Is It Gay to Fall in Love with Jesus?

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I mean, do you feel like a homosexual if you say that you're falling in love with Jesus? I mean, it feels weird. I would never say

00:05

I'm falling in love with Jesus. All right,

00:27

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

00:37

I think most people who listen regularly to us probably expected that kind of short response from you, but I think maybe there's 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.

00:54

I think especially the biggest pushback to this question, and 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

01:13

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

01:20

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

01:26

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

01:34

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

01:42

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

01:50

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

01:56

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

02:04

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

02:11

I had a seminary professor who was more on the effeminate side, and he said that the word of God is the bed in which we make love to Christ.

02:21

Oh, oh, no.

02:31

Oh. Oh my gosh. Hey, you asked me, you asked me.

02:40

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

02:47

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

02:58

Okay. 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

03:09

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

03:17

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.

03:28

Are you losing it? Tim I'm still laughing at the, I'm sorry, mate.

03:34

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

03:41

Jared Yeah, that was the weirdest moment that I ever had at seminary. But no, 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, meaning, like, our love is meant to be constrained in certain ways.

04:06

Right? So, think about it this way. I mean, like, if I, 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, you, like, a guy who was referring to a dog as his wife, well, that's love, right?

04:26

Love is love. Love can't be criticized. Well, the problem is that love, you know, God has commanded us to love certain things in certain ways and other things in other ways.

04:36

So, but you can imagine, like, you can imagine any number of scenarios. So, if I fall in love with a tree, is that right?

04:45

I think that's weird. 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 or is that normal, right?

04:54

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 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?

05:15

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 that you might have, like, a brotherly affection, you know.

05:25

I would say, yeah, I love you as a person, but I'm not going to.

05:31

Hey, please don't fall in love with me. Yeah, no. I mean, don't worry about it. I'm not tempted that way. But, you know, if I were to say, like,

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I'm so in love with you, Harrison, like, that would just be, we would shut this recording off. And we would go and you would probably go, like, hide in shame somewhere and wash out your ears with a...

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

05:58

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, erotic love.

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There's, like, romantic love. There's brotherly kindness kind of love. There's self -sacrificial kind of love.

06:17

There's, like, favor. Right. Yeah. So, I mean, you just have a word that can mean so many different things.

06:23

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

06:31

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

06:42

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

06:55

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

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And anything I want to do at that point is morally permissible and fine because I've entered into this love state.

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I think that's a problem. 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.

07:20

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 at all. 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.

07:55

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?

08:04

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

08:11

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, and you're not supposed to press every detail there.

08:22

So, you're not meant to do that, you know? And there's a lot of people who go that way. Ann Voskamp is a, you know, a heretic female

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Bible teacher who basically wrote, you know, some books about consummating her union with God, you know, in some kind of mystical experience where your eyes roll in.

08:40

So, 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.

08:53

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.

09:00

You said – you brought up the Bible doesn't talk that way, and, you know, what

09:05

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

09:11

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

09:21

I'm going to be wearing a wedding dress or let me consummate, you know, we must all consummate our marriage with God or some – he doesn't speak that way at all, and I can't imagine him.

09:33

I mean, he speaks affectionately about Christ, he speaks affectionately about God the

09:40

Father and the Spirit, but then he never speaks in any sort of, like, erotic or romantic type of way towards them.

09:49

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.

10:05

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

10:18

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?

10:29

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, 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

10:51

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 ourselves from, you know, being sexually frustrated as single people or something like that.

11:03

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

11:10

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

11:16

That's – What? Yeah. That's beyond weird. That's – yeah. All right. So, 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 – you know, so it's not just that your, you know, your gaydar is going off or something like that, right?

11:36

Like, you're meant – I mean, you're meant to be repelled at that thought, right, of erotic love with God, romantic love with a man, like, you're meant – like,

11:45

God – Jesus is a man. You're not – I mean, he's the God -man, but he's – you know, he has a human nature.

11:51

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.

11:58

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

12:03

Greek, you know, Greek and Roman myths are centered around. Right. It's like the gods copulating with humans and creating, like, mythical beings and all that.

12:13

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,

12:19

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

12:24

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.

12:30

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

12:39

Kind of strange, right? Yeah. But that's the point. The point is that, like, this is just, these are natural, normal impulses that men have.

12:48

And I think the more that, like, our songs get feminized, the more that those categories are blurred, too.

12:54

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

13:16

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.

13:28

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.

13:44

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

13:50

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

13:55

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

14:01

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

14:07

It's a choice that you make. You choose, like, biblical love is not just this feeling that comes and goes, that you're powerless to generate and once it comes, you must, like, it becomes an imperative that you must act upon.

14:26

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.

14:34

Why? Why? What's the reason? 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 in describing it in as passive a way as possible.

14:46

And then he's making that into a moral imperative that he must obey. And then when you fall out of love, when you're married, then you have a moral imperative to leave that marriage.

14:56

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.

15:08

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

15:15

Yeah. Because it's basically like a passive sort of out of my control feeling instead of saying, like, hey,

15:22

I'm going to love you unconditionally no matter what you do, you know, no matter, you know, what happens.

15:28

There's nothing that you can do that could change, like, my commitment to you, you know, whatever is appropriate for that relationship.

15:38

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.

15:45

It's not this is love that you fall into some kind of emotional feeling.

15:50

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

15:56

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

16:03

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.

16:21

But but yeah, if if it can conceivably in any, you know, in the multiverse, you know, somewhere out there, one of the most possible worlds, if if that expression meant, you know, an action whereby you love

16:38

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

16:46

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

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