July 27, 2006

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us, yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence.

Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll-free across the United States.

It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Why James White Is Reviewing Barry Lynn and John Shelby Spong

Good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line. On a Thursday afternoon, I mentioned on the blog this morning that I was listening to an interview referred to me just a few days ago when I heard that, when I heard that, how's that?

That's much better. There's a short in that thing. That plug does not like that thing at all. I just turned it a quarter turn and now all of a sudden no more boom type of stuff. Anyway, when I heard that Barry Lynn had interviewed John Shelby Spong, that was an interview I had to listen to for obvious reasons.

And especially in light of the fact that I debated Barry Lynn on homosexuality and this took place after that. And I have to wonder, a couple of his comments, if they weren't, didn't have something to do with people at least like me, if he wasn't thinking of me when he made them.

And of course I'll be debating John Shelby Spong on the subject of homosexuality, same subject. And while the debate itself wasn't, or I'm sorry, the interview itself wasn't on the subject of homosexuality, it did come up a number of times.

And it was primarily in reference to his book that came out, The Sins of Scripture. And we have listened to John Shelby Spong. We'll be listening to him some more in the future. Why? Well, obviously, since this is my webcast, we talk about things that I'm studying right now.

It's fairly obvious. It's sort of like Rush Limbaugh, you know, he talks about what interests him. Secondly, I'm really lousy at talking about things that do not interest me. That's another, I think, important aspect of it.

But more so than all of that, the primary reason is I really think it is important to understand where these folks are coming from. They are a large group. I have never seen liberalism really, at least in this form, replicate itself long term.

It's almost always deaf to the denominations that it takes over, even though you never hear them saying that. And Spong likes to present a very positive future for his progressive Christian movement, as he calls it.

But it's important for us to understand why people believe the things they believe. You can't just simply roll your eyes and say, oh, that is just so utterly ridiculous. Or that's just blasphemous. Okay, all of those things may be true.

But when it's your kid coming home and his professor has been reading Spong's books and repeating Spong's stuff in class, how are you going to respond to it? You can roll your eyes all you want. That's not a response.

And in fact, for many young people, that would be an admission you don't really have a response. And so we need to give an effective, meaningful, long-term response. One that doesn't just respond to one point, but to the entire worldview.

We need to listen to what they're saying. And you know, Spong is a good speaker. He knows how to be humorous. He knows how to use scripture passages. He's not ignorant in any way, shape, or form. He's very closed-minded to what the other side has to say, while claiming to be open-minded.

I don't even know that he knows that. But we need to be able to hear. And here's where I think a lot of conservatives fall down. This is where I think we don't give as good a response as we could give.

And that is, sometimes we are so turned off by the rhetoric. I mean, the very first question I'm going to play for you here is, it's almost demeaning. I mean, the whole response and attitude and idea is that people like you and I, who actually believe the Bible will be the word of God and things like that, we're just intellectually inferior.

We just are not nearly as bright as these folks. And it comes across very clearly. And I know that that's exactly what Bishop Spong believes. And that's exactly what he's going to believe when he walks into our debate.

And I can't guarantee he's going to believe anything different when we leave, because he'd have to be listening to what I'm saying to come to any different conclusion. And I don't know that that's going to happen.

I don't know that he's going to really hear what I have to say or anything else. And that's obviously not within my purview to determine one way or the other. But when we do hear these things, we tend to respond in such a way that we're not ourselves hearing what they're saying.

They will frequently, for example, cite factual things. Many of the things that are said by Spong and Lynn in this interview are factually true. For example, Spong pretty early on is going to talk about Joshua being commanded to destroy the Amalekites.

Okay, that's a factually true thing. That's a factually true statement. He's going to make references later on to the women in the Gospels who, as he said, are invisible up until the point where the men run away, which is only semi-true.

There's actually reference to them and how they helped to support the ministry and things like that. But they'll say true things, and it doesn't do us any good to deny the truth of what they say. A lot of people, when they hear this kind of stuff, because you get the emotions going or whatever, you don't stop and go, okay, that statement is true as far as it goes, but the connection being made by this individual and the conclusions being drawn are completely erroneous, and here's why.

And that's what we need to be able to do. That's what we need to be able to do when we are given the opportunities, as rare as they may be, especially in media and things like that, to interact with these folks.

And so I don't play these things just simply to advertise the upcoming debate and conference, though that certainly is important as well. And I would encourage you that if you have been putting off making your arrangements for being there, to make those arrangements as soon as possible.

Please remember that though the debate in Lynchburg is ongoing and will be taking place, and, in fact, I'm not going to say much more about it today, but there are developments in that area, and they are, in my opinion, positive developments.

I'd be watching the blog over this weekend or early next week for new information and major information on that subject. But even though that's definitely going to be happening and that's ongoing, I have asked that especially those who support this ministry and are blessed by what we do recognize that no matter how positive that might turn out, we don't have any way of guaranteeing access to people to that debate.

If most of the students from Liberty show up, there's not going to be room for people from outside. We can't guarantee access. We can't guarantee that you're going to be able to walk through the door.

And so we will be discussing the debate at the Pulpit Crimes Conference. And so if you want to have the opportunity of talking to both Tom Askell and myself about these issues and about what's taken place in the past up to this point and the whole issue, that would be the place to be able to get hold of us and to do that.

And in the process of discussing Pulpit Crimes and, of course, doing the debate with Bishop Spong, and that's what's going to be taking place at the beginning of November. So keeping those things in mind, let's go ahead and jump into the interview here.

And like I said, it starts off right off the bat, sort of in your face, but you'd sort of expect this. This is Barry Lynn's radio program, so we all know Barry Lynn.

Today's guest is Bishop John Shelby Spong. He's the former Episcopal bishop of Newark, New Jersey, a prolific author, the leader, really, of progressive Christianity, some say, as he writes such books as Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism and his brand-new book, The Sins of Scripture, just published by Harper San Francisco.

Bishop, thank you very much for joining us. Barry, it's wonderful to be with you. Look, I think most people understand that the Bible, as we understand it, the Christian Bible, is a collection of works put together by the early church fathers, and they were all fathers who took some texts and included them in this so-called canon of the Bible and then essentially took other works that could have been included but said, no, let's throw that one out.

So how, if we know that this is historically accurate in terms of the way the Bible was put together, how can anyone still believe that the Bible is literally accurate, word for word?

I didn't mean me, I meant my ears are bleeding. It's too stinking loud in the headsets. Instead of going, down, down, it stays loud, then I start trying to talk and there'd be no microphone over there.

Yeah, I'm sitting here, down, down, down. Okay, what did he just say? Oh, yes, all right. So anyway, that's an amazing presentation of how the Bible was allegedly put together by Reverend Lynn there, that's perpetuating the myth, and it is a myth, and it just demonstrates that, I'm sorry, Barry Lynn is not a scholar.

He may have gone to some religious school and gotten himself a degree, but his exposure to original sources and to original study is very minimal, and that was demonstrated in our debate when he threw out the standard argumentation on terms like arsenic coitus and things like that, and as soon as I throw back at him any type of rebuttal, he's lost.

He had no idea where to go from there, because he'd only heard one side. He'd never listened to the other side, because these folks don't believe the other side has anything worth saying. Remember, that was the same year where we had both Stravinskis and Lynn do the proverbial faceplant routine in those debates, because they had no respect whatsoever for me individually, but for what I represent.

They just didn't figure that anyone who was a Baptist from Arizona could have an IQ higher than a wet shoelace, and so they didn't prepare, they didn't read anything, they didn't do any fresh study, because they didn't figure that would ever be necessary.

And so, anyway, this kind of presentation that the can of scripture was somehow determined in smoke-filled rooms by a bunch of guys sitting around picking and choosing and throwing this one out is, of course, baloney.

Anyone who knows anything about the history of the early church knows that's simply absurd and that it never happened, and if I were to have the opportunity of asking Mr. Lynn to back that up, all he'd ever be able to say is, well, all the scholars agree.

Whenever you hear that, you know that someone really has no idea what in the world they're talking about, and he's later going to make reference. I'm sure that Lynn was real big on the Da Vinci Code stuff, because he's going to make reference to Mary Magdalene.

Spong's going to even make reference to Mary Magdalene and their relationship with Jesus and all the rest of this stuff. But, of course, they're going to make reference to the Gnostic Gospels and all the rest of the stuff that we've discussed so often on the blog.

And here's a good reason, once again, why we need to understand the nature of the canon, the formation of the canon. Issues like that, it is coming right at you from the mouth of Barry Lynn. So, now listen to Spong's response.

I think late in the Protestant Reformation, they wanted an equal authority, so they created...

Now, let me just stop it right there. The idea that that was the first time that someone had come up with this concept, that the scripture is God speaking, that it's inerrant, that it is divine, that it exists on another level, again, is a commonly enough repeated assertion, but it's also just as ridiculous, historically speaking.

The whole issue of inerrancy and the use of a specific terminology is one thing. The view of the church in regards to the nature and authority of scripture is completely different. And the idea that all of a sudden the Protestants decided they needed an authority equal to what had come up with the Pope, which, by the way, again, even historically, that doesn't make any sense, because the infallibility of the Pope was a development long after the time of the Reformation.

I mean, you're talking Vatican I there, so there's only like a 300 year difference. So, it sounds real good, especially when someone wearing a backwards collar throws that out there. But, historically, it's absurd.

It has no foundation and no meaning.

It is not an intellectual position that's defensible.

Now, in case you didn't hear that, he said it is not an intellectual position that is defensible. And I really believe that John Shelby Spong believes that. I really believe that he believes it so much so that he is, in essence, a fundamentalist on that as an article of faith.

Now, why do I emphasize that so much? Well, think about it. If you're absolutely fundamental on something as an article of faith, if, you know, when you're talking to a Christian, you're going to have to come up with something a little bit stronger and better than, uh, can God create a rock bigger and he can lift?

To really get a Christian to start thinking about the existence of God, because the existence of God is a fundamental article of our belief. And so, if you don't throw anything out there that's meaningful, a Christian's not even going to blink at what in the world you're trying to say.

In the same way, I think John Shelby Spong is so convinced of what he just said that it takes a tremendous amount to get him to even consider the possibility that someone who believes what he has rejected, and you need to, you're going to hear this, I can't think, I'm just thinking right now, I haven't listened to nearly as much Spong as I listen to, for example, Shabir Ali or something like that.

But, in all the stuff I've listened to, and in the stuff that I've read so far, I can't think of a single presentation where he does not, at some point, make repeated and definitional reference to his childhood growing up in the South.

He detests Southern culture. He detests white Southern Christians. They are just the very definition of the opposite of where he's coming from. And so, that has made a statement like he just made, that it's not an intellectual position that could ever be defended.

That's not because he's actually interacted with people who have provided an intellectual defense of it. That is a statement of faith for him. It is fundamental to understanding where he's coming from, that what he's going to encounter in November can't possibly happen.

That there can't be somebody who can actually think to some level of depth, maybe even a level of depth equal to his own, who could possibly believe those things. That is a statement of faith, not just an assertion of something, not a conclusion he's come to.

This is not the conclusion of a long period of study. This is, in point of fact, definitional to his worldview.

As a matter of fact, the Bible is written somewhere between 1000 BCE and 135 CE, or AD if you prefer. And, you know, it's a tribal story. It shows how God loves only the Jews in some parts and hates everybody else.

God certainly hates the Egyptians, sends plague after plague on them, kills the firstborn in every Egyptian household, drowns the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. And God is rejoicing about that. Well, that's not a very pleasant view of God if you happen to be an Egyptian.

Now, I've heard that one. That's a certain element of this presentation is sort of repetitive for him. It's part of his regular repertoire, shall we say. And I imagine we're going to hear certain elements of this, though it may be more focused given the topic of the debate than this particular element of it.

But something tells me some of these phrases are going to appear again in November because I'm hearing them repeatedly and that probably gives me an indication. Anyway, the idea is, of course, whenever you hear John Shelby Spong talking about Scripture, you will experience the same frustration that I experienced in that he completely atomizes it.

And, of course, that's the result of a lot of scholarship today, which atomizes the text. It breaks it up into pieces. It gives you the right to literally excise a phrase from a sentence. And those of you who've attended seminary and you read commentaries in the Old Testament, you know exactly how this works.

Take a phrase from a sentence. Assign it to one particular group of people writing in a particular context. Take another phrase from the same sentence. And it's a little bit earlier, but it's a different group.

And so you've got this is the Yahwist element of this sentence. And this is the Eloist element. And now we've got the priestly element and the Deuteronomist element over here. And you've got your J-E-D-P and all the various permutations of that particular theology.

Well, it is a theology. It's based on theology. And the result is you don't ever have to consider the entire message of a prophet or a book, let alone the Old Testament, because it is a given from the start that there is no such thing.

And I would say that if you believe that there is such thing as a consistent message, that today you are in the vast minority within Christian scholarship. I would say you're still in the majority as far as believers are concerned, but you're in the vast minority of Christian scholarship today where the vast amount of stuff that is being produced within what would be called Christian scholarship would tell you there is no consistency there.

I mean, look at James D .G. Dunn and how popular he is in, well, even in very conservative circles. And yet from his perspective and those who follow him, there's unity and diversity in the New Testament.

And what does that mean? Well, there's only a certain number of things where there is a unity and there's all sorts of diversity. And in reality, it's because Paul has his view here. And actually, Paul sort of contradicts himself here, there, and everywhere.

But then Peter has his thing. And the idea that you can do systematic theology, the idea that there is a revelation here, that you can determine God's truth by comparing scripture to scripture, that's extremely unusual in scholarship today.

And that's not because it's unscholarly to believe those things. It's because there is a political correctness that determines what's going to be accepted and what isn't. It's not that these things can actually win the debate.

It's that they've managed to shut the debate down. So don't get me wrong there. I'm just bemoaning the fact that a large portion of quote-unquote scholarship in the world today on many subjects has become extremely politicized.

And dissent is not allowed in many areas along those lines. And so this kind of stuff, extremely popular. And so the texts of scripture that explain God's destruction of the Egyptians, the idea of idolatry, the idea of the wrath of God, the idea that these people were under the wrath of God and that it was just to do these things, can never be allowed in.

It's amazing that later you're going to hear Spong saying that when we put God in a box and we think we can determine what God is all about, we're the ones engaging in idolatry. And yet in reality the biblical definition of idolatry is completely ignored and dismissed by both Lin and Spong in their commentaries in this particular interview.

And then you have other things. You have God stopping the sun in the sky during Joshua's time. So Joshua will have some daylight time to kill more of his enemies, the Amorites. You have the prophet Samuel addressing King Saul and urging him to commit genocide.

I think we ought to use the right word. Samuel says to King Saul, in the name of God you're to go out and kill every man, woman, and child among the Amalekites.

That's genocide is what it is. And this is exactly what some Christian fundamentalists though would read similar, perhaps even less lurid passages in the Koran and say, see this proves that Islam is a religion of murder and genocide and slaughter.

The Canon, the Gnostic Gospels, and the Formation of Scripture

Now let me comment on that.

There is no question that we should be slow, I think, to be sort of digging around the text of the Koran looking for verses and throwing them out without really any knowledge of context, if you can even determine the context.

That's the problem with the Koran is you don't have context. That's one of the biggest differences between the Koran and the Bible at this point is that we have the context of God's comments concerning and God's command concerning the Amalekites.

Way back in Genesis 15, way back when God made covenant with Abraham and told him he was going to send his descendants into a faraway land and they'd be there and then they would come back and they would be given possession of his land.

One of the things that is said in that context, check it out in Genesis 15, is that the iniquity of the Amorites, that is the people living in Canaan, was not yet full. Now we know that the practices and the religious idolatry and child sacrifice and the perversity of the religion of those people was incredible.

Just absolutely, positively incredible. So there's no question if you actually believe that there is a God and that he has a law and that you can violate that law, there's no question that God's wrath would justly come against these people.

But again, once you can just tear the Old Testament apart and just pull out this text, and pull out this text, and remember his book, The Sins of Scripture, is about how texts of scripture can be used to hurt people.

And see, he saw the Bible being, in his mind, misused down in the South. And that's what he's always reacting against. You can detect it in almost everything that he says.

Every religion starts with what I call a tribal God. And the marks of a tribal God is that a God has a favored people, which of course means everybody else is God's unchosen people, and that this God hates everybody the favored people hate.

Now that's what I call tribal mentality. I went to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions this year, and I heard a lot of tribal religion come out of the mouths of our politicians in both parties.

And everybody would end up the speech saying, God bless America. Senator Barbara Boxer was a little more provincial than that. She only wanted God to bless California. Charlie Rangel of New York only wanted God to bless New York.

Remember that? We've played one of his interviews before, and he continued that by saying, since I live in nearby New Jersey, I was a little bit concerned, was God's blessing just going to stop on the border and not make it in New Jersey?

So you have at that point, this is one of his favorite things to do, and did you notice, and I'm not picking on this, I'm just observing this, there was timing in how he did that, and he got Lynn laughing, and there was timing how he talked about Barbara Boxer.

Almost any reference to Barbara Boxer will make me laugh too, but he did it in a certain way that you can tell he's doing this. And that's one area where he's a better speaker than Lynn was. I really honestly think on that level that the debate that we're going to have will be better than that which we had with Barry Lynn.

He's got a whole lot more going on that level than Lynn did, and so I think that's a pretty safe thing. But this idea of a tribal God, again, you have to ignore those promises, going all the way back to Genesis 15.

See, once you can just cut it all up, then you don't need to listen to the covenant promise. You don't need to listen to the thing that your descendants will be as the stars in the sky and that all the nations will be blessed in you.

You don't have to worry about that, see? And then you can make, you know, if I could treat Spong's writings the way he treats Moses, then I could make him just as mean and nasty and terrible and horrible as he makes Moses by just ignoring those things and not allowing a singular meaning to be communicated by his words.

Obviously the parallel doesn't fit overly well because you have multiple authors, but he's not allowing, because of his presuppositions, for the Christian position, which has been held by Christians all the way down through the years.

We'll continue listening to this. We've only gotten, what, three minutes and 53 seconds into this, and I cut out the first 30 seconds. So three and a half minutes in, and it's a 38-minute discussion.

So I don't think we're going to get it all done today, and we do have at least one caller online, but we're going to take our break and be right back right after this.

...such a rarity today. So many stars, strong and true, quickly fall away.

Under the guise of tolerance, modern culture grants alternative lifestyle status to homosexuality. Even more disturbing, some within the Church attempt to revise and distort Christian teaching on this behavior.

In their book, The Same-Sex Controversy, James White and Jeff Neal write for all who want to better understand the Bible's teaching on the subject, explaining and defending the foundational Bible passages that deal with homosexuality, including Genesis, Leviticus, and Romans.

Expanding on these scriptures, they refute the revisionist arguments, including the claim that Christians today need not adhere to the law. In a straightforward and loving manner, they appeal to those caught up in a homosexual lifestyle to repent and to return to God's plan for His people.

The Same-Sex Controversy, defending and clarifying the Bible's message about homosexuality. Get your copy in the bookstore at AOMin .org. This portion of the dividing line has been made possible by the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.

Paul’s Charge to Preach the Gospel of the Grace of God

The Apostle Paul spoke of the importance of solemnly testifying of the gospel of the grace of God. The proclamation of God's truth is the most important element of his worship in his church. The elders and people of the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church invite you to worship with them this coming Lord's Day.

The morning Bible study begins at 9 .30 a .m. and the worship service is at 10 .45. Evening services are at 6 .30 p .m. on Sunday and the Wednesday night prayer meeting is at 7 .00. The Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church is located at 3805 North 12th Street in Phoenix.

You can call for further information at 602 -26-GRACE. If you're unable to attend, you can still participate with your computer and real audio at PRBC .org, where the ministry extends around the world through the archives of sermons and Bible study lessons available 24 hours a day.

The pilgrim's progress is not an easy way. It's a journey to the spot day.

Tribal Religion, Political Rhetoric, and the Bible

And welcome back to The Dividing Line. We are listening to an interview between Barry Lynn, and I would imagine most folks know who Barry Lynn is, the head of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

And also, I don't know what his situation is right now as far as if he is still an ACLU board member. I think that he quite possibly might be. I don't know. But he certainly is way out there on that level of things.

And he is interviewing on his radio program John Shelby Spong, his book, The Sins of Scripture, that came out in 2005, as I recall. And they're having a little discussion, and we are listening in and responding to it, even though evidently we should not have the intellectual acumen to be able to even understand what they're saying.

But we're trying to do our best as we muddle along in our poor fundamentalist fog. So we continue on.

Oops. ...group of people. And one of the great tragedies of our humanity today is that we haven't been able to escape our tribal identity, and now religion is deeply wrapped up with tribal identity. It's Osama bin Laden invokes God when he sends his attack planes into the World Trade Center.

But George W. Bush invokes God when he sends his missiles and bombers on the people of Iraq.

Well, in fact, in the President's case is even something stranger. As you undoubtedly remember, Pope John Paul II, of course, condemned the invasion of Iraq in the strongest possible terms that I recall any modern pope ever using, saying that the individuals responsible would have to face God and explain their actions.

And then a few days after that, of course, the President brought in some of our friends who might loosely be called members of the religious right to essentially go to the White House, meet with the President, and say, well, we've looked at the matter biblically also, and we just think the pope is wrong.

Go right ahead.

Well, you know, we do pick and choose a lot. Even Roman Catholics pick and choose a lot among the pope's many pronouncements. Statistics show, for example, that Roman Catholics practice birth control in this country in exactly the same proportions as Jews, Protestants, and nonbelievers.

So I don't know who the pope is influencing. But, you know, what we've got is that religion is serving a very narrow agenda of some of our people. I grew up in the South, Barry.

Southern Identity, Racism, and the Religious Right

Okay, here we go. Here comes the inevitable explanation of what really drives John Shelby Spahn. I think if you'll listen to this and you'll consider where he's coming from, then even in the debate in November you will better understand what he's saying, better understand why he's motivated to say what he's saying, and maybe even understand why I respond to him in the way that I do at certain points.

So let's zero in on this one.

And when I was in the South, the Democratic Party was solidly in control of the South. The only trouble was no black people could vote. And today that Democratic Party has become a solid Republican Party because the Democratic Party is by and large a black party in the South today, and racism is still at the heart of that.

I think the religious right today is nothing but the George Wallace vote of yesterday with a little perfume. You know, they don't want to be overtly racist. So they say, you know, we're not against black people.

We're in favor of family values. But you get them to talking about the gay issue, and all that racism and all that hatred comes out all over again. It's just a different victim because they think it's more socially acceptable to be anti-homosexual than it is to be anti-black.

Now, did you catch that?

You may wonder why I'm not overly optimistic that Bishop Spong is going to be listening real carefully to what I have to say or anything else because I think if I understand what he was just saying, he thinks that, and certainly, you know, again, I'm sure he really does believe this, but that I'm just sort of a Jim Crow throwback.

I'm down there, you know, being a redneck in Georgia or Texas or Alabama someplace, and I just don't like them colored people. That's, I guess, what his picture of a conservative theologian would be, especially one who would say, well, you know what?

The Bible very clearly says that God has a positive, clear presentation about the relationship of male and female. It's a creative decree. It is consistent from beginning to end, and the Bible shows the pain and the destruction that comes forth when that relationship is abused and when it is distorted all through the Old Testament.

We see this happening, and it is a measurement of the depravity of man when God's law concerning sexual behavior is violated, and there are clear statements that say that homosexuality is outside of God's will.

It is contrary to God's law. It is self-destructive. It is an element, an indication of man twisting the creator-creation relationship and demanding for himself the right to define his own creative nature over against God's clear purposes, Romans chapter 1.

And so for someone to say all of that automatically requires them to have a lower IQ than Bishop Spong has and to have to be filled with hate. Now, of course, you know, one thing that crossed my mind as I was listening to this as I was writing this morning, and I happened to have heard this particular section twice, the same thought crossed my mind both times, and that was, who's really hating these individuals?

This is going to have to come out a number of times in debate. If the data I've seen is correct, and I'm going to be doing more study on this, and I want to get some more specific information on this, but if the data I have seen is correct, the average lifespan of the male homosexual, and this can be broken down on a number of different ways, long-term partners and non-long-term partners and blah, blah, blah, but bottom lining the whole thing, the average lifespan of the homosexual male is 53 years.

Now, for the rest of the population, it's 73 to 74 years. And we go nuts about things like secondhand smoke, and it might take one or two years off, but we can't say anything about something that will take 20 years off of someone's life.

Well, because it's their choice, see? Well, I would imagine a lot of other behaviors are too, but is it truly showing someone love to encourage them in a behavior that will, in all likelihood, end their life 20 years earlier than it would otherwise?

Is that showing love? I'm not even talking biblically, I'm just on a social level. I mean, these folks don't have any basis for defining love anyway, do they? God hasn't defined what love is. It's obvious that in the worldview of these individuals, they're the ones who determine what is going to be defined as loving and everything else, and they hate the idea that they would actually have to submit themselves to definitions provided to them by God.

They want to provide those definitions themselves. When you listen to this, and you hear this stuff about hatred, I don't know if this will come out in the debate, but I hear a lot of hatred toward God's word.

I mean, later on, he's going to talk about, well, there's a part of the Bible about Hosea, and that love is just wonderful there, and there are some things in the Gospels that are just great. But I'm sorry, again, you're taking three sentences out here and ignoring the previous sentence and the sentence that comes afterwards, and somehow thinking, well, see, I'm finding good things in the Bible.

I see a lot of hatred for God, hatred for God's law, hatred for the idea that God could define what's right and wrong, and that's going to come out especially in their comments about the relationship of Christianity to other religions.