Dr. Nate Collins’ Presentation at Revoice 2018 Examined

Revoice, Gay Christianity, and the Need for a Biblical Response

And welcome to the dividing line. I'm turning the air down here because it's warm in Phoenix. We got hit last night, but I'll tell you, we sat around saying, oh, we want it to rain, we want it to rain.

Well, it decided to do that. Didn't really need the 60-mile-an-hour winds along with it, but it did rain last night. So it's monsoon in Phoenix, and so I didn't look at the radar, but we're probably safe for this afternoon.

We have gotten hit a couple of times during the program. The lights were flickering a little bit last night, so we should be able to get through the program today. Now, everybody and their second cousin are doing programs this week on the subject of the conference at the PCA church over the past weekend called Revoice.

Obviously, it has been discussed. I mentioned it a bit. I addressed some of the issues early on, but I just sort of figured once it happens and you can listen to it, then maybe. The workshops and things like that, I don't know if they were recorded, if they'll be posted.

I don't know. But the main sessions were live-streamed. Someone told me that they were taken down from their website. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes you post the live stuff, and then you want to edit it.

You want to cut it up and repost it. And so sometimes stuff will be up, and then it'll disappear. I don't know. I don't know if they've chosen not to put it up or leave it up, or I don't know. But at least the main plenary sessions have been posted.

I've listened to about half of that, I would say, and some of it more than once, because I wanted to at least address the presentation made by the primary person. When people started quoting what Nate Collins was saying on Twitter, I made a passing comment, and I expanded upon it yesterday to make sure people understood, and I'm going to expand upon it now.

I specifically mentioned on Twitter that there needs to be a clear and strong response from Southern Seminary on this. Now, there has been some level of response, but some people may be asking, why pick on Southern?

Well, sadly, because we don't expect Southeastern to say anything about it, and who knows who's in charge of Southwestern. But the primary reason is because of Nate Collins, and Nate Collins is associated with Southern.

He has a PhD from Southern Seminary. His dissertation topic—now remember, Nate Collins is the young man who identifies himself as a gay man in a mixed-orientation marriage. He's married, he has sons, and a lot of us find that terminology to be extremely problematic.

It raises many, many issues that need to be addressed in an appropriate fashion. Let me say before I continue on here, I've seen a lot of really inappropriate stuff being said online. There's not going to be any of that today.

That may not satisfy you, but that's life. The topic is more important than proving my bona fides as some kind of trasher of bad theology or something. There needs to be some self-control, I think, in some of the things that are being said throughout social media.

A lot of things come to mind, but I won't go into them right now. Anyway, Nate Collins is a graduate, PhD graduate from Southern Seminary, and his dissertation topic—my understanding is that his dissertation topic was secondary gender identities in 1 Corinthians 7 and 1 Timothy 5 and their Jewish and Greco-Roman background.

I'd love to see that, because I wonder what a secondary gender identity is. And I wonder—I mean, if you're familiar with 1 Corinthians 7, 1 Timothy 5, that's primarily in regards to single people, virgins being kept virgins by their fathers, widows, stuff like this.

And I don't know what that has to do with the modern utilization of the term gender identity. So I'm half tempted to track that dissertation down, because the University of Michigan would have it, and see what there is there.

But the point is, he's a PhD graduate from Southern, and until, I believe, April of this year, was associated with the seminary in some minor capacity, as far as teaching, I think, online classes, possibly, maybe just one or two.

I don't know exactly, but I have been informed that once the ReVoice conference became more of a focus of controversy, that he voluntarily disassociated himself, at least that's my understanding. But there's something else.

Nate Collins' dad was a dean of student life at Boyce College for quite some time. And so it's not just a passing thing. It's not like living nearby. And hence, when you have a PhD graduate who is making the kind of statements that Nate Collins is making, I'm just simply stating that I think there needs to be a strong contrast drawn.

And that was the only focus of what I was saying briefly in that tweet. And so this particular material, I, the videos didn't even, and maybe that's what they're doing. In fact, that's, in all probability, I'm just going to assume that what they're doing is the reason they've taken the main sessions down is they're editing them.

And they're actually going to make them more usable. Because there's music in between, there's announcements, it was the live stuff. And sometimes we have to do the same thing if we have problems with live feed, and we got pulled down, put up a fresh copy of it, and you need to clean it up and whatever.

So let's just assume the best. And that they're probably going to be maybe putting some graphics up, like who's who, because they didn't bother to announce. Sometimes they just assume since you're sitting there, you've got the handout stuff, you can sort of know, maybe they'll put up who the speakers are a little bit more clearly and stuff like that.

I don't know. But in listening to Nate Collins, I think there is enough here to really allow us to touch on some of the more important theological, moral, ethical concerns in regards to revoice. Now, I didn't talk with him about it.

But yesterday, my dear friend, Michael Brown, addressed revoice in one of the segments on his program. And of course, as always, he did so with, with graciousness, and yet with a, a firm assertion that the fundamental issue is what most of us have been saying all along.

And that is this acceptance of the modern concept of an identity that is not completely defined by scriptural parameters, but an identity that buys into the modern perspectives of the world. And hence, you have gay Christianity, queer Christianity, whatever else, LGBTQ Christianity, being an accepted parameter.

And if you do not accept those parameters, then you are a part of the problem. You are one of those that are guilty of, well, dividing the body, of pushing people outside the fellowship. And then you start getting all of the victim language that we've been getting for a number of years now from the LGBTQ.

And again, I don't believe there is such a thing, but from the movement. I think it's a capitulation on our part when we use the phrase LGBTQ community, because of the fact that that ends up completely muddling the categories that are represented by each one of those letters.

And I just, again, say, and especially within a Christian context, the idea of identifying a community based upon such diverse rebellions against the natural order created by God. Now, we live in a fallen world, and so that natural order is constantly being broken.

And in every single heterosexual long-term married relationship that we would say is appropriately within biblical parameters, you still have brokenness, you still have sin, you still have all the falling short that we have.

That's all true. But there remains a major difference between missing the mark in doing what God has called us to do, and missing the mark in doing the exact opposite of what the natural order of the creation itself calls for.

There is a difference between those things. And so that's why you can have marriage retreats where you can give general biblical counsel regarding the improvement of the married state, and there does not have to be any connection whatsoever between those statements and two men, two women, anything along those lines.

There doesn't have to be any of that. Because from a biblical perspective, you can properly understand that there are appropriate parameters, that I can talk to all husbands. Now, every husband can be a little bit different, I realize that, but there are certain duties that are relevant and appropriate for all husbands, right?

Same thing with wives. And so that's one area. And so we can talk about how husbands fail to do this and wives fail to do that. You can't do that when we're talking about same-sex relationships. You can't do that in talking about bisexuality.

You can't do that in talking about transgenderism, because all of these, in different ways, are fundamentally acts of rebellion when they are acted out. And then when you think about it, when you talk about homosexuality, whether you're talking about male homosexuality or lesbianism, when you're talking about bisexuality and when you talk about transgenderism, each one of those represents a different category and aspect of rebellion against the natural order of God's creation.

For example, bisexuality is not the same thing as homosexuality. There is a fundamental difference in this alleged orientation. And you'll notice we hear almost completely about homosexuality within a religious context.

Maybe they had something there in one of the breakout sessions or something, I don't know, but I didn't hear anything specifically attempting to address the idea of bisexuality in light of what was being said about the God-made-you-this-way concept of homosexuality.

And though a few things were said about gender identity and our trans brothers and sisters, you're in a completely different part of the solar system when you start trying to make some kind of an argument that there is some way to come up with some type of biblical parameter for saying when it comes to God made you and He made you in this way and you've decided you're not supposed to be that way.

I don't see how from a Christian perspective you can in any way identify this as anything other than either a major mental sickness and disease, a complete disorder, something that needs to be dealt with on the same lines as people who think that their left arms don't belong in their bodies and they'll do anything they can to get rid of that.

There's something wrong with someone like that. So you either got to see it in that way or you've got to see it as I think it much more often is, and that is a simple direct act of rebellion, a rejection of God's created order.

And how do you even begin to start talking about that within the church? How do you start talking about someone who on the one hand says, I have submitted in repentance and faith, that's one of the issues is there's so many churches today where there is no repentance, there is no bowing knee to lordship of Christ.

I don't know how non-lordship churches even begin to take the first step in having a consistent moral or ethical approach to this at all. I just don't know how you do it. I don't think it can be done consistently.

But how can someone who on the one hand says, I have submitted myself to the lordship of Jesus Christ, and that means accepting what God says about who I am, that I'm a sinner, that I'm justly under his wrath.

I mean, that's what repentance involves. How can you on the one hand say, I've done that, and on the other hand say, well, God may have made me as a male, but he made a mistake, and I'm actually a female.

There's no way to hold those two things together. And so we can talk about the small number of people who can honestly state that they've always had same-sex attraction and do not know of any other kind of attraction in their experience.

But when it comes to transgenderism, you're on a completely different planet. And so the reality is that we are dealing with a non-community being treated as a community. And so you have people voluntarily associating with a community that cannot possibly provide any kind of unity, the unity part of community, because of how different these things are.

So all of these things, these issues, and again, like I was saying, Michael addressed this if you want to listen to his Line of Fire program from yesterday, where he addressed this particular subject.

He didn't play anything from Revoice. He just simply was dealing with the idea, is there such a thing as a gay Christian? Where does our identity derive from, in essence? And so that was useful to listen to.

And my understanding is that Daryl Harrison and the gang are going to be addressing this, maybe already recorded it, or record it tonight, I don't know, but I think that podcast will drop tomorrow. So a number of us have felt the need to address this issue because of the fact that you have a PCA church.

Y 'all probably heard the conversation that took place on CrossPolitik with the pastor of the church. You have a PCA church. You have graduates of Southern Seminary. This is not what we've been listening to for a long, long time, coming from the PCUSA, or the liberal Lutherans, or the Episcopalians, or whoever else it might be.

If those folks were doing it, it's like, oh, doing it again, huh? Aren't you getting tired doing this? This is about the 10th year in a row you've done it. That's not what we have here. This is a different type of situation.

And so many of us wanted to listen, and I was most interested in what Nate Collins had to say, as some of you know. He was interviewed by Eric Metaxas about two years ago. That's where I first heard the terminology of a gay man in a mixed-orientation marriage.

Now, I did not hear that when it first aired. That has become probably more listened to over the past few months than it was when it first came out. But then he was with my daughter on Sheologians, and they were trying to get some direct answers to certain questions, and it was difficult to do.

And so you might want to listen to that episode if you want to hear more of the interaction with Nate Collins. But I wanted to hear what he had to say, because he's the mind behind this. And it's interesting.

Tom Buck was telling me that—let me pull this up here. I think it's still up. Yeah. While Dr. Collins was still, as far as we can tell, in at least some way, officially associated with Southern teaching wise, back when the Pulse nightclub shooting took place—and I think it's been established since then that homosexuality wasn't the primary issue in this thing at all, but as it may—in the immediate after effects of that, he posted on June 13th, 2016, how straight conservative Christians can help.

And the very fact you put straight conservative Christians together raises questions in and of itself. But he goes through a list. Here's the third thing on the list. If your conscience permits you, attend a gay pride event this month.

Not many straight conservative folks know that gay pride events commemorate the Stonewall riots that took place on June 28th, 1969, and are an occasion for LGBT people to remember the violence against their humanity that that event represents.

In my opinion, a conservative Christian can attend a gay pride event in solidarity with the shared humanity we all have as image bearers of God. Now, all I can say is, I don't know, about seven or eight years ago, I purposefully followed some links for video of gay pride events.

I don't know how anybody, how any Christian minister can ever say, yeah, you go ahead. It's one thing to go there knowing that you're going to be exposed to nudity and perversity on a level that is just astonishing.

Sex acts and everything else, out in the public, I mean, that's just common at the vast majority of these events. There's no question about it. No homosexual who attends these would ever dispute that.

That's just the way it is. So I don't know how anybody can say that unless they have just never gone to one or never looked at what happens. The only way you could go there is if you realize you're going into war.

You're going into a mission field that you're probably going to be arrested or attacked or beaten or something. But the idea of going in solidarity is astonishing. I don't even know how you begin to make a defense of that kind of a statement.

I don't know. But there it is from June of 2016. And what's interesting is that the seventh thing is give to a charitable organization that either helps LGBT people in crisis, offers Christ-focused support services, or promotes awareness, dialogue, and peace as genuine Christian values.

He links to Love Boldly, don't know that one, ERLC, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, and GCN, the Gay Christian Network. Yeah, I debated their president up in Montana a number of years ago.

Remember that? Author of Torn. Justin. Yeah, and links to them to be able to give money to them. And this is well, still, this is before Revoice. So you just go, Hmm, what does all that mean? Well, I don't know.

Okay, so let's listen to some of what Nate Collins had to say. We're gonna do some interaction as we frequently do, but it's always best to let folks speak for themselves. And so here is Nate Collins.

In the film, The Greatest Showman, the central anthem of the movie begins when the circus performers... That sound really is that bad, isn't it? Wow. I wondered why I had had so much trouble listening to it.

The sound is just horrific. I mean, the hum is there and the Hawaiian arts. Maybe you can pull some of the bass out and trouble it up some so it's actually understandable. But that's tough. Sounded better at home.

But yeah, if we can pull some of the bass out and trouble that up so we can maybe make out some of it. Or excluded. That's better. Excluded from a happy, joyful place. Led by the character of the bearded lady, they sing about this exclusion and the shame that they experience on a daily basis because of who their society perceives them to be.

The first verse of this song says, I am not a stranger to the dark. Hide away, they say, because we don't want your broken parts. I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars. Run away, they say. No one will love you as you are.

The reality that I want to point to and draw your attention to right now is the sheer fatigue that lies beneath these words. It's exhausting to live in the darkness of rejection. It's exhausting to constantly be defined by others by the ways you feel broken or by the ways you don't measure up or by a warped understanding of how and who you love.

It's exhausting to feel like you have no option but to run away from love. Is it no wonder then that for many of us, the main reason we're here tonight is because we're just tired? I'll just say it. I'm tired.

Okay, so I don't have any reason to doubt that Dr. Collins feels tired. One of the things that struck me as I listened to this, now this is a short presentation. It is not exhaustive. I'm not trying to make it an overarching thesis statement of everything else.

I asked a few others this and they noticed the same thing. It struck me that I was listening to a lonely man who's alone in his rejection, not a married man with a wife and children. This really struck me.

The terminology and the language even of his standing there, of his voice is of a person significantly more associated with a victimed community than a man who knows what the right is, is seeking to do it as best he can, is repentant and accepted not for his desires but from looking away from himself and accepting who he is as someone else.

I did not hear that. What I hear in Dr. Collins is an individual significantly and purposefully and knowingly associating with a community based upon a disordered sexual desire. I expect that from a large number but not all of secular non-religious homosexuals.

There are a lot of homosexuals that don't care about any of this stuff. They love homosexuality. They love what they do and they're not concerned about any of this stuff. They're sold over to it, given over to it, but that's not what we're talking about here.

We're talking about a conference that is put squarely in the midst of the great tradition as they use the terminology. In other words, a broadly Christian moral and sexual ethic, even though obviously there are lots of things that could be said as to exactly where that derives from and all the aberrations that develop during the medieval period and within Roman Catholicism and things like that.

But that's the context of this and I just found it striking that if I had been watching this and you had said to me, by the way, do you know he's married and has children? I would have gone, what? Now, I knew that beforehand but just listening to the terminology and to the sadness, I am weary, I am tired.

This weariness and tiredness will be defined a little bit more here in a way that, well, it's the reason I chose this section to look at. I can't hear it. Okay, let's go back here. I lost somebody in the other room, I guess.

Let's see. Tired. I'm tired of feeling burdened by loneliness because I believe lies that I'm unwanted. I'm tired of feeling burdened by shame because I think my orientation makes me less human. I'm tired of feeling burdened by expectations from others because I think so little of myself.

I'm tired. I'm tired of people saying I'm using the wrong words. I'm tired of people saying that I'm not using enough of the right words. I'm tired. I'm tired of hearing about gay people who have unsafe homes, angry homes or no homes.

I'm tired. I'm tired of the reality that gay people live every day with verbal abuse from their co-workers, bosses, neighbors, relatives, and even friends. I'm tired. Now, it is hard not to hear this as a lament.

That's a term that was used in the conference. A lament of a victim. He's adopting the posture of the victimology that, if you recall, years ago when we first responded to Matthew Vines, when we responded to Dr. Gushie and did so extensively for hours on end, there was that regular utilization of that kind of language as well.

Dr. Gushie brought up the issues of teen suicide and homeless people and all the rest of these things. The assumption always is that there is no meaningful relationship between the disordered desire and the resultant disruption of normal human relationships.

The idea is everyone else is at fault. The one that is not at fault is the one with the disordered desires. So, there is an anthropology behind this. The anthropology is there's nothing you can do about it.

There's nothing that you can do about this. It's just the way God made us. And this is really what I need to focus on by the end of the program. I hope I don't forget to do so as we talk about other subjects.

It's where I want to get into the text itself, because I think the Bible does address whether disordered, not God-honoring desires can be something that is a fundamental defining element of a true child of God.

I think that that is actually addressed in Scripture. Interestingly enough, right close to one of the two texts that Dr. Collins studied in his dissertation. So, we'll get to that. I'm tired of being reminded over and over again that 40 of homeless teenagers are LGBT, that gay and bi youth are three times more likely to seriously contemplate suicide than their straight friends, and that they are almost five times more likely to have attempted it.

Now, is it no longer even possible to point out the logical reality that unless you just empty the moral sexual activities of a human being of all ethical and moral meaning, that there is a connection between these things?

That there's something that is fundamentally destructive of a person's psyche, fundamentally destructive of one's relationships with others, one's relationship with God, one's relationship with oneself?

Isn't that the insight we get from Romans 1? I really wonder, to be perfectly honest with you, whether the individuals who were primary speakers at Revoice would agree that Romans 1 is actually directly relevant to a discussion of their experience of same-sex attraction, or is that a subgroup?

I really wonder about that. That's where I think it has been rightly pointed out there's a serious problem with Revoice. Revoice wasn't done by a group that would reflect meaningfully the church itself.

It's like putting together an entire group of people who struggle with anger constantly and experience anger constantly, and the only people that are allowed to speak and attend are people who experience anger.

First of all, that would be a rather volatile get-together in the first place, but beyond that, who would think that that's a wise thing to do? Well, we don't feel accepted by all you calm people, but that's not the point.

You need the calm people because it's the calm people that can give you the appropriate exhortations toward how you're supposed to behave and how you're supposed to respond to situations. And so if you put together a conference that is primarily from people that all have the exact same view of this particular issue, it's not really representative of the church itself, where you would expect to be getting balanced exhortation and balanced teaching.

And so when you don't have that balanced teaching, then you don't even have anyone raising the question, being able to ask the question, why does Paul use homosexuality as an example of the twistedness that happens in the creation itself and in the creature when they rebel against God?

What does that say? Because I've heard an innumerable number of homosexual advocates, people who experience same-sex attraction, say, well, that has nothing to do with me because that's only talking about people who have rejected God and been given over by him.

They're idolaters, and I'm not an idolater, I'm a Christian, so it can't have anything to do with me. Well, the problem is that the person who wrote Romans 1 also wrote 1 Corinthians 6, which is going to be one of the only foundational texts you can go to for an understanding of what this subject is all about.

I'm tired. I'm tired and grieved because 40 of transgender adults say they've attempted suicide, and that 92 of those attempts were before the age of 25. I'm tired. Okay. Now, one other thing. If he has not done these things, why is he tired?

Notice the, and people would say, well, it's a wonderful thing to self-identify with other people. We are not to self-identify with other people's weaknesses. That's not something that you're to grab hold of, is their rebellion, or their sins, or their disordered desires, or whatever else it might be.

Again, the foundation of this community, and it may just be a community of empathy, but still, the foundation of it, from a Christian perspective, is not a proper biblical foundation. And I think it skews how you listen to what other, how could someone in this position, meaningfully and pastorally, recognize differences in the motivations of people involved in the homosexual lifestyle, or tempted toward the homosexual lifestyle, once they have bought into this community idea?

As long as you're in the community, well, hey, you know, where's the critical examination? I don't know. It seems to be difficult to do. I'm tired of seeing the fragility of life put on full display in the stories of gender and sexual minorities who are trying to eke by, squeak by, every day of the week.

Okay. Now, I'm going to try. It's hard in the thing here. And then I forgot to find out what the timestamp was. I want to use that. Hold on a second. I'm tired. I'm tired of hearing about gay people who have unsafe homes, angry homes, or no home.

It was 33 .17. Let me try to get a little bit closer to, I want to use, oh, I see what's going on. Nevermind. I was looking at the wrong number. Okay, so maybe it's 31 .17. Let's see if we're closer here.

Gay and bi youth are three times more likely to seriously contemplate suicide than their straight friends, and that they are almost five times more likely to have attempted it. I'm tired. Close enough.

We'll get there in a second. I'm tired and grieved because 40 of transgender adults say they've attempted suicide, and that 92 of those attempts were before the age of 25. I'm tired. I'm tired of seeing the fragility of life put on full display in the stories of gender and sexual minorities who are trying to eke by, squeak by.

Okay, gender and sexual minorities. Okay, now here's the approach right now. And the reason this is working is because this isn't what we're accustomed to in our lives. And it's happening so quickly that most of us don't know how to respond to it.

But you introduce new terminologies that are themselves arguments, but you just use them. And when you force the other side to use them, you've won part of the argument by the use of language. What is the basis in a Christian context for the concept of sexual minorities?

What is that? What is a sexual minority? Because again, you'd have male homosexuals, you have female homosexuals, lesbians, you've got bisexuals, you've got transgender, and all the flavors in between.

And in every one of those groups, you have a myriad of different reasons, expressions, ranges of behavior and desire. How does that make a minority? Once you accept the idea of sexual and gender minorities, you have accepted the worldview that legitimates and legitimizes these concepts.

And it didn't come from a biblical framework. That's what again, makes me go as to his doctoral dissertation. Because as I read it before, the terminology that was specifically used there is gender identities, secondary gender identities.

That sounds a whole lot like some kind of a sexual minority type thing to me. I challenge this concept from a biblical perspective. There is no creation context. There is no fallen creation context. Gender, for example, don't even go to the rare, rare, rare genetic issues.

I know people love to go there. 99 .8 of the people that we're talking about, when we talk about quote unquote, transgenderism, have zero genetic abnormalities. We're not talking about having an extra Y chromosome or an extra X chromosome or any of those types of things.

People who have that completely different category, it's a physical manifestation. You deal with it from that perspective. That's not what we've got here. You've got people that are XX or XY, any genetic test will show it.

There's nothing wrong with them. There's no abnormalities in their genetic code. How are they a minority? They're not a minority. Not from a Christian perspective, because you do not make minorities out of sin.

You do not make minorities out of quote unquote, orientation. But that term is going to come up over and over again. Sexual gender minorities, it's just accepted. I never heard that terminology more than what, five years ago at the most.

Once it gets introduced, the people who introduce it get to fill it with meaning or by being purposefully vague, get to use it for all sorts of things, smuggling in the conclusion before the end of the argument.

Again, we saw this outside, but because it was happening outside, it was sort of like, I don't know. Every day of the week, just to get by. I'm tired. Now, if I'm not alone in this, and I suspect I'm not, how do we respond?

Where can we start? I think the first thing we need to do is learn how to corporately lament the reality that gender and sexual minorities live with virtually each and every day. Now, lament, as they like to point out, is a biblical category.

You have lamentations, there are psalms of lament, there are songs of lament within the historical books and things like that. But I don't believe that there is any biblical category of lament like this, and that is a lament for a sexual or gender minority.

You can lament the brokenness of the human race, but biblical lament is theological, and it begins with an acceptance of the holiness of God and his just punishment of sin. Therefore, biblical lament does not open itself up to being hijacked by worldly movements and worldly concepts.

It must be defined in light of God's law. I don't think that a proper element of biblical lament is that gay people in their experience will feel rejected by the majority because the majority do not have their sexuality, no more than take any other sin.

I don't know how people want to handle this, because on the one hand, you constantly hear people saying, homosexuality is like any other sin, so don't make it something special. But on the other hand, well, God made me this way, and it's natural.

So which one is it? Evidently, if you are any one of these, so if you're bisexual, and I've not heard a bisexual trying to make this argument, so let's stick with homosexual. If you're homosexual, well, God made me this way, and I recognize what God's law says about this.

So therefore, I need to seek other ways of community and other ways of communion and other ways of fellowship and friendship and love and intimacy, and that was what this was all about. But then when you say, okay, what other group would you allow to make this kind of demand?

We should be accepted by the church, and we should be loved by the church, and we should be given opportunities to serve within the church, and the church needs to accept us the way we are. So what other group is going to be able to make that claim that are identifying themselves based upon what is an accepted definition of sin?

There's all sorts of vice lists, go through them, and where do you have people identifying themselves on the basis of those particular failures, those particular character flaws, those particular acts of rebellion, those particular acts of unwillingness to submit to God's ways, whatever definition you want to use, what other groups can get to do that?

So on the one hand, yes, we are claiming to be special, and on the other hand, it's just one sin amongst many. Well, which is it going to be? It's got to be one or the other before we can really advance much in having conversation.

...church right now, but lament doesn't come naturally to us, at least lament that leads to life. I mean, we all know that person. Perhaps you are that person who just can't seem to move past lament, and I don't just say this jokingly.

Sometimes it's hard to know where good lament begins to shade into something too dark, into a depression that's actually the opposite of life. So to help us understand what lament that is deeply and thoroughly Christian might look like, I'd like to point us toward two examples that we see in the Bible, neither of which will be any surprise, the prophet Jeremiah and the example of Jesus.

And after we've looked at these two examples, we'll end with just some points of application that might help those of us who are great tradition gay Christians know how to lament. So again, there's the utilization of the terminology great tradition, broad moral ethical tradition, going back with the history of the church, but gay Christians.

So this is his terminology. And it's almost like, we're just going to keep using this until you all give up and start using it as well. And the only reason not to use it is if you have thought through what it would require of you in your redefinition of what a Christian is.

Because there's a lot of people, unfortunately, that are responding to this not by listening to what's being said and going, it doesn't fit with this parameter here. That doesn't fit with what Paul said over there.

That doesn't fit with Jesus' teaching over here. You've got the whole thread of the law of God here. A lot of people are just responding emotionally and prejudicially, rather than listening and going, okay, you are requiring us to adopt new parameters in our understanding, not only of who you are, but of who everybody else is too.

So this is a small minority saying, the church needs to change for us. And what's the basis of that? What kind of argumentation is being put forward to do that? That may seem real clinical, maybe not emotional enough for a lot of folks.

But given that that's what the argument really is, that's what we need to see. We need to see that kind of argumentation. I've never seen it, personally. So the prophet of Jeremiah prophesied to the southern kingdom of Judah for almost 40 years, from the time of King Josiah all the way until the nation of Judah was carried away into Babylon.

As a prophet, Jeremiah's primary ministry was to call the nation of Judah to repentance for their idolatry. And during his ministry, Jeremiah experienced enormous suffering as a result of his faithfulness to his calling.