, so to speak. Yeah, this is something that I think I've seen structurally, but I've also just sort of heard reports from people who were in some of those contexts and kind of shared, know, I felt like in theory, I was supposed to be sort of equal 50 % of how this congregation was functioning. And yet in practice, that wasn't what I experienced.
So I some practical and logistical questions about the efficacy. Of course, mean, I think ecclesiology, the question of like how we do church and community together has been a grand experiment since the first century. So I'm not one to so quickly foreclose every possibility as to be like, I've solved ecclesiology. Honestly, every time I think about ecclesiology hard enough,
I realize how badly I want to become Catholic because Protestant ecclesiology is just so dang messy. But then I think enough about Catholicism and I realized that there are certain sticking points that would be a difficulty for me because I'm deeply Protestant. So it's a problem. Anyway, yeah, I have questions, but the fact that I have questions doesn't mean it can't work. It just means that my own fragile human mind has failed to sort it out. With respect though to what I think,
could be beautiful about those communities. think one thing that I've realized, so I'm currently part of a community that we are, we're in a denomination that decidedly has a view around its understanding of marriage. And so for instance, asks those who are ordained in the denomination not to perform same sex marriages. And yet as our local congregation within the context of that denomination,
speaker-2 (35:46.894)
We've chosen to very much by intention say all the local roles that are sort of our responsibility to steward, those are equally open to everybody across difference of opinion on this question. And so it means that in function, our community does include a pretty significant mix of folks who have different theological views. And one...
anticipation that I had before I was in a community like that, I thought to myself, maybe all the people who agree with me theologically, they'll be like the good supports in my celibacy. And all the people who disagree with me will sort of condescendingly be like, Coles, you fool, know, someday you'll get your head on straight and you'll meet a nice young man and then we'll finally start supporting you. And yet my experience of being in the church community that I'm in,
is that my friends who theologically affirm same-sex marriage and think in theory that it could be perfectly possible for me to seek out a male spouse have nonetheless been some of my most tremendous cheerleaders, some of the people who have walked most closely with me through seasons of difficulty. been like family, they are like family to me. This is an ongoing thing we experience. Similar to what Sally said so beautifully before about her desire to
to support my understanding of my call to celibacy. I have experienced that in my local church body. so I, even as I say, like, I don't know how the third way experiment works, I can also attest to my own experience that some of the folks I know who disagree with me on this question have nonetheless offered some of my richest visions of the ways that Jesus is meeting me in my life.
And I don't know how to square that circle, so I just add it to all the other messy Protestant things that I don't understand.
speaker-0 (37:46.574)
I have to one more question coming from me and it's kind of a question I want to put to you so that the folks who watch this video our audience here can reflect a little bit more. Could you name, can you name one way where you feel like you have been misunderstood by those who have a different view from you and then just one thing you would ask them to consider?
speaker-1 (38:14.734)
Greg, I'm gonna let you go first on this one.
speaker-2 (38:17.742)
I will do so with joy and honor. So to be clear, this is not a misunderstanding I feel I've experienced from Sally. I'm sure you were sweating bullets about it, Sally. But I think with some folks with whom I've interacted and kind of explained, know, here are my convictions about
Christian marriage and singleness, here are the reasons I've chosen to be single. I think there are some folks who quickly assume that there is some kind of like a dislike of myself, a rejection of the body, a desire to distance myself from the reality of my sexuality, that there's an intrinsic self-hatred.
that fundamentally motivates my pursuit of celibacy. And yeah, I can say in all honesty that there have been seasons of my life where self-hatred factored significantly into my experience of celibacy. And yet I'm also delighted to report that these days I mostly experience celibacy as like the deep delight of Jesus.
And in fact, I don't think there's a healthy way to be celibate apart from experiencing the deep delight of Jesus in us, in the very unique ways that he's allowed us to experience our stories, in the ways that we are embodied. I think all of it can only be motivated by our understanding of the delight of Jesus if it can possibly be a good life with Jesus.
I'm supposed to invite those folks to consider something? Is that, I think I've answered the question wrongly, Scott. Please forgive me.
speaker-0 (40:11.646)
Yes, you should in naming a way you have felt misunderstood what you would ask those folks who have a different view than you to consider more.
speaker-2 (40:23.714)
think I would ask them to consider the possibility that if we allow Jesus to define for us what his kindness means, instead of us imposing our own vision of kindness onto him, that perhaps, is it possible that we might discover he's even kinder than we think he is? I think that's the question I would want to invite us to muse upon.
speaker-1 (40:55.32)
You know, was, goodness, I was in my late 50s when I first announced publicly that I was affirming of same-sex marriage and that I was planning to marry my now wife, Karen.
And there were a lot of people who made the assumption that I had just done what I wanted to do. I just gave up and just did what I wanted to do. And the obvious answer is if I had done what I wanted to do,
Don't you think I would have done that a lot earlier in life?
It was quite the opposite. My background is vocationally as a debate coach and a trial lawyer. And so I was trained to know what the other side was going to argue.
If you don't know the other side's argument, you will lose every time. You need to know it better than you know your own argument. And so when I first began looking at scripture, looking at all the resources that were available to me to become affirming, my intent
speaker-1 (42:46.956)
was to strengthen my own beliefs that I had grown up with and held to well into my adult life.
My intent was to look at those and to strengthen my own case to know what they were going to argue so that I could defeat that. And what I found was that there were things that made sense. Now, there were quite a few resources out there that didn't make sense. But there was one at the time that came out in 2013, James Brownson's Bible, Gender and Sexuality.
that was the real tipping point for me because it explained Scripture in a way that I had been taught to understand Scripture. He had a high regard for Scripture and I respected that. When he couldn't give you a definitive answer, he said so and I also respected that. And those resources and that study over time
convinced me that same-sex marriage could be blessed by God. And so I would say to those people who assumed that I just did what I wanted to do, I did quite the opposite. I had no intention of getting to an affirming place, and yet that's what happened. The assumption that along with that,
is that, she's just completely gone off the deep end and thrown away her love of God and love of Scripture and love of the Church. She's just abandoned her faith, and that's not at all true. If anything, my love of God and Scripture and the Church has deepened, has grown over time.
speaker-1 (44:55.787)
The woman that I was drawn to is a biblical scholar herself.
That's what drew me to her was her love of scripture, love of God, love of the church. And that's made all the difference. What I would say to people who made those assumptions is please do the same investigation yourselves instead of making assumptions that we already have it all figured out or we, we,
or that we certainly haven't given time to that because it's not important, I would encourage you to do the work, do the same work that we have done.
speaker-0 (45:49.526)
I appreciate both of your responses. Greg, I have a question from the audience. This one is going to go to you and then Sally, I'll try to get one to you while we have time. so Greg, you mentioned there are timeless truths. how do we know someone's asking, how do we know that there are truths that are changeless in the Bible? When or how do we decide, there are these truths. you any thoughts on that?
speaker-2 (46:14.718)
Yeah, I mean, certainly people are going to come at this very differently. I'll tell you how I have come to it, which may or may not make sense to you. But for me, when I was in the moment of most sort of like, I was I was going to say deconstructing, but this was back before we called it deconstructing. was deconstructing before it was sexy. But trying to sort of like piece apart my faith and then put it back together from scratch and
I found the person of Jesus, the historical person of Jesus so compelling. And so even when I was like, I don't know why I trust this old book with these sub books and who said this was God talking to me anyway. But even apart from anything in the Bible, I just found the historical figure of Jesus so compelling. And so there was a point where working out from Jesus, I began to ask,
Okay, how did Jesus seem to think about and to communicate to the people around him what were the words of God, what were the truths of God? And I was compelled by the way Jesus himself seemed to think about and perceive the Talak, the Old Testament scriptures. And then I was compelled by the way the people around Jesus documented his stories and began to exchange letters among themselves.
But for me, everything I believe to be true about the way we read scripture at this point in my life is for me an extension of the question of if I trust the historical person of Jesus, what can I glean from him and from the community around him about what it means to receive the words of God that are given to us? So that could be a much longer answer, but I hear we have questions for Sally too, so I'll keep it brief.
speaker-0 (48:05.326)
Thank you. Thank you. Sally, let me put this question to you here. Sally, someone says, I recognize that marriage as an institution is very different in our current American context and its purpose and how we choose marital partners. What difference do you think that makes and how we understand what scripture says about marriage? I'll put just a little spin on this. Like, there ways that changes in what marriage is and choosing a partner in broader society might impact how we
Think about marriage as Christians, how we think about reading the Bible. Can that illuminate anything? Can that be a problem?
speaker-1 (48:43.086)
Wow. And how long do we have to talk about that? my. Yeah. You know, I think a secular perspective of marriage has always differed from a Christian view of marriage, that being for life, that being in covenant with one person.
speaker-0 (48:47.266)
You have about 45 seconds.
speaker-1 (49:13.262)
There are lots of secular views of marriage that can become problematic and be very opposite from what we are called to as Christians. yeah, I think it's all the more reason we should do a lot more talk about what marriage is and purpose of marriage and...
and that it is covenant with one other person for life.
speaker-0 (49:47.438)
And then Greg and Sally, I just want to say thank you for being such fantastic guests. I think in the way that you care for one another, the way that you hold your convictions, the way that you look into one another's lives and see God at work, these things show us Christ in wonderful ways. So thank you both for being guests at Theology Lab for this series.
speaker-1 (50:09.176)
Thanks for having us.
