Dangerous Affirmation with M.D. Perkins: Part I

Welcome, once again, everyone to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, as always, dealing with a little bit of allergies here in upstate

New York. It's the Hudson Valley is the worst place in the entire country. So I've heard for allergies.

So you'll have to bear with me a little bit today. But we have MD Perkins with us who we've had before to talk about same sex, where I probably should get my terms right, because you define these in the beginning of your book,

MD, but gay affirming theology, same sex attraction, homosexuality, we'll get into the weeds and all of this stuff, because MD, you've come out with a new book called

Dangerous Affirmation. It's the only book I know of that actually engages side B Christianity, the revoice theology.

I don't know of anyone else who's doing this. And so thank you once again for joining me and being willing to talk about this. Yeah, good as always,

John, to be with you. So you've written before, I think, when we had you on you, you had at that point, you wrote a book, but it wasn't really a book.

What was it? It was just kind of a PDF. Yeah. So some of this. Yeah. So that's a little leaven confronting the ideology of the revoice movement.

I read it. I wrote it just initially as research. And then I expanded it out.

And so basically, it's just a free paper, you know, kind of a white paper on the topic of of the side

B slash revoice movement, the gay celibate theology, all of that, that kind of stuff that's infecting the

Southern Baptist, the PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, Church of the

Nazarene, Anglican Church in North America and some other places are dealing with this anyway.

So that's a little leaven was what we were talking about last time. Right. And well, and now you have an actual book, we'll put the link in the info section called

Dangerous Affirmation, the Threat of Gay Christianity. And this is how many pages is 200, a little over 200 pages.

I mean, it's it's a book. It's sizable. And it's it's really good,

I think, because it actually it parses everything out. It makes things understandable. And that's what I hope to do on the podcast today is make some things understandable that people have been confused about, because it seems to me,

MD, you could correct me if I'm wrong, that the biggest tactic in all of this is to just muddy the waters to just create more confusion.

I mean, do you get that sense, too, that sometimes there's even maybe a purposeful motive behind this where there are people who advocate for gay

Christianity or gay affirming theology just really, really want to cause confusion in the hearts and minds of believers?

Yeah. I mean, equivocation is such a big part of this whole conversation because and that's honestly,

John, I mean, that's how I got into even researching this topic. You know, I didn't set out to write a book.

I didn't set out to write a paper on the Revoice movement. I was just trying to understand these things for myself so that so that I could explain them to people around me.

And then as we were working on a documentary called In His Image, Delighting in God's Plan for Gender and Sexuality, you know,

I'm a film producer with American Family Association. So I carry multiple hats here in that regard.

But, you know, we were researching that documentary. And then this whole question of, you know, the gay

Christian movement and particularly this movement that's emerged within conservative spaces, this whole

Revoice gay celibate theology stuff. And, you know, to your point, like there is a lot of equivocation and a lot of people when they speak are muddying the waters.

And some of that is intentional, I think. I think there are leaders who are more aligned with that than they want to let on that they are.

So they want to say things that that have the air of orthodoxy to them, you know, have the ring of orthodoxy to them, but are adjusting pieces of the language or introducing little ideas within it.

And then but then, you know, some of those things get carried up by other people who aren't being careful and aren't listening discerningly.

And so then they just kind of add their own take on it. And so really, I mean, when it comes to the sexuality issue,

I mean, even just getting clear definitions of terminology and common usage of those terms can be challenging.

And that was the initial parts of this book project and the A Little Leaven project was just trying to understand what are people even talking about when they use terms like same sex attraction?

Is that distinct from sexual orientation? Or is that is that just another word for it?

Is that a synonym? Is that the same as when we talk about homosexuality as a as an idea anyway?

So you can kind of see, you know, the terms that you use matter. And the terms that people choose to use matter, and they've chosen them oftentimes for very specific reasons.

And so, you know, to push back on that and to really try and understand what what are you really communicating there,

I think is important for us. So let's do this. Let's get into the weeds a little on these various threats, because you survey those at the beginning of the book.

And then let's maybe bring some biblical theology to shine on this and to help clear it up.

So what are the threats then? Because you identify various kind of schools of thought of people or groups trying to take homosexuality in some form, infuse it with Christianity.

So what are we looking at? Yeah, so the the big picture, you know, I use the term gay Christianity. That's just kind of a catch all term to describe this overall movement to reconcile the

Christian faith with homosexuality. You know, two things that can't be reconciled. But within that overall movement, there are these individual threads.

I identify three of them, what I call affirming theology or the affirming church movement. Then what the other one.

And so that one's, I guess, in some degree, it might be seen as in the middle. And then there's one that's very far to the left, which is queer theology, which is just this.

I'll unpack that idea in just a little bit. So there's there's affirming theology, queer theology, and then there is gay celibate theology or the revoice movement.

So those those three ideas, you know, affect different different groups of people, people from different denominational and theological backgrounds.

You know, the affirming church and affirming theology has very much been embraced by the mainline denominations.

This is these it's basically the idea that that the Bible affirms homosexual behavior and homosexual relationships and that when someone says that they're gay, that that's that's a reflection of of how

God made you, you know, and so people use those kinds of terms. This would be exemplified by someone like like Matthew Vines, who wrote the book

God and the gay Christian, which wasn't wasn't new in terms of what it was promoting. It really took a lot of a lot of the ideas that have been out there in theology and kind of mainstream them to some degree.

But I think I think the affirming church is typically what people might think of when you use the term gay

Christianity. They think of, you know, pride flag in front of the church, you know, welcome and affirming.

All are welcome here. You know, that kind of I'm sure you could drive down, you know, the street, especially in upstate

New York and see, you know, all the mainline churches, you know, United Methodist or, you know,

Presbyterian Church, USA, you know, Church of Christ and just, you know, see see the rainbow flag in the window and and all that kind of stuff.

And so that's that's the affirming church. And that's that's been a progressive push for a long time.

I don't know if you want to comment on each. Well, in my neck of the woods, that's been something I'd say for the last 15 years.

I mean, it's just kind of we take it for granted if it's got a pride flag outside the church and generally up here, it's like an old building.

It's it's a stone building or it might be wood, but usually it's stone. But, you know, if it's old congregational or Methodist or Episcopalian, it will nine times out of 10, they have a pride flag out front.

And now they have Ukrainian flags with the pride flag. It's really no American flag, but it's very interesting to me because when you in your neck of the woods, you're in Mississippi, I think.

Right. And it's probably a lot different. The Methodists aren't flying a pride flags down there. But so we're familiar as you don't see it as often.

But, you know, certain towns certainly lean more heavily into that than others. But, yeah, so that I mean, that's that's kind of the biggest part of the movement,

I would say, you know, is is the affirming church, the affirming theology, finding some attempt to very directly argue that the

Bible actually teaches that that homosexuality is good or that homosexual relationships are good.

The problem that they would argue is just that that society has has so made it a taboo that then it's, you know, that people can't and especially the church, you know, and the church is teaching makes it such a taboo that people just feel this guilt and shame when they shouldn't.

And so we have to we have to combat that with with theology. It's it's interesting because it really is built more on kind of the modernist idea.

And so it has because it still makes an appeal to some degree to scriptural authority, you know, claiming that the

Bible teaches this, whereas something like queer theology, you know, which is using the Bible, but it's using it in these really combative ways to basically, you know, imaginatively deconstruct what

Christians have traditionally thought about things just by kind of almost shock imagery, you know, like describing

God as being an orgy or the Trinity as an orgy, that kind of idea.

Which is just, you know, gross and blasphemous and shocking. And it's supposed to be like that's the point of it.

You know, it's it's supposed to make conservatives feel uncomfortable. It's supposed to kind of be shocking and interesting because like, oh, like you hadn't thought you hadn't thought about it from that way.

You know, and so the idea that God is queer comes through a lot in that queer theology, but where they take the idea, the concept of holiness is

God being wholly other. And then that otherness idea, then they bring in with with their, you know, queer theory and stuff and connect in.

And so then they make this this kind of queer theology thing. And, you know, I mean, in some ways, people might look at queer theology and think, well, that's not really that doesn't really seem very threatening to me.

But the issue is the way that it kind of carries out a lot in social media.

I think I think a lot of people just like the really pithy, short, combative statement that they can put online that then, you know, a person reads it.

And in passing, you know, begins to it begins to unravel something in their head.

You know, if you say that that David and Jonathan were homosexual lovers and so that you can do a queer reading of First Samuel through that perspective, you know, and you just kind of throw it out there as an idea.

And then somebody kind of passing by starts to think, well, you know, he does say that, you know, they don't know the text well enough to really even combat it.

But they're just thinking, oh, you know, it does say that, you know, the well, the love of Jonathan, he he appreciated more than the love of women.

So, you know, maybe maybe he was gay, you know, and so it just it's intended to subvert.

It's intended to attack and deconstruct. That's what the whole queer theology is.

And there's there's blurred edges, you know, within these, you know, these aren't necessarily clear cut categories.

I just see generally there's this stream of affirming theology. There's a stream of queer theology, which is very academic.

And of course, academic thinking always winds its way downstream. And then there's the gay celibate theology exemplified by the

Revoice Conference, which argues that, you know, it basically takes psychological ideas from secular psychology that, you know, ideas of orientation, you know, that you're born innately and immutably homosexual.

You were born that way. You can't change and then starts to try and take conservative theological concepts like original sin and then connect that to this to this whole ideology to to basically justify, you know, the fact that someone who grew up in a conservative church felt certain attractions, temptations, desires and, you know, felt uncomfortable about it, tried to pray, pray about it and nothing changed.

They still had them. And so now maybe, you know, they can't overcome that. And so now they just have to kind of align themselves to this life of celibacy or so -called celibacy.

I mean, I don't I'm not convinced that all people are really even practicing celibacy as it as it, you know, would historically be recognized.

But basically just, you know, I saw Grant Hartley, who had spoken at Revoice, is dancing in San Francisco gay nightclubs.

Like I was just like, well, that's I mean, well, I guess as long as you're technically not like so weird.

But yeah, that's what you're talking about. That's exactly you know, that's that's such a sad decline to, you know, somebody who at one point, you know, is

I mean, he still claims to be celibate and still claims to to be part of this whole kind of Revoice side

B position. But then to embrace aspects of of the culture that are so.

That are such an envelope pushing kind of move to to just see, it's almost like, you know, somebody was like, well, how how far can you go with with somebody before you've committed sin, you know, and it's like just trying to push that edge, you know, well, can we can we hold hands?

Can we snuggle on the couch? Can we kiss? Can we fondle each other? You know, we haven't really committed the sexual act yet.

You know, and it's just like that little push further and further down the line, you know, to to accommodate these these sinful desires and behaviors that you should be seeking to mortify, like as a

Christian, when you when you're claiming the name of Christ, you know, that's what we're talking about here is people who are trying to take aspects of the

Christian faith and wed them to this this concept of homosexuality and sexual identity.

And to say that that these are just reflections of culture or something and that we can we can jettison parts of the way that the church has approached this, because that's the other side of the side

B approach is is to really, you know, combat the church on this and say that, well, you haven't you haven't loved us very well and you haven't loved this people group very well.

This minority group, you know, sexual minorities, you know, are recognized in many circles as a as another minority group.

And so you haven't loved us well. And by love us well, they mean like you haven't you don't agree with us.

And so even when you when people have offered their critique and pushback and rebuke of the revoice movement, the revoice authors and speakers come back and they say, well, you know, you're just not you're you're misrepresenting us and you're not very pastoral.

And by pastoral, they just mean that you basically have to agree with our theological position. And so anyway, that's that gives you maybe a brief, somewhat brief overview of the three three categories of that I'm trying to deal with.

These three streams of thinking, I think, within the gay Christian movement. Right. And so the most extreme or most honest stream,

I think we can as orthodox believers can all see, well, that's wrong. Yeah.

Homosexual advocacy that Christians can even participate in these acts.

We all know that's wrong. And I've seen something similar that in this just broadly speaking, social justice, that a lot of people who actually do advocate soft versions of social justice will often tell you very adamantly that they they're not woke.

They don't believe in social justice. Well, and then, you know, you'll find out they think, well, some monument should come down.

Well, of course, we need some diversity in our elder board. Well, of course, you know, women are mistreated and we like you start hearing all these things and you're like, well, it sounds like you're kind of on that social justice train.

And they'll adamantly say, of course, I'm not. And you're slandering me. And I think the same things that play here in this this iteration of social justice thinking where LGBT activists are kind of they're viewed as they're aggressive, at least you cannot associate with them.

They're that's still a pariah among conservative evangelicals. Like that's the kiss of death.

If you want to associate with that. Sure. So so revoice side B advocates seem to just want to really distance themselves from that and say, no,

I'm with you. I mean, I'm an orthodox believer. I believe all the same things about sexuality. But yet they're pushing it in subtle ways, sometimes sometimes not so subtle.

But people don't recognize that this is a it's a trap. This is this is a very logic that will get us to those more extreme forms.

So could you narrow in for us on where you see the real threat is for conservative evangelicals with side

B and revoice and the distinctions that they try to make between attraction and well,

I mean, they use all kinds of words. There's attractions, temptations, desires. Yeah.

Somewhere in that family, there's something that they think is acceptable. Yeah. You know,

I think there's multiple layers of threats. You know, when you think about an issue like this, obviously at the theological level, the threat is just basically a loosening of your holding to to orthodox teaching and your willingness to to speak against it, honestly, you know, and to to be clear about it.

You know, I mean, you started this conversation by talking about the murkiness of the discussion. And a lot of that comes in by these these introductions of these these ideas.

You know, when you hold out this concept that there's we don't know how it works, but basically somebody is born gay, you know, and so then that idea gets held out when people start talking about expectations and sanctification, you know, that God can't work that out or that God can't change you or God can't, you know, lessen those desires.

And then those things start to play out even more when, you know, then then somebody's faced with a temptation again.

And they're like, oh, well, I thought I thought I had changed or I thought God changed that part of me.

So I guess they have I guess God hasn't. So I guess I really am gay. And I just have to figure out how to deal with that rather than realizing that you're going to be faced with all kinds of temptations and you're not defined by your temptations ultimately.

I mean, that's so much of what this movement is, is this this push to define people by their temptations.

And, you know, and that just goes right alongside with what the secular ideology is teaching, which is that you are ultimately a product of your desires, that your greatest psychological needs are the ultimate reality of you as a person.

And so whatever you feel like you need or want or going after, then then people should not hinder you from that in any way.

And that that is very attractive even to to conservative Orthodox Christians, especially especially

Christian parents who who have a child who's come out as homosexual.

And they're trying to figure out, well, how can I. How can I understand this, you know, because the parent doesn't want to jettison the doctrine, you know, they've seen that happen.

But they're thinking, well, maybe maybe there's a way for my child who is gay.

And so they're basically consenting that point, you know, that their ultimate reality as a person is that they're homosexual.

So they so then they start to justify in their mind, well, maybe they can be gay and Christian. And the biggest thing that I want for them is not that they would get over being gay, but that they would that they would love the

Lord, you know. And so once you. But once you start to begin to fracture those two points, as if.

You know, pursuing homosexuality is somehow aligned in some way with with the pursuit of holiness and righteousness and truth and that somebody could could pursue

Christ and be embracing aspects of homosexual identity and and, you know, desire and kind of coddling those and keeping those without without the work of the

Holy Spirit doing anything to really change that, then then that's.

I mean, that's a problem. I mean, it's it leads to all kinds of other issues.

And before you know it, I mean, there there will be people who begin on the soft edge of it and they say, well, no,

I'm not going to go that far. But then they're already making appeals to try and preserve a relationship or the emotional appeals of of somebody saying, well, you know, these people are just so mistreated, y 'all.

You just don't understand that, you know, whenever you talk about the scripture, it's just like you're you're attacking us.

You know, that's that's the claim, you know, is that there's even the label, the clobber passages. That's what homosexual activists have come to to label.

The passages of scripture that directly speak against homosexuality, you know, in Leviticus, in Romans and First Corinthians and First Timothy, you know, those passages have been labeled as clobber passages because they say they say that Christians use them to just beat up on us.

And so that's all we hear when you talk about it. Like, you know, the revoice idea, John, you know,

I haven't fleshed out this idea fully, but I sense that there's a there's a crisis of discipleship that's ultimately has happened underneath this, where people are because the revoice movement itself is really claiming to be like this reclamation of of church discipleship, you know, where all these people that have this shared common experience can just come together.

They've kind of been rejected by the church. And so we don't need you to tell us anything true.

We already understand that homosexuality is sinful. We don't need you to tell us that anymore.

We just need you to listen to us, to love us, to empathize with us and to just to just allow us to work out this stuff, because you can't relate to our experience and we just have to work it out among ourselves.

And so you just need to allow us the space to do that. And so, you know,

I think you can already sense a lot of ways that that can be very destructive to the overall mission and purpose of the church, but also to the unity of the church, where you're constantly claiming this victimhood status and where the church has abused you.

And, you know, concepts of spiritual abuse get thrown out there. I mean, Nate Collins has done that recently, the founder of Revoice, you know,

I mean, he claimed that the the national statement was spiritual abuse and that anyone who even signed the statement was basically, you know, a tantamount to a spiritual abuser for for agreeing with a basic consensus statement on orthodox teaching on sexuality, you know, to sign that you are you are a spiritual abuser now.

And so, you know, there's so many ways. And, you know, I think

I sympathize with you and the ways that you've tried to patiently and diligently unpack so much of the social justice stuff, because it starts out and people are like, well,

I don't really understand what the threat is, you know, isn't it good that we're more diverse now?

Or isn't it good that we're able to recognize racism as a group? And hasn't that impacted some aspects of our institutions and the systems that undergird things?

And so can't we talk about that? And so when you're trying to caution against things, you know, it takes a lot of time and patience to really get people to even acknowledge what's happening there.

And, you know, that's why I mean, that's why I wrote the book. That's why I've been speaking on this topic for the last couple of years.

That's why I've tried to unpack some of the ideas, because I feel like there is that subtle threat that's always there for us as Christians, because the thing is, despite what the world says, and especially despite what

LGBT activists says, evangelical Christians are loving people. They want to hear people out.

They want to be loving. They want to be sensitive. They don't want to rush to judgment. And they want to find ways to be sensitive and caring for other people.

And so when people say that they've been hurt by the church, like, that's an appeal that hurts us.

Like, we don't want you to have been hurt by the church. We know that the church isn't a perfect place and that there's sin that still exists in us and ways that we've perpetuated that in ways that we haven't been sensitive and caring in the ways that we should.

So, you know, there's such a rife mix for the work of Satan and his spiritual attack and warfare on the church to really cause

Christians to either just be completely silent on the issues or begin to find little ways to accommodate the leaven of this teaching so that maybe they can feel more comfortable with where things are headed.

Because I think we all recognize the way that the world is so heavily opposed to the

Christian position on this. So when you hear somebody say, well, the Revoice stuff, you know, they're still holding to the orthodox teaching, you know?

Like, so that's the claim, you know? So why can't you just recognize that they're getting it from both sides?

And so because they have activists to their left that can say that they're too conservative, that then somehow they have this special middle ground where, you know, where that removes them from being able to be, you know, attacked.

So, you know, I was looking at Galatians chapter six, verse one. It says, brothers, if anyone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness.

Watch yourself so that you may not be tempted. Carry one another's burdens. In this way, fulfill the law of Christ. And this is, of course, right after the fruit of the

Spirit. And not just the fruit of the Spirit. I should probably say Galatians 5, verse 24, those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passion and desires.

Since we live by the Spirit, let us walk in step with the Spirit. Let us not be conceited, provoking, and envying one another.

And then the passage that I just read. And so I look at this and I think, well, if you want a ministry to homosexuals, people who struggle, let's say, with homosexual temptations, then

I could sort of see something fitting under this umbrella where those who are spiritual, in other words, those who are mature, who don't struggle with that, who have overcome that, can help other people overcome that as well.

But that doesn't, that's not the path that they're taking. And it seems like they're actually, the path they're taking is they want all the people who struggle, at least revoice

I'm thinking of, with same -sex attraction, some who don't seem to even struggle with it.

They just embrace it. But let's just give it the best charitable reading we can. Assume they all just struggle with this and want to be rid of it.

That's, those are the people that they're bringing into a room together. And they're all equally, they have this problem in some form equally.

There isn't someone who's spiritual there to restore. So the direction of the discipleship, if you will, seems to be, it's not an upward direction of like, let's climb out of this pit and then rejoice when someone has reached a level of victory.

It seems to me from my, from watching Revoice material and from reading it over the years that that's not the goal.

There's not really an end goal like that here. The end goal seems to be change the church, not change the individual to match what believers should be the ideal, but instead to change the church to accommodate this, this tendency to be attracted to those of the same sex in a romantic, physical or otherwise way.

So that's even different than like an Alcoholics Anonymous where, and I don't advocate for that, but at first it almost seems like it could be that where they're identifying with their temptation, you know, and AA does that, you know,

I'm an alcoholic. I disagree with that. That's not biblical, but, but AA at least is like, their attempt is like, and let's get you to where you're not drinking at all.

And that you're, and you leave eventually, you're not part of those meetings anymore. You're done with it.

And you're, you're a changed person. That's kind of the goal. I don't see that with Revoice. No, I mean, you're exactly right.

I mean, I've, I've noticed all of this, the same things that you've described there, this, this overall, you know, we, we're here to change the church, you know, when

I've, when I've shared, you know, I gave a response to, to Nate Collins and the whole Nashville statement thing.

And when I've shared that with some people, I've had some people say, well, you know, you know, we, we, we feel like, you know, there was something legitimate that Nate Collins was trying to initially say, you know, with his, you know, to, to be sympathetic towards him.

Like he was, he felt like, you know, the Nashville statement didn't really qualify, you know, some things very, very well.

And so there's been other better statements, you know, that have been released, you know, such as the, the PCA did a study committee on, on sexuality that came out the, the

Anglican church in North America did a statement, but, you know, I've seen all of the Side B guys really reject both of those things.

You know, even as in some ways, I feel like they're, they're not as clear as they could be on certain points and they make some accommodations even for Side B within their, their framework, that's a whole separate discussion, but, you know, they haven't embraced those as better, you know, quote unquote, pastoral tools, so to speak, because basically they want to be the ones to have, to lay down what the language is, how we define terms, what you can and can't say to, to somebody who says that they struggle with homosexuality or identifies

LGBT. They want to be the ones to define how we should minister to those.

So you can't point someone to some kind of counseling group that, that would help somebody, you know, overcome these things.

That's, that used to be the old ex -gay idea. You know, the ex -gay groups were, were based from people who felt like they saw that deficiency in the church.

They're like, pastors don't want to talk about this very much and they don't feel equipped, even the ones who do.

And so, you know, they were trying to, to find a way, you know, the good ones, at least,

I mean, there were some that were nefarious in their, in their purposes, but the good ones were always trying to help people work through these issues in a way that they felt like they weren't getting support from local churches and local ministries of the pastorate.

So, you know, it was trying to be a correction in some ways and just a place for that to happen. And so, you know,

Revoice in its, in its ideology and mentality is very much trying to set up basically if the, the word that keeps coming up to me is the safe space, you know, like the safe space idea.

Like we just need this space for us. You can't come in and speak into this because you don't know, you don't share our experience.

So we get to set up the parameters of the discussion and, and the, the, the language and what literature we're going to build from and what we're going to, so, so that we make sure that all of the people who identify in the same way that we do feel protected and don't feel shamed, you know, and can feel empathized with, you know, you hear a lot of that kind of counseling terminology come up from them when they talk about these things, you know, as if the, the way that we should define the, the pastorate is just basically a base level empathy, whatever you mean, whatever you mean by empathy, you know, there's a lot of stuff that gets attached to that terminology.

But anyway, I think you're right. You know, it is this, this thing that's setting itself up really as a, as a kind of a church within a church thing where like we, we are this group, you can't come in and we know our experience better than, you know, our experience and only we can define the parameters of that experience.

So when you speak about it, you're not qualified because you don't have that experience. Yeah. It's interesting because you wouldn't do this with like an ethnic group or at least it would look, it would be frowned upon.

Well, I think most people would frown upon it at least it, you know, if you tried to say we are, we're black or we're white or we're

Asian or we're, you know, and we, we have just such a unique experience. I guess social justice people are doing that to some extent, but it's still, they don't have like a revoice equivalent,

I think where it's like we get together and then we go back to our churches and kind of try to make them more accommodating to us.

But we get together in this annual meeting where we, we empathize with one another, kind of reassure each other.

We find a deeper fellowship supposedly. I don't see that in these other identity factors, but this identity factor, which is surrounding a sinful inclination seems to have this kind of glue that keeps them attached to one another and feeling a deeper sense of belonging there than they do maybe even at their home church perhaps.

And I don't want to speak for everyone who attends these conferences, but it, it, it's just the overall impression that I get.

The thing to me though, that is the most confusing to outsiders when they're trying to look at this is the distinction that's often made between attraction or temptation and really it's orientation,

I suppose. And then desire and lust and so that they can say that, well, as long, you know,

I don't lust after people of the same gender, but I, I do have a inclination towards them or something just, just like heterosexuals have an inclination towards women.

I have an inclination towards men if I'm a male and, and that's perfectly okay because it's not in this category of lust.

And so that's interesting to me because we do agree as Orthodox believers that people who are made in God's image designed by God have, should have an inclination towards those of the opposite sex where they should have a, there should be a desire naturally to want to get married and have children.

Right. Yeah. So that's what they're, they're putting their desires in that category.

And it's very hard to parse that out and to try to show people why that's wrong.

So could you help us with that? What, what is, what's the error there? Why can't we make that separation between let's say lust, desire and temptations and attractions?

Yeah. Yeah. Talk about this a little bit in the book. So the, the way that people typically, you know, even the word, when we use the word desire, we're, we usually are inferring something that feels a little more benign and morally neutral.

You know, like you could desire to have a car, you could desire to, to, you know, play a sport or you could desire whatever, you know, it's not inherently, there's not a moral, a moral issue there.

The issue comes, you know, when you were, you know, coveting something, or you were desiring for it beyond what, what you should, you know, you've made it into an idol, that kind of thing.

That's, and so people usually take that and they, they apply it to the situation of, of homosexuality and say, well, you know, we're not talking about lust.

So the way that the Revoice guys typically describe lust is lustful fantasizing.

Like they have a very specific and narrow definition of what it means to lust. And if you notice in some of their writing, they talk about same -sex sexual desire, you know, being wrong, but same -sex desire in itself is not wrong.

Now, what do you mean by same -sex desire as, as opposed to same -sex sexual desire?

That's where the murkiness comes in. Cause they don't always clearly define the difference there. But, you know, when, when a guy like Greg Johnson, who wrote a book called

Still Time to Care, he's a pastor in the PCA, actually, when he, in one of his when he was being inquired about, about some of these troubling positions that he held, even by his own presbytery, he was, he was questioned on this.

And he described it as his heart melting when a good looking man walked into the room as being an expression of this same -sex desire that he has.

Now, when he's saying same -sex desire and same -sex attraction, he just means like this moral neutral, this morally neutral, that doesn't always tend in good directions, but it's not inherently necessarily sinful.

It might be tied to original sin, but we can't repent of it because we can't repent of original sin.

It's like a disability, some of them say. Yeah. Disability is typically how it gets thrown out there. Coles, I think is his name.

He says that. Yeah. Gregory Coles talks about it. Wesley Hill talks about it. Nate Collins talks about it.

Yeah, they all have kind of this category of disability and disability theology, which is a whole mess of a, of a liberation theology kind of offshoot.

But, you know, when you talk about your heart melting, when you view, you know, a good looking man walk into the room.

Like if I were to describe, honestly, anybody as melting my heart when

I looked at them to my wife, you know, and then wanted to somehow justify myself and say, but I wasn't lusting.

Yeah. See how that goes for it. You know, because the other thing that you have to remember with this too, is it's not just lust.

It's also coveting, you know, and covetousness is desiring something that God has forbid you from having.

It's not, there's no way that you can have this because it's not yours to have.

It's not been granted to you, you know? So when you think of the 10 commandments, you know, obviously we recognize do not commit adultery and Christ, you know, and Matthew expands that out.

And we recognize that lustfulness can, can tie in with, with, you know, adultery.

So adultery of the heart, you know, so to speak, but, you know, in the 10th commandment that talks about covetousness, it, you know, mentions do not covet your neighbor's wife.

Now that's not describing, you know, necessarily sexual desire, but you're desiring this woman that does not belong to you.

Like she, she's your neighbor's wife. That is, that is not your, your ground to even desire or wish that, you know, she were yours or something, you know?

So even in a non -sexual way, you know, so when it comes down to this issue of lust and, you know, desire, temptation, you know, in the book, you know, there's a section where I break down the passage in, in Colossians chapter three.

And let me flip over to it because, you know, I wrote the book a while back.

I've already forgotten, you know, exactly how I worded things, but you know,

Probably Colossians 3 .5, I would think. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's it. Talks about passions and yeah,

I can pull it up. That's exactly right. Yeah. Passion, which is pathos, which the experience of strong desire, passion, a feeling which the mind suffers, an affection of the mind, emotion, passion, passionate desire, you know?

So, and that list there, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

So all of that together is something that, that the

Lord is telling us to put to death these earthly things. Right. So like, even if you feel like, well,

I haven't really crossed over a line into this lustful fantasizing, it's like, no, but you're, you're coveting something like that.

And all of these guys, you know, kind of have this covetous idea that just keeps coming out.

You know, like they wish, they wish they could go live, you know, the, the full reality of the homosexual lifestyle and all that that means, but they're

Christians. And so they can't. And so that means that they have to, they have to, they have to suffer and they have to kind of create alternate community within the church so that they can deal with this thing that God won't take away from them, but is their thorn in the flesh to suffer with.