Al Mohler & Social Justice

The Week in Politics, Culture, and a Conference Trip

Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. Man, I'll tell you what, for political commentary, this week leaves no shortage of information. You had, now it's old news, but you had the really pornographic displays at the Super Bowl halftime show last Sunday.

I was surprised to see some of the woke crowd people in conservative evangelicalism even, or what used to be called that, making fun of the prudes who objected to it. Now, I didn't see the whole thing.

I saw little clips, and that's all I want to see, but that's how you know your culture is being destroyed, when these supposed religious conservatives are, in kind of a roundabout way, defending that kind of display by making fun of anyone who would object to it.

I saw Mr. Den Hollander, and I saw Jonathan Merritt saying things along those lines, and I did not do a deep dive on Twitter to find out who was saying what, but that alone, it surprises me. I thought for the woke crowd, objectifying women was a problem, but apparently not as much as I thought.

And then you had the State of the Union speech, which by the way, I don't know if it's a context we're living in, that was one of the best speeches for the State of the Union I think I'd ever seen, if not the best.

I just, I don't know, I just, it could be that we're bombarded with negative news coming especially from the radical, radical left, that this was such a contrast, I don't know, but it was like the Democrats were attending a funeral and the Republicans were attending a wedding.

The contrast could not have been more stark, and if President Trump doesn't win re-election, I don't know this country. I mean, and by the way, I did not vote for Trump in 2016, and that's why I want to make an episode at some point about Donald Trump and kind of my thinking on whether to vote for him or not.

I probably will this next time around, but because I was a never-Trumper in a way, probably for different reasons than most of the never-Trumpers out there, hopefully maybe I can get through to them, we'll see.

Maybe that's a long shot, but yeah, there's so much. Kirk Douglas also, by the way, was buried. Most of you may not know if you're my age or younger than me, you probably don't know who Kirk Douglas is, but 20 ,000 Leagues Under the Sea, you gotta go watch that movie.

I always loved Whale of a Tale. I mean, I was a little kid. I had a little sing-along thing, but I loved Captain Nemo, and I forget the character he played on that, but Kirk Douglas, 103 years old, man, I did not know he was that old.

But yeah, so much going on, but I'm not going to really talk about any of that today. Oh, one more thing, actually, before I get to the main course here, I did attend a conference called the Churchman Conference on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, down in Jupiter, Florida, and had a good time, and met some of you, and I know some of you are probably listening.

Now.

There's probably, I don't know, four or five people who recognized me, came up to me. A few of them thanked me, and so they were listeners of the podcast, so yeah, thank you for that. It was an encouraging time, and on the plane ride back on Wednesday, when I was coming back home, I ran into this guy on the plane.

I sat next to him and asked him, so what were you doing in Florida? He says, well, I actually work for a company that grows marijuana, basically, or I guess they supply material to farmers who grow marijuana.

It's a company that deals with that business, and I said, oh, that's fascinating. I'm sure that's a growing business. We got to talking, and how do you prepare for this kind of a worldview? I'd share the gospel with him, go through some of the Ten Commandments.

He's not a good person, right? We do all that, and we're talking about there being an immaterial world, a spiritual world that he says kind of leans in, and he kind of whispers in my ear, he goes, I believe there's 14 levels of reality beyond this one.

I looked at him, I said, 14? You're sure it's that exact number, 14? He said, yep, it's 14. I've been to all of them. I said, oh, this is going to be an interesting conversation, so how did you go to 14 levels of reality beyond this physical world?

Well, it turns out this gentleman went to South America, and he said he was with some shamans there. He paid over $3 ,000, I guess, to go through this program that was about a week where these shamans, I guess, give him hallucinogenic drugs.

He heard voices, and he saw visions, and so he asked me, he says, who do you think the main voice he heard? He goes, who do you think it was that was talking to me? I said, I don't know. He says, it wasn't God, it wasn't Jesus.

It was me, the only voice I had never been listening to, and this voice showed me all these microtrauma events in my life, and how they've shaped me, and I release so much of the bad energy I have. He went on to explain that everything's connected by this energy field, and plants even.

Plants scream when you cut them, because even though they don't have a nervous system, they have energy. It was very interesting, so he was a pantheist. We sort of got to the bottom of it, and I asked him, I said, how do you make distinctions between myself, and you, and the chair, and everything else in this world?

You're talking to me. We have personhood and identity. How do you make those distinctions? How do you, when someone does something evil, because we had already gone through the Ten Commandments, and he seemed to have a sense of justice, so how do you create a civil penalty for someone, if they're just part of everything?

There's no identity in them, and he didn't really have an answer for that, and I think it intrigued him. Hopefully, he'll think about it, but yeah, it was interesting, and it just reminded me of how, in our postmodern day and age, we're not dealing, most of the time, with traditional religions.

This guy grew up Catholic, Roman Catholic, but he clearly was making up his own religion as he went, and that's why it's good to ask questions, and to have a good foundation. I tend to take more of a presuppositional approach to apologetics.

It doesn't mean I don't like evidence. I do, but I definitely think there's deep philosophical reasons that people tend to go the way they go, and believe what they do, and for him, he really thought that he was his own god.

That's ultimately what it amounted to. Self-connection was the big thing. You just got to be connected to yourself, and so I asked him, I said, so who allowed all these micro-trauma events to affect you then?

He said he was believing lies. I said, who allowed you to believe these lies? He said it was me. I said, so it sounds like you're the problem, which is exactly what scripture says about.

Us.

We are the problem. Hopefully, it gave him something to think about, but pray for him. I think his name, it was an unusual name. I think it was Rex, and anyway, God knows who it is, and it was just a fascinating conversation, and it just reminded me of the times that we live in, but the main course today, the main thing we're going to be talking about is something that I have been asked over and over and over, probably the most common question I get asked, and that is, where is Al Mohler?

Where is Al Mohler? With all the woke stuff going on, some of his own professors, there's at least four of them that have been promoting ideas consistent with critical race theory, where is he in.

All this?

I mean, he says things against critical race theory, but what about his own backyard? What about the major issues that take place in the convention? And I want to address this, and I've tried to be careful.

I want to sort of take you on my own personal journey here a little bit. I joined the Southern Baptist Convention because of Al Mohler. That's really the main reason. I was at the Master's Seminary in California and had always been more a part of that kind of John MacArthur crowd growing up.

Because of Al Mohler's speaking at the Shepherd's Conference, and because he was respected by John MacArthur, and because he was so big into public theology, engaging culture, quote unquote, I really gravitated towards that.

I had a sort of semi-political background and a political interest, but I also really wanted to know the Bible, and I thought, I want to get involved in the Southern Baptist Convention. If it's going the direction of Al Mohler, I really like what I'm hearing.

This was 10 years ago or more. Now about maybe seven or eight years ago, I started listening to the briefing every.

Day.

This was before I joined the Southern Baptist Convention, but I actually got a little, not a lot, but a little concerned with some of the things I heard on the briefing. I noticed that, because I have a history background, and I noticed when Al Mohler ever talked about history, he tended to read it.

If it was ever something that you could sort of bring in an aspect of, a racial aspect into it, he would sort of read it through the civil rights movement. And not just history, but even present day things, he would, I remember there was one instance where there was a shooting, and before the evidence had even come out, Al Mohler on the briefing made this whole statement about the black experience, and their relationship with the police, and how this is something to be expected.

It's the pattern, and this is kind of indicting the guy, the police officer, before the facts had been known. I think for the most part, Albert Mohler is very careful. I think he's very calculated, in fact.

But there was a few things he said along those lines that I just thought, you know, I can get my information somewhere else. I still absolutely respected Al Mohler. People who listen, I wasn't on a campaign to say you shouldn't listen to him.

I was encouraging people, read his books, you know, really good stuff. But there was a little, I just wanted to say, there was a little part of me that thought, you know, something's slightly off, and I can't completely put my finger on it.

But I still was attracted to the Southern Baptist Convention, and I of course went to a Southern Baptist school, and saw the transformation there, and any of you who listen to this podcast regularly, you know what I'm talking about.

So all that to say, I owe a debt to Albert Mohler for shaping my own thinking. I respect some of his stance that he's taken in the past. I am concerned with some actions that he's taken as of late, and I want to go over some of those with you.

My goal, though, is to give him every benefit of the doubt possible, and I want to just present to you what I'm seeing. Present to you the publicly available facts, and you can make your own determination at the end of this.

I don't want to necessarily steer you, obviously I'm going to have my own biases, but I'm not trying to steer you towards the idea that he's either liberal, or conservative, or an opportunist necessarily.

I do have my own thinking on this, but I want to show you what I'm looking at. And then, and at the end, I will tell you kind of where I lean, based on that information. But I want you to see the information first, and make up your own mind.

Come up with your own paradigm that makes sense of all the facts available. And the reason for that, the reason it's important, I think, is that Albert Mueller is running for president of the Southern Baptist Convention.

That's probably one of the reasons I get this question a lot. And I think conservatives are very afraid, because of Al Mueller's stature, and because of the great things he's written in the past, because of just how politically damaging it would be if you were in the SBC to say anything negative about him.

I think they're afraid. And I'm not. I think that it's good. It's a good, healthy conversation to have. And so I'm going to have E .S. Williams with me later to talk about this. He's done a lot of digging.

And by the way, you can go to the info section. You can watch both of Dr. E .S. Williams' videos on Albert Mueller, and see what you think about that. I would encourage you, really, go watch those. He's done probably a lot more time on this than I have.

But I do have a perspective to share with you. So I want to bring this up. I want to start this out by talking about some recent things. Just recently, a couple days ago, Albert Mueller put out a tweet, and he said, Southern Baptists are up to the challenge of talking to one another about difficult questions.

And really, what he's retweeting here is a Baptist Press article from the Resolutions Committee on the Southern Baptist Convention, where they're talking about Resolution 9. And what happened is, essentially, to sum up this article, the Resolutions Committee for the Southern Baptist Convention says, yeah, you know, we're concerned about Resolution 9, too.

We're the ones that, they essentially rewrote the resolution. It doesn't hardly even resemble the resolution that was presented to them by the pastor out in California. And they introduced critical theory as this useful analytical tool.

And then they're saying how, yeah, we're concerned about that language. Now the thing that's been pointed out, I know A .D. Robles, who, by the way, you should subscribe to his channel. A .D. Robles pointed out, Tom Askell introduced a friendly amendment that would have alleviated all these concerns, all the things they're saying they're concerned about now, how this is a godless philosophy, the damage it can do.

Tom Askell introduced an amendment with language to that effect, and it was not, Curtis Wood said that they did not accept it as a friendly amendment. And you've seen what's happened to Tom Askell since then.

And now, all of a sudden, they're sounding a little bit like Tom Askell. And it's unusual. And they're acting like, yeah, we were always this way. Our intentions were pure from the beginning. And Albert Mueller supports them in this, says, yeah, I think, again, Albert Mueller, he did not make a public stand against Resolution 9 during the actual procedure.

It was the next day on his program that he came out against it. And I don't know. There's political calculations. He's probably in, and I don't pretend to know all of those. Perhaps there's a reason for that.

But Albert Mueller has been on record saying he doesn't really agree with this. And at the very least, it makes him very uncomfortable. But the resolutions committee now, he's saying that they're striking the right tone.

He's encouraging them, complimenting them. And I just have to wonder, isn't the right thing to do in this? If this was a wrong resolution, to just apologize, to just say, you know what? We messed up. Here's why we messed up.

And we're going to correct it. We're going to get rid of Resolution 9. We're going to vote against it at the next convention. That's not what's happening. There's kind of a rebranding of it. And Albert Mueller seems to be somewhat complicit in that.

And so this is the curious behavior, though, because just last week or a week and a half ago or so, he was on The World and Everything In It. And you can go look at that. And Albert Mueller is swinging hard against critical race theory.

And so the question has been, how can you be so against something in the abstract, but then when it's concrete, when there's actual names attached to it, when it's actually in the purview of your control, you don't really do much about it?

That's, I think, the tension that people have been wrestling with. And I want to make a quick comment about, though, the resolutions committee and whether they were genuine. This is just one little sample.

You can do the Twitter deep dive. I mean, I did it just on this one guy. Keith Whitfield, who's a professor at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminar, he was on the resolutions committee and, you know, he would have been part of this article, I guess, on the resolutions committee and how they're kind of concerned about some critical race theory now.

But look what what was said at the time. Look, look, he he liked a comment by Matthew Malcolm Yarnell. Or Malcolm Yarnell says that essentially it was it was they displayed their wisdom of Solomon. They displayed the wisdom of Solomon.

And Keith Whitfield says, thank you, Dr. Yarnell. But now, yeah, we're really concerned about critical race theory. Doesn't sound like, you know, the two are compatible. Either, you know, you can't have this resolution nine, which adopts critical race theory and intersectionality as analytical tools.

You can't have it be the wisdom of Solomon. And at the same time, yeah, you know, we're really concerned about the impact of this. It's one or the other. And of course, you know, you can I'm not gonna take the time to read all these things.

But obviously, Keith Whitfield was very proud of the work the resolutions committee did when at the time it was passed. There doesn't seem to be any concern on his part, at least publicly, about this resolution and the impact it would have and the dangers of critical race theory.

He's circling the wagons with everyone else around this and saying it was it was great. We needed resolution nine. So that's why, you know, I have a hard time believing this latest article. If you think you got it wrong, it's simple.

Just repent of it. Just say we were wrong. We're gonna we're gonna get rid of that resolution. We're gonna have another resolution that corrects it. That's not what's happening now. So pay attention to those kinds of things and see if the actions match the words.

Three Ways to Interpret Albert Mohler

Now, there's three ways to view Albert Mueller. Basically, I haven't thought of a fourth one. I've been thinking about this for a year. I've been watching Albert Mueller's actions because, you know, people immediately after Shepard's conference Q &A wanted to jump in.

And I mean, I even had some insiders at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary telling me things about Al Mueller. And, you know, I did not want to come out and say much about him before I watched his actions.

So it's been almost a year now. And I think there's been enough actions to watch to create a paradigm to try to form an understanding. The first, you know, way to view Albert Mueller's actions, though, is he's liberal.

He's he's a liberal. And and that's just all there is to it. He's posing as conservative. He's really liberal. And you can look at things like this. I'm just gonna give you a few examples. You can look at, you know, how in the world did Curtis Woods get his dissertation through the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary?

How did Albert Mueller allow this to happen? Go to his abstract for his dissertation on Phyllis Wheatley. Chapter three, it says, and I'm quoting, Chapter three assesses Wheatley's critique of exemplary or open American exceptionalism through the lens of Chateau slavery.

Critical race theory becomes the analytical lens to understanding the intersection of religion, race, class and gender on Wheatley's socio-political imagination. Literally, you have the chairman of the resolutions committee for Resolution 9, who is teaching at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary right under Albert Mueller's nose presenting a dissertation which was accepted by the institution where he is using critical race theory as an analytical tool.

And it says it in the abstract for his dissertation. That was his work at Southern. Is he liberal? Is he liberal? Is Albert Mueller liberal? Now, look, this is guilt by association. Albert Mueller didn't write that dissertation.

Curtis Woods did. But it's at his institution. You'd think he'd know about it. You'd think he'd be working against that kind of thing somehow. But instead, Curtis Woods is teaching there. Instead, he's on the resolutions committee and not just on it, but the chairman of it.

Then again, you have things like this, Albert Mueller in the summer, in August, he really appreciated Curtis Woods again and Jarvis Williams' contribution to Christianity Day magazine. Now, listen to this quote from this article.

You can read the whole article, but listen to this one quote and see if you can see the perspectivalism or standpoint epistemology, this idea that, you know, the way that there's this worldview that comes from or essentially a way of looking at the world that comes from a sociopolitical cultural group and that impacts everything else.

It's the elimination of objectivity, the adoption of subjectivity, according to social groups. If you see that in this sentence or paragraph, I'm going to read from where we sit. Starts off from where we sit.

So our perspective as what? As African-American Christians. OK, so now you're already now starting down that path. From where we sit as African-American Christians, racism and white supremacy are opposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they pose a threat to all diverse image bearers in our churches.

Brown immigrants and people of color, families like Jarvis's with a Hispanic wife and a mixed African-American and Hispanic son, Curtis's with an African-American wife and children are genuinely afraid that white supremacists may murder us.

And our kids because of the color of our skin. These fears are present in many of our churches. So Albert Mueller, you know, he endorsed this on some level. Now, you could say he didn't write that. He doesn't believe in perspectivalism and you can read the rest of the article and see kind of where they're coming from.

Obviously, white supremacy is wrong, but there's more there's more in that paragraph than just that. There is a fear that comes from, in their minds, this perspective that they have based on the social group that they're part of.

And this has now been adopted in the reading of the Bible and the hermeneutical lens in many places, especially southeastern. What does Albert Mueller think about this? I don't know. I don't know. I would assume he'd be against it.

So, I mean, I could give you more, but and you will see more things later on. But that's one paradigm. That's one way to look at this. Another way to look at it is, well, he's, you know, he's actually a conservative.

I mean, look, here's a tweet that he put out in May last year against Beth Moore. And it was in favor of complementarianism. He doesn't name Beth Moore, but he certainly is alluding to something Beth Moore had said.

There's the episode right after Resolution 9 passed that he put out on the briefing, and he's against critical race theory. So, you know, look, he is conservative. That's another way of looking at Albert Mueller.

Maybe he's conservative. And there's a third way. The third way of looking at Albert Mueller is he's really not liberal or conservative, but he's an opportunist. And I have had people sending me this to try to demonstrate that.

When I met Dr. Mueller in 1984, he was in the president's office serving as a special assistant to Roy Honeycutt. Al was the epitome of all the Southern Seminary men. And in relation to women in ministry, Southern Seminary was very supportive at that time of women in ministry and various leadership positions within the church.

At the Southern Baptist Convention in 1984, I believe it was, they passed a resolution prohibiting women from being pastors. Why, he got up, he started a protest movement of his own right here on this campus against that kind of thing.

It was published in the Courier Journal.

For all around us, we see the ruins of once great churches and once great denominations, which in the name of tolerance and modernity and inclusivity forfeited their integrity.

Coming to the New Orleans convention, whispering to me in the press room on Tuesday morning, knowing that I was a moderate, that it did not look good for our side. And then after we had been defeated at that point and Roy Honeycutt declared that any politicizing for my part was over, Al Mueller returned to Georgia and his editorials took a hard right and began to become very political and very fundamentalist.

There's this great story that always gets told about Southern Seminary that you may, in fact, you may have noticed while you're on campus that there's not a cross on top of the chapel. In fact, there's a weather vane on top of the chapel.

And the story goes that every morning everyone has to go out on the lawn to see which way the theological winds are blowing so they'll know what to teach that day. And Al Mueller, in my assessment, pretty much personifies that story.

Dr. Al Mueller is a man who lives his convictions with courage.

For me, having known Al and watched this transformation of Al, when other people would call him a fundamentalist, I would correct them and say he's an opportunist, that there's a difference of conviction.

Well, it's very simple. He, I think he wanted to be president of Southern Baptist Seminary. I think he wanted to be a leader in the denomination. And to be a leader in the denomination, you've got to think, you've got to act, you've got to do what the leadership of the convention requires.

Now, interestingly enough, I was reading a book not too long ago and I came across this. It's called The Evangelicals by Francis Fitzgerald, and he's a liberal guy. There's no doubt about it. But he writes this.

He says when Honeycutt resigned in 1992, weary of the struggles between the faculty and the trustees, the search committee with Honeycutt's support appointed Mueller, then just 33, on the assumption that he could resolve the differences better than the candidates from the outside.

Instead, Mueller moved the seminary abruptly to the right, adding positions on abortion, homosexuality and women in the ministry to litmus tests for future professors and causing turmoil in the faculty.

So here's the narrative when people say this, that he's just an opportunist. What they're saying is, look, Honeycutt did not know, and the liberal professors there, they didn't really know that Albert Mueller was a complementarian before he took over Southern.

And when he took over Southern, it was right at the point where the conservative resurgence was the popular thing. Complementarianism was cool with the bigwigs in the SBC. And Paige Patterson, Adrian Rogers had done, they had taken most of the shots.

Albert Mueller got to benefit from what they did on the convention level, and he implemented some of their ideas at Southern Seminary. And he's an opportunist and people close to him, you see in that video, he's an opportunist.

That's who he is. And people are drawing parallels. They're saying, well, look, critical race theory was taught for years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Look at all the things happening under Albert Mueller's nose.

He doesn't say anything. And all of a sudden now when it's a concern and there's a political issue and maybe critical race theory is not so cool, even the resolutions committee is trying to backpedal on it.

Now, Albert Mueller is all of a sudden really going hard against it in the convention. That's what they say. So that's the third way of looking at this. There's three basic ways. Now, what was Albert Mueller's defense to this back in the 90s is what he said.

I've been very, very, very clear about my own convictions and I will always be just that.

It is my. Now, in order to test this, in order to see where Albert Mueller lines up on these issues, I think it's good for us to be clear about the three issues. And really, they are basically in this current liberal debate.

Complementary and gender roles is coming back up. Critical race theory and LGBTQ normalization. Those are the three categories of consternation for Southern Baptists. What do we do about this? Now, on the complementarian gender role thing, I showed you Albert Mueller essentially came out against something Beth Moore said earlier this year.

And that's really all I know about Albert Mueller's stand on that. He hasn't said much otherwise. And I think we should just take him at his word. He's a complementarian. I know in the abstract, without naming names, he's also said other things in favor of complementarianism over the past year.

And I just believe him. I think there's no reason for me not to. He's a complementarian. He doesn't believe in any sense. I mean, you saw this in the Founders documentary that women should ever be pastors.

So he seems to have been consistent on that over the years. Now, the other issue is critical race theory. We will spend the lion's share of this podcast talking to Dr. E .S. Williams about critical race theory and where Albert Mueller stands on that.

But let's jump to the third one. We'll save critical race theory for last. LGBTQ normalization. Now, the reality is Albert Mueller has changed his stance on same-sex orientation. And I'm going to show you some clips that demonstrate that.

One, in particular, where Albert Mueller apologizes for getting this wrong. That is a switch. And that is a concerning switch because that is really the that is the basis on which this whole revoice, not saying Dr. Mueller agrees with revoice or everything in revoice at all.

But that that is kind of that Trojan horse behind everything regarding the soft peddling of homosexuality in evangelical Christian circles. Start with the idea that it's an innate orientation, something that is perhaps unchangeable, something that is part of who a person is, doesn't come from scripture at all, completely comes from it's a Freudian psychological idea.

Even people like Rosario Butterfield acknowledge this. But Albert Mueller adopts this on some level. All right. I'm not saying he's innate Collins who graduated from Southern, but he he does adopt this on some level.

So here are the clips.

Dr. Mueller has your words as evidence that evangelicals have done a poor job with the homosexual issue. Merrick quotes words he alleges you spoke in an interview with him. This is what Dr. Merrick writes.

She says, quote, We've lied about the nature of homosexuality and practiced what can only be described as a form of homophobia, Mueller says. Further, Merrick alleges, you said in the interview, we've used the choice language when it is clear that sexual orientation is a deep inner struggle and not merely a matter of choice.

So those words that allegedly have come from you, Dr. Mueller, I'm especially interested in how you can fact these words were spoken in an interview. How evangelicals broadly and Southern practice particularly have, quote, lied, unquote, about homosexuality and in practice, homophobia.

This is part of the greatness of the Southern Baptist Convention that we get to have a conversation. And this is the kind of conversation we're having. And thank you for the question, my brother. And I'm glad to tell you that I was asked that question and I made those statements.

They're not alleged statements. They're actual statements. So there is no way that anyone can, in fair mindedness, be confused about what I believe about homosexuality because I published over 200 articles on the subject.

Not that I'd expect you to go home and read them all this evening. When I was asked that question, I responded that I did because I believed then and I believe now with my whole heart that that is a part of our challenge as we now face the responsibility not only to speak the truth about homosexuality, but to minister to a very militant community of homosexuals and also to a large number of persons in our churches, whether we want to acknowledge this or not, who are struggling with this issue.

The reality is that we as Christian churches have not done well on this issue. And I think if we're unwilling to admit that, it is further to our pain. For instance, evangelicals thankfully have failed to take the liberal trajectory of lying about homosexuality and its implements.

We know that the Bible clearly declares not only in isolated verses, but in the totality of its comprehensive presentation, the fact that homosexuality not only is not dot best for us, as some try to say, but it is sin.

It is particularly identified, for instance, in Romans chapter one, as a sin indicative of the total wickedness and sinfulness of humanity as a whole. The point of thought of Romans chapter one, then, is if people will do this and rationalize it, then human beings are able to do anything in terms of sin and come to terms with it.

So we as evangelicals have a very sad history in dealing with this issue. We have told not the truth, but we've told about half the truth. We've told the biblical truth, and that's important, but we haven't applied it in a biblical way.

For instance, we have said to people that homosexuality is just a choice. Well, it's clear that it's more than a choice. That doesn't mean it's any less sinful, but it does mean it's not something that people can just turn on and turn off.

We are not a gospel people unless we understand that only the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ gives a homosexual person any hope of release from homosexuality. The gospel is what we stand for, and the gospel is the only way to save us, and we have also exhibited a certain form of homophobia of which we must, absolutely must, in gospel terms, repent precisely because we believe that all the scriptures teach us about homosexuality and all the scriptures teach us about sin.

We must recognize that our job isn't done until our churches look exactly like the church described in 1 Corinthians 6, where those very sins are articulated, and then it says, but such were some of you, but you were wise.

Our job is not done until sin and misuse among us are those of whom it is said, I once was that. As we say, I once was something else. We are sinners saved by grace. Until there are those who have been trapped in that sin sitting among us, we know we've got a gospel job to do.

You understand there are those who are now, in terms of these biblical texts, are rejectionist. There are those who are saying that the human flourishing will only take place if these texts are stared down and rejected.

And then there are others who are following a revisionist argument saying, no, we can we can make peace with this sexual revolution by understanding these texts in a way the Christian church never understood them before, because data was lacking then that we have now and undoubtedly data was lacking then that we have.

Now, one of the things we should not be embarrassed to say is that we are learning. One of the embarrassments that I have to bear is that I have written on some of these issues now for nearly 30 years, and at a couple of points, I have to say I got that wrong and we got to go back and correct it, correct it by scripture.

Now, early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary in order to to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation and speaking at an event for the National Association of Evangelicals 20 something years ago, I I made that point.

I repent of that. I believe that a biblical theological understanding of a robust biblical theology would point to us that that human sexual affective profiles and who we are sexually is far more deeply rooted than just the will, if if that were so easy.

But Genesis three explains that helps us to understand that this complex of same sex challenges coming to us is something that is deeply rooted in the biblical story itself and something that we need to take with far greater seriousness than we've taken in the past.