Listening Carefully, Thinking Carefully

The Need to Read Carefully and Avoid Meme-Level Misrepresentation

Greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. On a Thursday, we are continuing with our response. We started on Tuesday, so it's sort of a continuation type situation. You might want to catch what came before, but going some other directions, so not just the same old, same old.

I'm hoping to be interrupted at some point during the program by the arrival of a child, but hasn't happened yet, and so I'm concerned that someone is taking a page out of my daughter's handbook because her first was a short little 44-hour long labor experience, so let's hope that's not the case.

But anyway, do you have my screen over there? What I want to start off with, we've been looking at Diane Gaskin's response, review, rebuttal, whatever you want to call it. Exposé is what it was called on the website initially, of Rosaria Butterfield, and so one thing, this is not a part of that, but published by the same people, at least it's been posted by the same people hosting that Exposé, let's put it that way.

I just want to use this as an illustration of what we're up against. The internet has made it dangerous to be a deep thinker. The internet has made it dangerous to be a deep thinker, because remember when Doug Wilson went to, what was the University of Indiana or Illinois?

Start with I. And the totalitarian leftist nutcase protesters were getting up and screaming and pounding on walls and stuff, and at one point Doug engaged this one woman, and she would only let him get one sentence out at a time before she would interrupt him, and eventually Doug said, would you please let me finish?

He said, I often have thoughts that require more than one sentence to express them. And it was the most ultimate slam ever, only if you're a deep thinker. They're all going, well, I don't get it, because they weren't deep thinkers.

You could just tell by the way they were behaving that they were anything but deep thinkers. So the problem is that there are people in our history, for example, who've written great works of literature that now languish upon bookshelves without being read, because it not only takes you many pages to grasp hold of a concept, but sometimes you might have to reread those pages.

You might have to go back after you read something later on and then reread again, and that's not entertaining. And so the danger in seeking to address difficult topics, deep topics, in a society that no longer honors those things, is that it's very, very easy for someone, if they have nefarious purposes, to isolate your words, meme them, and attack you, and attack you effectively.

Not because there's any truth to what you're saying, but you just need to realize in our day, the truth content of any attack, article, meme, video is pretty much irrelevant. It's how much emotional impact did you create?

And how difficult will it be for someone to undo the emotional impact that you have created by your statements? So here is a meme that was posted that you'll notice, for example, the quotation given, I can't see it on the screen.

There we go. Sodom was not destroyed because of sodomy, but because of their neglect of the poor and the needy. Rosaria Butterfield. There's a, there's something down below there that was cut off in the images it was posted.

The something something. But who knows? But I see no references. You always should be somewhat suspicious if there is no book and page reference provided. But when I saw this, having written a book on the subject of homosexuality myself, together with Jeff Neal, and having myself specifically written the chapter on Sodom and Gomorrah, and hence, well-knowing Ezekiel 16, 49, 50, issues like that, I, the first thought across my mind was not to decide that Rosaria Butterfield is a plant of the LGBTQ community and she's infiltrating and we need to expose her.

And no, my, my first thought was, I wonder what she's actually said. I wonder what her published thoughts were because any meme, any meme cannot give you a context. There's just not enough space for it.

So it's just a matter of, you know, getting out a book and doing some searching. And so I got out the secret thoughts of an unlikely convert, looked for Sodom and Gomorrah, found the section on it, and here we go with context once again.

And here we go turning the sound off once again. Quote from, unfortunately, at this point, secret thoughts of an unlikely convert does not have page numbers like Housekey does, so it's only location, 22 in location, $5 .99 if anyone cares.

At this time, I was just starting to pray that God would show me my sins and help me to repent of them. I didn't understand why homosexuality was a sin, why something in the particular manifestation of same-gender love was wrong in itself.

But I did know that pride was a sin and so I decided to start there. As I began to pray and repent, I wondered, could pride be the root of all of my sins? I wondered, what was the real sin of Sodom? I had always thought that God's judgment upon Sodom in Genesis 19 clearly singled out and targeted homosexuality.

I believed that God's judgment against Sodom exemplified the fiercest of God's judgments. But as I read more deeply in the Bible, I ran across a passage that made me stop and think. This passage in the book of Ezekiel revealed to me that Sodom was indicted for materialism and neglect of the poor and needy.

Sodom, Ezekiel 16, and the Danger of One-Sentence Context

Now, let me stop right there. If you have looked at the same-sex controversy and looked at the bibliography of the same-sex controversy, which would mean that you would think that I believe everything that the homosexual side says, because the bibliography lists books by homosexual authors, you will find the works of people like Daniel Hymeniak, who was the first person I read, at least in my reading, back, coming up on 20 years ago now, who attempted to use Ezekiel 16.

And basically, what he did in his book is he only quoted Ezekiel 1649, which indicts Sodom for its inhospitality, for its lack of care of strangers. And that's what made me look it up, and in the next verse, it says they committed abominations.

Toeva, the one sexual sin in the Holiness Code that Toeva is used of, is homosexuality. So, any type of meaningful intertextual interpretation would tell you that Ezekiel is drawing from the Genesis account, and therefore, that verse 50 specifically does make reference to homosexuality.

So, what you're dealing with there is someone who is specifically trying to say that homosexuality has nothing to do with Genesis 18 and 19. Folks, this again is where we get to learn how to analyze false argumentation, even when false argumentation is being used by Christians.

And that is very often what Christians, the trap we fall into, is to push back on a particular issue that we know these people are coming against biblical truth. If the other side's smart, they will phrase their argumentation in such a way that if we just push back at a hundred and eighty degree angle, we'll end up defending something that we actually don't believe, and then they've got us.

So, how does that work here? One side says Sodom Gamorrah had nothing to do with homosexuality. So, what's the dangerous trap for the Christian? To attempt to defend what? Not that Sodom Gamorrah had anything at all to do with homosexuality, but end up defending the idea that the only thing that Sodom Gamorrah had to do with was homosexuality, when that's not what the text says.

In fact, Ezekiel 16 says otherwise. So, see how that happens? We do it all the time. We get manipulated by the form of the argumentation to defend something that we have no business defending. Shouldn't go there, but we end up doing it anyways.

And so, in this situation, there are revisionists, Daniel Hilminiak, saying has nothing to do with it. Quotes Ezekiel 16, but he misquotes it by stopping so that you don't see that homosexuality was relevant, but that doesn't mean that Ezekiel 1649 doesn't exist.

That does not mean that Sodom is not indicted for its lack of hospitality. It is. So, the reasons are more complex than a single sin. So, with that in mind, returning to Rosaria, I ran across a passage that made me stop and think.

This passage in the Book of Ezekiel revealed to me that Sodom was indicted for materialism and neglect of the poor and needy, and that homosexuality was a symptom and an extension of these other sins.

Stop again. In the regular English language, if there is such a thing anymore, given how fast it's changing, but in the English language, let's hear this again, and that homosexuality was a symptom and an extension of these other sins.

What is homosexuality being identified as in this English sentence? A sin, right? Other sins. It's in the category of sins. Just keep that in mind. In this passage, God is speaking to His chosen people in Jerusalem and warning them about their hidden sin using Sodom as an example.

Importantly, God does not say that the sin of Sodom is the worst of all sins. Instead, God uses the sin of Sodom to reveal the greater sin committed by His own people. Quote, and here's the quotation from Ezekiel, as I live, says the Lord God, neither your sister Sodom nor her daughters have done as you and your daughters have done.

So, stop for a second. God is saying that what Israel has done is worse than what Sodom has done. Didn't Jesus do the same thing? Woe to you, crazed and abasated, if what is done in you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would have repented, right?

Look, this was the iniquity of your sister Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, fullness of food, abundance of idleness. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and the needy, and they were haughty and committed abomination before me.

Therefore, I took them away as I saw fit. Ezekiel 16, 48, 50. I found this passage reveals some surprising things. In it, God is comparing Jerusalem to Sodom and saying that Sodom's sin is less offensive to God than Jerusalem's.

That's what it's saying. Next, God tells us what is at the root of homosexuality and what the progression of sin is. We read here at the root of homosexuality is also the root of a myriad of other sins.

First, we find pride. Sodom and her daughters had pride. Why pride? Pride is the root of all sin. Pride puffs one up with a false sense of independence. Proud people always feel that they can live independently from God and from other people.

Proud people feel entitled to do what they want when they want to. Second, we find wealth, fullness of food, and an entertainment-driven worldview, abundance of idleness. Living according to God's standards is an acquired taste.

We develop a taste for godly living only by intentionally putting into place practices that equip us to live below our means. We develop a taste for God's standards only by disciplining our minds, hands, money, and time.

In God's economy, what we love, we will discipline. God did not create us so that we would, as the title of an early book on postmodernism declares, amuse ourselves to death. Undisciplined taste will always lead to egregious sin, slowly and almost imperceptibly.

Third, we find lack of mercy. Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. Refusing to be the merciful neighbor in the extreme, terms exemplified by the Samaritan traveler to his cultural enemy, left to die on the road to Jericho, Luke 10, 25 -37, leads to egregious sin.

I think this is a shocking truth, and I imagine that most Bible-believing Christians would be horrified to see this truth exposed in such bare terms. God calls us to be merciful to others for our own good, as well as for the good of our community.

Our hearts will become hard to the whispers of God if we turn our backs on those who have less than we do. Fourth, we find lack of discretion and modesty, for they were haughty and committed abomination before me.

Pride combined with wealth leads to idleness, because you falsely feel that God just wants you to have fun. Why is that true? If unchecked, this sin will grow into entertainment-driven lust. If unchecked, this sin will grow into hardness of heart that declares other people's problems no responsibility or care of your own.

If unchecked, we become bold in our sin and feel entitled to live selfish lives fueled by the twin values of our culture, acquiring and achieving. Modesty and discretion are not old fashion values. They are God's standards that help us to encourage one another in good works, not covetousness.

You might notice that there is nothing inherently sexual about any of these sins. Pride, wealth, entertainment-driven focus, lack of mercy, lack of modesty. We like to think that sin is contained by the categories of logic or psychology.

It's not. So why do we assume that sexual sin has sexual or affectual, A-F-F-E-C-T-U-A-L, origins? That is because we have too narrow a focus about sexuality's purview. Sexuality isn't about what we do in bed.

Sexuality encompasses a whole range of needs, demands, and desires. Sexuality is more a symptom of one of our life's conditions than a cause, more a consequence than an origin. Importantly, we don't see God making fun of homosexuality or regarding it as a different, unusual, or exotic sin.

What we see instead is God's warning. If you indulge the sins of pride, wealth, entertainment, lack of mercy, lack of discretion, you will find yourself deep in sin. And the type of sin may surprise you.

That sin may attach itself to a pattern of life closely or loosely linked to this list. While sin is not contained by logical categories of progression, nonetheless, sin is progressive. That is, while sin does not stay contained by type or trope, if ignored, excused, or enjoyed, sin grows and spreads like poison ivy.

But God is a God of mercy, redemption, second chances, and salvation. And therefore, when Jesus uses Sodom as an example during his ministry on earth, the example reveals that God is angrier at the religious people of Jesus's day than the inhabitants of Sodom.

And it goes on to the section that I was just referring to. So, what do we have here? Well, again, if you...it depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking to fairly hear and understand a writer who comes to this from an incredibly unique background...

So, in other words, if you go, you know, I would like to know what someone who's come out of the homosexual community thinks and how they dealt with their sin and what was it the Lord used to open their eyes and to break their hearts in the good sense of breaking their hearts from pride and rebellion and how did that happen?

If you think that way, then you will read Rosaria and you will not set her up upon a pedestal as the final authority in all things. We need to avoid identity politics here. Just because Rosaria lived the lifestyle for quite some time does not mean that coming out of that lifestyle means that you have every insight that needs to be had, every balance that needs to be had.

No. But what it does mean is if you really do want to know, if you're the type of person who goes, my conclusions on this issue will be deepened and made more rich and hopefully I will be more useful to the kingdom and to speaking to people who might be experiencing same-sex attraction if I think these issues through and if I hear from others and if I have other perspectives to bring into mind.

And that may mean sometimes you might read something from Dr. Butterfield and go, I can't go there because of the fact that I'm, you know, I think I see she's being unduly influenced by this aspect of her past or something like that.

And I would be completely stunned if Rosaria would say, well, that's not valid. No, she would say, no, it's completely valid. And I get the feeling she's the type of person who would listen to what I have to say and weigh it fairly and go, well, here's someone with decades of ministerial experience, pastoral experience, theological experience, linguistic experience.

I want to learn from what I can gain from him and vice versa. That's how it should work. That's how we enrich ourselves. None of us can read everything and experience everything. But if we will listen honestly to others with an open heart and mind, not with an open brain in the sense that we will accept anything we're told, but with meaningful discernment, godly disciplined discernment, man, we can learn a lot from one another and grow as a result.

One of the greatest disappointments I had was seeing how many of my fellow Christians back in 2018 or was it 2017, whenever it was, that the kickback for the simple statement that I said I had learned so much about Islam from Yasir Qadhi, from a Muslim scholar, so many Christians were like, you can't do that.

And I'm like, I mean, it was so hard for me because when I first studied Mormonism, yeah, I started with Christian books and immediately went to Mormon books because I realized I needed to know what the Mormons themselves were saying.

I needed to understand. I needed to hear in their own language and in their own categories. So to realize there are so many Christian people who honestly believe that it is an act of compromise to listen to what a non-Christian says and learn from it, but this is part of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism is a worldview of fear. And so I was saying in St. Charles and a well-known scholar was sitting right over here from me. And I saw him going like this when I was saying this. I said, in conservative seminaries, we study what liberals believe.

We read their books. We understand where they're coming from. We understand what their criticisms are and we interact with them. In liberal seminaries, they don't study what conservatives believe. They don't think that has any meaning to them.

But on the right side of us in fundamentalism, now you're back in the same mindset as in liberalism. They don't listen to what anybody other than fundamentalists have to say. Even the quote-unquote conservatives, they're liberals too from their perspective.

So everybody's to the left and say, listen to no one. And so you end up with an echo chamber on the extreme right and an echo chamber on the extreme left. And you don't ever hear what's being said from another perspective.

This is part of fundamentalism. So I could conceive of a situation very, very clearly where I could come to a different conclusion than Rosario Butterfield on the interpretation of X, Y, or Z. It happens to be that if you read the same-sex controversy on Sodom and Gomorrah, I don't think she would disagree with what I said.

And I certainly didn't disagree with what she was just saying here. Now, I had a different purpose. I was interacting with people who were trying to say there's nothing of homosexuality. It doesn't even appear.

She's not dealing with that. She's dealing with people who tried to turn it into the only thing. And Ezekiel 16 and Jesus' own words preclude that interpretation completely. So we go back to the meme and we simply ask a question.

Where'd you get that? Was that an isolated sentence and the next sentence would have clarified it? Why produce something like this? You're producing it for a reason. And the reason is to attempt to create in the minds of viewers and readers a prejudice against someone based upon a purposeful misrepresentation of their position.

Because when someone puts up a meme, when some King James only or something puts up a meme about me saying, I don't believe the Bible is God's word and I don't believe that God is actually spoken and blah, blah, blah, blah, you know that I've written entire books in defense of the Bible being the word of God.

And so there has to be something else going on. There has to be a unwillingness and normally a purposeful unwillingness to actually engage what it is I'm saying and why I'm saying it. Same thing here.

And so I just want to use that as an example of how memes are fun. Someone did a meme today. Well, it's not a meme. It's a video. Well, it's a video meme. If you haven't seen it, it's the Baby Yoda loves Radio Free Geneva video where it's a section from the Mandalorian thing, which I've not seen.

But little Baby Yoda keeps turning on the Radio Free Geneva and I guess that's the Mandalorian. I assume it is. Keeps turning it off and then Yoda turns it back on and it's fun. So memes can be fun, but anything that is fun can also be used as a weapon if you join untrustworthiness, dishonesty, bias, and prejudice working themselves out.

Uh, you can turn it into a weapon and that's what was done with that particular, um, that particular thing. So, um, with that, oh goodness, how to get back to that? Huh? All right. Well, I'm going to have to scroll back.

I thought I had already scrolled this back to this point, but anyway, we'll find it here. All right. Let's look at some of the key issues that, um, Diane Gaskins derived, not so much from her book, not so much from Rosario's book, as they were derived, um, as they were derived from the Gospel Coalition 2014 Women's Conference video, which again, very easy to find.

It's less than 20 minutes in length. I would recommend listening to all of it in its own context. If you want to have a more, um, balanced, uh, presentation understanding. But turning to the Gaskins article, it talks about the interview.

The interview is just under 20 minutes, but includes Rosario's key slogans that summarize her message and those of the SSA movement. Those of the SSA movement. What's the SSA movement? I mean, I mean, that is not a meaningful category.

Uh, what are you talking about there? Because you can't, for example, in this interview, Rosario specifically says she rejects the terminology of gay Christian, and she explains why from a linguistic perspective.

You're modifying your change in the meaning of Christian based upon your self-identity. Uh, this is inappropriate. But what's the SSA movement? We're not told. Um, there is much problematic content in this interview, more than space allows to relay, and discerning readers will want to view it in its entirety.

I agree. Please do. Because I think if you are willing to listen without bias and prejudice, you're not going to be bothered by almost anything. Born this way. Because the fall, we are all born some way.

Rosario teaches the fall means we are each born with a particular sinful inclination, and homosexuality is such an inclination. Homosexuality is an ethical outworking of original sin. Quote, quote, sorry, quote, this is quoting Rosario.

Homosexuality is an ethical outworking of original sin. Do you know what that means? We're born that way. End quote. Now, here again, and if Diane Gaskins had not identified herself as being Reformed, I would have found this very confusing.

Well, no, if she hadn't, I wouldn't have been as confused. But since she identifies herself as Reformed, I do find this confused. But I also have to recognize that in my experience, there are people who are Calvinistic regarding general soteriological schemes, but not Reformed in their anthropology.

They may profess the T, but they won't let the T go as deeply as the T goes. Total depravity. And this is especially true about original sin. I think a large portion of the Southern Mass Convention doesn't believe in original sin at all.

I'm pretty sure that the traditionalists don't, not in any meaningful fashion. Anyway, homosexuality is an ethical outworking of original sin. Is there something wrong with that? It's not the original sin, is it?

Is homosexuality the original sin? No. So it is an ethical outworking of it, right? I mean, that's what Romans 1 says. I mean, because it's used as an example of what happens when idolatry goes to full flower and ends up influencing the entirety of mankind's experience, even to the point of one's sexual desires, which you would think are hardwired for the continuation of the species.

And yet, even that can be perverted. But clearly, that's not the original sin, right? So it is the ethical outworking of original sin. Do you know what that means? We're born that way. Born fallen. Every one of us is born fallen and born sexually broken in some fashion.

And I think the reason that people struggle with this is because they want to think that the, all of the Me Too movement, um, what was it you were just reading me? Um, 65 or something of sex slaves in the United States, foster care.

Yeah. So, so you have, you have the human trafficking, sex slaves all over the world. I mean, um, the guy who did not kill himself. Um, yeah, Epstein, as far as we can tell, Epstein wasn't a homosexual, but are you going to tell me that his sin was somehow less because of that?

And see, and this is where, this is where the category stuff comes in. This is where we have to think categorically. There is something fundamentally disordered in homosexual desire because it goes katafousis, against nature.

It's against the created order. And in the sense that, um, adultery or fornication between a man and a woman does not go against the created order in the sense of the desires that define men and women.

So in other words, you don't have the Romans one. They left the natural function of the male and either direction. So it's different on that level because it involves a, um, the impact upon the, the natural created desires of man that allows the species to continue.

But does the difference in character that it is disordered, does that make it worse than the serial rapist or the serial, um, committer of, of adultery that spreads venereal disease or, or, or whatever else.

And the thinking is, yeah, as long as it's disordered, that somehow makes it morally worse. And on that basis, that's why there are certain people. I think Steven Anderson's one of them that does not believe that homosexuals can be saved.

Um, and remember, he does something really goofy weird with 1 Corinthians 6 to try to get around, uh, what that is specifically referring to. But there's a confusion there of the fact that there is something about homosexuality that is specifically disordered and saying that makes it the worst of all sins.

It's not original sin. And how you rank it is really going to depend from God's perspective on what you know and what your, um, intentions are in the commission of it. So someone, and again, Jesus says to cities in Galilee in his day, it will be more tolerable for the people who surrounded Lot's house and wearied themselves trying to get in once blinded than for you.

Have you thought about that? Have you thought about what that means? Again, you know, we're going to Israel next year. Keep that in mind, folks. Uh, less than a year now. Um, and I can't help but think about visiting Bethsaida, um, these cities that were specifically mentioned and thinking about why would Jesus say it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, which were destroyed by God with fire and brimstone than for Chorazin and Bethsaida.

Why? I, I know that Lot was a righteous man, though, boy, I'll tell you over the weekend, Lot came up in the discussion and there were some people that just were, just wouldn't get off of it. They would not, I mean, they, they wouldn't accept Peter's statements about Lot and his soul and being a righteous man or none of that stuff.

They were, they, Lot was, Lot was just a bad, bad man. Anyway, um, we're not given any indication that Lot functioned as a prophet amongst these people. We don't see him out in the city square preaching.

He eventually does, he does say to them, do not do this great evil. And it's when he identifies what they want to do as evil, that they go crazy and try to break the door down and everything else. Could we argue that Lot should have been identifying their indolence and indulgence and selfishness and pride and arrogance as sin before this point in time?

We're just not given enough information to know those things. But the point is, if you take Jesus's teaching at face value and at face value, seriously, he's saying the amount of light that you have is all important.

And in comparison to the light that Christian and Bethsaida had, because he who made light was walking through their streets, because he had ministered in their synagogues, because he had preached the unvarnished word of God, and they didn't care.

It's not that they attacked him. I just didn't care. They were so in love with their self-indulgent lifestyle. Not that they're, not that those little villages would have been the homes of Lot, would have had the homes of a lot of rich people in them.

But even the poorer people, yeah, apathetic. And the Son of God's walking amongst them. It's one of the reasons, by the way, why some of the expression of divine attributes had to be laid aside. Can you imagine if Jesus is walking along and he still has the Shekinah glory of God?

I think he would have been reacted to a little bit differently. But he just looks like the carpenter's son. And yeah, his words, they're convicting, but maybe someday. It seems that Jesus was saying that is more reprehensible in the sight of God than what the guys in Sodom and Gomorrah were doing.

And maybe that's why we don't like to think about it this way. Maybe that's why we like having homosexuality as the worst possible sin, because it's too easy to sound like you're from Crazan and Bethsaida.

So when she says we're born that way, what she's saying is we are born in original sin. We are born broken. And does someone disagree with this? Then it says Rosario Butterfield discounts the idea. Well, the subtitle is, We Are All Messy.

All Sins Are Equal, Except Unbelief Is Worse. Rosario Butterfield discounts the idea that any sin is more heinous than another, quote, We should not think of our gay and lesbian neighbors as struggling with something that is different.

It is part of the human condition, end quote. Now, why does that say, where does that say what the subtitle said? It doesn't say that. And it's not saying all sins are equal. It is saying that the root sins that give rise to the later sins are the sins that have to be dealt with.

If you simply deal with the fruit that comes later on, rather than the root, you accomplish nothing. I know that she used an illustration. It's a good illustration because I remember this, but no one in Arizona gets this.

Well, no one in the desert. Remember dandelions? Okay. I'll bet you there are kids that have grown up in Phoenix and never seen them. I mean, if everybody around you has their desert lawn, how would you know?

Yeah, you grew up in Prescott and so you had grass. And when dandelions would come up, how did it, how did the seed spread? Once the flower goes, you get these seed pods that open up and then the wind blows the seeds everywhere.

And that, that's a, I think that was designed. I'm not sure about you. I think someone designed that because it works very, very effectively. Palm tree seeds do the same thing. Ever noticed palm tree seeds can get almost anywhere.

Same, same thing. So what was the worst thing you could do when you had dandelions? Was to just lop the tops of the heads off. Cause that would just spread the seeds. And then weeds, where do you got to get the weeds at?

Gotta get them in the root. If you just run over, if you just took your lawnmower, ran over, all you're doing is just creating the world's greatest seed distribution service ever. And they're going to come back and they're going to come back with a vengeance because now it's getting blown all over the place.

It's a very effective seed distribution system. And that's the illustration that she used. If you just lop off the top, if you lop off the fruit sin rather than the root sin, it's just going to keep manifesting itself because you're not dealing with what's giving rise to it.

And so is the argument that idolatry and pride are the root that need to be gotten to rather than mere manifestations, is the argument that she's saying that that means homosexuality isn't a sin or it isn't relevant.

She repented of this stuff. How would that be the case? What she's saying is nothing impacted her until the reality of what she was seeing in scripture came true in her life. And that is, she is a prideful person who thinks she's in control of all of her relationships and her entire destiny.

And it's God that's in charge. And if God's in charge, then God says, you live this way. And therefore, I have to line myself up with God's will. And the reformed error in this is what exactly? We're not told.

We're not told because what's being appealed to by Mrs. Gaskins is this idea of there is an assumed orthodoxy that we all, we all just get it. And if she doesn't sound like us in the way she says these things, there must be a reason.

It's that Henri Nouon guy, and it's that other occult lady, and we're going to find the hidden messages and all the rest of that kind of stuff. So, but notice that even in the statement, she is saying that homosexuality is a manifestation of original sin.

It's the fall. That's not what the gay Christian movement is saying when it describes homosexuality as a gift from God. How can you not see this? Well, the only way you can't see that is if you have a really, really, really major, you know, thing going on.

Now, so Mrs. Gaskins says, while it is true that any sin is sufficient to merit an eternity in hell, she wasn't talking about that. That's not what Rosaria was talking about. She's talking about the relationship of sins, and that sins rarely exist unto themselves separated from everything else.

This is an important insight. It's a good insight. So why are we now going someplace else? Is it because she doesn't understand, or that she doesn't have a response to what Rosaria is actually saying?

I don't know. I can't tell. While it is true that any sin is sufficient to merit an eternity in hell, the Bible calls some sins abominations, Leviticus 18, and some affections vile, Romans 126. We glorify God when we recoil from those sins according to how they are treated in his word.

That is something intolerable in a mindset that believes in the sin of homophobia. Okay, let's try to follow the mindset here because this is helpful in understanding how people think. The Bible does call some sins abominations.

A full study of toevah, the Hebrew term for abomination, is somewhat challenging because toevah is not always used only as something that is morally reprehensible in God's sight, more so than something else.

Because there are some things that are called toevah that are ceremonial. But in Leviticus 18 and 20, that which is toevah is homosexuality. And some affections, vile, vile affections, remember? I'll never forget.

Well, I don't know why we use that phrase. I may. I may forget. But I keep saying, I'll never forget. And that's the way of how we say this was really important and memorable. But I'll just never forget the look on Barry Lynn's face during the Romans 1 cross-examination in our debate in 2001.

Vile affections. So, is this, well, there's these different lists of sins, and could I borrow your Bible? Man, by the end of that debate, he was spitting nails. He, oh man, was not a happy camper. Nobody had ever forced him to actually walk through Romans 1 before.