Episode 6 Part 1 - Is Homosexuality A Sin?

Why Christians Should Love God More

Back at it again. This is the Point Taken podcast. This is the podcast where we make and take spiritual and biblical questions and chat it up. My name's Hunter Wilson. I'm the host of this podcast, Point Taken.

To my left is Pastor Josiah Shipley. How we doing?

Hello, friends. I'm doing good, man. That's not enough. You didn't say it. Oh my gosh. I do have to do this every time. Guys, I'm really happy to be here. I'm just so excited. This is so fun. You enjoy doing this, right?

I enjoy doing it.

If you didn't enjoy it, I'm not going to enjoy it.

I'll be up at three, and I'm still going to enjoy doing this right now.

That's exactly right. To my right is, as always, Andrew Cook. How we doing?

Doing good. Welcome, Shoulder, everybody. I'm glad to be back on the Point Taken podcast. Welcome, Shoulder. Just going to make sure I do that twice since you didn't say welcome back, Shoulder. Yeah.

I did that by design. I know. So I fixed it. Well, let's go ahead and introduce our guest because you're being rude. You are being rude. Our guest today is Brother David. How you doing? What's up, Brother David?

Doing good. I'm doing good. Good, man. Brother David, we have our friend David here today because we are talking about a very important topic, a very special topic, a topic that may be, can I say it, controversial, as the English would say, controversial.

And we are talking about homosexuality. We're talking about, is homosexuality a sin? We're talking about the effects of homosexuality in politics, in the church, in the world. This is a topic that is either skimmed by or skipped over by Christians or, the worst case scenario, completely given up on.

Right, right. But it needs to be talked about, needs to be spoken about, and you need to know where you stand on these things because they weigh so heavily in everybody's lives. So I'm going to open up the floor today.

We're going to start it off with what is something that you can say about God, a reason that we should love Him a little bit more?

Pastor Josiah. Brother Andrew, music minister here, has been opening up services the past couple of months with an acapella chorus and he chooses I Love You Lord some of the time or Amazing Grace or whatever, but when we sing that song, I Love You Lord, I Love You Lord and I lift my voice to worship You.

So there is a sense in that we worship God simply for who He is because He's God. And yet, even then, the psalmist tells us to love and delight in the things that He has done. One reason that I love God and one reason that I encourage others to is because most of our experiences in love are two-way streets.

Well, God says that we love Him most when we obey Him. And speaking as someone with young children, that is how they show me the most love and honor. And it is the fact that not just that when I mess up, God still loves me, but it's that He started loving me before I ever started loving Him.

We love Him because He first loved us. What's so amazing about God's love is it doesn't have to be reciprocated in order, it doesn't diminish His love for me. While I was still a sinner, Christ died for me.

That type of love, that selfless giving love is the highest of all. And so I encourage people to recognize that Jesus is not your boyfriend. He's a sovereign God of the universe who chose to unwillingly give Himself for someone He loved before they ever loved Him.

In fact, Romans 3 says, while we were God haters. So that's something that humbles me all the time. And I encourage other people with that. That's awesome.

I guess we'll just go down the table. My reason to love God a little more is the realization of His faithfulness. And it's something I've been harping on just about every time I'm asked about God. I'm going to harp about His faithfulness to me because of my unfaithfulness to Him.

It has been made perfected in my mind just how faithful He is. We listened to a song this morning. We had a little worship morning in our college class. And it goes, faithful, you are faithful. Your love will always find me.

Your love will always find me. And I think that this is so incredible, the type of God that we have. And I was going to speak to your point that He does not wait for us to fix ourselves. He does not wait for us to clean up and look better and presentable before He dies for us.

Then we had a listener question about forgiveness a couple episodes back. How do you forgive somebody who continually sins against you? Well, it's the same way that Jesus forgives us and how we continually sin against Him.

We never asked for forgiveness before He died. He died for me while I was still the one killing Him. He said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. So the faithfulness of God, I've been struggling with my faith, not in my belief, but in my faith that He will provide.

I wouldn't have said it in those words until I was convicted. But I realized, man, where did it go? Faith. Because that's not something that I've struggled with very much in the past. God has blessed an abundance in my life with faith.

And I realized, man, I'm having so much anxiety. And I'm like sticking my hands in a situation that I can't control, which is life. And I'm just having all this anxiety. And then when I realized you have no faith, when the Bible says, O ye of little faith, it literally is talking to you and you specifically.

Because you are pathetic right now. I said, dang. I said, dang. And then God's going to turn around, convicts, and then provides. He convicted me, and then He immediately provided for me. And I said, man, now I feel horrible.

Because I was like, how have I forgotten the love and the faithfulness of my God just because my life isn't easy? That's the point of faith. It's easy to have faith when everything's working in your life.

So that's just something about God to make you love Him a little more is that He loves you even when you decide to shove Him off.

I think for me, I would say one reason to love God more is His sovereignty. Kind of to your point, Hunter. I know I was given some information from just talking to somebody the other day and talking about economic problems that we're probably going to be facing here soon.

And political problems that we're—all the stuff that we see constantly going. Just all kinds of crazy stuff that potentially will happen in the near future. And you go back to the scriptures, and it says, if God pays attention to the sparrows, they never worry about where they're going.

They don't worry about food. They just—they know that they're going to be taken care of. How much more would God care about you than a sparrow? So knowing that, that God is an active God, not a God of—let me back off and let— as some belief systems would say, oh, well, there's a God, but it doesn't really matter because it doesn't affect me in any way.

Yeah, sure. But you have that assurance that God is sovereign, God cares about His children, and that He's going to take care of us. And another thing to think about is—I had it in my head, and then it left.

I love when it does that. But anyway, sovereignty is one thing that you can love God more for because He promises. That's what it was. There it is. Sorry. So since we are talking about homosexuality, the rainbow is a symbol that God will not flood the earth again.

Right. Another part of that covenant that was made between God and Noah was that the seasons would continue to change. As long as the seasons changed, He would remember His promise He made to Noah. So as we are shifting into fall right now, you can look out and go, sovereignty of God.

That's so true. Never. Wow. He never stops. He never goes back on a promise.

I love that because it shows another way that you can remember to be grateful to God. You can look at God and blame God for the great things and say, the seasons changed. I love that. Blame God for the great things.

Blame God for the great things. It's His fault.

Yeah. It's your fault. All that is good comes from God. Yeah. There was a meme that was like it was a guy I guess it was supposed to be Noah and God and a cloud. And it said, oh, that's a beautiful rainbow.

And then it goes into all the like God goes into all the scientific stuff. He's like, I'm never going to do this again. So that was kind of funny. Anyway, so yeah, that's my take on it. Nice. Well, mine with the season changing, that was my first thing of why we should love God a little more.

It's becoming fall. It's not going to be as hot outside. It's my season. Pumpkin flavors. We just love it. But no. Well, the season. It's not the pumpkin flavored stuff.

No, no, no. I'm your basic white boy. I love my pumpkin. I'll eat the pie. Pumpkin spice, pumpkin everything. Oh, you like to buy pumpkins. No, I like pumpkin pie. I just don't. Oh. I don't want like a pumpkin drink.

I've never liked anything pumpkin other than carving them up. Oh, no. It's the best thing. Anyways, no. No, it's literally not. That would be steak. But anyway. I work at a steakhouse, so.

Oh, he's got you beat. No, he doesn't. Passage is high. I think he's got you beat. He doesn't, but I'm going to let him have this one. Okay, okay. Yeah, okay. But no. My reasoning as to why we should love God a little more is honestly his plans are always greater.

They're always better, and I know for me within the last month, he's definitely shown his plan, and with my whole move and everything coming up in about a week and a half. Sorry.

But it was just one of those. If you got 30 pieces over, you'd do it, too. Yeah. I don't have. That was a Judas reference.

Because 30. All right. Go ahead, David. Anyways, it's just one of those where I'm a planner, and so I've had my plan to stay in Memphis a lot longer, and then it kind of just like you get that call to go, but I had no means to, no reason for it, no ability to, and then literally within two days had everything straightened out because God's sovereign and his plan is perfect, and so it was just one of those.

His plan is the reason why I love him a little more. If you follow through with his plan, things are going to go great for you, so. That's awesome. Yeah.

David’s Testimony and Why He’s on the Podcast

All right, guys. Well, I think we should open up since we do have our friend David as our guest today. Before we get into the conversation, I'd like to ask if you're comfortable sharing at all.

Your testimony or how you got here. Oh, yes. I'm an open book. Yeah. So why we have you on the podcast? What has God done in your life? All right. Yep. So the why I'm on the podcast, I guess it's the easier way to say it.

I'm the ex-gay.

We have ex-everything in this church, ex-convicts, ex-drug addicts, ex-gays.

The new Marvel comic that's gotten the most buys, Wolverine and the ex-gays.

After growing up and having that mindset and then going to college and being out on my own and then experiencing the lifestyle and then realizing that it's just not fulfilling and coming well, I shouldn't say ever leaving the faith, but coming back to the basics of it and getting your mind straight.

Technically, getting everything straight. It works out. But no, that's just one of those that's why I'm here. Awesome. To share my testimony about it and my thoughts because

How long have you been you've been here for A year. Just only a year? A year. I know. Yeah. So we've had David with us for just about a year. Sorry to see him go in a week, but we wish him the best.

But we're going to be talking about we figured we'd bring him on today because he has a good head on his shoulders, knows what he's talking about about this stuff, and we wanted to open up our conversation with the basic question, is homosexuality a sin?

This is a huge debate, believe it or not, in the world today. Is it a sin? Is homosexuality a sin? Brother Andrew, do you want to start us off on that one? It is. Okay. You know what? That's a good take.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks. Episode over. All right, guys. If you liked this episode The answer is yes. Yes. If you liked this episode, find us on YouTube, like, comment, subscribe. Point to a thing. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, right there. There's a link. There's a link to We pointed to four spots. Well, you can't point at a link like they can. Yes, we did. We did last week. No, you would point at a name. Yeah. Address, link.

Wrong. It's the same thing. It's a whole different thing. Say that again. I thought it was the same thing. Your address. He's the guest. He's right. That's what you said. No, no, no. No, no. Remember earlier?

It's not in the video. It's up in the thing. He said link it up in the thing or it would be down below. Hold up five fingers. There we go. Disliked. All right. So we can start with Pastor Josiah just because I feel like I'm not going to start off.

I want Pastor Josiah to start off. All right. So it's homosexuality. It's homosexuality. I did start. I did answer the question.

The answer is yes. Of course it is. Guys, if you like this episode. So there's no but to that statement. The answer is yes. It's a sin. It is no higher degree of a sin than any other sin. So all sins are not equal in their present physical punishments that they bring about.

We all understand that. So there is worse physical consequences to the sin of rape obviously than there is the sin of stealing a candy bar. Sure. Okay. But as far as eternal separation from God, as far as breaking God's law, the book of James says if you have broken one of his laws, you've broken all of them.

You've broken the law of God. So this whole, you know, as you kind of got to Hunter, we tend to be on this pendulum in the church where either homosexuality is such a grotesque sin that it is unforgivable that God could never fix someone like that, that that person should not be a member of a church, something like that.

Or we're on the other side of, well, God would never be against love, right? You know, it's funny. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother, including to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.

So let's look at just that one sentence in the Bible that's re-quoted in the New Testament by Jesus, by Paul, by Peter. A man, not a boy, shall leave his father, mother, including to his wife, the woman.

Okay? So we have two consenting adults. Sure. Heterosexual relationship, not polygamous, one man, one woman equals two, not six, not seven, two. And then equals one. Right. And the two will become one flesh.

That one sentence gets rid of basically every sexual sin that there can be. And we're all guilty of sexual sin. Jesus made this more clear than ever. What do you say? You did not commit the letter of the law of sin of committing adultery, but if you have lust in your heart for her, you have already committed adultery in your heart.

That's what he said. I call those the one-ups.

Yeah. And you know, exactly. Jesus. Jesus came in and said, all right, so this is what it says.

This is what it actually means. So the simple question is homosexuality is sin, yes. Should it be treated as a greater sin than others? No. And I'll say this and I'll pass it off to someone else. And then later I've got a passage we can read.

This is why we have taught here for a while now what the word struggle actually means. And if you're listening to this right now, I would encourage you to pull out your phone, please, and type in the word struggle and see what the definition says.

And I can tell you what it's going to say. It's going to say to make a violent or forceful effort to break free of restraint. And as I've said before, there is no shame in a young man struggling with pornography.

So long as we all have the same definition of the word struggle. If he's making violent effort to break free from struggling with addiction, struggling with homosexuality, struggling with, it doesn't matter what you put in that blank.

If there's a struggle against it, that's called sanctification. Yep. In that you are more holy than you were yesterday.

That's called taking up your cross and following me daily. That's what I'm saying.

It's those who do not struggle. That's why it's the most overused word in the Christian language because most Christians say it. They really just mean I do it. They don't mean struggle. If someone is actively struggling with sin, the book of Hebrews says, you have not resisted yet to the point of shedding blood.

The struggle is actually a godly thing to do. And that's kind of what David was getting at a minute ago. But yes, it is a sin. It's just not any worse than gossip or slothfulness or gluttony.

And I'd say a trap a lot of people fall into is to your point, de-equalizing it, homosexuality with heterosexuality. I believe both hold the same potential for sin. Oh, of course. Yeah, of course. Right.

And that's, you know, I've been asked a whole lot of times, and I've found like, dude, how do you answer this and show love? And the best way I've found is it's like, Hunter, I'm gay. Do you think I'm going to hell?

Is that a sin? Does God forgive? And I'm just like, currently you're on your way to hell, not just because you're gay. It's because you have not accepted God's grace. Salvation. It's not because of which sin you're struggling with.

It's because all have fallen short of the glory of God. And until you accept God's gift and call upon the name of the Lord, you will not be saved.

What you just said right there, our rebellion all comes out in different ways. How it comes out is different based on different things. The most unloving thing you could ever do to someone is not tell them they're in rebellion and on the way to hell, and then actually tell them that their rebellion, that is fast-tracking them to hell, is actually godly.

You woe to them to call evil good and good evil. That's the most unloving thing you could ever do to somebody is telling people who are living together outside of marriage. It has nothing to do with forbidding them.

It's just saying, hey, man, I love you. Why don't you come over to my house? By the way, you're calling yourself a Christian. This is something you need some help with, and I can help you. That's the most unloving thing would be to tell someone, hey, there's nothing wrong with your gossip.

There's nothing wrong with your thoughtfulness.

That would be the unloving thing. That's exactly right. If we could visualize sin, if we could see sin the way God sees it, I feel like we'd have a lot less of an issue calling it out. Because it's literally, and this is the Sunday School version of it, but it's literally like you see somebody stabbing themselves and thinking they're fine.

What are you going to say? It's like, yeah, that's fine. You're totally good.

Oh, now you're crawling. You're going out. I don't want to offend you, so I'm just going to, yeah, it's okay.

But the thing is the Bible is supposed to be offensive to those that don't follow through with it.

Right. It's offensive to all of us when we're not obeying it, including myself. It's supposed to be.

It's offensive, and it sounds foolish. It's foolish to those who don't have experience.

We've shared the analogy of the doctor, and I don't want to cut you off. No, you're good. The doctor is a perfect example of this. You have a man who is having some abdominal pains. He goes to doctor number one.

Doctor number one gets the scans, and it is absolutely cancerous. The doctor knows that treatment's got to be started now. It's advanced now. He walks out there in the waiting room, and the guy's there with his family.

He goes, man, I hope you've got some good news for me because I really can't take any bad news right now. And the doctor, doctor number one says to him, hey, man, you're totally fine. It's just stomach cramps.

It'll go away in a couple of days. Do whatever you're going to do. Now, we all know what's going to happen to that guy in a couple of weeks. So the guy ran up and hugged him and said, thank you so much.

You've made my day. God bless you. You must be an angel sent from heaven. The guy, just to make sure, goes to the second doctor and gets an opinion. The doctor walks in there and says, hey, man, the news is not good.

It's cancer, but if you get treatment now, I can help you. You're going to go through a rough time the next six months, but you can live. The guy starts throwing stuff, throwing chairs in the waiting room, tearing down pictures and said, how could you tell me that?

Now, which doctor showed love? The second one. The one who told the truth, showed love. That's the idea of what you're saying. If we saw sin, how God sees it, how the Bible describes it, it's not a shameful thing to say, hey, man, I love you enough to tell you the truth, because if I lied to you, you will be deceived.

And that's the idea of what you're getting here. And it will partly be my fault.

That's what the book of Ezekiel says, it will partly be in my hands.

Your blood's on my hands. And the way I've found to do that in love is to stress the point. Okay. You deal with homosexuality. Cool. I deal with lust. Tell me the difference. Right. Yeah, there's not.

Right. It's like if you want to rank sin, you can be a Pharisee, and that's on you. Jesus wasn't a fan of them. You know what I'm saying? But like I'm not going to say that your heterosexuality is worse than my I mean your homosexuality is worse than my heterosexuality when I don't control it.

Right. If I decide to let sin run rampant, then sin is sin is sin is sin, and it doesn't matter what you label it. And I think the important thing is I feel like people get too caught up in the label.

I feel like oh, go ahead.

No, no, dude. I was just going to say it's like the you've got to stop. Sorry, I can't hear you. I know. It's like shacking it ain't hacking it. That's how Pastor Jeff says it.

In other words, living together before marriage. Yeah.

That's There's no difference. There's no difference. There's no difference in that and the guy who watches porn. Like you're doing what you shouldn't be doing. God has a specific written out plan of how it's supposed to work.

I mean even the word in the New Testament, sexual morality, pornea, P-O-R-N-E-A. They don't try and hide it. Yeah, yeah, pornea, pornea. That word means any sexual activity outside the God-created bonds of man-woman marriage, a man-a woman marriage.

So adultery. Literally any sexual ascent outside of that is what Jesus called sexual morality. Think about it for a second.

It's Deuteronomy where everything starts they write everything out. Like this is what you should not do. This is abhorrent. They're still talking about that in the New Testament. Oh, yeah. It's like so it's been laid out.

Yeah. It was laid out a long time ago. And yet and we definitely see it today. But even in the New Testament still they can't we can't follow it. We just can't follow it. They can't. We can't. They can't.

I say we because we're the same if not worse.

So just pull that in there. To say about your thing earlier, you said, how can God be against love? I was like, that's a fallacy. God is love. What you are defining as love is a twist of love. So in the same way that porneia is anything that is outside of the bonds of or the bounds of what God

God created sex. He created it. And he created it as a non-sinful good thing. And then so if I were to say, well, then that means that no version of sex is a sin, it's a little uneducated. It's a little you can twist these things.

And David, jump in when you want to. But Harry Potter does not get to decide who he is. J .K. Rowling does. Word. Okay. J .K. Rowling. Rowling? Rowling? I don't know. She's pretty hated right now. Well, anyway, she is the creator of Harry Potter.

She defined who he is. Okay? J .R .R. Tolkien defined who Gandalf is. I'm a nerd. I'm sorry. We can make an argument about George Lucas, but let's move on from that for a minute. My point being is God is the creator of marriage.

He gets to define the bounds. He gets to define it. We don't get to take what the creator made of it and say, well, really, it's this. We don't get to take we could use any number of movies we want to.

The creator of that character defined how that character would be. God is the creator of marriage, so he gets to define the bounds of it. And when any of us in any way go against that, yes, it's sin. There's forgiveness for it, but not in spite of, but in fact of repentance.

I think that's kind of the point. Exactly.

Biblical Teaching on Homosexuality as Sin

So let's share some scripture. I feel like if we're going to be talking about is something a sin, is something not a sin, we should have something to back it up. Oh, do we have to read the Bible from it?

Yeah, I believe so. He didn't say that. That's not necessary. Obviously the one everybody would understand or at least have some type of knowledge of is Levitical law. It says man shall not lay with another man.

This is an abomination, whatever. I'm sorry. I misquoted that then. It was Leviticus.

Yes. I said that. I am so sorry. I knew what you meant. Yeah, well. For fact checkers, it was Levitical.

I'm sorry. I thought maybe it said it in Deuteronomy, and that's what I thought it said.

Yep. I thought they sometimes repeated themselves. Well, Moses wrote all of them. He does say it. Right.

True. It doesn't matter when he said it. So I got a couple. I'm going to start with Jude 1, verse 7. In the same way, Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them committed sexual immorality and practiced perversions, just as the angels did and served as an example by undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.

If you know about Sodom and Gomorrah. Clear. It's very clear exactly what it's talking about. Obviously, I do believe that there are other sexual immoral things that, I mean, it's got to be 99 .9 chance of other sexual immorality things happening there.

But it is speaking about homosexuality. Yes. We are literally talking about Lot walks into the city. Not Lot. The two angels walk into the city. Just two new dudes walk into the city. And the entire city, it does not say a few men from the city.

It says the city came out to meet them and demanded they come out and have sex with them. And so you put that in perspective and you say, what type of place? It's nowhere on this earth currently. I mean, we have some messed up stuff that's on this earth currently, but nowhere can you go and all of the men have had so much sex with each other that they will know and they're looking for new people to come in and everybody floods and not trying to buy him a drink,.

Not trying to compliment anything. You just described the gay community in all honesty. Like if you're new to any area in town and you go into the gay bar and you will be flocked because you're the new blood and it's a conquest for other men to see how many times they can get you or stuff like that.

Is it a trying to seduce or is it a like come on, grab, let's go.

It can be either one in all honesty. Okay. It can be either one. It's sickening.

It really is. Yeah. Well, that's where Sodom was. And the point that Lot, while those angels were under his protection, it was Lot. He had two daughters and he had those two angels. They were banging at the door.

Bring them out so that we can have sex with them. Lot's a coward. Lot comes out and says, no. How about I give you my daughters instead? I was like, okay, Lot. And they were just like, no. And since you're trying to stop us, now we're going to have sex with you instead.

And did you read that? Did you know that? Yes. I recently reread that again and said, oh, I didn't even know that Lot was in danger in that situation. You tried to stop us. Now it's going to be you. And so the angels pulled him back.

So that's what that's referring to. Do you have a verse as well?

Yeah, I've got a couple. Well, I mean, Leviticus makes it clear. Romans 1 makes it clear. Romans 1. And Romans 1, by the way, it includes the male aspect of that and the female aspect of that. Mine is 1 Corinthians 6.

But this goes down. That's what my next one is going to be.

Do you want to go, bro? I would like for David to read it. Oh. I've got my Bible. Okay. That would be awesome.

I've just got some comments. Because I felt like, yeah. How about chapter 6, 9 through 11, brother? Chapter 6, 9 through 11.

Because I feel like it speaks about his situation. I think it's one of the best ones.

I think it's awesome. It's going to be hard reading with a boom mic in front of me. You said chapter 6 through 11? Chapter 6, 9 through 11. All righty. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers. Revilers. Revilers. I have a different translation.

Nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, and you were sanctified. You were justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.

Amen.

I love that last part. May I? Yeah, you got my phone if you want it.

So, what I love about this passage, and I want everyone listening, especially those of you who are caught off guard by us even talking about this, but the Spirit is convicting you, so you haven't turned it off yet.

Please listen. Sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, anyone practicing homosexuality, thieves, greedy people, drunkards, verbally abusive people, swindlers. That list, I imagine, had every single person, including myself in the forehead, with at least one of those.

Yep. And every single person. And listen to what God says. And such were some of you. Man. But you were washed, you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.

1 John does the same thing here. It's not that those who are washed never commit these sins again. It's that that is no longer their identity, and they do not, as 1 John says here, practice these things, practice homosexuality.

That is no longer your identity. There is a mode, a pattern, a what do you call this? You're moving upwards, okay? A hike. It is a pattern towards holiness and away from that. Such were some of you. See, it's not just that I struggled with, let's say, greed.

It's that you were greedy. Yep. It's not that this person here struggled with sexuality. He was sexually immoral. Such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, and you were justified in the name of the Lord, Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God.

I would point out that it doesn't say such are some of you. My point in saying that is what? It's that, as we go back through, struggling is the most sanctifying thing you could ever do. It's those of us who this was our identity, and we still struggle with it daily, as 1 John says, but we're moving in the right direction now.

That's what Paul is getting at here. There's your Bible line. That's one of my favorite passages on this topic.

You keep saying identity. But for me, first and foremost, as someone who grew up with that lifestyle in the back of his mind, my identity has always been Christ. I've always claimed that as my identity, and it's the one thing that when I see another Christian who says, oh, I'm a gay Christian, your identity is not in your sexuality.

It's in your relationship with Christ. Amen, dude. For you to sit there and say, I am this, but you act and you behave as if your identity is your homosexuality, your identity is not in Christ. You're not saved, and you're the issue.

You're the problem. You're why we're doing this podcast, in all honesty.

That is so huge because I think you're so right. There's so many different things, if we're going to talk about culture, man, that are going on, that are caused by people finding their identity in worthless things.

It's like my identity is the color of my skin. God. Dude, what? So anybody who says anything about the color of your skin has attacked you as a person and who you are. Therefore, you're going to go off the rails.

My identity is my sexuality? Yeah. Really? Of all things? But you're going to preach, it's not your business what I do in the bedroom. But then make it public. But my entire identity, who I am, is what I do in the bedroom.