Is It Gay To Fall in Love With Jesus?

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Warning, the following message may be offensive to some audiences. These audiences may include, but are not limited to, professing Christians who never read their

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Bible, sissies, sodomites, men with man buns, those who approve of men with man buns, man bun enablers, white knights for men with man buns, homemakers who have finished

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The message of Christianity is that salvation is found in Christ alone, and any who reject

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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The issue is that humanity is in sin, and the wrath of almighty

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God is hanging over our heads. They will hear his words, they will not act upon them, and when the floods of divine judgment, when the fires of wrath come, they will be consumed and they will perish.

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God wrapped himself in flesh, condescended, and became a man.

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And when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day, their house will stand.

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All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is, is it gay to fall in love with Jesus? Yeah, man.

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Yeah, it's pretty gay. I think most people, most people who listen regularly to us probably expected that kind of short response from you.

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But I think maybe there are some other people who this is one of the first things they're ever hearing from us, and so we probably need to flesh that out a little more.

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I think especially the biggest pushback to this question, you know, we're obviously trying to get at something specific with a question that's worded this way, but I think inevitably what would happen is people might come into this and say to themselves, hey, hold on, the

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Bible says that we're supposed to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and now you're calling that gay?

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Like, who do you think you are? So what is, you know, sort of flesh out the answer.

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You said yes, it is. Flesh out that answer for us a little bit. For sure. I mean, do you feel like a homosexual if you say that you're falling in love with Jesus?

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I mean, it feels weird. I would never say I'm falling in love with Jesus. Why not?

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Because that just feels strange. I mean, it's the same as saying, like, you know,

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I don't know that I've necessarily ever heard anyone say this, but, like, if someone were to say, you know,

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Jesus is my lover, you know, like, I mean, that would feel, you know,

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I think everyone should cringe if someone were to say, Jesus is my lover, you know.

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I had a seminary professor who was more on the effeminate side, and he said that the

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Word of God is the bed in which we make love to Christ. Oh, no.

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Oh, my gosh. Hey, you asked me.

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You asked me. I didn't even ask you about your seminary professor. I'm just trying to help you.

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You know, this is not intended to be a deep mystery here, but I'm just trying to help you to feel, you know, the gayness of particular ways of phrasing certain things.

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All right. So it feels weird. It feels weird to say that. But is that just, you know, we're being overly masculine, we're trying to overwrite certain commands in the

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Bible that do tell us to love the Lord? There's different types of love, right?

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There's different types of love in the Bible. So, I mean, obviously, you know, if you just think about it this way, think about, like, there's a type of love that you have for your children.

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I'm still laughing at that. I'm sorry, mate. I'm sorry. You're trying to answer, and I'm still laughing at your seminary professor.

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Yeah, that was the weirdest moment that I ever had at seminary. But, you know, I mean, all right. So, look, love is not like love is a concept that we're called to do.

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But then, you know, you need to you understand that there are love, like love in general is not just a virtue that's good in the abstract.

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Meaning, like, our love is meant to be constrained in certain ways, right?

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So, think about it this way. I mean, like, if I love an animal like I love a person, that may be a little bit weird.

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Now, we live in a society that doesn't care about that. But, like, if I really, like, we mentioned in one episode, like a guy who was referring to a dog as his wife.

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Well, that's love, right? Love is love. Love can't be criticized. Well, the problem is that love, you know,

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God has commanded us to love certain things in certain ways and other things in other ways. So, but you can imagine, like, you can imagine any number of scenarios.

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So, if I fall in love with a tree, is that right? I think that's weird.

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That would be weird. If I treat a tree like a person, is that weird? If I treat a, you know, if I fall in love with an animal, is that weird?

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Or is that normal, right? Is that, you know, now, if I fall in love with a man, as a man, you feel cringey with that kind of way of phrasing it.

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Because it's, like, the issue is not love. Like, love is fine. But there are, like, different types of love that are appropriate in different kind of context, right?

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Yeah. And so, like, you have, like, the word love can mean a lot of different things. So, like, love can mean, like, brotherly kindness.

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That you might have. Like, a brotherly affection. You know, I would say, yeah, I love you as a person.

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But I'm not going to have... Hey, please don't fall in love with me. Yeah, no. I mean, don't worry about it. I'm not tempted that way.

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But, you know, if I were to say, like, I'm so in love with you, Harrison, like, that would just be, we would shut this recording off.

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And we would go, and you would probably go, like, hide in shame somewhere and try to wash out your ears with...

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I would go to the other elder of our church, and we would start the church discipline process.

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Right. So, the issue is, like, love is a good thing, but there are different types of love.

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There's erotic love. There's normal, like...

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There's erotic love. There's, like, romantic love. There's brotherly kindness kind of love.

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There's self -sacrificial kind of love. There's, like, favor, right? Yeah. So, I mean, you just have a word that can mean so many different things.

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So, part of what's cringe about it is, like, the following of love language in general is kind of cringe, if you think about it.

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Meaning, like, I think people shouldn't just give themselves over to their emotions and let their emotions guide them.

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It's kind of like a follow your heart way of talking in general. Like, period. Okay? So, I think that, like, there's better ways to word even romantic love than, like, the following of love language.

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Almost as if once my emotion is attached to you, I have no moral responsibility to make a wise choice, and anything

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I want to do at that point is morally permissible and fine because I've entered into this love state. I think that's a problem.

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But then what's more so a problem is that you have, like, when you're intent upon using this language of romantic love as it relates to God, then it can lead you to some really weird places.

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And the Bible doesn't really talk that way. So, the Bible doesn't use, like, romantic language to describe our relationship with God.

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And so, you know, it gets really weird either way. So, you can imagine the single girl who is looking at God and basically saying, you know,

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I don't need to get married. Oh, I'm married to Jesus or something like that. It's like, well, that's really weird. Like, that's, like, the church as a body is one day going to be presented as a gift to Jesus.

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And there's a parallel to that in marriage. But what you're not meant to do is, like, fantasize about the consummation of that, right?

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Because that's entirely not the point. You just have one feature of marriage that's being, like, picked up on, right?

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So, there's different features of marriage. You have a metaphor, this imperfect, I mean, incomplete kind of metaphor there that you're supposed to latch on to certain truths from that.

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You're not supposed to press every detail there. So, you're not meant to do that. You know, and there's a lot of people who go that way.

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Ann Voskamp is a, you know, a heretic female Bible teacher who basically wrote, you know, some books about consummating her union with God, you know, in some kind of mystical experience.

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Oh, my gosh. That's weird for women to do that kind of thing, but it's even more weird for a guy to picture himself in a wedding dress, you know, and, you know, picture himself doing that with Jesus.

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It's like, that's weird. Like, we don't need to go there, and that's not, like, the Bible doesn't talk that way.

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Yeah, you said, you brought up the Bible doesn't talk that way. And, you know, what

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I immediately thought of while you were saying that was, man, I just can't, I cannot see

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Paul speaking this way at all. I mean, he doesn't. Number one, he doesn't anywhere in Scripture, you know, talk about, like,

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I'm going to be wearing a wedding dress or let me consummate, you know, we must all consummate our marriage with God or something.

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He doesn't speak that way at all, and I can't imagine him. I mean, he speaks affectionately about Christ.

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He speaks affectionately about God, the Father, and the Spirit, but then he never speaks in any sort of, like, erotic or romantic type of way.

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They don't, but then what's happening is a lot of our worship songs now are doing this kind of thing to where, you know, you have a lot of worship songs that don't understand that you're not meant to press those kind of metaphors in the way that they're doing.

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They're sort of mixing up the categories. They're mixing up a category, yeah. So, like, you have a metaphor of where we as a church are the bridegroom presented to Christ to tell something about, like, that teaches us something about what

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God did in redemption, but you're not, like, if you're going in a salacious direction with that in your mind, you're doing something entirely inappropriate and wrong, right?

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So, like, that's not what's supposed to happen at all, okay? Like, you're not supposed to think in those kind of terms, but you have a lot of people who are doing that, and they're talking about God in that way.

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And, you know, a lot of our songs are going that way so that people don't even realize how abnormal it is to speak that way about God because the

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Bible doesn't do it. So the Bible doesn't present God as if he's, like, our lover, you know, that we're supposed to mentally fantasize about in order to keep ourself from, you know, being sexually frustrated as single people or something.

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Like, that's just not... That's, oh, man, I don't even want to... I hope no one is doing that.

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There are people, yeah, in Dallas campus doing that. Oh, man. That's weird.

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That's beyond weird. Yeah, all right, but that's what my seminary professor is. He's speaking that kind of language, the language of erotic love, and, like, there's no value in that, and that's not a biblical way of talking, and we need to...

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You know, so it's not just that, you know, your gaydar is going off or something like that. Like, you're meant to be repelled at that thought, right, of erotic love with God, romantic love with a man.

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Like, you're meant... Jesus is a man. You're not supposed to... I mean, he's the God man, but he has a human nature.

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You're not supposed to... You're supposed to be repelled by that, and you're not supposed to carry that over into some relationship with God.

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That's some kind of, like... I mean, that's, like, straight out of a pagan religion. Right. Well, I mean, that's what all the

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Greek and Roman myths are centered around, is, like, the gods copulating with humans and creating, like, mythical beings and all that.

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You're not supposed to think that way. You're not supposed to talk that way. So, I mean, it's entirely possible. I can say to my son,

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I love you, and everyone knows what I mean, but I could also make it creepy if I want to. Uh -huh.

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You know, and if I were to say, hey, I'm falling in love with you, everyone would think, whoa, we need to take your kid away from you.

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Right? Like, that's really weird and inappropriate and strange. Yeah. You'd probably be uncomfortable with me even mentioning it as a bad thing to do right now.

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Kind of strange, right? Yeah. But that's the point. The point is that, like, this is just...

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These are natural, normal impulses that men have. And I think the more that, like, our songs get feminized, the more that those categories are blurred, too.

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Right. From time to time. And do you think, you know, okay, so hypothetical situation here, just to kind of help clarify the point a little bit.

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Let's say you live in a culture where the phrase, you know, falling in love with someone is not, like, a romantic phrase.

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Right? Like, so you live in a culture where that's strange to think about, because for us it's so much a romantic thing that it's hard to think about it not being that.

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But let's say it truly is just like a platonic expression of, like, fondness towards someone with no sort of, you know, sexual or romantic connotation to it.

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Would it be the same issue to say that? Or is it more about, like, what you're actually communicating?

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If it were platonic, it wouldn't be that issue. It would be another issue.

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Okay, what do you mean? I mean, love is a verb. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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It's not a state of being that just happens. Mm -hmm. Right? So, like, it's a decision you make.

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It's a choice that you make. Right. You choose, like, biblical love is not just this feeling that comes and goes.

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Mm -hmm. Yeah. That you're powerless to generate, and once it comes, you must, like, it becomes an imperative that you must act upon.

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And that's the way we talk about it. So, I mean, we talk about it that way. So a man goes to get married to a woman, like, he says he does it.

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Why? What's the reason? Well, because I've fallen in love with her. Well, he's not taking, like, he's basically taking that word and saying it's just, and describing it in as passive a way as possible, and then he's making that into a moral imperative that he must obey.

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Mm -hmm. And then when you fall out of love when you're married, then you have a moral imperative to leave that marriage.

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And if you fall in love with someone else, you have a moral imperative to get divorced and go pursue the other thing, because the love feeling, like you're being governed by the feeling.

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Right. The feeling governs everything. So even if you take away the romantic connotations of it, it's still a wrong view of love.

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Yeah, because it's basically like a passive sort of out -of -my -control feeling.

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Experience, right. Instead of saying, like, hey, I'm going to love you unconditionally no matter what you do, no matter what happens, there's nothing that you can do that could change, like, my commitment to you, you know, whatever's appropriate for that relationship.

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And then over and over again, as you read through the Bible, Jesus is going to say, this is love, that you keep his commandments.

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Mm -hmm. It's not, this is love, that you fall into some kind of emotional feeling, right?

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Right. Love, if you love God, you will keep his commandments. The one who says he loves him does not keep his commandments. This is a liar.

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The truth is not in him, right? So love, biblically speaking, is an action. So what you're telling me is now

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I am able to say I'm falling in love with Jesus, but I mean it as I'm just trying to obey his commandments.

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But yeah, if it can conceivably in any, you know, in the multiverse, you know, somewhere out there, one of the

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Molinistic possible worlds, if that expression meant, you know, an action whereby you love

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God, then I suppose in that universe you could say yes. There's only one universe, and the one that we're in, it doesn't mean that.

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Okay. All right. Well, fair enough then. This has been another episode of Bible Bashed.

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We hope you have been encouraged and blessed through our discussion. We thank you for all your support and ask you to continue to like and subscribe to Bible Bashed and share our podcast with your friends and on social media.

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Now, go boldly and obey the truth in the midst of a biblically illiterate world who will be perpetually offended by your every move.