God is Good

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God is good!

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Trust yourself. You know who you are. And some people will call those, will identify that as gay
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Christians. That's what they will call themselves. You don't have a problem with that. I have a big problem with that. If God wanted me so badly to be straight and to not have these thoughts, and I wanted it, why wouldn't he do something about it?
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You, you do believe sexual orientation can change. I've seen it happen. I have a record for saying reparative therapy is a heresy.
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My name is Anthony Padilla. Anthony Padilla is a popular YouTuber with over five and a half million subscribers.
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He does interviews with all kinds of interesting people. And when I saw his interviews with conversion therapy survivors,
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I thought it would be worth making a video responding to some of the highlights. Conversion therapy or reparative therapy is a practice that uses any attempt to alter a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.
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So the key here is what exactly conversion therapy is. There's a kind of conversion and reparative therapy that Christians can also say is wrong, but Anthony is defining conversion therapy as any attempt to change who people think they are, which would probably encompass normal Christian teaching about homosexuality.
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So what's wrong with homosexuality? A number of things, but just a few in this context.
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Number one, it's a violation of the created order. In 1899, a
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German psychiatrist claimed that he had turned a gay man straight with just 45 hypnosis sessions and a couple trips to a brothel.
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In a continued attempt to correct what was believed to be unwanted or sinful behavior, some people faced electroconvulsive therapy, while others were subjected to even more extreme techniques, such as lobotomy of the brain.
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Obviously, Christians should be opposed to this form of conversion therapy. We're completely against responding to homosexuality with things like hypnotism, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomy of the brain.
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Today, some 700 ,000 adults in the US alone have received conversion therapy, half of which were subjected to these practices from religious or spiritual advisors and even licensed healthcare professionals before reaching the age of 18.
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Anthony says that these adults were subjected to these practices, and the practices he just listed were hypnotism, electroconvulsive therapy, and lobotomy of the brain.
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But Anthony is being misleading here, because as we'll see later, conversion therapy today doesn't usually involve these particular practices.
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A recent study found that LGBTQ who experience conversion therapy are nearly twice as likely to attempt suicide.
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Conversion therapy that leads to depression and suicide is something that we as Christians certainly oppose.
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The Christian message should result in sorrow and repentance over sin, but also hope and peace through Jesus' atoning sacrifice for sin.
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The kind of conversion therapy that's being referred to here is a distortion of the message Christians should be communicating.
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And today, I'm going to be sitting down with conversion therapy survivors to learn what it's really like to experience a practice that's been discredited and proven ultimately harmful and outright cruel.
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Were these conversion therapy survivors able to come out of this experience with a newfound appreciation for their most authentic self?
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Or do they live every day deeply tormented by the overwhelming shame they were forced to experience at the hand of those they believed had their best interests at heart?
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This is where we start to have some real problems with what Anthony is saying. He uses the phrase, a newfound appreciation for their most authentic self, which communicates that their most authentic self is their homosexual identity, and that this homosexual identity should be appreciated.
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But the truth is that our identity isn't who we define ourselves to be, or who we think we are.
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God created us, and it's God who defines our identity and sexuality. Can someone self -identify as gay and be a
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Christian? Someone can identify as someone who is struggling with same -sex attraction.
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You will struggle. And some people will call those, will identify that as gay Christians, that's what they will call themselves.
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You don't have a problem with that. I have a big problem with that. You do have a big problem with that. And I'll tell you why. Okay. Well, I'm an English professor, of course.
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We can, I guess we can't, we can't diagram a sentence back here, but, but gay is an, it's an adjective,
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Christian is a noun, and the, the job of an adjectival modifier is actually to change the noun, it modifies.
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So you say you're a gay Christian, you know what you're doing? You're putting on the wrong team jersey.
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It's a paradox. It can't work. And you're going out on the field, and you're playing. And you're confusing everybody.
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You may be a Christian who struggles with same -sex attraction. You may be a Christian who struggles with any manner of sin.
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But as soon as you embrace an adjectival modifier, and claim that as your identity, you are a not identifying fully with Christ.
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And here is what you are saying. You say you're a gay Christian. You are saying, Holy Spirit, don't touch me there.
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That's off limits. That's my identity. Through the Bible, God has revealed that all of us are sinners by nature, who both need to trust in Jesus alone for salvation, and are called to fight against our sinful desires and pursue holiness through obedience to God's moral law.
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Just because a person has a natural tendency to be attracted to the same sex, doesn't mean it's right to indulge in and celebrate this tendency.
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I mean, suppose, you know, we can say that I have a genetic predisposition toward violence.
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Does that make it okay? Because we can prove that I have a genetic predisposition.
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If I have a genetic predisposition toward drunkenness, does that make it okay? Officer pulls me over.
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Sir, you been drinking? Officer, I don't even know. Sir, you want to get out of the car?
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Okay, but before I do, you should need to know, I got that drunk gene. Oh, well, sir,
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I'm sorry. Please, weave on your way. What do you consider yourself?
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A conversion therapy survivor? Someone who's been shamed for their authentic identity? Again, Anthony uses the phrase authentic identity.
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But as we've already said, our authentic identity isn't who we say or think we are, but rather who God, our creator, has revealed about who we truly are.
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We're made in the image of God, but we're now all sinners by nature because of the fall. We need a savior, and we need to be born again and transformed by God.
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Can you explain what conversion therapy is in general? Anyone. It can be a therapist, a pastor, a life coach, or a friend who tries to change your sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.
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The name is misleading in and of itself. It's not therapy. You can say it's torture, you can say it's abuse.
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I mean, you're really destroying people's lives. If conversion therapy is just about trying to change someone's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, then yeah, that's wrong.
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And if this conversion therapy becomes torture, abuse, or destructive, then that's even more wrong.
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Rosaria Butterfield, who used to call herself a lesbian, opposes conversion therapy that treats changing a person's attraction to the same sex as something that is guaranteed.
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But I do not believe that sexual orientation changes are a gospel imperative.
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Right, that doesn't have to change if you're a believer. I'm on record for saying reparative therapy is a heresy.
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It's the heresy of the prosperity gospel. You know, one of the things that's hard for American Christians especially is that on this earth,
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God will give some people ten crosses to bear and another person one. Historically, yeah, you hear about electric shock therapy and other really aggressive forms of aversion therapy.
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There's less of that today. Most of it is talk therapy. And no one should think that's any less damaging.
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Here's why we need to make important distinctions about what Matthew refers to as talk therapy. Talk therapy is certainly wrong and damaging if it prioritizes or guarantees changing a person's attraction to the same sex.
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This gets into the territory of the prosperity gospel, which is also unbiblical. Does God ever choose not to heal?
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No. As Christians, here's a summary of what we would say. First, we're all sinners who need
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Jesus to save us. Second, we all need to repent and turn away from our natural tendency to sin.
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You might struggle more with attraction to the same sex. Someone else might struggle with anger, alcoholism, or pornography.
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There's no guarantee of perfect victory over our sin. But if we've been born again and saved by God, we're going to want to live life the way
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God created us to live and we'll never stop fighting sin. You have a church community that will be with you every step of the way, fighting with you and supporting you in your fight against sin.
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If Matthew would also call this basic Christian message talk therapy, then that's where we would have a problem with what he's saying.
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And so you feel good in the moment, and there are all these people who seem so invested in you, right?
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You're like, oh, but I'm so bad. And they're like, oh, but we're going to help you. If these people were just trying to help change his sexual desires, but weren't incorporating the gospel truths that we just talked about, then we'd agree that their attempts to help were problematic.
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I cut off more and more parts of my life to the point that I told my friends and family just to forget about me because I was convinced that I was going to send all of them to hell.
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There's a fundamental misunderstanding of the Bible and the gospel here. Either people didn't teach Matthew the truth or he really, really misunderstood it.
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It's just completely untrue that he could send anybody else to help. And if someone who was trying to help him could be led astray by him, then that person wasn't really in a place to help him in the first place.
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When I was 15, my parents found a men's workout magazine that I had bought.
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And they didn't tell me about it, but my dad told me that we were going to go on a trip together and he didn't tell me where we were going.
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I remember very vividly when we got to a layover in St. Louis that he told me that they had found this magazine and that he was taking me to a therapy center to fix whatever weird sexual shit
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I had going on. The father's actions here were neither Christian nor loving. It was wrong to immediately want to just fix his son's sexual desires.
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A Christian parent's response should have been to actually talk to Darren, ask questions about what he was going through in his mind, lovingly communicate the truth about the gospel of sin and salvation, and walk alongside him, never compromising on the truth, but always being there as someone
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Darren could trust to talk to and process through things with. He also made it really clear that not only did he think something was broken with me, but that if I didn't get fixed, as he called it, that he would get rid of me.
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I know there's always two sides to every story, but the way Darren puts it, it sounds like the father was self -righteous and mean -spirited.
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Did the father believe nothing was broken with himself? Did he think his son had a problem and he didn't?
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Also, threatening to get rid of his son demonstrates a huge misunderstanding of his duty as a father.
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That's how it came out. It came out to my dad. But literally the next day, my dad had his own panic of what this meant.
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His only son is now going to live a gay life. What does that mean to our family? What does it mean to the conservative community
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I was growing up in? And he began immediately searching for a therapist, not knowing what a conversion therapist was.
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Again, the way Matthew puts it, it seems that his father cared more about external things, such as his reputation and his community, than he did about Matthew.
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The father's immediate response was to look for a therapist, not to talk to Matthew and communicate the truth of the gospel to him.
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We agree that this view of conversion therapy is wrong and harmful. And can you explain what the conversion therapy process was like?
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I sat with a series of therapists. It was very heavily religious, but they believed in what they called generational sin.
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And that would be that my grandfather or my father or my uncle or my mother had some kind of sin that then passed on to me and tainted me and made me, could have made me gay.
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That could be one of the reasons. Well, that's definitely not a right or helpful view of why a person might experience attraction to the same sex.
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These therapists treated this same sex attraction as something that came from outside of him, not as something that originates from his sin nature, which every human has.
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So if these therapists were Christian, it seems that their understanding of homosexuality wasn't really
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Christian. So it was your battle to fight to make up for your ancestors' sins.
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I was supposed to do homework and write down any sin that I knew my father had committed or that my mother had committed.
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We agree that this is absolutely a terrible approach to talking to someone about homosexuality.
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There would be some physical things too. Like I remember them making me walk and try to walk more masculinely.
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Throughout the therapy, I crossed my legs. They would tell me like to sit differently. This kind of external approach to sexual desire is certainly unhelpful.
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The Christian approach should be to communicate God's design for human sexuality and how unnatural desires originate from our sin nature.
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All of us have sinful desires that we need to fight against, but our fight against sin shouldn't be a grudging one.
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We fight against sin because we're thankful that Jesus paid the ultimate price to save us, because we've been born again by God, and because we want to live life the way
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God created us to live it. There was a lot of talk about sexuality as well in detail.
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I remember them talking about how much I'm f****d, if I watched pornography, even my penis size.
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How is that relevant to anything? Short answer, it's not. The next five years were me keeping that idea, that thought process, that conversion therapy going myself.
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Trying to be fixed for something that I didn't want and I couldn't control.
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It's right to not want to be attracted to the same sex, but the fact that some people may not ever be able to fully control these kinds of desires doesn't mean that these desires are right.
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Similarly, some people struggle with addiction to pornography all their lives, but this doesn't make it right to watch pornography.
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They actually ask you how sexually experienced you are. Because in the world of conversion therapy, that matters.
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Okay, so they want to make sure that you've only dabbled. So because I was less experienced with men, they're like, oh, you should probably start to see your heterosexuality come back within six weeks.
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These therapists are an absolute joke. What they said isn't biblical, helpful, or right.
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How did you feel after you were convinced that you completed conversion therapy?
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I was mostly scared that my parents wouldn't believe me when I said it worked.
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Very quickly after that, I continued to have sexual thoughts and I realized that something was still broken with me.
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It was a really, really dark time in my life. Mostly, I felt really isolated from God.
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If God wanted me so badly to be straight and to not have these thoughts, and I wanted it, why wouldn't he do something about it?
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The thing is, the Bible is clear that we will experience the consequences of sin for the rest of our lives on earth.
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God sometimes doesn't remove struggles from our lives to help us depend more on him. Paul prayed for God to remove the thorn in his flesh, but God responded by saying,
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My grace is enough for you. My power is made perfect in weakness. Our hope is in Jesus and God's grace in saving us, not in total victory over all our struggles on earth.
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That said, are you still heavily faith -based or have you kind of disconnected from that?
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I'm an atheist. That was enough to kind of set you on your way. That was a journey on its own too.
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Of course, atheism is wrong, and it's wrong to embrace homosexual desires, but it's sad that the unbiblical conversion therapy he experienced probably played a role in driving him away from the
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Christian faith. When did you ultimately decide that you were actually happy in being your most true authentic self?
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When I was 18, I went to my first Pride Festival in Atlanta, and I remember seeing these parents carrying signs that said,
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I love my gay son, or I love my lesbian daughter. And it really hit me that I wanted that love, that maybe
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I deserved that love, not just from my family, but from myself.
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It's possible to love people without affirming and enabling them in their sin. As Christians, we need to communicate that we can't compromise about homosexuality being a sin because we love people enough to tell them the truth, not because we're self -righteous and think that we're better.
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It's actually very unloving to affirm, enable, and harden people in their sin. So don't let anybody tell you that it's not loving if you stand flat -footed and speak the truth about this issue of homosexuality.
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What's not loving is to look someone in the eye when God says they are in jeopardy of an eternity in hell and merely wink and nod at their sin because you're afraid of being called names.
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Why do you think the suicide rates for LGBTQ who have undergone conversion therapy is so much higher than those who haven't?
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Well, if you're gay or LGBTQ and you come out, you might lose everyone.
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It's not like someone's telling you, hey, you're perfect the way you are, everything's okay. It's like, no, you're not perfect the way you are. You have to change.
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All people actually need to hear the message that they're not perfect the way they are. And we all need to change in the sense that we all need to turn away from our sinful desires towards obedience to God's righteous commands.
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But there's no guarantee that we won't struggle against sin for the rest of our lives. When you're at a dead end, suicide becomes appealing to so many people.
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And we do know now that all it takes is one guardian or one person in your life that supports you, helps that individual out of suicide.
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Affirming people in their sin definitely isn't a good thing to do. There needs to be an option where we're able to love people who experience same -sex attraction by both telling them the truth and treating them with dignity.
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He said he was probably treating 12 or 13 boys at the time I was his patient. And he said today, all 13 of them are gay.
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It didn't work at all. Yeah, he says that he realized how harmful it was.
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We completely agree that this kind of external, unbiblical conversion therapy doesn't work and can be really harmful.
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At the same time, it's clear that many Christians who experience same -sex attraction are now living heterosexual lives, even if they still struggle with the same -sex attraction.
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To say that homosexual desires can't be changed at all, or that they completely define who we are as a person, goes way too far.
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And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the
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Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of God. That's 2 ,000 -year -old evidence that people stopped being homosexual.
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I forgave him in that moment because I wanted to be free of it. I'm not saying he deserves a pass.
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But yeah, I think all conversion therapists, including my own and the others that I saw, should be held accountable.
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We would certainly agree that conversion therapists who approach homosexuality from an unbiblical foundation should be held accountable for the harm that they cause.
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But are we allowed to say that homosexuality is a sin? That homosexual desires can be changed?
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Or that God commands us to fight against homosexual desires? If not, then that's where we'd disagree.
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None of that. I've thought frequently how the conversion therapy experience has stuck with me all these years.
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And I bet none of them remember me. They had such a detrimental impact on you, and yet it was just business.
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Conversion therapy that's just business is certainly wrong. If there's anyone watching who has experienced conversion therapy themselves, is there anything that you'd want to say to them?
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Trust yourself. You know who you are. Do not question it, whether your parents are questioning it, the therapist is questioning it.
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I knew exactly who I was at 16 years old. I'm the same person. I could have been proud and confident then, and not go through a 15 -year journey to get back to exactly where I started.
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This is really bad advice. We actually don't know who we are. Sin blinds us to our rebellion against and guilt before God.
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We need to look to God's revelation in the Bible to learn who we really are. And it's from the
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Bible that we can find joy in the power of the gospel to save sinners from the punishment they deserve, and joy in living the life the way we were created to live it, which is in relationship and obedience to God as our loving