Sam Allberry and Same Sex Attraction

Same-Sex Attraction, Temptation, and the Difference Between Temptation and Sin

Is it a sin to have the capacity to be attracted to people of the same sex? And I would say on that issue I don't think it is a sin. All of us will experience certain forms of temptation. Virtually all of us will experience certain forms of sexual temptation.

We don't tend to choose the particular form temptation takes. What is our responsibility is how we respond to temptation. And the Bible is very clear that we need to flee sexual sin. So the Bible makes a distinction between temptation and sin.

Jesus in the Lord's Prayer says, Deliver me from temptation but forgive us for our sins. So the experience of being tempted is not in and of itself a sin. It is however a reflection of the fact that we have a fallen nature.

That we are even tempted in these ways is a sign that we are not the way we are meant to be. That we have the capacity to be tempted in that sense is a sign that we are fallen. The temptation itself is not a sin.

I am so glad that we now live in a culture where people can be open about their sexuality. And so to my gay friends part of the impetus behind gay pride is this idea we don't have to hide anymore. And I want to affirm that.

As a single person with an increased capacity for friendship that comes with that, there's a breadth of intimacy I get to experience that you don't.

Sure.

So there's again there are some unique pluses to being in my situation. And I keep coming back to I know the bridegroom. I'm not actually missing out. I'm not getting that the temporal signpost of the love of God that marriage is designed to be.

I'm not getting the appetizer but I'm getting the entree. And the entree is so good I can skip the appetizer. So if I have the bridegroom then I'm not missing out on the whole marital romance, all of that stuff.

Actually I'm just as swept up in it. That is profoundly meaningful to me. I'm wearing a ring on my ring finger which is a cultural signal for hey I'm married. There's other stories to why I'm wearing this to do with medical research.

It's a smart ring. But I felt actually I'm going to wear it on this ring because I'm taken. I belong to someone. And it's a nice tangible reminder to me that the bridegroom pursues me.

So let's talk about... I love that by the way.

Yeah.

I love it. It's beautiful.

There has never been a time when the teaching of Jesus on sex and marriage was not countercultural. But what Jesus teaches here is not arbitrary. It's not that he suddenly decided well I've decided I like this combination and not that combination.

No, as you look at the Bible as a whole, as you look at the plot line of the Bible as a whole, one of the things we realize is that the union of a man and a woman in marriage points beyond itself. It actually gets to the heart of the big thing God is doing in the universe.

He's drawing a people to his son Jesus Christ. And marriage between a man and a woman is a picture of the final perfect relationship Jesus will have with his people.

Sam Allberry’s Rise in Evangelical Circles and the Church’s Response

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast.

I'm your host John Harris.

Hope everyone's doing well. I had a little bit of a connection issue there at the beginning. So hopefully that montage played through.

You were able to listen to it.

They're just some snippets over the years of various things Salma Albury has said on podcasts and in presentations. Salma Albury, of course, in the news right now because of the fact that not only has he resigned from the church, Emanuel Church in Nashville, but he also has been removed from the Gospel Coalition website and the Keller Center.

And I'll show you what I mean by that. He is, in fact, if you go to the Gospel Coalition website right now and you try to find Salma Albury, this is what you're going to find, that there's no one there by the name Salma Albury who has any articles.

So they've actually just erased him from their website. I think we can read between the lines.

We know what's going on.

There's a sexual sin, but they're not getting specific on exactly what happened, just that it was egregious enough for them to remove him from these positions and websites. So I'm going to start at the beginning, and then I'm going to give you some, hopefully, understanding of what's going on here.

Why was Salma Albury ever elevated to the positions that he was elevated into? And what I mean by that is he was involved with Living Out, the Gospel Coalition, the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, the Keller Center for Christian Apologetics, Acts 29, Family Life, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission for the Southern Baptist Convention.

I just actually recently critiqued something he said on Nine Marks. I don't know if he's been removed from that website or not. He was a contributor at Desiring God. And, of course, various churches and conferences looked at Salma Albury as the go-to guy, as the man who was going to tell you about what you should do when it came to issues like homosexuality.

And so I remember even I was on a class trip when I was at Liberty University, and there was a classmate of mine, I guess you could say. He was on the trip, and he really liked Salma Albury, really liked apologetics, and just thought Salma Albury, he was the best guy to go to.

He was one of the best when it came to the issue of homosexuality. And if the church really wanted to learn how to navigate this issue, they needed to put away all their preconceived notions and old fuddy-duddy bigotries and listen to what Salma Albury had to say, because he was able to do two things.

Number one, he was able to respect marriage and keep biblical orthodoxy. And number two, he was able to be compassionate and help Christians separate themselves from the stereotypical bigoted church that might be against those things.

And there was a hunger at that time, and I think there still is among a lot of churches, especially in blue cities, to do that very thing. And so I think this is important to talk about, and I'm going to approach it from a 30 ,000-foot view, but first I want you to know the details of what's going on.

So if you could, just leave me a comment. If you're live streaming, let me know you're here. If you have questions, let me know. I want to make sure the audio and video are working good, since I did have some connection issues at the beginning.

And I'll also say, I'll say this in passing real quick, it was really good to see some of you over the weekend at the Truth Conference. My presentation, obviously, is posted online, if you want to go to YouTube or iTunes, on the State of the Church in 2026.

And I just had a marvelous time with all the brothers who came out for that, and sisters. And if you want to support me in any way, you can pray, or you can go to the links in the info section and support me there as well.

Darren Mel is in the stream. I normally wouldn't take comments now, but Darren Mel is someone that I've had on the podcast before, someone who came out of the sin and lifestyle that we're going to be talking about today, has a wonderful, beautiful family, is pastoring.

He just says, thankfully, you're addressing this, John. You have much grounding in this, historically speaking. You've been engaged and aware, speaking the whole time, not just in the podcast or opinion.

I appreciate that, Darren. Of course, you have been a great inspiration to me, and, of course, very intimately involved with this issue and helping people understand what's at stake. So I should say that there's a lot of people other than me who are weighing in on this and have a great understanding.

And Darren Mel is certainly one of those people. Jared Moore is another one. He's written a book about it, and I've had him on the podcast. I think he's going to have an article coming out on TruthScript today or tomorrow about this.

I noticed Michael Clary had an article. I haven't read it yet, but it's out there on his sub stack. And there's just a lot of people who have been trying to sound the alarm on this. Michael Foster, another one, Tom Buck, another one.

I mean, I'm going to be leaving people out. But this issue of same-sex attraction has been tackled by a lot of different people, and American Family Association has tackled it. So Emanuel Church in Nashville wrote a statement from the elders.

It says, In the spring of 2024, the Emanuel elders were made aware of Pastor Sam Albury and that he engaged in an inappropriate relationship with an adult man in 2022. This relationship concluded prior to Sam being called as a pastor at Emanuel in 2023.

Now, right there, a relationship that sort of gives you more than a red flag, more than a yellow flag, I should say. It's a red flag. What do you mean there's a relationship? This is a compromised relationship of some kind.

It reminds me a little bit of Steve Lawson when things were first revealed, and then it was like drip, drip, drip until you got to how egregious and bad it really was. This is kind of like that. They're giving you general language, but it's egregious enough.

They got to pull him off the Gospel Coalition website. Anyway, being made aware, the elders immediately began a thorough examination, and after considering the information available at that time and the posture of Sam and the other party, the elders ruled that though Sam's conduct was unwise, it did not rise to the level of disqualification.

However, in January of 2026, the elders received new information about this relationship that had not been disclosed previously. This initiated a reopening of the investigation, the findings of which led the elders to conclude that while the relationship did not go as far as it could have, Sam's conduct constituted a serious breach of trust, and I think that's the key, breach of trust, and a failure to walk in a manner worthy of the Gospel.

The elders are unanimous in their decision that Sam is currently disqualified from Gospel ministry, and Sam agrees with the decision, and he resigned from Emmanuel Church. Throughout this process, Sam has been repentant, humble, and cooperative.

So, I mean, that's good to hear. With the elders and outside counsel, the elders continue to care for Sam as a brother in Christ and member of Emmanuel. We will continue to support Sam and the other party with counseling, and we are determined insofar as we are able to restore him in a spirit of gentleness to the full fellowship in the church, Galatians 6 .1, which is the right approach, at least what they say at the end here.

But, of course, it raises a lot of questions about what about the beginning of this, and the Emmanuel Church in Nashville is a fairly prominent church. Russell Moore serves there. Now, it's kind of ambiguous what he is.

This is the church where Sam Albury was formerly a pastor. Barnabas Piper, John Piper's son, so these are very prominent people here, is a pastor there. The senior pastor is T .J. Sims. Now, if you scroll down to the bottom, you have got to get through a lot of people.

It's a big church. You have got to get through a lot of people here. Leaders and residents. Leaders and residents are members in good standing who have been ordained in a gospel ministry and are serving the Lord primarily outside of Emmanuel through their respective ministries.

So Gavin Ortland is one of these people. Russell Moore is one of these people, and Dr. Ray Ortland is one of these people. They apparently saw that there was a relationship that needed to be investigated.

They investigated it, and for whatever reason, they thought, well, it's not disqualifying. Sam Albury can be a pastor here. That's a high standard, obviously. Then they find out later, he wasn't quite honest with us about what really happened.

That's the issue that's causing this major problem now. Gospel Coalition, of course, has come out, and they have a short statement. TGC was informed yesterday by Sam Albury about an inappropriate relationship with another man a few years ago, and that an announcement will be made today at Emmanuel Church regarding his resignation as a pastor.

He then also resigned as a fellow of the Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. Per TGC policy and procedure, we immediately began to remove all of Sam's content from our website and other content channels, and we deferred this statement until the church membership was informed.

We are brokenhearted over this news, and we continue to pray for Sam, Emmanuel Church, and everyone affected. He eulogized Tim Keller, so they were close enough. Like I said, promoted in all the top evangelical organizations as the go-to guy on this issue of same-sex attraction and homosexuality.

Here he is, unfortunately, being caught up in that same sin, which he was helping in his capacities as a pastor, an apologist, a speaker, other Christians to navigate, which is certainly terrible. Guys, I think it's safe to say, and look, this isn't anything I can see in primary sources that just jumps out and I say, that's it.

God's judging us. But I think we can conclude over the last few years, God's judging us. I think we really can, and this is obviously the spiritual thing. I'm not putting on my academic hat right now.

I'm putting on my Christian hat, and I'm just saying, how else do you interpret the falls from grace, as it were, the people who were trusted and then failed in the very areas in which they were trusted?

I don't need to name all the names. You know them. And then all the people that are solid that died unexpectedly in some cases, randomly it would seem. Of course, there's nothing random in God's economy.

I just said this in my State of the Church address on Friday. We could have really used a Votie Bauckham and a Charlie Kirk and some of the people that have left us, and they're not here. They're being replaced by

I don't even know if they're not really being replaced. That's the issue. They're not being replaced. And the hope is that people are going to be trusting their local pastor who's solid in preaching the word.

But on the Internet and on institutional levels, there's really no replacements. And if you do find a replacement, it's someone who you look at, and you're like, this is someone who's, I think, another sign of judgment.

This is not the quality at all. This is not someone who probably should even be in the pulpit. And I'm just seeing more and more and more of that. So anyway, we got Sam Albury at the Gospel Coalition.

Not there anymore. Page not found if you try to find him. So egregious enough, they removed him completely. Tom Buck posted a little bit about Sam Albury over the years, but here's one from August 5, 2025.

I think he started in 2019 going in on Sam. But he points out that Living Out, which was the organization Sam was involved in starting, had a audit for churches. And Tim Keller and Nancy Keller were also involved in rolling out this audit.

And the audit says things like this. Your church family meetings include people who could be labeled LGBTQI are same-sex attracted, true, false, not sure, derogatory language or stereotyping attitudes towards sexual minority groups would not be tolerated either up front or in conversion.

Sorry, I'm thinking conversion therapy. In conversation between church family members, true, false, not sure, all in your church know that we all experience sexual brokenness and are all being encouraged to confess their own sexual sins, true, false, not sure.

And so it goes through this, talks about same-sex relationships. Are they ever mentioned in isolation from other sinful patterns or behavior? All in your church are hearing the same call to radical self-sacrifice of themselves.

Are all in your church encouraged to develop an identity founded first and foremost in their union with Christ? A godly Christian's sexual orientation would never prevent them from exercising their spiritual gifts or serving in leadership of your church.

God gifts of either singleness or marriage are equally promoted, valued, and practically supported in your church's family's life together. And we only have two more. Church family members intrinsically share meals, homes, holidays, festivals, money, children, and others from different backgrounds and life situations.

And then last but not least, no one should be pressured into expecting or seeking any healing or change that God has not promised any of us until the renewal of all things. So let me summarize some of this for you.

If you're same-sex attracted, if you have desires for homosexuality, then you should be not singled out. That sin should not be singled out. There should be a way to normalize the attraction at least to the extent that people aren't going to pressure you into getting this fixed before Christ comes.

You don't have that guarantee, so you shouldn't look for it and feel pressured. You shouldn't feel pressured in standing out just because you're single. And this is not just because you're single, but single because you have same-sex attraction, and so you are shutting yourself off in some way from pursuing marriage with someone of the opposite sex.

It is purposely to make people feel comfortable. And I pointed out before, look, you wouldn't do this with any other sin. You wouldn't say, especially let's take something like hatred for someone, unequal weights and measures being applied to someone, sinful partiality in that sense, based upon an ethnic background.

No one would say, we need an audit to really make those people feel comfortable. Obviously not. And this obviously was and still is in some churches something that they're very interested in doing. Sam Albury was behind much of this.

Tom Buck was very big into, in 2019 and forward, trying to expose some of this. And there's just so much you could say. I mean, I've done multiple podcasts on Sam Albury. The last one I think was three years ago.

And I just walked through an interview that he had with Paul David Tripp, I believe it was, and pointed out the problems with it. And it basically came down to this. Sam Albury got saved. I think it was in his late teens, early 20s, somewhere he was, I believe, a young man or a teenager, but he got converted.

And he didn't tell anyone about this same-sex attraction. He thought it would go away by 30, he'd have kids, and that he would be able to live a quote-unquote normal life, like other Christians. And he was getting closer, it was his mid -20s, wasn't happening, finally shares it with his pastor.

His pastor just says, that's difficult for you to share with me. I'm glad you did, and gave him love and acceptance. And then he, in this particular podcast I critiqued, he talks about how the church, churches, need to be somewhat tolerant and accepting and loving of people who have same-sex attraction.

And one of the points I made is like, look, if you want to get married and have kids, it's gonna be a process possibly. There's a sanctification process we're all in. And if you have sin that's to that degree, the first thing you should do is not keep it inside like he did, but actually go and talk to someone who's wiser, who can restore you.

Those who are spiritual are to restore those who are not as spiritual. That's really what should have been done. And then don't close yourself off to it, because he hits 30 and it's like, well, didn't happen.

I guess it's not going to happen. I guess I need to sort of more or less make peace with this and live a life of celibacy, because I don't want to engage in sin. But at the same time, he has sinful desires and temptations and quote-unquote orientation.

And he is, I think, throwing in the towel, just saying, look, it hasn't happened. It's probably not. This is who I am. This is part of who I am. I'm a same-sex attracted Christian. And I compared it to my own life and said, look, if I said I want to have kids by 30, which I did, I very much love kids.

And I see there's people that I know that don't really like kids as much. And they have tons of kids, and hopefully they like them now. But that wasn't their goal. My goal was I wanted to have a lot of kids and it hasn't worked out for me.

I have one daughter right now, which I'm very grateful for. I would love to have more, but I am into my 30s now. And if I said at 30, when I did not have any children yet, well, I guess God just doesn't want me to have children.

Right? That would have been wrong. No, we keep pursuing that. And that's obviously a different example in a way. This is much more tied to holiness and sin. But that's just not how life works. And it's terribly demoralizing when you start to just believe these goals are unachievable.

You can't live in the order that God has made for us to live in because it hasn't happened yet. Or I'm embarrassed. I'm not going to share it with someone who can help me. I'm not going to take the measures.

I'm just going to sort of learn to live with this. And then I'm going to go tell churches what they need to do to normalize it for other people. And that's where Sam Albury was. I do have a lot of compassion in the sense that I feel bad for a guy who has these broken, fractured identities and this sin temptation, this sin issue.

But at the same time, he's going around as an expert trying to tell people what to do, trying to give churches advice and navigate this issue. And he's speaking from his own brokenness on this. And I don't mean brokenness in the way Big Eva so often used to speak about brokenness, where it was like sort of a softening of sin.

There's sin in this. But what I mean is that there's confusion, destabilization, disorder, incoherence. There's a fractured identity. I don't know where this all traces back to, but he's speaking as an expert from that place, from the place that you shouldn't be speaking as an expert.

You don't know what you're talking about. You're going to do more damage. And that's the problem with Sam Albury. Always has been. If this is the issue, don't become the poster child for how to solve the issue.

You haven't even solved it for yourself, right? And it's an amazing thing. It's the people like him and others who have written for organizations like the Gospel Coalition that seem to be the approved voice on this subject, maybe because of a standpoint theory or something.

But it's like you've got to be struggling with this. You've got to have this as your identity to say anything worthwhile. If you're someone who overcame this, if you're Darren Mell, if you're Juan Riesco, if you're any of the others, Rosaria Butterfield, this used to be a struggle or a sin or however you want to frame it.

It's all sin on some level. But this was a problem. And now the Lord has, through the Holy Spirit and the grace of Christ and the fellowship of the church and the tools he gives us to overcome these things, now look where you're at.

That's the place to become the expert on it. Become the person who can speak on it and say, I overcame it. God overcame it in me. And now I'm here to help you. Those who are spiritual are to restore. So that's not what happens, though, unfortunately, and it hasn't happened in the beguila land.

I want to talk about a broader issue with all of this, something I don't think I've talked about in relation to same-sex attraction before. And generally what I do, and I've done this even in my book, Against the Waves, which you can get online, I talk about Greek words, right?

So I talk about pathos, which is where we get the word pathology or pathological. It's this passion, an impulse, and it's probably the closest word in the Greek we have, in the Bible at least, to what might constitute orientation language, right?

So Colossians 3 .5, 1 Thessalonians 4 .5, Romans 1 .26 use this. When I've talked about this before, I'll talk about this state or condition of pathos. And so if you have inappropriate, sinful pathos, then you need to repent of that.

And then I'll talk about epithemia, which is desire, lust, or craving. And it can be used in positive or negative ways. You've got to have a good craving, bad craving. But oftentimes it's used in the negative.

And pathos and epithemia are both condemned in Romans 1 and Colossians 3 .5. So it's two separate words. If you have the pathos, this state or condition, if you have the epithemia, this desire or lust, and they're sinful, they're for things God has prohibited, you need to repent of that, right?

But that needs to be mortified in your body. You need to make war on that. And it might be hard, but God gives you tools. God helps you. God gives you grace. And don't get off the saddle. Keep riding.

Don't ever give up on it and say, well, that's who I am. I'm always thinking violent thoughts. I always want to murder people in my heart. And I guess I'm a Christian murderer. That's my attraction. That's my orientation.

No one does that, right? And that's part of the issue here. And I'm not saying that murder and same-sex attraction are the same exact sin or anything like that. What I'm saying is other sins start out in the heart.

Jesus said that's where sin starts. It's out of the mouth. The heart speaks. And we don't take those heart conditions, those desires, those state or condition, pathology, we don't take those and say, well, that's your identity now, right?

And so I'll usually say that. I'll usually talk about the difference between external and internal temptation, because temptation to do something, charismos is the word for that. That can be something that is temptation for a good thing that God has ordained, but you want to fulfill that good thing in the wrong way.

So you could have the kinds of desires that God gives to males and females for the opposite sex, and you could want to fulfill that in a way that is not pleasing to God that is outside the boundaries of marriage, for example, or you could have a disordered temptation.

James 1, 13 through 15 says, let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust.

Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. According to this passage, the source of temptation to evil is a lust, which is present in fallen creatures, you and me, but not in God.

So we can conclude temptation is not the source of sin, but it does expose desires that could be the source of sin. And that's where we have to make a distinction. Romans 1 talks about these disordered desires.

So these are all things that I talk about. I talk about the definition of sin. Proverbs 7, it means to miss the mark. If you're being tempted, and it's for something that is an unnatural thing, it is a disordered desire.

Romans 1 talks about these unnatural affections. This is a lower state of temptation. It's not like the temptations Christ endured. God can't be tempted, not in the sense of internal temptation.

He can't.

You can't entice him with something that is against God's law directly. I mean, he's impeccable, so you can't actually get Christ. The devil was on a feudal mission when he was trying to get Christ to sin.

But the things he used were things like,.

It's good to eat, it's good to drink, you deserve worship.

And of course, all those things are true, right? Those aren't bad things for Jesus Christ to want. And food and water, those aren't bad things for us to want. Those are things God ordains in their proper place, not outside of their proper place though.

But there are things that are universally wrong, that are disordered desires, that there is no way to... Homosexuality is one of those things. There is no way to find a scenario where it's appropriate or approving from God to engage in that.

And so I've covered all of this. That's just a review of all of it. The Bible is clear on these things. We've been over it. But there's something else that I want to say. And it just struck me when I was thinking about this.

I think it was Stephen Wolf who tweeted out something about, I'm summarizing, but we shouldn't be giving advice essentially from our brokenness. Maybe the church shouldn't platform people to give spiritual advice from their brokenness or their broken identities.

I think it was something along those lines. And I started thinking about this, broken identities. And you know what? I think I commented back, so this sounds like the internet to me. And I'm not going to do the thing where we just normalize same-sex attraction because, well, everyone's got a broken identity.

No, no, this is a specific sin. But God does put us in a world where he gives us certain slots, if you were. And if those slots that are fulfilling, slots that are part of who we think of ourselves as, as part of our identity, right?

When you think of who am I, right? I'll make myself an example here. When I think of John Harris, well, first of all, I have a name. Harris is my last name. I belong to a family. It's part of my identity.

And this is the way God made the world. John is a male name. There's certain responsibilities attendant to being a male. And then when you become a husband and a father, there's other responsibilities, additional responsibilities.

It means you have strength. You're supposed to be a protector. You're supposed to be a provider. You're supposed to make sure that your family's taken care of and stuff like that. In the church, there is a spiritual identity that we have.

We are part of a spiritual family when we become one in Christ. So we become part of Christ's family. Now we're brothers in Christ. God is our father. We're no longer children of the devil. We've changed families.

We've been adopted. That is an identity. That's part of my identity. I'm a child of God. Obviously, I also live in a region. I can't avoid that. Can you avoid that? I mean, even if you're sitting on your computer all day, you still have to go out and go to the store and meet people.

You have a place you live and you interact with other people in that place. It's inescapable because your spiritual identity and your familial and physical identities all are carried out not in some abstract location.

It's a real-world location. That is part of who you are. You've got to put clothes on. What kind of clothes are you going to put on when you go out? There are all these things that make us us. Even your regional affinities end up being expressed through things like sports, music you listen to.

These are all important things. What are you saying, John? What does this have to do with Sam Albery? I think Sam Albery is someone who's broken in a way. Yes, sinful. He's a culprit. But sin often makes us victims and culprits simultaneously.

We're certainly not purely victims. When we're sinful, we are culprits. But it does do things to us. It sometimes is the result of sins. Sin bleeds to sin. You're downstream sins from upstream sins. One of the things that I have noticed in the last few years really impressed on my heart this need for people to understand better who God made them to be.

I realized that's not just finding spiritual satisfaction in Christ. That is the primary first thing. But there are other things that God has given us, like family, etc. One of the things I've noticed as people are more and more online and in chat groups and pursuing hobbies and interests that would have been probably less a part of their identity but now it becomes a primary identity because you can find all these people who are into that kind of thing.

People who go down weird racial paths and are trying to assert themselves as, I'm a part of this group. I've seen guys transform. That thought never would have crossed their mind. They knew who they were in a more holistic, rooted, organic way.

Now they're trying to grab something that's more abstract and technical. They're saying, this is who I am. This is the primary thing. This is my tribe. Personality cults, right? I'm following this guy because he says things that I like.

I don't want to over-psychologize all of it, but maybe a lot of man of spirit guys are like this. If you had a broken relationship with your dad, you're probably going to be attracted to someone who's speaking a language that you long to hear.

All of that to say, I conceive of it this way. We have slots that God has given us. Each one of us has notes that we're supposed to play. In a healthy, especially in a world that's not fallen, we wouldn't have really had to think about.

But in a fallen world, and with things like broken families and divorces, and moving around all the time, and sinful normalization that gets you to do things that are unnatural. Unnatural in the sense that they're not what God has ordained.

You can find yourself over the course of years in very weird places. You can see your anonymous online identity as more primary than your real identity. It's different for everyone, but I think there's a big identity crisis going on.

When I was thinking about Sam Albury,.

I was like,.

Sam became big.

When,.

This is pre-AI, but this is when podcasts are really starting to become a thing. Sam's this personality guru. For some guys, he was a personality cult. Not his fault necessarily, but people were really attracted to him to try to navigate this issue of same-sex attraction.

I think the reason he was so popular and so famous is because he was trying to add a dimension, to add an identity factor that had not been normalized before and use it as a substitute. Let me give you an example.

I think I played the clip, but he wore a wedding ring. Now, if you want to get married, if you want to attract a wife and you're struggling with this sin and you're waiting on God,.

God, break this.

I'm going to fight it every day. I'm going to seek spiritual help. I'm going to do everything I can and I'm just waiting on you to answer my prayer. The last thing you probably want to do is put a wedding ring on.

That'll scare away any person of the opposite gender who's ever going to be interested and it just says,.

I'm taken.