Tim Keller Downplays Side B Threat in the PCA

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Welcome to the Conversation, the Staten Matter Podcast. My name is John Harris. We're going to talk today about the

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Presbyterian Church in America, the PCA. We don't often talk about the PCA because it's smaller than the

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SBC and because I'm more familiar with the SBC, but it is important to talk about the PCA. They have some of the same battles going on in the

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PCA that are going on in the Southern Baptist Convention, and they might look a little different, especially because of the polity of the

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SBC, and it is different than the polity of the PCA. PCA has overtures that are actually binding on local congregations, whereas the resolutions in the

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SBC don't bind local autonomous churches. So different beliefs on church government, but that means that overtures in the

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PCA are more important. And so keeping our eye on the overtures that are either rejected or accepted is one way to see the trajectory of the

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PCA, and it's not the only way. We can look at other things. We can look at what's being said on social media, what's being sent in emails, and what pastors, prominent pastors are saying and that kind of thing, but the

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PCA, it's a little more rigid because local autonomous churches in the SBC, they have a lot of leeway to kind of do what they want, but in the

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PCA, that's not the case. You can be brought up on charges of being against the state of beliefs of the

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PCA, and that can get you kicked out, and you can be tried for heresy and all that kind of thing. So much more tight in the way that things operate.

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Now I wanted to start, we're going to launch off of this, if I can here.

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This is an article by Tim Keller in the By Faith, I guess it's a magazine.

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It's a magazine, it says, of the Presbyterian Church in America, so I'm assuming there must be a soft copy or a hard copy of this as well, but it's posted free online, and the title of it is this from March 21st, is

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What's Happening in the PCA by Tim Keller. Now I've covered Overtures 23 and 37 before, you can go back to a podcast

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I did with Pastor Sean McGowan on this topic, and I know I've given at least two updates since then, and long story short, without getting back into all the details, if you want to go watch those podcasts or listen to them, you can.

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Overtures 23 and 37 were concerned with the character traits, the moral integrity, the standards for someone who is ordained or a pastor in the

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PCA, and the intent behind Overtures 23 and 37 was to tighten up the language on same -sex attraction, homosexual orientation especially, identifying with those kinds of things, being characterized by those kinds of desires, because the

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PCA has a problem with revoiced theology, sometimes called Side B, and this is what this article is primarily about.

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Overtures 23 and 37 failed. They were recommended by the

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General Assembly, but then when they actually went to the presbyteries and had to be approved by two thirds, they failed that.

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And so this has been a cause for contention in the PCA. Is this a sign of liberalism?

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What does this mean? Is this just because of procedural issues? And there's been debates going on about that, surrounding this.

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Here's what Tim Keller has to say, though. I thought this was really interesting. And there's a great piece, by the way.

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It's just very long. That's the thing. It's very long. And I'm not going to get into all the details of it. But if you really want to know more about this whole issue that I'm about to give to you, you can go to warhornmedia .com.

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And I'm not intimately familiar with Warhorn. I know I've seen other articles by them, but this guy,

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Tim Bailey, wrote an interesting piece that I thought responded. If you listen to it, it's over. It's an hour and 16 minutes long.

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It's like one of my podcasts. That's long. But he goes through in detail.

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He takes Tim Keller's statements, examines them, shows why they don't actually pass the

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SNF test. And so what I want to do is not just go over everything he went over. I might take a little bit from some observations

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I might use from that. But I have just some more general observations about this, not just the

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PCA, but this just pertains to evangelicalism in general, in my opinion. So let's look at what

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Tim Keller has to say. I think there's a lot of straw men in this. I think there's a perhaps purposeful, but at least an inability, whether it's willfully or not, to deal with the issues that are actually right in front of us.

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And we're in a day right now where there's so much misinformation. People are engaging in conspiracy theories, the term you hear a lot now, but people are engaging in just viewing reality in a way that just doesn't match reality.

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Their understanding of reality is just not in touch with actually what's happening out there. And I'm seeing this more and more everywhere.

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It doesn't even need a political ideology connected to it. Just people are trying to come up with ways to interpret reality.

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And some are saying peace, peace when there is no peace. And I don't know what all the motivations are.

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I think some of this has to do with stability, wanting to a sense of stability. Things aren't really changing as fast as we think as they actually are.

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Others are thinking that they're just blowing things out of proportion. We're all going to die. Chicken little.

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And and so what I've attempted to do to the best of my ability is to avoid needless speculation and go on what we can verify as much as I possibly can.

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And there's going to be some assumptions we have to make here and there. And hopefully they're reasonable assumptions. But what

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I see you in this narrative that Tim Keller projects that I'm about to read for you is a peace, peace when there is no peace.

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It's not as bad as it seems. This isn't a big deal that we that the problem is those who are actually reading the situation correctly are the ones in the wrong because they're exaggerating things.

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They're bringing in categories from politics and viewing this as bigger than it really is.

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This issue of revoiced theology and side B. And I think it's a perhaps a maneuver to pacify.

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That's what it could be, at least because it doesn't make any sense to me. Someone as smart as Tim Keller could misread things this badly.

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So let's go through it. This is what Tim Keller has to say. The failure of overtures 23 and 37 to receive approval of two thirds of our presbyteries has given rise to many interpretations of what this means about the state of the

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PCA. I want to question one of the main ways of reading the results of the vote.

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The narrative goes something like this. A majority of the presbyteries of the PCA are conservative. They don't side with side

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B approaches to homosexuality. But there is a significant minority of presbyteries that do.

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This is an extremely dangerous situation because side B always slides into side A. And the end of Orthodox Christianity, we see where those side

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B leaning presbyteries are and we know where the liberalism will begin developing if it hasn't already.

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Most of the PCA is sound, though. OK, so I want to stop right there. This is Tim Keller representing the argument that the narrative that he believes is prominent right now, and that is that side

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B, which we'll get into momentarily, but this theology that many are concerned with, this revoiced theology, really, that this is going to slide into side

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A. So side B is this affirmation of a homosexual identity of some kind, cultural elements to it.

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We'll give more definition to it as we go. Side A is this idea that Christians—so side

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B, Christians can engage in that. They can have that kind of an identity and engage in certain cultural elements, perhaps, but not in what

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Scripture specifically prohibits, which is sexual activity. That, I should say, if you have kids in the car, just you might be forewarned.

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I don't know how to navigate all of this without using some words that give more description, but without having actual sex.

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With actual engagement in same -sex relationships, physical relationships, that's wrong, but everything else, pretty much, just about.

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You could talk with a lisp, and you can perhaps dress in a certain way.

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You can have these friendships that are supposed to be almost substitutes for a marriage, but they're just these strong friendships.

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You can have all that kind of thing. But side A, Christianity, or those who believe in some kind of an appropriate and acceptable homosexual lifestyle within Christianity, if they believe in the side

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A approach, they think that, yes, having sexual intercourse would be fine in a homosexual relationship.

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Side B can't do that. Side A can do that, but side B opens up a lot of other possibilities.

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Tim Keller's whole, the way he sets up this straw man, in my opinion, which is, I think, what this ends up being is that it's a slippery slope argument.

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It's people in the PCA are concerned because they're just afraid of homosexual, physical, intimate relationships.

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They don't want to endorse that, and they think if you endorse the side B perspective, that's what you're doing. Now, I don't think that's what's going on, and I don't know of anyone who's ever who thinks that's what's going on.

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In fact, we had MD Perkins on maybe two or three months ago to talk about this whole issue, and he produced a document for Focus on the

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Family on this very topic, a very well put together document. And the concern, I mean,

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I suppose you could say that there's this concern that if you soften orthodox belief on sexuality, you can wind up in various places that are wrong, and that would include side

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A. But the actual issue with side

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B is that it actually endorses behaviors and feelings and temptations and desires that are sinful in and of themselves.

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That's the contention. It's not that, well, side B is okay, but hey, watch out.

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It's going to slide into something wrong. It's that no, side B in and of itself is wrong. So Tim Keller sets it up,

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I think in my opinion, wrong from the beginning, and misses what this is about. In fact, those overtures, if you just read overtures 23 and 37, you can figure out pretty quickly what it's about.

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It's about a lifestyle of identifying yourself according to sinful desires or sinful lifestyles, manifesting traits of that, etc.

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So this view divides the PCA into a majority of conservative people in presbyteries, but also a minority of side

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B -leaning social justice -emphasizing progressives. There are considerable problems with this view. So he's saying that you have a division here.

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That's what conservatives really are saying, that there's—and let's just face it.

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This is the narrative coming from conservatives. He doesn't say—he doesn't attribute it to them. The narrative just comes out of nowhere, somewhere.

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It's just the narrative. This narrative is coming from conservative people in the PCA. This is his audience.

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This is who he's trying to address. It's obvious from the beginning. It's people who would have this view, and those are going to be the conservative types.

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The progressives aren't going to be taking this kind of a narrative as serious.

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They think that they're orthodox, and that's always been the case. The heretics always think they're orthodox.

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Since when is that not the case? So the people who are concerned about a slide and losing orthodoxy in some way, these are the conservatives, and they are—and this is a strawman of the way they feel about things, and they see a line being formed, and there's one people—there's a group of people on one side of the line against Overtures 23 and 37.

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There's a group of people on the other side of the line for them, which is how they feel about it, and Tim Keller's saying, no, no, no, no, hold on, hold on.

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This is too simplistic. That line isn't really there. There's just problems with thinking through things that way.

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So as far as I know, there is not one PCA court, not one session, presbytery, or agency that has ever endorsed

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Side B Christianity. Now, of course, the article in Warhorn Media by Tim Bailey rips this one to shreds.

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I'm not going to do that. He's got all the receipts on that if you want to know why this is wrong. This is the observation

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I have about this, though. Who cares? Why is that significant? You have the

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Revoice conference hosted at a PCA church, and there has not been significant actions taken.

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There's been reports and things, but you haven't actually reprimanded

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Greg Johnson. The issue to me in all this is, you have an ideology, this

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Side B interpretation, that is gaining ascendance. It's on the rise, and you don't have to look at these metrics to know whether or not that's true.

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You can just simply look at the fact that there was a church that did this, and the willpower to actually discipline

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Johnson wasn't there, and the willpower to pass these overtures wasn't there. You don't need much more than that.

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That's my contention here, and I know you could put a list here. Warhorn Media has a whole list of where you find this kind of thing, but you don't even need that.

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All you need is what's even presented, honestly, in this article. You can figure out, wait a minute, there's a problem somewhere. There is a disagreement.

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There is a schism of some kind. Second, the PCA's Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality considered this

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Side B view and clearly rejected it. So, Warhorn Media took this one on and gave specifics, but I just wanted to open up the document and look through, okay, where does it say

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Side B? Nowhere. Nowhere is Side B mentioned. Okay, so they denounced something they didn't even mention, apparently, according to Keller.

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What about revoice theology? So, I type that in, and revoice does come up, but you don't find the strong denunciations that Keller's referring to when you type in revoice.

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There's references to reports, things like that, but there's no denunciation of revoice here.

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So, I'm like, what is he talking about in this? Third, he says, in light of points one and two, we can conclude further that the reasons for the no votes by presbyters on the

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BCO amendments must have been based on matters other than an insipid liberalism.

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Again, the reasons for votes against the overtures were extremely diverse, yet after hearing many, many of them,

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I think the common uniting concern was that the overtures could do more harm than good. Some thought they would exclude some people unfairly.

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What he's painting a picture of here is that, look, the reason that these overtures failed was because of reasons other than people in the

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PCA who wanted to support Side B theology. And so, look, the

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Side B thinking here, the revoice theology, he doesn't call it that, but the revoice theology is, it doesn't necessarily, people are concerned that it's gonna slide into Side A, right?

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So, he strawmans it. And then, the second thing is that no one endorses this in the

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PCA, not on an official level. And then the third is that we've already actually denounced the

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Side B view. And then fourth is that the people who voted against it weren't even necessarily supporting

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Side B. So, it's all downplaying this, that the Side B view, the revoice theology is a big deal, that it's a threat.

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It's really not a threat. And then he goes, he does this interesting thing, the old narrative. It says, well, then what is going on?

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Tim Keller says, I have a view. So, what explains? If it's not a disagreement in the PCA over revoice theology, and homosexual orientation, same -sex attraction, making that compatible with Christianity.

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If that's not the disagreement, then what is the disagreement? This is the view Tim Keller has. I have a view that it is possibly wrong, but is my best guess right now.

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What is going on now is, with one significant difference, what has been going on in our denomination almost from the beginning.

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All right. So, for a conservative, that's gonna be like, oh, whew, you know, good. This isn't anything new. But that makes no sense.

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It just, like, try to make that jive with reality. This has been going, we've always had debates over this kind of thing.

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Of course not. But how does he frame it? He says, the PCA has been divided between a minority of ministers who interpret the

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Westminster standards in stricter ways, and a majority who interpret them in broader ways. An example is the regular principle of worship.

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So, this whole side B controversy is no different than the regular, debating the regular principle?

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Really? That's the kind of thing you're gonna compare it to? I mean, no, side

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B stuff is pretty fundamental. How about this? Any effort to give names to these groups makes one side look better than the other.

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Is one group confessional and the other evangelical? Is one doctrinalist and the other side missional? I use these terms just to help readers get the gist of what

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I'm talking about, and I'll not use them again because I do not want the labels to rob anyone of proper respect or brand them uncharitably.

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So, the second thing he's saying, okay, we've had this from the beginning. We've always been arguing over things like the regular principle based on more strict interpretations.

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And then he goes on to basically argue against people who would use labels and call one side evangelical or one side doctrinalist.

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And we shouldn't be doing that. These are just terms of identification because a division does exist.

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And if you can identify what's causing the division and try to categorize what people who exist on one side of the line and people that exist on the other side of the line and what they're thinking and what they're advocating, it's inevitable that you're going to have some way in a shorthand of describing that.

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And Tim Keller's trying to say, no, no, no, no, we shouldn't even describe it according to labels. And it's just this old argument that's been happening for a while.

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And it's this grievous division. Let's see here. And we should assume the best about each other.

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Paul's statement that love thinks no evil does not mean we should be naive about the reality of sin, but it must mean at the very least, that believers should give each other the benefit of the doubt.

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Okay, we'll talk about this in a minute. Benefit of the doubt. Polarization of the PCA mirrors polarization of the culture.

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And here's where he kind of lands. Listen to this one. During the last five to six years, the entire nation has become more polarized politically and culturally.

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No matter your position, the alternative viewpoint to yours have become louder and stronger and more extreme in society.

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Now, that's not universally the case, by the way. The left has won so many battles and has pushed so far that you have people on the right now who, like PragerU and The Blaze TV and Megyn Kelly, all advocating for homosexual parents adopting through surrogate mothers.

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I mean, those are conservative supposedly now. That just shows you how far... They haven't gotten more extreme on that particular position.

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But the left has gotten so extreme that the populist right that are being squeezed are putting up defenses and they're getting more brash in some ways.

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They're getting more vocal, brazen, all that kind of thing. So I'll give you that. But no, it's not like alternative viewpoints are just becoming louder, stronger, and more extreme, especially the more extreme part.

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It's that you have a socialist revolution and one side is becoming so extreme on that end of things and you have a reaction from the other side.

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But it's not like they're running in the opposite direction. They're trying to maintain... I think

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Trump was trying to maintain 1995. Anyway, I just get frustrated with that when people paint it as both sides are moving far away from each other.

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It's like, no, they're not. One side's moving really far and the other one's just not moving as fast to catch up with it.

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Some are seeking to re -read the strict and broad groups as being the same as, and as connected to, the conservatives and progressives that are battling in the culture wars on the national stage.

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For example, many now want to name the broader PCA group progressives and tie them to the activism of the secular left.

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If a PCA church emphasizes helping the poor or disadvantaged, it may be said they are into critical race theory.

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If they voted against overtures 23 and 37, it may be said they are sympathetic to gay ideology. This effort to tie the old strict broad division in the

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PCA to the culture wars of the country has not been without any effect. So he's saying this is arbitrary.

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You're taking a division that's been there forever, whether or not one is a strict interpreter of the Westminster or not, and you're then placing that debate that's centuries old into the...

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Or at least since the inception of the PCA. I can't remember if he said from the beginning of Presbyterianism or the PCA, but at least since the inception of the

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PCA. You're taking that, decades and decades of that division, and then you're just arbitrarily impressing upon it the interpretation of a political sort, and you're saying that one side lines up with conservatives, one side lines up with progressives, politically speaking.

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And that's what's really driving this. And here's the thing. This is the obvious thing to all of us. This kind of a discussion over revoiced theology would not even be happening if there wasn't a sexual revolution.

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It wouldn't even be a thought. No one, even two decades ago, this wouldn't have even been a thought in most people's minds in the

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PCA, that this would ever be even a debate. Many of you listening are probably wondering what in the world is side

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B? I mean, it's so new. So this is the thing. This is totally a result of the direction of our society.

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And the sexual revolution has much to do with that. People seeing themselves on a fundamental level as different than the way that God actually created them.

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The created order is not what's, well, or some will take the created order and impose upon it values from the outside.

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So there's two ways of approaching that really, but either a downgrading, a dismissal of the created order, and I have my own identity, or the created order includes this same -sex orientation that I have.

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And so therefore it's legitimate in some ways, even though I can't act on it.

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And that wouldn't have even been a thought 20 years ago in a PCA, it just wouldn't have been. There might've been a few people on the fringe that probably didn't say it out loud.

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So Tim Keller's whole, this is a peace, peace when there is no peace. That's the whole construction of this. And then he ends with, anyway,

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I might even go into his conclusion. It's a rehashing of a lot of this. So how are we gonna, how do we approach this?

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I mean, I've given you my thoughts on it, but I wanna just show you some stuff from, mostly I think from Twitter here.

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We're gonna talk about Side B a bit. And I wanna show you the reaction to this from those who would be more on the, well, first I wanna show you this.

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I forgot about this. Greg Johnson, who's at Memorial Presbyterian Church in St.

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Louis, they hosted the Revoice Conference. He clearly showing here, and there's many

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I could have shown you, but helpful caution about Overture 23 from Tim Keller. Really, there was this idea, it was in 2021.

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Hey, Tim Keller's kind of on our side on this. Tim Keller's, he's against these overtures.

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And so you have Greg Johnson right there making common cause to say it, to put it mildly with Tim Keller.

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And so this was, I think, the general feeling is that Keller's not on the side of these overtures necessarily, or at least he's more welcoming to the

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Greg Johnsons of the world. That's just been kind of an impression that I've gotten at least from people

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I know in the PCA. Now, Nate Collins, who organizes

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Revoice, or at least did, I don't know if he still does, he had a whole response to the article

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I just read you from Tim Keller. And let me just read his

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Twitter thread here. He says, well, at least it's explicit now. Tim Keller now says that the

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PCA sexuality report was intended to reject Side B Christianity. I don't know of a single

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Side B gay Christian who has ever used the phrase Side B Christianity. This makes me wonder if the use of the phrase

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Side B Christianity by straight Christian leaders is a form of othering of those of us who use

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LGBT terminology to cast us as different, but more importantly, wrong Christians.

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As a gay man who believes in Jesus and is living by faith according to a biblical sexual ethic that prohibits all forms of sexual intimacy between members of the same sex,

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I reject the idea that my Christianity is fundamentally different from that of my straight siblings. You can tell why these overtures would have really affected people like Nick Collins.

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I mean, as a gay man who believes in Jesus, I mean, right there, he would have been in trouble by identifying himself according to something that's sinful.

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It's worth noting that neither this article by Keller nor the PCA report actually engages with anything written by someone who would claim to represent the

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Side B perspective. Side B is a fairly broad tent, but this lack of engagement is intellectually dishonest and lazy.

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So he's mad at Keller. Keller's article also neglects to address the insipid homophobia and legalism that animates a significant portion of the

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PCA. While not receiving the necessary two -thirds majority to amend, overtures 23 and 37 did pass by a clear majority of the denominational leadership.

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The tolerance, so it's not enough that these failed. The fact that it was recommended at the last General Assembly is enough to say that there's all this homophobia.

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The tolerance of homophobia and legalism towards gay people in the PCA is pastoral malpractice and enables the systemic spiritual abuse of sexual minorities.

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With this article, Keller joins the ranks of moderates whose effort at peacekeeping are doing more spiritual harm. As a thought experiment, imagine that the far right wing of the

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PCA is the drunk dad, inebriated on legalism while the PCA moderates are the mom who keeps hiding the liquor bottles and pleading with the gay kids to not make daddy mad.

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My advice to the PCA moderates, for the sake of your own safety and the safety of your gay children, either confront your spouse and demand change or leave.

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Now, listen, this is telling. This is a shift on how is

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Tim Keller viewed? Who is Tim Keller? Tim Keller's, he's not down with the struggle enough. He's now moderate.

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Tim Keller, moderate, the PCA, by the standards of some. Because he is, you know, he may have this, he's the mother.

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He loves the gay children, but he just, he's trying to appease the bigots.

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That's the interpretation of Nate Collins. That's very interesting to me because there's fractures in the progressive side of things.

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There's those who are gonna full steam ahead and then there's those who want to, as you know, and Tim Keller, I don't know for what his motive was.

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I have, like I said, my suspicion here. I think it probably, he's addressing people that have a certain view, more conservative as evidenced by his article in the beginning of it, and he's trying to pacify them.

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That's at least the effect of his article. That's what it does. That's what he's, that's what he's argues for.

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And so I think that's what's happening here is that that's the motive Tim Keller has. What he actually believes,

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I'm not 100 % sure. I think he's, at least people did think he was more accommodating to the revoiced stuff.

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Now, where is he? And so he's not able to satisfy those.

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In so pacifying, in trying to pacify the people who are conservatives, he's now offending the people who are, and I'm just gonna use the terms

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Tim Keller doesn't want me to use because they're accurate, the more progressives. That's who they are. Here's what he says the next day.

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Things I would have never imagined seeing Tim Keller providing cover for legalism. Then you have

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Sarah Collins. Now, this was in a response to a tweet by Greg Johnson, where Greg Johnson was essentially, as far as I remember, lamenting what

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Keller had said, but the tweet's now gone and I can't seem to get it back. So I'm just gonna go with the response here.

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This is from Sarah Collins, which I believe that would be the wife of Nate Collins.

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And she says, claiming no session supportive side B as he does, when the gospel's hospitality to revoice has meant a storm of denominational controversy.

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And I think she says MPC's gospel hospitality, that must be Memorial Presbyterian Church.

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That's the church in question. That's the church Greg Johnson is a pastor at. So she's saying that the...

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Keller's wrong. That Memorial Presbyterian Church had gospel hospitality for revoice and it's meant a storm of denominational controversy, including multiple investigations.

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And it's just shocking to her that Tim Keller would come out there and say, hey, no session support side

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B. When she's like, what are you talking about? That's just not in touch with reality. Not to mention ignoring your book and Georgia Talks.

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And I think she's talking, she's responding here to Greg Johnson. So Greg Johnson's talk and talks.

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So, or whatsoever those things are called when you walk up to a mic at Georgia, okay.

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So here's what I think is interesting. The progressives are calling

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Tim Keller's bluff and they're saying, hold on, like you're not representing this fairly.

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And I'm not saying they're progressive in the sense that they go as far as, they're not like, you know, they might be

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Democrats, who knows, but I'm not saying they're secular Democrats. What I'm saying is within the boundaries of the

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PCA, within that group of people, they are more on the left. And the evidence, all you need to know is that they believe in the revoice stuff.

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To know that, that's a direct result of a soft peddling of homosexuality.

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Grant Hartley, Grant Hartley. I think we've talked about Grant Hartley before. He used to work for Crew. He's actually, I think, Roman Catholic now.

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But he was, I think he did some poetry for Crew. He was, it was an interesting homosexual poetry thing.

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I played it on the podcast. It was a while ago, years ago now, I think. Anyway, he was,

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I believe he's one of the revoice speakers, but he weighed in on this. And he said, reading Tim Keller's center church was a large reason why

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I began to think of the LGBT community as a distinct cultural group. Whoa. So this is, again, it's the feeling that Tim Keller was with us, which is the foundation of much of my work, especially, listen to this, especially at the first two revoice conferences and a significant theme of my life.

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And now I'm remembering, actually, I did watch. He did do, I think the first revoice thing I watched, he had this whole talk on redeeming queer culture, something like that.

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His discussion of contextualization and missiology, perhaps surprisingly, one of the biggest reasons why I call myself gay.

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Why I can begin to consider my sexuality be an aspect of my identity. Why I feel such a strong connection to LGBTQ people, culture, and history.

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Now, by the way, LGBTQ people, cultural history, what does being gay have to do with being transgender?

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What holds these things together, LGBTQ? The only thing that can hold them together is that they're not the created design.

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They're stepping outside of that. Like, otherwise, what do they have to do with each other?

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Right? But they are one community? Wouldn't there be the lesbian community, the transgender community, the queer?

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Like, why are they all together in one community? Because they stand in opposition to traditional marriage, biblical marriage, created design, and those orientations, which

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I don't even like using that word because it's just orientation itself. It's, we are created for the purposes our creator has given us.

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We are designed in a specific way to function a specific way. We are who we were designed to be, not who we feel we should be.

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That's the root issue in all this. So what kind of a culture do

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LGBTQ people produce? Is it even a culture? Culture is what you cultivate.

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So what do they cultivate? They can't have children. Um, history?

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I mean, like, what? This is a deception right here. But he's saying that Tim Keller is the one that convinced him to identify with this.

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Very interesting. Not great for Keller, but he's saying, hey, it's Tim Keller that inspired me to identify with the

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LGBTQ, quote, unquote, community. I quoted him extensively throughout those breakout sessions at the first two

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Revoice conferences, and his work has irrevocably shaped me. He, so it is especially painful, he says, to seek him publicly, see him publicly, harshly distance himself from the

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Side B community because his work has been the catalyst for so much Side B thought and cultural formation over the past several years.

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This is telling. This is so telling that Tim Keller is one of the guys that these people thought he's on our side.

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And then when he tries to pacify the conservatives, they feel rejected. Why are you going and talking to them?

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I thought you were with us. They're hurt. They feel rejected. They're not accepting it.

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So what is Side B Christianity? Here's Nate Collins. He tweeted out, enjoying being interviewed for this thoughtful and helpful article about the complexities and the lights of the

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Side B gay Christian community. So again, they don't really say Side B Christianity like Tim Keller did, but there is this

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Side B gay Christian community. And this is the article he references. And I'm just gonna read you from it here.

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And it's quoting Grant Hartley as well. It's the same kind of people in all of these, the same group.

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At first, Side B was mostly offering a theological pathway for Christians to both accept LGBTQ as a

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God -given identity and uphold traditional stance on sex and marriage. Now Hartley said, the group has taken on a cultural weight.

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Over time, Side B has felt less like a theological position and more like a distinct subculture.

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Really? How so? Many Side B Christians feel called to celibacy and a select few are in celibate same -sex partnerships or mixed orientation marriages where one party is straight and the other is not.

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These experiences have led Side B Christians to develop alternate models of belonging that honor single celibate lifestyles.

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One such model he'll says is spiritual friendship, a deeply committed relationship that's more spiritual vocation than casual

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Facebook acquaintance. He'll says these sorts of intentional celibate friendships deserve public recognition and support.

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Side B folks also find community by creating chosen families, mutual support systems made up of non -related members or in the case of Eve Tushnet, through communal acts of service.

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I don't have to read any more. This is what it is. Side B Christians engaging in celibate same -sex partnerships.

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It's everything. We can do everything but have sex. Everything else is permissible.

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We can act like the people that and the habits that were produced by people that were having illicit sex with each other or sex outside of the bounds of matrimony.

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That's a man and a woman, biblical marriage. We can imitate that culture.

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That quote unquote culture, those habits, those ways of talking and acting and dressing.

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And we can come up with substitutes here for marriage. We just don't have sex.

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I mean, would you even accept this for heterosexuals? I think that's people that, yeah, you know,

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I'm heterosexual and we are in a same -sex partnership, but we're celibate.

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We're like, we'd be like, yeah, right. Like, what are you doing?

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We know what this is. This is marriage. That's what, at least, that's the created order. That's what God intended.

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And like, what are you doing fooling around here? Like, you're trying to substitute something for what we all know is baked into creation itself.

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And that's the root issue of all this is the question hinges on whether or not we are whom

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God designed us to be according to the created order or we are something else. Grant Hartley said, this is in 2021.

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One of my friends responding to recent Psybe subculture is bad discourse. And he says,

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I mean, why do deaf people need their own subculture? Why can't they just hang out with hearing people? Now look at that comparison.

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Identifying yourself as homosexual, gay, same -sex attracted, whatever, is kind of the same thing as being deaf.

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Well, God tells us very clearly who made the deaf ear, who made the blind.

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We also, we have the result of sin as well and fallenness in the created order and that it does affect things.

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But being deaf is not the same thing as identifying with a sin pattern of identifying with lusts for things that God has not authorized.

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We would never do that with any other sin. What about the, I don't know,

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I mean, the community of liars, the community of thieves or the community of pick any sin you want.

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Community of, you know, polygamists. If you wanna try to go for heterosexual things that are outside what

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God's plan is. On the heterosexual side, pedophile, pedophilia, you know, whatever.

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You know, would they, would we say that there's a legitimate community that pedophiles come up with or that serial adulterers come up with that we just really need to welcome that into the church.

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They need to have their own community, their own space, their own, like what? No, they need to realize who they are in Christ if they're

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Christians and who God created them to be. They need to live according to that. Created to order and God's sanctification process are not in conflict here.

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So Greg Johnson, again, if anyone lacks clarity about the real effect of PCA Overture 23, look no further.

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Not everyone who supports it thinks this way, but those who think this way definitely support it. And Eric Erickson saying that supporting

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Overture 23 and that he's against the pastor defining himself by his sexuality. So really, again, this fleshes out what the side

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B thing is, that it's defining yourself by your sexuality. You should be able to do that.

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Even if you believe your sexuality is in conflict with the biblical order that God has set up and the created order.

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Greg Johnson, again, says this, a key step in many of the ex -gay and reparative approaches. I just actually brought up this tweet.

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For those looking at it, you can read it. Let's see. The whole issue he has with reparative therapy is that it rejects homosexual self -perception.

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And that's the freedom for humans to define themselves according to their sexuality, their feeling about who they're attracted to, what they're attracted to.

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That homosexual self -perception is a valid category. That's the argument here. That's the issue with the side

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B stuff. So just a little bit of hopefully clarity there on what the actual issue is.

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And then I don't even have to call Tim Keller's bluff because you have all these people on the opposite side of this issue from me calling

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Tim Keller's bluff. And this is the moral of the story here is you can't fence it on this.

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You can't pretend that a schism doesn't actually exist, a widening gap.

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When it does, there's a fault line there. There are people on one side, they're answering this question differently than people on the other side.

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And it's not just something as, and I don't want to say service level because it's not, you know, the regular principle is not service level, but it's not something that Christians who are

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Orthodox can disagree on like the regular principle. It is something so much more fundamental than that.

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And Tim Keller either doesn't see this or he does see it. And he's trying to pacify you. He's trying to say peace, peace when there is no peace.

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So you won't worry and you'll stay in the PCA and you'll continue to support it and money will keep flowing. And when in reality, this is bad for the

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PCA. And I'm not one to give you advice. I don't know enough about the PCA to give you advice on whether you should leave, whether you should stay, any of that.

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Maybe there's hope for the next General Assembly, something can be done. I don't know, maybe. But there's definitely a battle going on and on a fundamental level.

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And it does mirror to some extent the political divide that exists in our country right now. And anyone who doesn't see that is just, they're pulling your leg.

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They're not being true to reality. They're just, and I don't know if Tim Keller, maybe he just needs to stop.

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Maybe he's getting too old or maybe he's just losing his credibility left and right. And people need to stop listening to him when he talks as if he has so much wisdom on this.

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You don't have wisdom if your starting point is fundamentally flawed. And you're just not even dealing with reality as it is.

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So that's my two cents on that. And hopefully that was helpful for some of you, especially if you're in the PCA, just kind of understanding what's happening, what the next move might be among some who now are,

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I guess, moderates, but I would say progressively leaning people. They're going to, I think, try to pacify more and more that this isn't a big deal.

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It kind of is a big deal. It kind of is. There needs to be a mechanism in place for rooting out people like Greg Johnson.

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There is no mechanism in place for doing this. That's the problem. And the overtures were supposed to be about correcting that, and they failed.

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So what are you going to do in the PCA? That's the question. What are you going to do? God bless.