Biblical Womanhood In a Godless Culture | Rosaria Butterfield

All right. We are back with another episode of the Room for Nuance podcast. I'm Sean. We are here with our guest

Rosaria Butterfield. Yes. Uh, not the third or anything like that.

Sister, thank you so much for joining us. We're honored that you're on the show. Would you mind asking the

Lord's help opening us in prayer? Oh, I would be honored, Sean. Let's pray. Our gracious God and our heavenly father, how we thank you for your justifying imputation of Christ's power to forgive us and how we thank you,

Lord, that Christ, our Lord, indeed died and rose and now sits at the right hand of the father and that we even have the opportunity to shore up our sufferings in his.

We thank you, Lord, that the Christian life is a life of meaning and purpose and grace, even in suffering.

And we thank you, Lord, that that imputation of, of, of forgiveness has launched us into a life where we can truly live in victory in the power of the resurrected

Christ. We thank you, God, for that. We pray Lord, um, that everyone listening, ourselves included here at this table, that we would, that we would know that deeply and well, and that we would have greater faith.

So Lord, we pray that you would continue to grow us in sanctification. And we pray that our faith would fail us not.

And we pray all of this in the matchless name of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, sister. So we are here at the cross conference. Um, last night

I shared my testimony and, uh, I went through a phase.

I kind of have a, like you, uh, and I think extraordinary testimony, at least to a lot of people.

I pray for my kids that they have the most boring testimony, right? Yes. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. I went through a phase when

I was younger after kind of going on the circuit, you know, come tell your story, come tell your story where I kind of got tired of it.

And I was like, I just want to preach the gospel. Not saying that you can't do both at the same time. I think I've sort of come out of the other side of that, understanding how the

Lord uses our testimonies in really incredible ways. And I'm saying all this because I think it's your testimony that kind of puts you on the map that really introduced you to a lot of people.

So, uh, I think most of our listeners will probably be familiar with it, but can you give us a, like a five minute version of your testimony in case someone doesn't know your story?

Yeah, absolutely. And then speak to maybe, if you went through any of that. Oh, I did. I completely resonated with that.

So, um, so I was converted by our gracious Lord and savior to faith in Christ in 1999.

At that point, I was, uh, a newly minted, tenured radical.

My field was English women's studies and queer theory. And I was hired by Syracuse university in some ways to make homosexuality look wholesome.

Yeah. Um, I, now I hadn't always been a lesbian, so I'm 61 years old in my generation.

You're 61. You did not know that. I didn't know that. You don't look 61 at all. But I feel it.

Wow. Okay. Um, uh, in my generation, you know, it wasn't like it was cool or popular to be gay.

And so, so I didn't come out as a lesbian until a whole lot of other people said, you know, you're gay, you know, you're a lesbian.

So, um, and so when I came out, um, I found that I just felt like I had found my authentic self.

I, and I, I, um, immediately threw myself more deeply into a gay rights activism.

I had been a feminist and a gay rights activist before I had met my first lesbian lover. Um, so life just felt normal to me because that's when you're not a

Christian, your sin is you're not at enmity with your sin. You're, it's just with God.

Yeah, true. Exactly. So, so the sin part wasn't, you know, but, but I had finished my 10 year book all to say, and I was just genuinely curious.

Why do evangelical Christians, why don't they leave consenting adults alone?

This was back when the gay rights movement had that very quaint phrase. You haven't heard it in 10 years and maybe we'll get to why.

Uh, but that quaint phrase of, we just want you to leave us alone. Just leave consenting adults alone.

Um, what we do in the privacy of our own bedroom is, is just not your business. And so, and I was just curious why evangelical

Christians felt like that wasn't, you know, part of just pluralism and pragmatism and you know, just like being a grownup in a world with people who don't agree with you.

And so I, um, I had written an article that got a lot of play. It was about the promise keepers visit to Syracuse university.

The big New York newspaper gave me a whole back page with the title promise keepers message is a danger to democracy.

So you can imagine that caused a little kerfuffle. And in that kerfuffle, I met a man who would, who would lead me to Jesus.

Pastor Ken Smith. Pastor Ken Smith. He's still alive. He's 96 years old. Whoa. Yeah, no, he's, he, and he doesn't look like he's 96 either.

So just, or, you know, act like it. Um, but, um, he and his dear wife,

Floyd, who went to be with the Lord a few years ago, they, um, they just entered my world.

Now the way they did that was he wrote me a letter and, and he said, uh, you know, I'd like to talk to you about some of the ideas in your article, which is great.

I love talking about ideas, but I also was excited when I saw his pedigree because I thought, wow, this is great.

This is my unpaid research assistant for this book. I don't read Greek and Hebrew. I don't know stuff. I'm going to, um, the fundamentalist angle.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, um, so I immediately said, yes, that'd be wonderful. And then he was very gracious.

He's, he's very gracious and, and, and very chivalrous. And he said, well, are you going to be uncomfortable coming to our home?

Would you rather we meet you somewhere else? And, you know, at that point, gay activism was all in the home.

This was the nineties and New York AIDS had just, you know, it was just devastating the community.

So all kinds of things are going on in the home. And I said, no, I, home is great. You know? Yeah. And then

I discovered that his address was right around the corner from my house. So he was a neighbor as well as, uh, what

I thought was going to be my unpaid research assistant. Well, we, he immediately was excited about my research project, which

I thought was crazy. I said to him, look, here's my problem. I'm going to have to read the Bible. Oh, no problem. Oh no.

Exactly. So, um, he, in some ways he put me on a, uh, like on a, on a reading program.

And we were going to get together once a week and talk about, uh, you know, what we were reading. And I had a, uh, just providentially

I had, I had a research, uh, a leave. I had a sabbatical. Thank you. Coffee is coming.

Coffee is good. Um, and, um, I found myself reading the

Bible for five hours a day because I'm a reader first of all, but I'm on a sabbatical and I'm working on a book.

Well, you know what? If you read, if I could read the Bible five hours a day, and if you could read the Bible five hours a day right now, you know, can you imagine that gives the

Holy Spirit some pretty wide angles in your life. So I read the Bible, met with Ken and Floyd.

And I think sometimes people got a really strange notion of what it's not that he was just like, Oh, tell me what it's like to be gay.

How can we help you be gay? How can we help? How can you help our church be gay? Like none of that.

He was just loving you. He was just like, Hey, let's read the Bible and let's see what God says. And, and he made something very clear the first time he met me.

He said, look, I can accept you as a lesbian. I just don't approve. Yeah. Well, we say that, but we are now 2023 post

Obergefell. One of the, one of the clauses in the Obergefell decision in 2015 that legalized gay marriage in all 50

States was the dignitary harm clause, which means that it is considered now legally speaking a harm to fail, to affirm someone's

LGBTQ plus dignity. Well, um, so I read the Bible. I met with Ken and Floyd.

I probably had 500 meals at their house before I ever walked through the door of the church or committed my life to Jesus.

But there are a couple of things along the way that were significant. One was very quickly.

I could see why this was called the good news, the gospel, but not for me, but I could see why for you all, it would be the good news.

Like paper. It's great. Yeah. And for people who aren't gay, like if you don't have to give up like the core of who you are, how would, who wouldn't, and it was, it was a grand story.

Um, I'm a lit professor. I love a good story. It in it's hermeneutically interesting.

And I could totally see why if I wasn't me, I would be like, yeah, this is good news.

It's the kind of story you wish would be true. Yeah. Yeah. Or, but, but, and I, and you know, and at a certain point, then

I got to the point where I believed, you know what, actually I think it is true. I actually think that the

Lord Jesus Christ is risen and real. And I actually think that that's a truth over which

I have no interpretive power. And then I thought, okay, but I still don't know how that's going to work for me.

Yeah. I mean like, how can I, how can I repent of something that I think

I think is who I am? And so I was talking with Ken and Floyd about this because I also found something else.

Cause you know, that was back in the days of the Franklin planners, you know, those big, like you see are too young to even know this.

Okay. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Okay. It was these planners, everybody, all professionals had them.

They was like the size of a phone book. You probably don't even know what that is. And you would record every, you know, like it was just about productivity.

And I realized, you know, this is after my research leave was done. I was spending hours in the morning reading the

Bible and I thought, why am I doing that? Right. And I realized that I did it because I was amazed that there might be a

God out there who loved me and knew me. And it might just might just maybe be possible that this word was different than any book

I had ever read that it's alive and it's dissecting my heart.

And, and, um, and so at that point I just said to Ken, what is going on? And Ken said, well, I've got, let me,

I'd like to give a lecture to your students about why the Bible is true. I'm like, you're not getting to my students, buddy, but you give me that lecture.

And so he called you over, you had a one -on -one. We did actually, he came to my house that night. He came to my house that night and he gave this lecture and you know,

I take, I'm a note taker. So, but quickly I realized I was going to have to do that, you know, draw the line down the middle, what he says and why

I think it's not true. Right. So like I'm arguing back and forth and that was a, just a watershed night.

And, and, and, and I said to him, but what I basically said to him, but what do you do with your sin?

And, um, and isn't that really the question that everyone has to answer? Isn't that the question? And he gave me a little book by Chris Lundgaard called the

Enemy Within and it's on John Owen and indwelling sin.

And what, what that, that book was really transformative because it made me do something that, um,

Thomas Watson will call the first step of repentance. He has six ingredients for repentance. And the first ingredient is recognizing your sin like as sin, not calling it something else and not an oopsie daisy.

Yeah. And not who I am and not an ontology. Yeah. And so, um, so that book really turned me around and, um, and when

I committed my life to Jesus, I didn't stop feeling like a lesbian, not at first.

I needed to learn what it meant to go to war and I needed to learn how to hate my sin without hating myself.

Yeah. To put off the old, put on the new. Yeah, exactly. And so, and that's painful at first.

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but the church loved me.

Um, so I should also say, I was a gay rights activist at the time. I wasn't like your lesbian next door who, you know, just led a quiet life.

There's nothing quiet. I had helped write policy that snowballed into the gay marriage decision.

I testified before the legislature. I led, you know, many, many student groups on LGBTQ plus activism.

And then when I came to Christ in some ways, what, it wasn't what I said that changed anything.

It was what I stopped saying. What God did was he put me out of, you know, he put me on the sidelines, right?

I couldn't, I couldn't direct those dissertations. I couldn't teach those things. And that was a very hard time.

I mean, can you imagine, you know, flying here from Australia to work with the queer theory professor on a dissertation and now she commits her life to Jesus and you don't have a dissertation director.

And this is back before there was a bunch of people you could who were doing this. It was still sort of in the backwaters of academia.

Oh, it was. It really was. It was, it was completely a, yeah, no, it's, it's a,

I had been called a pervert many, many times. Actually recently at the Durham County school board meeting, life changes.

That's because I, you know, believe that transgenderism is junk science, but anyway, we might get there. So, so the church was wonderful.

And they walked with me gently and quietly, but then also, you know, more forcefully.

I never was alone, even though I was still teaching at a university.

I was, I had to go before an ethics board to explain why I wanted to teach in Christian hermeneutics and not queer theory for which, you know, the university had invested a whole lot in me doing and the church was there.

And then, you know, I, the Lord started to very much work in my heart because the seeds of the gospel are in the garden.

There is no fruit of the spirit that just kind of dangles apart from the creation ordinance.

And so I really started to dig into what am I as a woman. Yeah. And there you go.

There you go. No, no, that was so good sister. Talk to us about difficulties.

And so, you know, you wrote secret thoughts about unlikely convert. Was there ever a point where you got tired of asking people to come and share the same story?

Oh my goodness. Well, first of all you know, I'm by God's grace.

I married Kent Butterfield and that I married Kent and I were married when I was a

Christian only for about a year and a half. So I've been biblically married for almost as long as I've been a Christian.

And I was very quiet about my past. I wanted nothing to do. I wanted to live for Christ.

I was done with that. I just really, and we were, we were in, we lived in Percival, Virginia and a friend of mine, a neighbor came across the street who was a

Christian. And he said to me, you know, I have been praying for this Syracuse university professor, lesbian activist.

Her name is Rosaria Champagne. And I think I don't have to pray for her anymore because I think that's you.

And I just threw the guy off my porch. I'm like, look, I don't want to talk about that. And he said, you know, you need to, you need to write a book.

And I thought, you are a crazy man. You need to, you just need to, you need to get off my porch before I act like the

Southern woman and throw something at your head. But then Kent and I talked about it and I started writing and then, you know,

I wrote this little book and I was, it was just going to be a little book and it was, you know, little press, little book, thousand copies, mostly for my church, my community and my children.

I wanted them to know that I am not cleaned up, that Christ is cleaned up for me.

Yes. I need to repent of my sin. Yes. I need to drive a fresh nail through it every day and all that I work.

There is sanctification is work. You can't just sit there on a lump, but it's Christ who measures up, not me.

And so that's why I wrote the book. But then other people started reading the book and then it did become popular. And then

I did start speaking and then I tanked. It was probably those years of just sharing my testimony to an evangelical world were very dark for me.

I had had all of this liberty in Christ, but then you start talking about the old stuff in the old way.

And I started dealing with body memories and it was, it was really bad.

And I, you know, my husband and I just decided, and you know, you know how strange it is, you know, this, the evangelical world, you know, they, it, it, you know, because I didn't come from it either.

No, me either. No, this is wacky to me. Like this idea that, you know, so we decided

I was going to just back off. And so I wrote a few books and I'm a writer, I'm a scholar, I'm a homeschool mom.

I teach, you know, rhetoric literature in a co -op, it's turning into a school, you know, I love doing that.

But, but yeah, those were really dark days. And I, um, I realized that Satan is very active and very crafty.

And that this was not, this was not, I was not going to benefit the evangelical world by doing the dog and pony show anymore.

And if, if I was going to be of any benefit to them, maybe I could write some books that would give them tools to know what time it is and to know what it takes to defeat

Satan in a, in a world where he has set up a lot of shops, including some in bratty evangelicalism.

Amen. Um, that makes me think of the scripture about the men of Issachar who were wise to the times.

Somebody just this morning sent me this from Vaughn Roberts. If you were the devil, where would you direct your attack against yourself?

Take that and apply it to evangelicalism. Pairing that with second Corinthians two 11 so that we would not be outwitted by Satan for we are not ignorant of his designs.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. There's a wonderful book or in fact, our church is going through it right now and in our book study and old book of course,

Puritan book by Thomas Brooks called precious remedies against Satan's devices. And what's fascinating is the last five pages of the book is on basically six ways to know you have a false teacher.

Ooh, I'm just telling you it, it, uh, it would increase everyone's vocabulary. But if I could give that book away at this conference,

I would do it. Okay. So you, you kind of went through that.

You went through the darkness. How'd you come out? Cause, cause your new book, which is why you're what we're going to be talking about today, five lies.

Uh, but I mean, you basically kind of do most of your theological work through the lens of an extended version of your story.

So how did you come out of the, the, I don't want to share my testimony. I don't want to be the testimony person. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What got you to the place where you were ready to do it again? Well, repenting of a number of sins that I had committed as a

Christian as I was sharing my testimony. Okay. Because here's the thing, um, saying, you know, justification is done.

Sanctification is slow and the problem with sharing the same anything over and over again, unless it's like a lecture on King Lear or something.

But the problem with doing that is it locks you in a time and a place.

And, um, especially if you're doing it at a big conference with colleagues, or, you know, people who've kind of become colleagues, they're invested in you not changing your mind on things.

And I had to step away and realize I have sinned.

And so the first section of five lies of our anti -Christian life starts with me repenting to you all about those sins.

But that was very helpful. The Lord, the Holy Spirit kind of sloughs up the reality.

But if you're so busy, you got the hair, you got the mic on and got the makeup on and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're the dog and pony show.

How do you hear the Holy Spirit? And so, um, now, you know, sinners always sin with company, don't they?

And so all of the sins that I, that the Lord graciously brought to my attention that I was committing as a

Christian, as I was sharing my testimony with all of you and doing interviews and other things like that.

Um, I talked with some of the friends who are committed to me, not changing my mind.

And it's been a really interesting thing because nobody said, Oh, if it's a sin, please repent of it.

People say, well, can't you just tell people you changed your mind? Can't you just learn? Yeah. And I think that's a cop -out because if it's sin, you need to repent of it.

And actually Thomas Watson and his book, um, um, the doctrine of repentance talks about the difference between repentance and counterfeit repentance.

Counterfeit repentance is when evangelicals with a reputation to maintain won't repent.

We'll just course correct. You know, we're just like, well, we're all learners. True. But if it's sin, you need to record it as sin.

I mean, if you take the wrong exit on the highway, that's not sin. That's a mistake. You don't have to repent to that. You just have to correct it.

But I committed sin and I needed to repent of that. And so that was a very life repentance, but you know, our confession of faith,

Westminster confession of faith calls it repentance unto life. Repentance is very life giving. So I repented of my sin.

I could write this book. I could, now I don't speak often because I have to taper it.

Yeah, I just do. It's, it's, it's, um, it's a very, it's there's a high degree of spiritual warfare when

I clip on that ear mic. Um, so I don't, I don't do a lot, but what

I do, I try to do in the power of the risen and resurrected Christ, um, knowing that, uh, you know,

I just, I do it some Psalm 103, 12, right. He puts his sin as far from us as the

East is from the West. And so that means for every Christian today is a new day. It's a new day. And if you want to live with, you know, if you want to live with the courage, that's real courage, not just bravado, then, you know, repent of your sins.

Psalm 32 says, you want to be happy, repent. Okay. So speaking of things that you've had to repent of,

I think one of the, um, one of the big things that has come up, it was, it was released as an article several months ago, but it was an excerpt from your book.

You have repented of the accommodation view of using wrong pronouns or the hospitality view.

Can I just tell you how happy I was when I saw that I have for years, it just not understood.

Well, not even you, uh, just why anyone would struggle with it. Names can go both ways.

Pronouns are binary, right? To use a pro pronoun that doesn't belong to a person is what the

Bible calls a lie. Yeah. Yeah. And it's hating your neighbor too. There's a, there's a laundry list of sins connected to it.

Having said that, uh, grace, right? You were not trying to harm your neighbor, right?

You were trying to serve them. You were trying to love them. You were trying to accommodate them for the sake of the gospel. Nevertheless, just like all of us at some point we realized,

Oh, this thing that I thought was helping me in my evangelism was actually a hindrance. And the Lord may have worked around that because he's sovereign and he can do that.

And he does do that. But we don't want to put barriers in the way. We don't want to send that grace may abound.

So, uh, so how did you think through that? What was, was it a series of things or did it just kind of, was it an epiphany one day?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I am Presbyterian, so I have pastor and I'm married to the pastor.

PC USA. No, good night. PCA. Okay. No. Oh, PC. No, no.

Our PC, our PC, which is formed Presbyterian. You know, you're informed. It's right there in the name.

Yeah, no, we have, um, less people in our denomination than we have at the conference right now.

That's so funny. We are exclusive Psalm singers. We came to this country and declared something, a couple of radical things.

Okay. Declared that if we'll come back to that, I don't want to talk about the regulative principle. All right. So how did you, how did you come, come around on stuff?

I sit under preaching that teaches me I'm a dirty rotten sinner and I need to repent.

So the Bible, well, my pastors, my elders, um, people, you know, really said, Hey, why are you, what are you doing?

Yeah. Or sometimes maybe we're like, why are you still doing this? Yeah. Cause that's, you know, here's the thing about being me and being you and being anybody.

We come to Christ with a history and we're not lobotomized.

And so a lot of, so we bring some bad patterns in. And the point of sanctification is to repent and to turn and to be done with those.

Um, and so definitely my pastors and my elders said, what are you doing? And I really took it to heart because that's, you know, the first step of church discipline is when your pastoral elders come to you and say,

Hey, I think a fellow church member. Yeah. Yeah. But I'll tell you the difference. Your pastor and your elders have authority over you.

Yeah. So, and I think this is important because I'll get, I'll, I'll close that loop. But, um, so, so I do,

I answer a lot of questions with, I'm a Presbyterian, you know, why, why am I going to war against, you know, some big names and bratty evangelicalism?

I'm a Presbyterian. Um, but, but, um, so they come in like,

Hey, what is going on? And I'm thinking, you know, yeah, that was, I don't really believe that anymore.

And did I ever, and, and, and, and do, is there any fruit that's coming from this? No, no, no, no.

In fact, what's happening, we're not seeing people from, you know, uh, you know, a transgender, you know, disorder repenting and coming to Christ.

We're hearing evangelicals do seminars on how to humanize the transgender experience.

Like the church is becoming more gay and more trans and I'm part of the problem.

So actually the ref 21 article to which you referred, that is not an excerpt from the book. That's a, the book was written first.

You know how books are. Cause so the book was written first. That article is much fuller than what I have in the book.

Yeah. And so I want, and I, cause I, and that, and that I also call people out cause I don't sin alone.

I'm not the only, I'm not the, you know, I'm not singing a solo here. Yeah. Um, and, and I also wanted to make the case that, um,

God is not blessing us in the evangelical church because we have Aiken in the camp. Okay.

Okay. Josh, but you know, my mom went to Danny. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was like shots fired right out the gate.

Here we go. Oh dear. No, there's compromise. You and I are a dangerous combination here.

That is yes. We don't believe in editing, by the way. So that's great. That's great. Um, yeah.

So, so, so God is not blessing us cause we are sinning, hiding the booty under the dirt and, and yet somehow wanting to gain credibility by not repenting.

Well, look, I serve a Holy God. If my repentance is my last day in broad evangelicalism's conferences, you know what?

Praise be to God. Yeah. It's not a big loss. It's not a big loss at all. And so I, um, so I, and yet here you are at a conference because not all is lost.

The Lord has appointed people to hold the line. True believers are here and they need to hear the, the unfiltered gospel.

Yeah. Um, but I realized that all of this, the, so, you know, use the use. So anyway, use of transgender pronouns.

Part of why I did it was that it was a bad habit from being a gay rights activist. Okay. Which is a terrible excuse for any

Christian. Um, but I rationalized it by saying, if I can meet people where they are and just kind of respect their, you know, their fictional self,

I can at least have a second conversation and a third conversation. And that might have been true 20 years ago, but there's no way that that is true because that is called social transitioning.

When you use someone's pronouns or a name or encourage them to cross dress, um, that is social transitioning.

And even the APA, which pretty liberal rag, like I don't, I quoted at school boards cause like that's their team, you know, even they will acknowledge that social transitioning, hormonal transitioning and of course surgical transitioning stand in the way of the healing of gender anxiety in children.

And so, um, so to, to use transgender pronouns today in 2023 fast tracks people into a social contagion that really muddies the water about all the other comorbidities that they might've had that would lead them to this disorder in the first place.

And so I think it's fair to make a distinction. I make a distinction, not, not everybody in the reformed camp would, would, you know, agree with me and I'm happy to have pushback, but I make a distinction between the medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and the social contagion of transgenderism.

So there's, let's unpack some of these terms. Uh, in your book, you talk about gender dysphoria, gender anxiety, and the social contagion, which

I assume you're pulling heavily from Priscilla Shires. Uh, uh, no, no. Abigail.

Yeah, I am. And I'm also not fantastic. Yeah, it was amazing. Irreversible damage.

She's a hair on fire feminist. Well that that's the thing that we need to realize that the people who are leading the conversation in being rational human beings who know what a logical equivalency is and isn't and don't want to be hoodwinked by idiots.

All of those people are unbelievers. Right. And what you have in broad evangelicalism are the

Preston sprinkles waving the flag of, you know, here's my, you know, trans asterisk hair, you know,

Christian who shows me the better way. And you're like, no, we're coming back to that.

No, no, you don't go there. So I realized that this is a, it is, it is not only a violation of the ninth commandment.

Yeah. It is hating your neighbor. It is putting them in a dangerous place.

Gender dysphoria is it's medical analog is anorexia. No one affirms your 14 year old daughter's anorexic self delusion.

Yeah, you're right. You are really fat. Yeah. And nobody thinks that a sticker in a parade will solve her problems.

And so we have been hoodwinked. We in the evangelical church to instead of leading the world and helping people be victorious and be emancipated from the world, the flesh and the devil as transgenderism and homosexuality are instead, we somehow think that making the church more gay and trans is going to help people out.

And that's nuts. And so, but I wanted to market as repentance. So the ref 21 article, like the book marks it as repentance, not just I've learned enlightened, you know, that's cheap.

Yeah, it's really, and it's, and it's, it does not give glory to God. They're not mutually exclusive.

You can say, yeah, I learned that I was in sin when I was thinking and talking about these things.

And if you're a good leader and you have your people's trust when you say those things, all that's going to do is earn more trust.

Whereas when you withhold and you play kind of fast and loose, people can smell that people can,

I think, maybe not the broad masses, but a lot of people can. And I would say, who cares if it's right.

Look, what, what happened to Aiken? Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know, Joshua came and said, give glory to God and the death sentence had already been proclaimed.

And then he repented and gave glory to God. And he was, he was executed.

Right. So, you know, I mean, I, I don't know. And I think we just have to get right back to the fact that you do it because it's, it's obedience.

Amen. Yeah. There's a lot of, and this is the room for nuance podcast, but the emphasis is on room, not nuance as a, as the highest virtue.

I think the reason why we started this show is because a lot of people are trying to have really complicated conversations on a time crunch.

We're going to talk about transgenderism and side B Christianity. And by the way, you have 15 minutes. No, that's not helpful.

Yeah. So let's explore some of that, some of that nuance. I have so many questions for you.

I'm going to respect your time. Let me just try to work through them. Let's talk about something that you don't address in your book, but I'm just curious to get your thoughts on.

Okay. I have noticed a trend it's in broader publishing it's in the zeitgeist, but I'm finding it making its way into evangelical publishing houses where when referring to all people, we have begun using feminine pronouns instead of masculine.

That's an old one that's been going on in publishing for at least 25 years. Maybe, maybe not in evangelical publishing.

That's the point I'm starting to see it make its way into evangelical publishing. Yeah. My sense is that is wildly unbiblical.

That is wildly unbiblical. Can you speak to that? That is wildly unbiblical. Yes. Genesis one, 27, 28.

That is wildly. There you go. There's your sin. Because God, God made man first and he made woman from man.

And so the noun man is, does refer to man and woman.

Yeah. And it, but, but it captures the reality that woman is from man and man comes from woman as first Corinthians says.

So it captures the, the that, that necessary both hierarchy, but also symmetry relationship.

Yeah. So yeah, it's sin. It's a sin. Don't do it. Amen. And a woman.

Okay. Onto the next one here. I noticed in your book, you, you were, you use the word patriarchy, which

I like. It's kind of like, yeah, you're kind of like it. It almost feels like a, and, and watch what

I'm going to do now. Do you, do you disagree not with the way it's being used?

Cause I know words can be used a thousand different ways, but do you disagree with the word complementarian or complementarian as a message?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm a word Smith, so I'm an English professor and I choose my words carefully.

Right. So if I use the word heresy, I use it. I really mean it. And it's a good word. It's an old word.

It's a biblical word. And I don't, I don't like the word complementarianism.

And, but, but I, I don't like it in the same way. I don't like almost any word that was founded in 1970.

You know, I, I, because I believe that the creation ordinance makes it very clear that sex and gender are the same thing.

There is no distinction between sex and gender, biblically speaking and to introduce gender as a new category that somehow opens up more worldly possibilities.

And you think complementarianism does that? Well, I think it, it leans into this idea that sex and gender are different.

I know it in some ways, when my friends who say complementarian, too many syllables, too many syllables.

When they say complementarity, sorry, go ahead. And I say biblical patriarchy, they want to say, but we're saying the same thing we are, but my word is biblical and historical and it speaks to the creation ordinance.

It speaks to the way that, that the creation ordinance sets forward a pattern that implies a practice.

So God isn't some, you know, insane engineer who builds a bridge that drops you into a lake.

Right. Okay. The pattern of one man, one woman leads directly into the practice of be fruitful and multiply, and that is called good for everyone.

And so, so you don't need to we don't, we don't need a new word.

And I think that when we add a new word, we're going to bring with it. Words always carry with it, the cultural zeitgeist of it's both etymology, but also just all the, you know, what it picks up when it chooses it walks along the path.

But would you say patriarchy is a biblical word? I mean, conceptually I understand. Yeah, of course it is. The patriarchs.

Oh, I see what you're saying. No, the patriarchs for sure. It's a biblical word. And and I think it also is a powerful word.

It's a strong word. And it's good to have a strong word. It's, it's, it's necessary. I mean, when

I first met Ken Smith, I had no idea what I had just walked into because I hadn't been in at a dinner with a strong man.

I think in my, maybe my life, I mean, I never encountered, I'd never encountered this.

I had never encountered this. Or there's something also about his biblical patriarchal authority, gentleness.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. But, but a strong, but a strong authority.

I had never, I, you know, your whole life was spent around strong women. Yes.

Who played fast and loose with language. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So I, I like the term and, and I know it's a strong term.

Um, and it does get people's attention, but I think it's a better term. Interesting. Interesting.

I would like to see you sit down with John Piper, uh, who is, you know, the craft, uh, one of the, him and Wayne Grudem, they crafted all those documents back in the day and hear you guys hash it out.

Well, I just sat down with John Piper last night at dinner and I got an earful. Of course.

Right. Did it, was it a good conversation? It depends. Okay. Moving on.

Uh, we'll see how today's conversation goes. How's that? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So you start your book off at the tower of Babel.

Why do you start there? Well, well, you, you technically started Genesis three. Yeah, but, but I mean you really centered on the bad frame, the tower of Babel, because the book was written to respond to so many moms and grandmas who would write to me and say, why do

I feel like I'm living at the ground zero of the tower of Babel? Why, why, you know, if Christ isn't divided, why are

Christians and I came up with, because I'm, you know, this is how my brain works. I came up with three reasons and five lies.

The three reasons were we have thrown away the old Testament failing to see that the seeds of the gospel are in the garden and the

Bible is an entire biblical revelation. The second is we don't know what time it is and we use silly evangelical slogans like God is, you know,

God, because God is sovereign, I don't need to know what time it is. Well, you know, you probably checked your weather app to see what shorts to wear today.

Just to be clear, when you say we don't know what time it is, you mean we do not understand the times. Yes. I'm not speaking eschatologically.

I am. I am. I mean, we could go there if you want, but boy, that always gets me in trouble. But, um, but, um, but no, we don't, you know, a

Birgefell, Boztok, is it true as the gospel coalition recently promoted that it is safe and wonderful to send your child to public school?

Or is it true that since 2021 there is a federally mandated anti -bullying clause that demands children become allies to the transgender movement in order to not be called bullies?

Well, I know the latter is true. So I want to know why broad evangelicalism is promoting the former. So we don't know what time it is.

We don't know that we are living downstream from all of the exchanges, you know, in Romans one, the exchange of truth for lies, the exchange of the worship of the, of, of the creation for the creator and the exchange of heterosexuality for homosexuality.

We need to realize that all those three exchanges are now codified into law. And if you don't know that you're going to have a hard time defeating

Satan in your life because he has all kinds of open ways that you don't see. And then the third is that we've just failed to love our enemies.

We've, we've, it's a failure of love. We don't love our enemies. We're happy with common grace and pretending our enemies are our friends.

And that makes us cowards and traitors to the gospel. And so, um, so the tower of Babel is where of course

God just confused the language that people couldn't communicate anymore. And I've, that is what we all see in broad evangelicalism.

I mean, I had a debate with Rebecca McLaughlin for the TGC against wokeness. And when I got done with the debate,

I just realized, Oh, we just had this whole exchange and we're not even speaking the same language.

When I say woke and you say woke, we mean two totally different things. And we're not being honest. These can't, you can't have a good faith debate if people can't at least root their words in something that isn't melting plastic.

So I think it's hard to have a debate on a neologism. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah. A neologism is a new word like wokeness or complementarity.

It's hard to have a debate because it's a plastic word. It was meant to be a plastic word, you know, add a little heat to it and it kind of can shape it this way.

And that way it would be better to have the debate on a biblical concept so that we can actually dive into the theological issue.

And that's what I'm trying to do in this book. And I'm doing it for moms and grandmas because they want to know how do

I stay connected to my daughter who used to be lesbian, who now says she's non -binary, raising my three year old son, my three year old grandson as a, as a girl and buying him a tuck buddies.

Okay. Okay. You might need to, you might need to edit because I just realized I may have said something that your audience shouldn't look up, but you know what, if they sell it at target for three

T's, it's not about looking it up. It's there. Maybe Christians should know what that is and defy it. Okay.

So in light of you saying you wrote this for moms and grandmothers, praise God for godly moms and grandmothers.

Yes. We think, thank God for Timothy, Timothy's grandmother. This is a question that I got from Luke's wife, a church member.

I went on Facebook and said, Hey, what's what, what are some questions that I must make sure to ask Rosario if I don't, but if, if I forget everything else, she says, how should

Christians interact with family members who do not claim to be Christian and live an openly homosexual lifestyle?

That's a great question. And I would say the appendix to my book answers it because to this new book, to the new book.

Yeah. The appendix of five lies of our anti -Christian age is specifically dedicated to how to stay connected to your loved one without becoming indoctrinated.

Psalm 100 says all people that on earth do dwell, not Christian people or people who pretend they're

Christians at Christian conferences or, you know, all people, the creation ordinance is for all people.

And that is why rebellion against the creation ordinance is so much bigger than critical race theory.

You know, you know, critical race theory is a really unbiblical idea. And if you pursue it, you're going to break all your legs, you know, and break everybody else's legs.

And you're going to have a, an entire, you know, evangelistic movement of people with broken legs, but you go against the creation ordinance.

Oh, that's a fatal heart attack. So, so no, this is all people. This is not just Christian people.

Yeah. All people are called to the creation ordinance. And back in ancient history, like 15 years ago, nobody would have argued that.

Of course. Yeah. Things today are debated ad nauseum when five minutes ago, nobody even questioned.

This is not a gospel issue. This is a reality issue. Yeah, that's right. And one of my favorite, one of my favorite sayings from Al Mohler is ontology always trumps autonomy.

No matter how hard we try, we're trying to overcome this creation ordinance, but we can't, but along the way, a lot can be ruined.

A lot can be destroyed. People can be hurt really badly trying to overcome. And one of the ways is having the evangelical church co -opt the broad evangelical church co -opt ontology to complain, to claim that homosexuality and transgenderism are ontological.

That's right. Who I am, not how I am or how I feel. Yes. So, um, we're getting there.

We're slowly, but surely. I can, I, you guys tell me to like, no, you're doing great.

Oh, trust me. I will. Okay. You're doing great. Uh, so let's talk about sexual orientation.

Uh, where does this concept come from? And is it biblical? No, it, it, it, in terms of the history of ideas, it comes from Freud in the 19th century.

Um, and it basically is the idea that how you feel is who you are. And if you don't act on your feelings, because of course, you know, your feelings are very good, then you will kill yourself.

Okay. So, so it comes from, from the history of ideas perspective, it's

Freudian, but from, if you want to think about it biblically and we should, where does sexual orientation come from?

It comes from the flesh. So we have a category for it. It isn't just a history of ideas problem.

Um, homosexuality and transgenderism are from the flesh, the world and the devil.

Yeah. And anything in Christ, in Christ, we know that anything forbidden in the flesh or found in the flesh is forbidden in the law and is overcome in the gospel and the savior.

So why are we withholding the gift of repentance unto life and a good, strong military approach to our indwelling sin for people that we love?

Yeah. Why are we doing Satan's bidding? Carl Truman talks a lot about this in, um, rise and triumph, amazing, right?

Give away as many copies as you can. Uh, one of the things that I think he does a good job highlighting is how in, in the

Bible, uh, when sins were talked about, they were primarily talked about as deeds that we committed in light of our fallen nature, not identities.

That's right. Uh, so a man who laid with another man was not homosexual.

He was committing homosexual acts, right? Right. And so it was a verb, not a noun.

Exactly. So then you add some Freud, you add some weird postmodern stuff, some Jean Jacques Rousseau, even before that.

And then you get to the point where people say what I feel and what I do is who I am.

And if you deny that you're doing me violence, you're denying my very existence. Right. And then you're a Pelagius.

Okay. Because what you're doing is you're, you're, you're denying that original sin has bearing on you both as an unregenerate person, but also as a regenerate person, you deny you, you, you are acting as though, um, the regeneration of the

Holy spirit in your life means you are no longer battling an indwelling sin.

Yeah. And so you are misreading, um, the first 11 books of Genesis.

And to add you are now producing a vile heresy in a misreading of James one and Romans one.

And then you are saddling an entire generation of people with that heresy.

And you wonder why we are growing in homosexuality and transgenderism in the church instead of battling it, defeating it, winning and seeing the captives released.

You want me to unpack any of that or you want to go on with some of your questions? Well, I mean, I think I want to, I'm going to unpack it, but as I ask you questions, sure.

Uh, let's start with this phrase, same sex attracted. Should we, uh, refer to Christians as being same sex?

Never, never. And, and, and, and if you want to really go even further, there should be no one who calls himself a same sex attracted pastor.

Oh, well, pastor, non -pastor, especially especially pastor. That should not be in our, uh, it's cause it's not a matter of vocabulary.

It's a matter of theology and ideology. Okay. So let me, let me play the devil's advocate. And I don't like to do that often because he has enough of his own, the, uh, a young, a young sister in your church comes to you and she says,

I just use that term to say, no, I feel sexual attraction, uh, towards people of the same sex.

So I'm just kind of using it as a bare bones descriptor. What would you say to that? I would sit down and I would diagram the sentence with her and I would show her use of the to be verb am is, um, in linguistics it is, it is called a conjugal verb.

It actually commits the, it, it, it, it weds the subject.

I with the direct objects gay. So, so I would show her that even, even your pagan, uh, you know, professor of linguistics would know that you can't, that when you say that you do not just mean you feel that.

Okay. So, so, so you need to, but I think we need to go maybe to now

Romans seven and think about what Paul says when he says, why do I do what

I don't want to do? It is the law of sin in me. So he separates and this is

Paul, the believer. Let us, let us be very clear. Yeah. You're, you're ending the debate on Roman seven, right?

Yeah. I, well, if you think it's Paul, the unbeliever, I can't, I, you know, you, you got to go back.

Yeah. Go back. This is Paul, the believer. I, I agree with you. Well, good, because because it is,

I don't care. Right, right, right, right, right. And, and, and, and it's a, what this recognizes is that just as in, uh, in the fall in the garden,

Adam's fall imputed, uh, a sin nature onto man in justification by faith alone,

God himself imputes the righteousness of Christ. Um, the forgiveness of Christ, but that doesn't mean, what that does mean is now you need to go battle your sin.

It does not mean you just sit there and somehow wait for the garden to grow and you have no weeding to do.

Sure. And so it becomes a really important thing that Paul, even Paul, I mean, he's, what is he at the holiest man?

You know, like how can I even compare myself to the apostle Paul, right? Even he says, it is not high.

It is sin in me. That's indwelling sin. Another way to think of indwelling sin is to go to James one.

And when, um, James, do you mind if I, am I allowed to read the Bible? You are certainly well.

Yes. Let no, as long as it's the passion translation. All right. James one.

Okay. No one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it is conceived, gives birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

The heresy of our day says James one is talking about an innocent temptation over which you can't repent.

You just kind of flee from it. You run like a little scared school girl. But then, then it only becomes sin when it is conceived.

And the, the, the reformed reading of this, which is I think the accurate reading of this is no, this is the life cycle of sin.

First we see sin as an embryo, which we do believe, do we not, that that is a full human being, right?

Just not, not, not, you know, so it has embryo adult death. And if you tell people,

Oh, you're just the same sex, attracted Christian. It's not a sin. You're not in sin.

This is, you know, this is a temptation and you're to flee temptation, but repent of sin.

If you say that to people, first of all, go repent yourself right now, right now, just drop down because what you're doing is you are denying young people the opportunity to fight their sin when they have a fighting chance.

It kind of reminds me, I grew up in a, my family full of drug addicts. I grew up in the world of narcotics, synonymous.

Oh, there you go. And so, you know, the whole thing is, you know, once an addict, always an addict, it's very similar.

It's, it denies you the possibility of victory. It's like true victories. It does. And what

I would say is that the way that you fight your sin is through a full understanding of repentance.

And the first step in repentance is recognition, recognition, you know, and then you have sorrow and then you confess and then you have hatred for your sin and then you have shame for your sin.

And then you go to Psalm 103 12 and you having having dropped down and said,

Lord, I did it. This is my sin. I repent.

I hate it. I fight it. Then you receive that victorious statement as far as the

East is from the West. I put this away. So, and you know, the things I'm quoting from, I should tell you,

I'm, I'm not, I'm not digging, you know, a 2012 book, you know, from whoever

I'm the, the quotations I was reading about flea temptation, repent of sin.

SSA is a temptation out of sin. That's from a book that was published yesterday.

Actually, a company kindly sent me a copy. I read it on the plane site. And so this is, these are, this is a new, this is an old idea that hasn't been repented of and it's still in our commerce.

It's still in our language today. And so we need to teach young people to repent of their sin when it is at its embryonic stage.

Okay, well let's take, let's take that and run with it. Let's say you're sitting with that young woman in your church and she says, you know,

I'm a same sex attracted Christian and you sit her down and you diagram and you go to James and you walk her through this and she goes,

Oh, okay. How should I talk about this? How should I refer to myself? When people ask, you know, what are you struggling with?

What's a positive vision for how they should speak? First of all, I would say, do not come out of the closet. Okay. Coming out is a, you know, that is a gay activist.

Right. Yeah. So you do not put it on your Facebook page. You don't talk about it on Twitter. The only people who know what your indwelling sin is, is your pastor, your elders, and a few close friends.

And here's why you want to kill it. So you want to kill it dead.

You want to kill it so dead that you don't have to be Rahab the harlot.

What do you mean by that? What I mean by that is you get to kill it so dead that it doesn't describe you anymore.

So don't wear it. Don't own it. Okay. A little pushback. Let's say, um, your testimony is really powerful and you've just got baptized or you're about to get baptized in our church.

Before you get baptized, you go up and you share your testimony, uh, not coming out of the closet per se, but if this person's main defining sin in their life has been homosexuality, how do they then speak about that?

Do they just say, do they just say, Hey, I'm not like the famous viral internet clip. I ain't gay no more.

I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to give you a little pushback. Okay. Um, and I would say that, um, your repentance of, uh, repentance is both private and public.

Okay. And there are absolutely some aspects of our testimony that would be extremely painful, difficult, and dangerous for a new

Christian to share, because Satan will be all over her publicly. Her pastor needs to know her elders need to know she needs to be doing combat with that a thousand times a day and then get up tomorrow and do the same thing.

But yeah, exactly. But that should not be, there should be no young Christian who should be expected to publicly, um, uh, you know, to sort of, you know, as my friend

Beckett cook would put it, speak those words over yourself. You are giving Satan all kinds of room and I would really encourage you to rethink that as a practice.

Well, that was just a thought experiment. I mean, we're always going to have people share their testimony before they get baptized. But I guess,

I guess I'm trying, sorry, I'm trying to do thought experiments to drive at a certain point and I'm not doing a good job of it.

When someone wants to talk about their struggles with homosexual sin, talk, how would you, what would be the language?

If it's not, you would be in a discipling relationship with someone, preferably a pastor and an elder pastor's wife, you know, elders, wives, and it would be done privately so that you can be free of that and not wear that as a label as you move on.

This is a question of modesty and we live in a world of exhibitionism.

We have to be exhibitionists about everything. Even our testimony, God forbid. I mean, I was decades into my life in Christ before I ever spoke publicly about my lesbianism.

And at that point I was at a place where I could very comfortably say to you lesbianism is part of my biography, not part of my nature.

But the day that I took the covenant of church membership, if somebody had asked me to share my testimony, it would have been, it would have been really miserable.

Now I was a former gay rights activist. So you know what? You kind of knew it. But in our church, you know, you, you, you take vows.

Yeah, that's what it is. And I have my covenant of communicate membership vows in my Bible. I read them every day.

I want to remember my vows. And I took these vows and my, my, my pastor and my elders knew that I was taking them in humble reliance upon the grace of God without coercion and with full truthfulness.

And so that's what, that's what the covenant of church membership is.

It should not be, uh, people, uh, having to give, you know, exhibitionist, you know, teasers into, into their life, especially young people that does them harm, not good.

So let's take that thread and run with it. Exhibitionism. You, you say in your book that, uh, women in particular, but I think you would say this is general, uh, for men and women, both are being encouraged to replace the

Christian virtue of modesty, which is one of the five laws that modesty is, you know, dangerous, outmoded, you know, old fashioned, uh, with exhibitionism.

What do you mean by that? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I kind of mean like what you were just talking about about what happens in your church people.

So, I mean, I mean, I'm like, it's literally embedded into our culture. If I have lunch today, I have to take a picture of it and send it to 10 people.

Well, why would I do that? Am I inviting you to lunch? We, we, we have come to the place where we have just, we are performing our lives in a visually seductive way for anybody to see.

And we think this is connecting with other people. That's nuts. Um, actually the, the, the fifth, the fifth lie is that modesty is an outdated, um, mode that holds women back and supports biblical patriarchy.

And the idea is that's bad, right? You see, I am very blessed to be a member of a church.

That means I have a covering I'm covered and, and I'm certainly,

I'm also a biblically married woman. So I have my husband's covering also. But when

I was a single woman and I took those, those vows of covenant membership for the first time in my life,

I had a covering of male headship that protected me from the world, the flesh and the devil.

And, um, why are we denying that for people? So I don't, it's not that I don't,

I do think men have become exhibitionists too. Sure. I just think it's a lot more dangerous for women. Okay.

And I think you really see it on social media. Yeah. Twitter is for combat and women are not made for combat.

That might be the most, you know, you know, radical thing

I've said on your show. Right. But it is, I have seen, you know, with my own eyes,

Christian lives shipwrecked because of this either compulsion or sense of responsibility to share our stories.

Okay. So where do you draw the line between exhibitionism in storytelling and bearing witness to the gospel with your testimony?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, um, that definitely might be, I don't actually like the name of your podcast nuance, but I don't, but that might be a place where we would need some.

Okay. All right. So here's what you would do. You would talk to your pastor and your elders. You would say, you know,

I feel, you know, did this recently, you know, not so recently cause I'm old, but you know, a couple of years ago before I wrote five lies,

I feel the Lord is calling me to write this book and it's going to be, it's going to be lemon juice in the eyeballs.

And I feel like I need to repent of my sin publicly. I need to, I need to, um, recapture my testimony and I need to identify these problems.

Okay. What do y 'all think? And then my pastor and my elders gave me counsel, right?

So it's not just me and the Holy Spirit, because you know what? I can misunderstand what the

Holy Spirit says, especially if I have people handing me book contracts with money involved. So I have to go to people who, who are not, um, as easily deceived as I am.

So my pastors and my elders are the under shepherds.

Hebrews tells me that the Lord's going to work through them to help me interpret exactly that question.

Now another question might be is how many people have been helped by just the litany of testimonies we have out there?

How many more people would be helped if they would just read their Bibles? See, I think the problem with testimonies is there's a little too much eye voice in them.

And what that can do is it can intimidate people. Testimonies are also told from a certain point of view, a certain vantage point.

What if I'm listening to your testimony and I'm not there yet. And I write a testimony that offers something different.

So, you know, let's take, let's take the year 2010, 2012, you had

Wesley Hill, Christopher Yuan, Rosario Butterfield, Sam Albury, Jackie Hill Perry.

And we are all offering our testimonies. Yeah. That was kind of a unique concentration, right?

It really was. And, and, and, and, you know, and it's an interesting thing to look, well, okay, where's everybody now?

Uh, and I don't want to speak for everybody on that list, but the only person on that list that I know you're standing solidly in the same place as Christopher Yuan.

And so what happened to everybody else? Now I'm not suggesting that we are at a higher level of sanctification, not at all.

I, I'm, I'm just saying that the, at the very least, what we want is our testimonies to bring people back to the word of God.

Um, there's going to be all kinds of problems in our testimonies because ultimately they're told through the point of view of a sinner.

And there are words, not the word of God. They absolutely are not inerrant, but, but, so they should be always, um, submitted to the word of God and always being willing to be rebuked by the word of God and also to be in a beat, to be silenced there.

There's a, so no, I would not say in any stretch of the imagination that it is a new believer's best, uh, move to, uh, or that she owes it to everybody.

What is your reasonable service before God? Obedience, obedience. And at that point

I can absolutely guarantee you if you have come out of homosexuality or out of transgenderism, you need to be protected by your elders.

You need to be protected by the women in your church and your close friends and you need to go to war because it's not, the war's just started.

Yeah. For a new Christian. Oh, the war has just started. Yeah. And you need to figure out what tools you need.

Paul loves employing a good war metaphor when talking about the Christian life. He does it all the time. Timothy, my beloved soldier and son.

Uh, okay. Help me coach me. Correct me. I know you won't be shy about it. Uh, room for nuance since you brought it up.

Uh, trying to explore difficult conversations at length, uh, in the same way that you would discuss the

Trinity. God is fully man, right? I mean, excuse me. God is three in one or the, uh, the incarnation of Christ, the hypostatic union.

You need a lot of time to explore. That's why the creeds are not 15 words long, you know, and they took a couple of years to hammer out.

What would be a better word than nuance? Right. That's a good question.

And I'm not trying to tell you that you need to change the title of you. Tell me, tell me. I'll tell you a word

I like is teleology. Oh, that, that's not going to work.

Oh, I would love room for teleology.

Sure. You would. Okay. Well, well, I know you mean, you mean it's not all about me, Sean. Okay. Okay.

And I'll tell you what I like about the word teleology. It tells me, it tells me that no love isn't love.

Love the integrity of love is determined by the object.

A temptation isn't sinless. If my object is something that God's already told me is sin.

So I think we need to have a lot of room for teleology in, and I really mean, and I can,

I, I'm a, I'm an old professor. I can make teleology sound like cotton candy if you give me a little bit of time.

But I think we really do need room for teleology. We need room to see, to take a metaphor that, that I'm sorry,

Dr. Moller used recently to talk about Andy Stanley's unconditional conference.

He said, the train is leaving the station. Okay. Now actually I, my, you know,

Christopher Yuan and I are tight at the hip. So we were talking about that when it came out and I said,

I thought that train left the station in 2014 when we were at ERLC and Stanley said something about how, you know, unhitched from the old

Testament. I thought that train left the station a long time ago. He's like, yep, yep. Cause I go to bed early and other people stay up late and have these conversations and then they report them in, you know what

I mean? I'm like, didn't that happen? He said, yep, that happened. And so I realized what, you know, that is a very good metaphor for us right now.

Because you know, if you're on a train and it's going to a station, maybe it's a couple stops behind Andy Stanley.

Okay. I get that. You're not a full rank heretic. You're just a heretic in training.

Okay. How many people have been on a train? I used to live in Chicago, so I took the train all the time.

How many people if you're on the train and you realize it's going to the wrong station, solve that problem by talking to the other people on the train and try to nuance the problem of going to the wrong station.

Not one single person. You get off at the first time you can and you turn around.

I've literally done that lost on a subway system. So have I lived in, you know, yeah, absolutely.

And so that's what I would like to encourage young Christians to do. Think teleologically, where is your train going?

If you're on a train and it's a few stops behind Andy Stanley's, you're still going to the wrong station and you cannot solve the problem by having nuanced conversations in the car, in the car.

So the nuances in the problem, it's, it's the direction of the nuance. Yes, exactly. And so I, so I would love, yes, let's think teleologically,

Sean. Amen. But now we just got to teach a whole generation of people what the word teleology means.

Well, why? I'm a professor. You can do it. So can you? You're a pastor. You just, this is what we do is we teach people.

I mean, isn't the Bible itself a a constant study of new ideas.

Is any of this familiar to you? It should be way more familiar than it is. Well, but I mean, it, it, it, it, it violates our, our sin nature.

And I would say to, this is the other reason that I think thinking teleologically is really important. Um, so many of the sins that are plaguing the

Christian life today are what we would call what John Owen would call indwelling sins and an indwelling sin.

It's also what James one 13, it's internal temptation, indwelling sin. You quote a lot of Puritans, but I think it's important for our viewers to know the reason why we quote

Puritans is we think they just did a really good job explaining. Yeah. They're way smarter than we are. Way John Owen.

Yeah. Yeah. And they wrote in Latin and we can barely translate. So there you go. But, um, but yes, no, no. And, and, and, and in fact, the entire 10th commandment is, is, is devoted to this problem.

Coveting is an internal indwelling thing that shall not covet is about what you do in your heart, not what you're doing in your body right now.

So, so it is, uh, you know, and, and, and Romans seven makes it clear that it's unchosen, you know, so don't tell me,

Oh, it's not a sin. I didn't choose it. Read Romans seven. I didn't, I didn't choose my indwelling sin.

My indwelling sin is part of the way that my, my sin nature marks me and predisposes me for certain actual sins.

But if you don't have a game plan, you know, indwelling sin is like there's a robber and he's in the closet and you're coming home, you're unlocking, you don't know the robbers in the closet, you're coming home, unlock the door.

If your only security system is to lock the door behind you, that doesn't do anything for the robber that's in the closet.

So you need a game plan for that. And I don't think we're teaching people how to deal with their indwelling sin.

In fact, we're telling them it's not really sin. It's just temptation. Um, we're telling them you didn't choose it.

So it certainly can't be sin, completely ignoring Roman seven and, uh,

Exodus 2017. Um, and I think we need to stop doing that.

We need to teach people how to deal with their indwelling sin. And we need to let young people know that if you make it hard on Satan, he will start leaving you alone.

You know how people are victorious over their sins. I mean, we could talk about addiction. I have a friend who talks about when she first, um, you know, when she first came clean and she first came to Christ, it was literally heartbeat to heartbeat that she would have to deal with that.

And I deal with it. I mean, drive a fresh nail into any sin that says do it again. Just, um, make no provision, make no provision for the flesh.

Um, my husband is a pastor who works closely with the local rescue mission. These are many times men who have been addicts and homeless for three decades.

Can you imagine going to them with side B gay Christian nonsense and saying, well, it's just a temptation. Uh, don't you know

God's not really going to change you because that's who you are. Okay. Actually, let's stop right there.

I don't know that all of our listeners and viewers know what the difference is between side

A and side B. Can you explain that? Sure. Was I finished with the last point? I just want to make sure I wrapped up. Finish that up, but let's make sure we come back to it.

My last point was that you need a game plan for dealing with your internal sin. And that game plan can't be saying it's not sin.

Be killing sin or sin will be killing you. Exactly. So your game plan cannot be, it's not sin because famous, famous evangelical

Christian up there who, you know, is talking about his same sex attraction and how it's predisposing him to better appreciate beauty is, is lying.

Okay. Okay. I mean, he might be deceived. I'm not saying he's intentionally lying, but that is not true. You must, you must flee from that.

Okay. And in general, just don't take your cues from famous evangelicals on the stage. Take your cues from pastors and old dead guys that can't lie to you for modern reasons.

Exactly. That's okay. That's and can't monetize their brand. Yeah. Okay. Side A side

B. Okay. Boy, this is almost going to be like telling you about the phone book.

Cause you don't, you know, like you vaguely remember a phone book. Yeah. The white pages and the yellow pages.

Okay. Does anyone remember a vinyl record? They're making a comeback. There's a resurgence.

Yeah. There's a resurgence. Okay. Okay. In a vinyl record, the record is the, the, the ethical thing.

And side A is one side and you play it. And then you turn it over, put the needle on side

B. And so this side A side B takes its cue from the idea that there's this vinyl record and the vinyl record is the thing.

It's the thingness of the thing. It's the entity. And then one side plays one set of songs and the other side plays another set of songs.

And so gay Christianity works from the idea that everybody on this vinyl record is gay.

That is who you are ontologically. It is immutable. It is fixed.

Um, some people, you know, escape, I don't know, through like a crack in a door, but we're just anomalies.

Like there's not like, it's not like God doesn't have a game plan. Oh, like Rosaria made it out. She stopped being gay.

Don't expect that. She's the anomaly. Don't even for a minute think that that's going to happen to you.

I mean, Greg Johnson says 99 .9 % of gay people, you know, in his book, it's just, it's like, first of all, that, that stat is so dumb.

Like anything, pull that out of nowhere. So, so, but on one side are the people, the side

A people and the side A people believe that, um, God loves and honors you and wants you to be happy and therefore does not want you to be alone.

And if you are, if you are ontologically gay, then you should be married to a man or to a woman.

You should be married to a same sex partner so that you can flourish and live in the fruit of the spirit.

So rank heresy, rank heresy, side B only slightly less rank heresy. Side B says, we're the same record.

Of course we're gay, gay as gay can be. We'll never not be gay. Um, but we believe that God does not want us to act on our gayness.

So there's a big, there's a theological heresy right there because if you are gay, but God doesn't want you to act on being gay, what does that say about that?

I am gay. Is it sin? Is it neutral? How can it be neutral if God doesn't want us to act on it?

Right. If you replace gay with, I am a murderer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the reason they don't like that analogy and they'd say, no, no, no,

Sean, that's a bad analogy. The reason is because sexual orientation is a category of personhood according to side

A and side B and that is heresy as well. So actually inside be gay Christianity. I know it's like people are like,

Oh, but come on Rosario, cut them slack. They're, you know, they're not acting on it. Well, coveting is acting on it.

Okay. Coveting sin is actually acting on your sin. So I don't know what you mean. They're not acting on it.

Um, and everybody I know that I was close to 10 years ago who were side B, they're now side a.

So if my personal history means anything, so what solution do we have?

Well, you know, again, the, the book, the book of Romans, Romans one paints that picture of how serious homosexuality is as a sin, even if not acted on.

Okay. The, the, it is, it is an abomination. The impulse is the abomination. Yeah. The impulse is the abomination.

And so how, what do we do? That's another good word that we should start using more a biblical word abomination.

I love that word. Yes, absolutely. How are we going to help people to arrive at the victory of redemption?

Um, Thomas Chalmers calls it the expulsive power of a new affection.

I remember that. I remember desiring my ex lover and hating my lesbianism at the same time.

I remember that war that is not, and I would say probably, you know, anybody who's had any kind of a having to deal seriously with a sexual sin that has body memories, has people, has history and, you know, smells and sounds understands that.

Yeah. But if you deny them repentance, if you tell those people don't repent, this is who you are.

What are you doing? Well, you're setting them up to be bait for Satan because there's only one entity that never wants people to repent.

And that's Satan. In fact, Satan wants you to say, it's too late to repent.

I'm a Christian. How could I have done that? Satan wants you to believe the very opposite of Psalm 103 12.

Repentance is a new day. You did everybody repent today and you get a new life.

Um, and as you do that over and over and over again, Satan gets tired of you and he does liberate the captives.

But you've got someone like Matthew Vines who says Romans one has nothing to do with homosexuality, which is crazy.

Well, but then you have Preston Sprinkle who would agree. And his new book, 21 arguments, he says their arguments to support a biblical marriage.

But he also in his, you know, the, I mean, I read books, I read, I read good books. I read bad books.

I dine with sinners. I, you know, that's what people do. So I was really kind of intrigued to get his new book and read it.

I'm always hopeful people are going to, if they're not going to repent of their past sin, at least they're going to learn some new lessons. And right there, right there on the, you know, very first section of the book is

I support biblical marriage. Good Preston. I do too. Praise God. Let's, let's see how you argue this point.

Okay. So it's a paragraph. In fact, I've used it in a, in classroom settings, this paragraph, because it's such a great example of how not to write.

So you've got the, I believe I support biblical marriage. And then you have the body section, which is

Romans one has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with how we all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

It's not homosexual. It's not particular. It's only universal. And then what's called the clincher sentence in a paragraph.

The last, you know, the last two sentences says, therefore straight Christians should never wave these texts around to call gay

Christians to repentance. I see. So you should never give people the tools to be liberated from their, the bondage of their sin.

And you think I'm not going to say that's a heresy. Does he try to argue that exegetically or does he merely assert it?

Well in that particular paragraph, these are assertions. Now there's, it's a, it's, you know, there, and that's, it's, it's a very postmodern book.

And in fact, that's how all these, this, this kind of side B community rights, very postmodern books.

And what I mean by that is that you, you have you have topic sentences, body paragraphs, and then clincher set sentences that all contradict each other.

And that's supposed to be nuanced. That's the other problem with nuances. Many people use nuance to be let's be comfortable with contradiction all the time.

And I'm not comfortable with that. I think that's heretical. Now we actually put out a whole video when we've released this podcast to say when we room, when we use nuance, we mean whatever the people writing the

Nicene Creed meant, right? We need to come together and explore these extremely complicated, tension filled, absolutely true biblical ideas.

And we need to be able to parse them out and set them together so that we can see their mind is darkened. Whereas postmodernism says,

I'm just going to use the word nuance so I can move into deeper and deeper realms of untruth.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So the problem with side B is it sets up a whole community of young Christians to really feel like they can't beat their sin because it's not a sin.

It's who I am. And then when you say things like you need to learn how to hate your sin without hating yourself, which

I think is really what Roman seven is about. It is not I, it is the law of sin in me.

And the law of sin could be, it's interesting. That's almost an ironic use of the word law. When you think of the law of God, that word is almost like the law of my sin nature.

I have two natures, right? Or, you know, I'm, I have my new nature in Christ, but I have this old nature that still kicks around and it's not, you know, until I'm glorified, it's going to be kicking.

Um, but this idea that you can't beat an indwelling sin, if that indwelling sin comes with stickers in a parade called

LGBTQ plus is nonsense. And then it's dangerous nonsense because we are post a burger fell post -Bostock title nine now includes biological men, um, anti -bullying legislation that promotes transgenderism in every government school, including the ones that famous evangelicals want to tell you to send their kids to, um,

I mean, I, you know, North, I was able to work on this North Carolina is one of only 17 States right now that, that has laws against transing, uh, minors without their parents, you know, understanding.

So anyway, like it's just, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a brawl out there. And LGBTQ plus is the reigning idol of our day.

If, if, if the Lord Terry's, um, these days will be remembered in the infamy of Malik.

So how should the church deal with people in your, in your life?

Well, you should be Jude 23. You should be saving them as though through the fire.

You should be definitive and truth and love and loving it. When, you know, when my husband and members of my church, when we speak before the legislature and we speak before school board meetings, and that's not fun, you know, they have your name and address.

It's not like going to a big conference like this. If you, you know, a few zip codes away, they know right where you live.

Um, and it can get rough out there, but we, uh, we were protesting outside of an abortion clinic when I say protesting, preaching.

And, uh, one of the volunteers on the other side, most people don't know this. There's, they always have, we call them the death squad people trying to shuttle women in to kill their babies.

Absolutely. Uh, she started telling me all this really personal information about my family that she had, you know, so they're, they're vile.

They're nasty. They're nasty. And you know what? Those are the people we invite over for dinner after school board meetings. Because as my son, who's my bodyguard for these things tells me, this is the world that Jesus came to save.

But those are two separate things. Do you see what I'm saying? And none of that involves the bright lights of the evangelical stage.

It's three minutes before your school board. It's conversations on the stair of the school board.

It's inviting people over for dinner. They come, you get to know them.

You try to understand what's going on in their life. You learn about the man who castrated his 14 year old son because he thought it was a good idea.

And now maybe thinks it wasn't. Who more needs the gospel than that? And what gospel, the side

B gospel? I mean, and what would any of these people say from side B to me speaking before the school board?

Would they say, you should really, Rosaria, let's humanize the trans experience.

Right? I mean, no, this is dangerous. People need to be, be helped.

And we need a bridge that they can run on. But who more needs the gospel right now than the man who castrated his 14 year old son and the 14 year old son?

Who else needs to hear that in Christ, you will be the man you were meant to be in the new

Jerusalem, that your glorified body will rise on that last day and you will be fulfilled and complete as the man you were meant to be.

God cannot be mocked. Of course, that conversation needs to happen. Is it going to happen in a three minute school board meeting when people are spitting at you and calling you, you know, actually,

I love that. Calling me a pervert. That was a good one. Um, no, but it's going to happen at your dinner table.

And so how do you get there? I don't know, but I don't think the evangelical stage has a lot to do with it.

I really don't. I mean, I'm so you're like, I don't know. Why are you here? Okay. That's a good question. But I'm here to talk to you.

I'm here to talk to students. I'm here to, I'm here to have the sidebars. And to give some credit to the people who are putting this event together.

It's a good event. I'm not, they love you. Yes, yes. And it is a very good event. And we don't, but I'm just saying that you mean in general,

I get that can't be the only thing we do. No, no, no, no. And that can't be the most important thing. We can't, we can't invest all our hope in this.

No. Conferences are so far from the answer. No. Yeah. And so we can't make this the most important thing.

No, it's all those sidebars with students that I'm going to have at this conference. The best thing that will come out of this conference is, is whatever this conference drives people to do back in the sphere.

They're in their church. Yeah. Wherever they need to be everyday faithful. That's right. Uh, okay.

So, uh, I'm not trying to go for a soundbite here. I genuinely want you to advise our viewers.

There are, there's a proliferation. It started, like you said, in round 2010, high concentration between 2010, 2012.

But now there's a whole industry built around people talking about side B Christianity and stuff like that.

Who would be some authors that you would say, stay away from these authors?

They're not going to help you. Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And, and, you know, let me just say something about that. Anybody part of why

I almost don't want to answer it that way is because then you don't have to, if you don't want to the minute that these authors repent and change, they have so much good to offer.

So I've already called out a bunch of people. I've called them out in, you know, my ref 21 article,

I call them out in my book, uh, Preston Sprinkle. Um, he's probably the, the, the worst of the worst right now, but you know what?

If he repents and turns, that man is brilliant and, and engaging and has many good gifts.

But here's the thing that you want to do. You want to be a Berean. And you want to, you, your, and your pastors need to have a backbone.

You need to be willing to be hated. You cannot be a people pleaser, fear

God. You need to read books. And also we need to remember the gospel. It's only the justified that are going to be the sanctified.

So this, this Arminian, I self ID as a Christian, I self ID as a potato.

I self ID as a man trapped in a woman's body. That's all garbage. It does not matter what you self

ID as where is your fruit. And I cannot read anybody's heart, but I can read their books.

And I would say that there are some really that, that this, that side B has moved from the 2010 gay

Christian network approach to the right now we're in side B 2 .0, which is all about transgenderism.

It's all about humanizing transgenderism. It's all about you believing that homosexuality, homosexuality and transgenderism are not the world of flesh and the devil.

And so I would say there's a whole proliferation of those out there as a pastor.

I would really encourage you to be, you know, fearless, right?

I mean, my husband took a vow, our vow number six for our denomination to die for the gospel and for the doctrine.

And if you took a vow to keep the lights on in your mega church, you might need to get a new job because you know what?

Satan's going to be all over you. Yeah. Or if you're a pastor at a mega church, maybe get a new job. Hey, okay.

So who would you positively recommend? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would very positively recommend

Denny Burke's new book on male and female. He made them. I would very positively recommend

Christopher Yuan's new curriculum based on his holy, it's called the holy sexuality project. A book

I love a little book by Christopher J. Gordon called the new reformation guide to human sexuality.

Oh, I've not heard of it. Oh, you know what? Add it to the list. Yeah. I have an extra copy. I'll give it to you. Nice. Okay.

I will. Yeah, it's terrific. It's actually based on the Heidelberg catechism and the focus is on, you know, learning how to drive a fresh nail into your choice sexual sin every day and then a thousand times a day and then killing it until it's dead.

And you know, the Heidelberg is a great, it's a catechism made to capture the heart of a struggler, right?

The, the first question, I love the, I love the way it answers, you know, but who, who am I? And, and just the knowledge that, that God will work all providence to be subservient to your salvation.

In other words, all the bad things that have happened, they serve you and bringing you to Christ.

So, um, and then sanctifying you. And so, and then I think the other thing that needs to be focused on is what does sanctification look like?

And so the problem with side B -ism, even 1 .0 or 2 .0 is nobody has to, nobody works toward their sanctification.

They sit there, they say, well, grace alone, no, that sanctification, you are to work it out as he is working it in.

You are to put off and put on it's heroic and athletic.

And if you're not losing blood and sweat and tears, then there's a problem.

And the other thing I would really caution you against is some of the terrible Christian music that is out there.

Um, I am a Psalm singer. I highly encourage it. And I will tell you that the

Psalms say things that if any man said it, it would be a sin. So, you know, you are, you can, you can sit under the heavy hand of God and then under the uplifting hand of God in your

Psalms. And I don't mean Psalm choruses. I mean, the actual Psalms sing the Psalms crown and covenant has some wonderful, uh,

Psalters they're called. Um, it was the original song book of the church. I recommend it.

It's good for your scripture memory. It's good for your sanctification. You'd be much better off having those songs running through your head than almost anything

I've heard of late. Well, there's a revival of people setting Psalms to congregationally friendly music.

Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. For that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, what's the one we sing very often? Psalm 150. Psalm 42.

Psalm 42. Yeah. Anyways. Yeah, absolutely. That's great. So good. Can you tell us, I thought it was super powerful.

Can you tell us the story of Jim and art? Oh man. Yes. Can I do it without swearing?

Because they were very colorful men. Um, I give everybody different names. So I'm trying to like, oh yeah, yeah.

I remember that story. So, um, I was speaking at a church. I love to speak at churches.

So my, I don't love speaking at big conferences because the lights wear me out and people wear me out, but I love supporting the church.

So I do a lot of churches. So I was speaking at a church and, um, the last, um, question of, and I always do a

Q and a, a live Q and a, I, I love it. Bring it on. Last question was a biological man, um, dressed as a woman looked really uncomfortable, came to the microphone and immediately started just chewing me out for being a transphobe and dah, dah, dah, dah.

And it was the last question of the day. And so I invited this person to come have a coffee or tea with me in the pastor's lounge.

And we could, cause there was a lot that this person wanted to talk about. And I, my feet hurt and looking at the heels that he was wearing, his feet probably hurt too.

And so I thought it would be a good, you know, an overall good situation. And so we all start to walk together.

And, um, um, so I'm trying, I want to make sure I use the, don't use the real name.

So the person went by, I don't remember what name I gave, gave that person in the book.

I don't remember. I know art was the man's name, but anyway. Um, so, you know, I'm Matilda and okay.

Okay. And so we're all walking together and it got all the pastors, big church, all the pastors, um, transgender man, transgender person, myself.

And as we're walking to the pastor's office, we turn the corner and this big burly guy, you know, yeah, like you, you know, yeah.

He kind of comes, you know, marching up and he looks at us and he says, art, what happened to you, man?

And art said, I, I'm not, I'm not art. I'm Matilda and I'm happy. And he said, that's bull.

And then you can fill it out. Right. Right. But I was best use of the word. I had heard all night. Right.

You know what I mean? If there's ever a time, if there's ever a time. Yeah. And, and, and art kind of pulls back and it says, you know, but I'm happy.

And, uh, you know, Jim says, but you know, what about your wife and kids?

And, you know, then this is really helpful because there's this narrative that, look, I'm not hurting anyone.

Like, Oh no, no. If you're sinning, you're hurting all kinds of people. You do not sin alone. And so we,

I didn't know who this man was. I loved him instantly and we grabbed him along and he said, you're coming to tea at the pastor's office.

Well, it was a pretty big church. It turns out this man was loosely connected to this church, maybe even a member.

Um, but he brought history to the table. So here's art slash

Matilda. And if you've ever sat really close to somebody who is trying to perform as transgender, there's a great deal of mental health issues.

And you can tell very uncomfortable in your body and, and just physical problems and the use of cross -sex hormones.

And it just, it's a, it's misery. Um, it's really sad to see. It's really sad to see.

And only a barbarian would encourage it. So most people have only ever perceived it at a distance.

They've never actually seen it face to face and it is tragic. Right, right. Absolutely.

And so one of the things that Jim brought to the table was history, which is the one thing that every person who identifies as transgender does not want you to bring to the table.

So we learned all kinds of things about art. We learned that he and Jim had committed their lives to Jesus together, that they had been baptized together, that they knew each other's families, that they were both truck drivers and they would keep each other accountable, that they had shared a life together.

And what, what Jim was basically saying was art, in order for me to believe that you are happy and that you are a woman,

I have to not believe my own history and I'm not going there. So I am going to hold your ankles as you're dangling off this cliff, but I am not, because I can't deny it.

And the same way, that's what every Christian needs to say. When somebody says, I'm trans, I'm gay, I'm a Christian. In order to believe you,

I have to deny my own testimony with Jesus. Did he show up specifically on that rescue mission or was he just there?

No, no. It was the greatest example of God's providence. He was a member, loosely connected to the church.

It was a big event. He happened to be like walking to the restroom and, and we were walking around the corner and that's when he got close enough.

I mean, everybody saw the transgender person ask a question, but that's where he got close enough to realize this is art.

This is my old friend. And so we immediately got right.

Once I knew once, once we all knew that art had committed themself to Jesus, that's right where we went. We didn't talk about, you know, high heels or transgenderism.

We talked about, that's a distraction. That's a distraction. That's a symptom of something else. We went right there and it was clear that art had a longing to return to church and, but said,

I can't like, how can I do this? I'm so far gone. Yeah. And, and that's where this church was just remarkable.

Because in some ways we, we as a church need to think about this.

If the Lord blesses our evangelism, we will have a lot of arts coming into our church. These are chemically castrated people.

They don't own clothing that matches their birth sex and they probably have had enough hormones that, especially for women, you know, a month of testosterone, full beard, voice changes, voice changes forever.

It's, it's hard. Yeah. And so the church decided that art could come to church in whatever art was comfortable coming to church in.

And of course, art wanted to know if he could join the women's Bible study. And the answer is no. Right. And if he could use the women's restroom.

And the answer is no. But the pastor said, here's my private room. You have, so wise, so wise.

And that, that, that art and Jim would come together, that they would come together and that they would be some biblical counseling offered as well.

And, um, and my understanding is that was how art started that long journey, but important journey into de -transitioning.

Yeah. Now I want to say something important here. That church is not promoting art to be a spokesperson.

Yeah. They didn't make him a mascot. And we have to be really mindful to remember, especially with the transgender, with, with transgenderism, there are so many comorbidities and so many mental health issues that, that are just playing in here.

The same comorbidities that led a person to want to castrate themselves didn't go away because they did.

So those are not the people. We should be asking to teach us how to be

Christians. We should be walking alongside people and reminding them that in the new

Jerusalem, there's that glorified body raised and resurrected in perfection.

You have done no harm. You have what repenting of your sin means is you have done no harm.

The Lord will take it from here. And in the meantime, as a church, we will protect you.

We will, again, back to that covenant of church membership, we will cover you. You aren't all alone and you are not a spokesperson because we don't need you to be because this is the creation ordinance.

And I would say the same thing about homosexuality and giving of testimonies to a degree, they can be helpful in bringing people to a sense of, you know, giving glory to God, look at what the

Lord does, but they also can become something that makes people feel bad.

Whereas we like, well, I'm not as far along or, you know, 10, you know, is there a 12 step program for this?

You know? And then the worst of the worst is they can be, they can be monetized.

And you can have parachurch ministries that are, that are created. And then the other issue that we haven't talked about that we should is that homosexuality and transgenderism are often symptoms of trauma.

Now we know you can be a victim and a sinner all at the same time. Look at all the people in this room and all the people at this conference, but if it's trauma that is driving the show, you need to deal with that trauma.

So it's one of the most dangerous things you can do for someone who's coming out of that life is to platform them.

Absolutely. To basically turn their story into a business. I mean, you, that's not what happened to you, but you did it,

I think in perhaps the best safest way possible. And it was still very dangerous for you in the vast majority of people who, who go through this are not going to have it done the best safest way possible.

It's going to be the worst. It was devastating and I sit down, get discipled, learn how to follow

Jesus and, and you may never have a public ministry with this. Maybe you will, maybe you will, maybe ten years down the load down the road after you've been sanctified and man, you're so mature and your elders say,

Hey, we think actually, but, but maybe not. And that's okay too, because it doesn't sorry.

I'm about to go on my own right now. This is your episode, brother preach, uh, you know, coming from an, a background of drug addiction.

Uh, I cannot tell you how often people have approached me and said, you know, you can speak to these people in a way that we can't.

It's so not true. I know you have the Bible, right? You have the Holy spirit. Okay. Exactly.

We could both do this. You and I have no magic. Yeah. No magic. We do have the Holy spirit. And as a matter of fact,

I might even have some blind spots. I might have some weaknesses. That's right. We go into, uh, that's right.

Absolutely. The, the jails on Monday nights, the Lord has allowed our church. I haven't done it in the last six months, but, uh, the, the idea is like,

Hey, because you have this really gnarly background, you can speak to these brothers while I was getting burned out. Right.

So I invited another guy, a local pastor to come and alternate weeks with me.

Okay. He was raised in a homeschooled bubble. They love him.

Yeah. They love him. He goes in there and he preaches and he teaches. And if I had to guess,

I would say there's probably more fruit from his ministry in the jail than my ministry in the jail. So yeah, that is just a postmodern.

You have to have the lived experience in order for your truth to be true. And it reifies this idea that there is such a thing as a gay

Christian. There is such a thing as an addict Christian. There is such a thing as a trans Christian and that you have to reify that and codify that personal experience.

And it's, it's devastating. And you know, maybe part of the reason why we have so many people deconstructing their faith is because they were not in the faith.

Yeah. And that's the, you know, they went out from among us to show that they were never, yeah. I mean, we used to call it apostasy and, um,

Mark Jones has a terrific book out. Uh, just, just came out called the pilgrims regress. Yeah.

And it's about the difference between apostasy and backsliding. Yeah. And I mean, neither is good.

No, but somebody else has a new book on deconstruction coming out. Who is that? Elisa. So she's coming on the show.

I'm halfway in. Yeah. It's so good. Her argument alone for why we shouldn't use the term deconstruction.

Right. It's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. I had a chance to read that book in manuscript too. So that's a really good book.

So good. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, and that also speaks to why Christians need, if LGBTQ plus is the reigning idol of her day.

And I believe it is. Um, Christians are called to tear down idols. Uh, they're called to tear down idols and proclaim the word of God.

They were not called to go, uh, proclaim the word of God on top of Mount Moloch while children were being burned.

That's it's ridiculous. You have to tear down the idols. And so the question then it's a good question.

Whose job is it? Is it the job of these D transitioners? Please, God forbid, say no.

Do you know what it's like for them to be trounced out before the legislatures to have to tell their story?

And they're not in a great place. Okay. So you've got a woman who's still shaving because even though she's not taken testosterone in a year, her body, do they want to be under that scrutiny?

Do they want death threats? Do they want, um, do they want to be mocked and shamed again?

The same mental health issues that led them to want to mutilate their bodies didn't go away because they did.

And now we're saying in order to pass this law, we need you at the legislature. And you're telling me as Christians, we don't know how to body block that.

I know how to show up at the legislature and be very effective and you do too. And, and, and I just,

I, I, I get so tired when people say, well, you know, I'm not a Christian nationalist. Well, call it what you will. Are you a

Christian? Do you believe that you're to preach the gospel to the nations?

Yes. I'm at a missions conference. I do believe that. I do believe that. And that includes my very, very lost, you know, all woman school board.

It does. And, and so, you know, our denomination has a doctrine called the mediatorial kingship of Christ.

It's where we believe that because Christ has an office, if you are, uh, uh, a mediator, a

King, if you will, if you hold a civic office and you are sitting in that civic office, we need to call you to repentance, not only in your personal life, but in your office.

And, um, we have found here, my little County and you, my little town in North Carolina, we have found that we can be very effective.

Small group of people go to school, board meeting. You get three minutes. Y 'all speak together.

You can get facts, uh, the gospel. Oh, sorry. So you, you know, if you speak all together, you can get, you can get all of that in.

You can, uh, and, and you can witness to people afterwards. You can pray for them. You can invite them home for dinner and your home for dinner.

Okay. It is literally three minutes. And so if Christians think that you're going to legislate this by having, um, you know, de -transitioners come and clean this up, that is,

I'd say that, well, and I think it's cruel. Well, I think it's irresponsible. An analog to that from, from my experiences in rehab and anywhere where there's like a halfway house or a rehab program, what they do is they take the most successful person in the rehab who's been clean the longest and then they hire them and they make them one of the staff members.

And do you know how often that goes? Well, it never goes well. I mean, you can bank that they're going to recycle all the way to the bottom of the program within a year.

You know, now listen, there are exceptions to that, but exceptions generally prove the rule.

Sometimes somebody comes out of this lifestyle and then they become a spokesperson and they, but it's just not a good, wise, general practice.

Yeah. All right. Uh, who is Chase Ross? Well, um, a

YouTube influencer that probably more so than any other quote unquote transgender man has made double mastectomy and hysterectomy look wholesome.

And, and now when I wrote the book, uh, you know, you know how a book, so a book comes out in 2023 but you wrote it in 2020 at that point,

Chase Ross was one of the leading YouTube influencers. You know, now we have even more of a, of a, of a disease going on in with, with tick tock.

And some, some of these influencers are somewhat anonymous, but I actually have a friend whose daughter was trans daughters, you know, autism spectrum from, and those two things are highly correlated, highly correlated 12 to 14.

Uh, mother was never contacted about the daughter who would go to school.

And in fact, the reason the mother knew is she kept getting these, these, these math exams home with the name Jim on it.

Like, why do you have Jim's math test? And that's how the whole thing came up. And then the mother learned that daughter had been given a cell phone.

Mom didn't come from mom and was encouraged to watch hours of tick tock during school.

This is your government, your, this is your government school as your tax dollars at work. Um, uh, that all glamorized, um, the whole procedure of a double mastectomy and a hysterectomy and convinced this girl that she's not a girl anymore.

And, and it doesn't, you know, that's called, um, Lipman, Dr. Lickman calls it rapid onset gender dysphoria.

And it's a, it's, it's not, you know, it's not going to blow your mind to realize that 14 year old girls are uncomfortable in their body.

Like that should not be a shocking, you know, admission. And, but to suggest that the solution to that is this horrific procedure.

So my husband's a pastor. He's preached three sermons now on the sin of transgenderism. And in one, he said that these metal medical procedures are a little bit like when

Dr. Frankenstein meets Dr. Mangala and they go into practice with each other. But what, what has happened that, um, that, that, um, people are convinced of this, like how extreme of a satanic influence are we under that we, that we believe that men can be women and women can be men.

And, and furthermore, that these, these medical procedures, which are Gothic, they are

Gothic, especially what they call bottom surgery. If at any moment we ran out of the medication needed, do you know that when a, you know, a penis is removed and they make a hole for a vagina, if your body has a, you know, if you cut yourself and you have an opening, you have a wound, what does your body do?

It tries to close it up. These are highly dangerous, uh, procedures that require constant medical attention.

Um, not only with dilation, you know, very painful, but also medication. What happens if we run out of that?

You know, these are, this is outrageous that we, that this happens, but it's, it's unthinkable that we are in part of a church community that wants to dehumanize this.

This is, we need to, we need to save, especially these children, you know?

So Chase Ross is one of many YouTube influencers whose job it is, is to make a transgenderism and the medicalization of your body look wholesome for an entire generation of young people.

And you too in your government school can have access to this without your parents knowing. Yeah. And if you try to stop it in some

States, they might take your kid away from you. Yeah. But you know, here's the thing. That's why, that's why those of us who can speak should, um, you know,

I, I, you know, I don't have a job to lose. I don't have a kid in public school. You can't have my kids, you know, like that's crazy.

Um, uh, and, and I've had people say, even Christians say, well, what right do you have to speak at public schools?

If you don't put your kids in them, do you pay taxes? Anybody here pay taxes? Does it take anything more than that?

What are you talking about? So I do think those of us who can be a little light on our feet, Oh, you're going to lose cultural capital.

Yeah, absolutely. But nobody's going to take my kid away. All right.

Uh, first of all, thank you. We've been talking for a long time. I hope you still in it.

I'm great. Yeah. This might be the last question. I'm not sure. Uh, this is just a weird question that I've been wondering ever since I read the secret thoughts of an unlikely convert, uh,

I've given that book away. I can't even tell you how many times you at the end of the book go into a pretty long, not long, relatively speaking, spiel, but intense feel about the relative, the regulated principle, and you almost got there within the first five minutes of us talking today.

I've never seen anyone so passionate about the regulated principle, so so talk to us why the regulative

I mean listen. I'm a regular principle guy myself. Well, I, yeah, I think the Bible prescribes it, so that's a safe place to be.

All right. Now, now, just like anything else, sometimes when I say regulative and you mean regulative, we might mean different things, but, but what, why is that so important to you?

Okay. Because how you worship will determine a lot of how you live because doctrine affects life and because the regulative principle, much like the

Westminster confession of faith, I'm not, I did not go to seminary. I, you know, I just know how to read.

Um, but these are guides that have helped me think systematically and principally about the world in which we live.

So recently I was at, uh, at summit ministries in, in Colorado and, uh, speaking there and a question came up, student, you know, what do you think about women pastors?

I think it's a sin I say, and to which all of my panelists take a gasp and a deep breath.

And I said, but you guys think it right. Well, we just wouldn't say it that way. Okay, fine. So afterwards, you know how it is like, okay,

I, I don't know, I'm five foot 120 pounds. I don't think you can hide behind my skirts, but you can try if you want to.

Um, so you know, afterwards, like, why couldn't you just say it was a sin? Like, I'm curious. Don't you believe that?

Yeah. Well, we don't use the regulative principle of worship. We use the tier approach that has nothing to do with whether or not that's the sin though.

Well, but here's how it does. Everything's a second tier. If it's not a gospel issue.

Okay. If it's not like you could be saved and believe this, then it's a second tier issue.

And then nobody's an abuse of theological triage. I mean, Al Moeller, the guy who kind of is most responsible for popularizing theological triage would say, just because something is a second or third tier issue does not mean it's not a sin issue.

Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, I, I, I would just say it's just not, it's just, it's not allowed.

See, it's not that this is, you know, doctrine, you know, and also we would, we talk about the regulative principle of worship, but we also talk about the regulative principle of doctrine and of life.

So, um, basically God's word regulates all of these things. It regulates all of these things.

And so I just think it, it really helps me be courageous. And, um, we live in a very topsy turvy world sometimes, and you know, it'll probably happen at this conference.

Somebody will ask a question that'll make me feel literally like I've just fallen off a snowbank and I'm head first, six feet under, and I don't know which way is up.

That's where my Bible is really needed. It's the, it's the, it's the Bible alone that is going to help me to know which way is up and I'm going to know which way is up only by answering one question at a time.

Um, so yes, I'm, I'm passionate about it. I also believe that the regulative principle of worship sets, um, not only is it biblical, but it also sets forth good practices that warriors need.

See, if there's a reason we are really losing the battle and our children are losing the battle, especially of sexual sin, everybody's just way too soft.

Toughen up buttercup. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, and I, I say that to people all the time, get a grip.

Yeah. And if a five foot 200 pound woman is having to tell you to toughen up, you might really need to toughen up, but no, all jokes aside, being tough is not a male or female thing.

It's a confidence in the word of God, confidence in the, the fact that Christ is risen. We are victorious because we're in him and the world will not win.

Right, right. And it's not about us. Amen. Yeah.

It's not about us. We don't want our names to be remembered. We want the name of Jesus to be remembered.

And, um, you know, I love Hebrews 11, the great hall of faith, right? Um, all of those saints are victorious in Christ.

The ones that were saved from the mouths of the lions and the ones that were sawn into.

Yeah. We don't get to pick which one we get to be, but we can right now commit ourselves to being faithful.

Amen. Uh, any final words to our viewers?

Anything else you want to say, sister? Oh, it's been a lot. I probably, please forgive all the dumb things

I've said in this very long interview. The longer you get me talking guys, I don't know. Do you have any followup questions for me?

Is there anything left? You know, I just, I want to encourage you sister. What I, I think your final sentiment is, is probably the most important one.

We need courageous Christians. I think we're going to disagree strategically and we always have about the absolute best way to carry out the great commission.

You know, do we call it Christian nationalism? Do we not call it that? You know, but, but what we cannot disagree on, what we have to be completely unified in is fear

God and not man speak the truth, deny lies and live out the truth of the gospel fearlessly.

Right. Cause that is our testimony. The watching world sees limp wristed Christians and they don't go, what's distinct about that?

What's special about, I want to get in on that. Right. They want to see strong, hearty, grace filled, loving, patient, gentle, kind, all of that fearless Christians.

And I think you are an example of that. And so I just want to commend your ministry and I hope that this episode strengthens everyone who watches it to do just that.

Well, praise the Lord. I don't actually have a ministry though. I have a home and I have a church. I do.

I would like, can I add one more thing? Sure. Fire away. I think another thing that really does ruin our witness is the way that we go to combat with each other on social media.

Oh, amen. And I'm not on social media. So you might say you don't have, I've just, I just think it's stupid. That's one of my questions that I didn't answer.

Cause I was like, we're going long, but I'm so glad you're talking about this. I think it's how idiots work out their theology is on Twitter.

And I just, I think we, we, if you have a problem with somebody, go talk to that person. And, and I'll tell you as somebody who has gone to, um, you know, school board meetings, um, and we've brought, you know, we brought bring young people with us.

People are scared to actually deal with conflict face to face because all they do is work themselves up on Twitter or X or whatever.

And so I really, you'd have a lot more time if you would just throw that in the garbage, it's garbage.

And in fact, if there's one thing I want readers of my book to know, I give you permission to throw things in the garbage.

I talk about garbage books. You can throw away, you can think my book is garbage, throw it away. You know, you don't have to do a book review on everything.

Yeah. You know, every thought that comes into your head doesn't need to be posted on anywhere. Just it's a, it's, it's where idiots work out their theology.

Please don't be an idiot. Yeah. Work it out in the church. Not, uh, not online in real time. That's right. Well, sister, uh,

I think that's all I have. Can I, can I pray for you as we close? Thank you so much Lord for, uh, giving us your son,

Jesus Christ in him. We have life and breath and every good thing. He sustains the universe by the power of his word.

He sustains us at this very moment. Lord, forgive us if we have said anything, uh, unhelpful, unwise or untrue, but anything that we have said that is in complete alignment with the gospel, we pray that you will, uh, use it, use it in a, in a powerful way, not powerful according to our understanding, our earthly understanding, but powerful in such a way that when we get to heaven, we will look back and say, wow, look what you did with this

God. We pray that you will bear an abundance of fruit from this conversation. Uh, and we, we, what we want most in the world is for your most

Holy name to be glorified for your will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Any small part we get to play in that Lord, we feel honored and grateful and we ask that you would give us the strength to continue to be faithful in the days to come in the mighty, perfect, beautiful name of Jesus.

We pray. Amen. Amen. What I'm doing right now is appointed in the

Bible to have its unique place. It's one thing it's called preaching. Do we have a

God who wants to be understood? Who is God enough to communicate in a way so that humans can know him, love him, worship him, and be saved by him.

Can it really be true that a faithful believer can experience all of these things?

And the answer to that question from the scripture very clearly is yes. Why do we come to church?

Why do we hear the word? Why do we read the scriptures? We are looking for God. Are the words of scripture actually what they're meant to be?

We're now at a point in time where people question whether scripture is clear. What we are most accountable for is our handling of the word of God.

We are called to faithfully preach the word. At 10 of those, we want to serve the local church by equipping your church family with great resources that are going to point them to Jesus.

So we'll come and set up a pop up bookstore in your church. There's no charge. We'll come for your

Sunday services. Maybe you've got a weekend retreat or a conference. We would love to come and then make recommendations.

This is one I've read three times now. It's called Incomparable by Andrew Wilson, and he goes through 60 characteristics of God.

It just wonderfully takes our eyes off the world, off ourselves, and puts them on our saviour.

Now we've got lots of things for families and kids. For parents, I want to recommend this series.

This one is Raising Kids in a Screen -Saturated World. Our passion is to get good books that hold the

Bible read by as many people as possible. We hand pick our bookstore.

It's curated so we know everything we sell will point to the Lord Jesus. Everything's discounted.

And as we make recommendations, we're seeking to serve your church family so that they may be excited and equipped to read good books.