Is the Church Pro-Gay?

Conversations That Matter

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00:11

Welcome to the conversations that matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, as always here.

00:17

It's a beautiful day in upstate New York. It is a cool day for the summer. It's a weird thing we've been having.

00:24

We've got summers that are cool and winters that are warm and springs and falls that don't know what they are.

00:31

But I'm happy. We've had a few hot days and now I'm ready for some cool weather. So cool is for me is like, you know, 69 is cool now for me.

00:40

But I don't know what it's like for Pastor Mathis. We have Pastor Mathis joining the podcast for the first time from Colorado Providence Church, OPC Church there.

00:50

How's the weather in Denver right now? Very nice. It got a little hot, but it's been 70s and 80s and nice shower last night.

00:59

You know, if you were a red state, I would highly be I would consider very strongly moving to Denver.

01:06

Yeah, that's what everyone said 20 years ago. Not at all out here. Unfortunately, it's not a bunch of John Harris's.

01:11

It's everyone else. I know. And I don't know what happened exactly. I mean, California happened.

01:17

But I remember, you know, as a kid watching the presidential elections and it seemed like the

01:22

Republicans carried Colorado up until what was it Obama that that flipped?

01:29

Yeah. Colorado is kind of interesting. We would vote Republican one way and Democrat another on president versus non -president positions and whatnot.

01:37

But yeah, Obama about flipped it. But since I came out of the military in early 90s,

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I came out here about 94, came back here to Colorado's where I grew up. And that's when I discovered everyone and their mom's trying to come to Colorado.

01:50

And apparently everyone, their mom from California for 25 years now. Yeah. Yeah. I was in Boulder last year.

01:55

I think it was. Yeah. I just thought, wow, OK, this is not the

02:01

Colorado I was expecting. And very California influenced in that region, at least.

02:07

But you do have a website. I should let everyone know. Pastor Mathis dot com. And I'm assuming not only are there social media links, but people can get in touch with you if they have questions or want to connect.

02:18

And you are in the OPC. When's the OPC having their annual meeting? The General Assembly should be coming up soon.

02:25

I think it's the week of the 17th. Doesn't sound like you're going. I am not going. I'm on vacation.

02:31

I'm going elsewhere. Oh, that sounds much better. Yeah, because right now the PCA is meeting the

02:36

SBC meeting. I know the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, I think, is meeting next week or something.

02:42

And so it's like everyone must be an agriculture thing. Like, you know, June is the month where everyone feels like, you know, we've planted the crops and we can go and be part of the meeting.

02:52

But all right. So, you know, we're not here to talk about the OPC, though, although that would be interesting. We I want to talk about your book that you published in January.

03:02

And I have a picture of it here. It's called Is the Church Pro Gay? This is the

03:08

Kindle edition, of course. It's also an audible and you can obviously get a print copy as well.

03:14

But this is endorsed by people like Rosaria Butterfield. And there was a recent article you probably saw on TruthScript about this and just summarizing kind of what it's about and stuff.

03:29

And, you know, I think we're going to get into the Audrey Hale stuff because that's kind of recent. But I want to ask you first, what sets your book apart?

03:37

Because there's been a number of books in the last year or two that have tried to approach this topic of homosexuality and transgenderism in the church, the normalization of these things.

03:51

And, of course, you write a book for a reason. You think you're saying something that other people are not saying.

03:56

So I'm assuming you think you had a unique perspective on this or something that others weren't saying. So what is it that you inspired you to write this?

04:06

Yeah, so I think what makes it stand out the most would be Chapter two. And then the application is drawn from that.

04:11

Chapter two is about the gay queer life. What I've run across in lectures and conferences and books, they don't really cover that.

04:20

It's just kind of assumed they're just heterosexuals that are a little weird. And it's nothing of the kind. It is a foreign world to us.

04:28

And then I point this out for the implications in the church when it comes to outreach, which will occur, of course, on the flip side.

04:36

Related to that, that means then they shouldn't be a target audience in the way that we typically think of other groups of people like target audiences.

04:44

Parachurches, unfortunately, think of them as some kind of, hey, we got to go after them. We got to have more gays in the church or something like that.

04:52

No. You want them saved. Yes. But these are such things, such serious matters, not unlike MS -13 or sex traffickers and the like.

05:02

You would treat them differently. You hope they can be saved. Maybe under good conditions, you can talk to them.

05:07

But ordinarily, you're not going to have good conditions with them. You're going to walk around and try to avoid them mostly and the like.

05:14

And it's pretty bad in the homosexual world. I haven't got that sense from pretty much anywhere else I've run across.

05:20

I just reviewed a long, I don't know if you saw it, but it was it was like a two hour podcast and it was it was a long kind of montage that I made from Cruz, six hours of LGBTQ training.

05:31

Yeah, I saw some of that. Yeah. One of the things that they do is they provide these positive examples of engaging with LGBTQ plus people or people who think of themselves in that way.

05:44

And they have at the end of the montage that I made towards the end of the training, there's a man who is on crew staff and says, yeah,

05:51

I just go to gay bars and I try to strike up conversations and he'll go for months on end when he's living somewhere and form these relationships and then hope that this transitions into sharing the gospel and then becoming

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Christians. And and so you're saying that quite the opposite of that. And that's a lot of red flags.

06:10

That's what I'm telling you, right? Yeah. And I think so, too. I wouldn't I wouldn't do that whether it was a gay bar or not.

06:17

That just isn't the way that I would approach it. But especially like, you know, I wouldn't go to a strip club and, you know, let's get the people in the strip club.

06:25

But I think there's this admiration that Christians have for that. They think it's bold.

06:30

They think, yeah, this is what Jesus did in reaching out to prostitutes and tax gatherers.

06:39

So maybe talk about that a little while you're saying quite the opposite. Why? It doesn't work that way in real life.

06:47

There's this long history in the American churches, the reform evangelical, that you do these amazing things and they have amazing results.

06:56

If anybody remembers, was it Richard Mueller 120 years ago and these amazing things would happen from prayer and whatnot or extraordinary acts of providence.

07:03

It doesn't. You're talking about George Mueller. George Mueller. Yeah, Richard George Mueller. Thank you. Yeah. Remember him from the charismatic days.

07:11

It does not. God doesn't work that way. And unfortunately, we don't hear what really happens on the ground.

07:18

We get a lot of fluff when you dig into it. In my own experience, the experience of many other officers in my interactions admit, yeah, you deal with drug addicts, you witness to alcoholics, but they have a high turnaround rate, a recidivism rate, it's called in social, sociology circles.

07:39

There's not a lot of, there's another way to put a lot of effort, a lot of dangerous effort, even, especially in the case of grooming male, homosexual people out there that yields very, very little fruit that any other situation like Japan right now, you're like, okay,

07:55

I have to commit resources and go somewhere else. You do. We have limited resources. People don't want to hear this in the churches and you have to go after what you can and witness to people.

08:04

And of course they come across your path. Gays come across our path in various and sundering ways. Let's preach the gospel to them. Amen. But they shouldn't be a target group any more than we should throw money to Japan right now.

08:13

They just, no one gets converted over there. Okay. God's call, not ours. So many questions, so many.

08:21

You mentioned George Buehler at first. And so I have to just clarify because I know people are going to think you're saying

08:29

God doesn't do miracles anymore. And of course he does, a conversion's a miracle. So God can provide in miraculous ways when we're in need.

08:38

And he can also convert homosexuals. You're not saying that those things aren't possible. Well, there certainly are possible.

08:43

There's a reason why Paul picked gays in chapter one of Romans. It is such a heinous sin.

08:50

And there's such hardness there that many of them do not convert, just cross the board.

08:58

Right. And there's a lot of sins that are probably, I mean, if you go into deeper depths of depravity and say that there's someone, when they get to that point, they've made so many decisions along the way to choose sin that they're lost.

09:13

And I think that maybe this is hard for Christians to comprehend because we're all lost and we're used to that language and we are, it's true, but you can get more lost, right?

09:23

Correct. So yeah, this is interesting to me because I don't know if I agree or not yet.

09:30

I do think that we do need to reach out to sinners and that's the only kind that God saves anyway.

09:36

But you're trying to say that there's certain demographics that are more responsive than others and that this is one demographic.

09:44

That's a historical fact. That's why I used the Japanese example. We've had missionaries there a very long time in the OPC, 10 or 12 years ago, interdicted.

09:52

That is they stopped officially supporting missionaries to Japan because you're throwing all this money, all this resource, all this time, and it's going nowhere.

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And you're like, but over here, they're more receptive. That's all we know providentially. We don't know God's secret reveal. The reveal things are to us,

10:07

Deuteronomy 29, not 29. None of this. Well, God could do, God could do it. Sure. Let God do it.

10:12

You're called to do what your duty is, which is people here, people who are responsive, et cetera, et cetera.

10:19

Duty is ours. Results are God's. That's how we should live. So if you look at the Middle East, let's say in the Persian community that seems to be having these dreams and, or at least that's what some of them are claiming, but there's, there seems to be a high rate of conversions happening in that part of the world.

10:32

That would be an area you'd say, uh, based on the initial results, it seems like a place to invest versus Japan where we've tried that.

10:41

And it doesn't seem like God's working there as much. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. I know what you mean by seeing, but it just, they literally aren't, it isn't happening.

10:50

What's Oh, in Japan, you mean the verb seem. And I would say it is not, it is no seeming about, I'm sure there's like one guy.

10:56

I mean, it's true. There's someone you can point to, to say that person. Yeah. But you know, common sense Christians are supposed to live in a common sense world.

11:03

The gospel comes, redeems us in the situation we find ourselves in, which is natural law, natural common sense.

11:10

We don't tell ourselves, Hey, we could convert that gangbanger. If I went there to New York city and a dark alley

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Friday night after midnight, I'm going to find that gangbanger and God can save him. He's made the image of God and he's going to convert them.

11:22

And God's going to use me somehow. No, you're going to get mugged, probably die. And your family's going to mourn for you. That's foolish.

11:28

Yeah. Well, if it's that, if that is the, uh, the normative, which I think David Platt kind of helped make that somewhat of a normative thing, at least in my generation,

11:38

I remember in seminary, my classmates thinking like the right thing to do is to pick up and move to the ghetto.

11:44

And, uh, and it's like, if you're trapped there, I get it. But like making the self -conscious decision to go from the suburbs to the ghetto and putting your family at risk in order to reach people that, yeah, that's something that you really want to be a hundred percent sure about.

11:58

This is certainly not a universal thing. All Christians need to do. Uh, David Platt doesn't even do it.

12:04

One of the things I've noticed is that right -wing young men, especially the other, the pagan, uh, and secular right -wing young men seem to me to be very open to Christian things and they are looked over, uh, you know, the sure.

12:22

And so maybe that would be a demographic that would be more likely to be responsive versus.

12:27

Yeah, I think so. I think so from what I've, I, what I've seen, I don't know as much about that, but that's been my sense as well.

12:34

Here we have a, these group of people who are socially conservative. I mean, if you're already socially conservative, relatively speaking, right.

12:40

Socially conservative compared to moderate or especially the leftist progressives, half the battles already dealt with.

12:47

Yeah. Half the offense is gone. They're like, we already have a lot in common. Paul went after the

12:52

Jews. He not only had a lot in common with them, he was biologically a Jew. That was his first thought. And then when the results weren't working, maybe your point, he said that at the end of, you know,

13:02

I'm going to go to the Gentiles. How do you guys. Yeah. Yeah. That's a really, you know, that's an intriguing thing to think about.

13:08

And I think we should probably should think about that more. I've noticed even regionally in the United States, there are certain areas that are less open.

13:16

I'm in one of them actually in New York. You can go and pour it's discouraging too. You can really pour your heart out and hand out tracks all day and try to spark up conversations.

13:28

And the, I have, I'm trying to even think if I've seen conversions that have been accomplished based upon that.

13:34

Not many. And, you know, you wonder, you know, we're supposed to evangelize. So I would never say to stop evangelizing, but maybe rethink where you're going, who you're going to, how you're going.

13:46

And there's other regions I've lived in that just seems so much more open. When I was in North Carolina, you know, even people who were not

13:52

Christian seem very open to talking about things of the Lord. And so that, yeah, something that maybe should be delved into more, but maybe we're getting away from your book and I don't want to do that because that's the point.

14:01

So you open the book with a discussion about Audrey Hale in the introduction here. And, and I just think that's interesting given the current news cycle that we're in right now regarding Audrey Hale.

14:14

Why did you start with, with Audrey Hale? I mean, first and foremost, an intro to a book wants to get people's attention.

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First it's the cover, then they go to the back, then they grab the first few pages, the intro there, the chapter one specifically here.

14:30

And I want to grab them by the shirt in their mind and say, pay attention.

14:36

This is serious stuff that's going down here. And it's not the only story. Although I spend the first five pages,

14:42

I go off to the Orkberg scandal with his son, the famous pastor, John Orkberg and his pedophilic homosexual son that he covered for for a number of years, apparently, and weave them together to show these are the things the church is facing right now, these problems.

14:59

So with the developments that have taken place, it seems like you're kind of vindicated in your initial assessment of Audrey Hale's motivations.

15:08

I am definitely, yeah, that has been vindicated a twofold. There was another incident.

15:14

I think it was Christ Presbyterian Academy or something like that, where there's a cyber stalking, who's going to go after them, the woman trying to pretend to be a man, the

15:23

FBI took her out before it happened. That was another PCA school in Nashville a year later.

15:29

Oh, I hadn't really read about that. There's so many incidents and they don't always get reported or at least, you know, mainstream.

15:36

Yeah. So, you know, this is what do you think this is illustrative of, though?

15:42

The fact that, you know, in Christian schools, you have people, you know, essentially students who should know better that are choosing to go down these paths to think that they're men when they're women or women when they're men.

15:56

And then in the case of Audrey Hale to build up all this resentment and commit an act of violence because of the resentment that they have towards the church.

16:09

It is happening. They already have hate. They're unbelievers, unfortunately, in many of these cases, and they get groomed.

16:17

I think the younger ones, especially get groomed. Someone comes along and convinces them. Usually in the school, we've seen it over and over again.

16:23

I think you're probably pretty aware and the audience is aware how bad the schools are with respect to the sex, gender issues and what they're shoving down their throats.

16:32

And the kids start believing this stuff. And with Hale, it went even further. Of course, it coalesced with white hate.

16:37

She called herself white nothingness many times in her journal. This is the Tennessee Star. So the listeners can go to that.

16:43

They they've they've broken the news. They've got 80 pages of her journal and that's not everything. Yeah. Oh yeah.

16:49

The churches and the schools need to be prepared for this. Christian schools tend to have more trouble students because the trouble students in the public schools, the parents can afford it are like, hey, we're going to take them to a

16:58

Christian school that'll fix them up. And the Christian school, if they have a misunderstanding and don't appreciate and know the depths of the problems of the queer community, specifically here, transgender, they are completely unprepared and they don't know how to handle these things.

17:13

And what they need to do may be along the lines of what we used to call tough love. Yeah. And they want to be winsome and water it down and turn a blind eye and to say, well, just kind of like us a little different.

17:25

She was very unstable. This community is very unstable, very depressive because of their own wicked lifestyle choices.

17:32

It's just a feedback loop that makes it worse and worse until they blow up in this case with the transgender. What do you think about the

17:38

ERLC's response to this with Brent Leatherwood trying to cover up the manifesto? You know, people have wondered and speculated that why they're doing this.

17:48

Is it because they don't want Christians to hate people who think they're trans? What do you think's going on there?

17:54

Why Christians are reacting in such an odd way? Yeah, there, it could be other things they're trying to cover for.

18:01

They don't want the people to find out what was happening. She was there at covenant, what, sixth, fifth or sixth grade, 10, 11, 12 years old.

18:09

And she was under therapeutic treatment then. So while going to, we just found out going to covenant, maybe the school knew about it and they didn't know about it.

18:18

We don't know. These are things we need to find out because again, it almost happened a second time in another PCA church in Nashville a year later.

18:26

Yeah. Something's going on. Two points already make a line. We're going to get a third one. I'm sure eventually.

18:32

I don't know why it can't be talked about. Leatherwood is a scandal. The whole thing is, well, it could, yeah, it could be protecting the school or, you know, something.

18:40

It seems like there's some odd interest he has in covering this up. So you say, uh, in the book on page 149, that, um, you want to, well,

18:53

I'm not going in sequential order necessarily, but you say, I want to stress the need to teach this doctrine, specifically applying it in your book.

19:01

You're talking about mortifications, the sinfulness of the gay life. Mortification must be taught vigorously. That includes the wickedness of homosexual attraction.

19:09

It is not enough for pastors and church leaders to affirm opposition, informal statements.

19:14

They must preach and write against it. Otherwise their congregations will be left to open danger. And this is, I think, uh, important because you have a lot of churches that we would think of as very orthodox on this, and maybe they've even added doctrinal statements, but you're saying that's enough.

19:29

So what paint us a picture? What's enough? Well, part of that is what

19:34

I point out in my book, maybe in a Sunday school class, they spend a little time. If that particular topic comes up as they may, they're made, they're going to meet somebody at the fast food restaurant in their neighborhood.

19:44

Who's gay. And they're going to be very nice and be very pleasant, but the gay lifestyle is very dangerous, not just sexually, but even physically, they have high rates of interpersonal assaults and whatnot, and they need to explain it to them more or less.

20:00

Probably not appropriate in a sermon, but the closest you would get, we were Romans one, of course, preaching through that.

20:06

And what you can highlight there of the depth of the depravity is the hardness of their heart. Now Christ can overcome that, but the hardness means practically for us, you got to be wary of them.

20:18

Like you'd be of a mass murderer. We all know the extreme situations, which unfortunately are becoming smaller and smaller now, because we've normalized these things.

20:25

A pedophile. You're like, I'm going to treat the pedophile a little, they're sure they're converted, but in the church, you still keep them away from kids.

20:31

Just like an ex -drunk, you keep them away from the wine. This is what we should be doing, even if they're not,

20:37

I don't know. But I think a lot of people on the ground understand these things. People in the pew are like, yeah, it's going to be a little different because it takes time for us to understand where you are.

20:44

We don't really know a lot of people. We don't even live in the same neighborhood. And it's naive and foolish to say, oh, you've been here for a year.

20:50

We're going to pretend like nothing ever happened. So let me ask you this because I know there's going to be perhaps a strong reaction to viewing them like a mass murderer.

21:03

And I could understand why. And I think the reason is, is I can think of people in my own life that took gradual steps to get where they are.

21:14

And you think of a child or a minor who's thinking through their identity and at a stage in life where I think we all have, we're going through puberty.

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We all have issues with our identity and our self -image and all these things where all these changes are happening. They have a voice come to them and say, actually, maybe you're a girl and maybe you're in the wrong.

21:36

You're not actually a guy, you're a girl, or maybe you're gay. And I think during that stage, especially, that is when you have all these changes and there's insecurities and all the rest, that can be appealing to some children or minors.

21:52

And so the moment that someone starts questioning these things that God has established, obviously they're in sin, obviously this is evil, but I wouldn't call them a mass murder at that point.

22:04

And I think that's maybe where some of these pastors who teach we need to normalize these conditions in the church, they're relying on that.

22:14

They're relying on us to see those situations and those who are unstable, we have compassion for them, but to then sort of take that and make that everyone who's in the, people who are at gay bars dressed in leather, marching in gay pride parades.

22:33

And they're not maybe quite the same thing. So can you parse that out a little bit and where we can have compassion and where we should be gentle, where we should be harsher?

22:43

Yeah, certainly. That's certainly the case. You're going to have a gradation, right? Entry point into this wicked lifestyle.

22:50

There you have, providentially speaking, I speak as a man, a better opportunity to pull them back from the brink of disaster.

22:58

But when they have hardened themselves 20, 30 years into the gay lifestyle, it becomes a lot harder.

23:04

And the warning lights are going a lot brighter and a lot louder. And you need to put up more walls between them and people like other kids, for example, it's pedophilia, a lot higher amongst the homosexual population.

23:15

The numbers are showing it for decades. Nobody wants to talk about it because then they play the game. Well, you're saying we're all pedophiles.

23:21

I'm not saying you're all pedophiles anymore than I'm saying every biker out there is mean and going to beat you up.

23:27

But if I'm walking down the street and I see a bus stop over there and one has a bunch of ballerinas and the other one has a bunch of Harley Davidson guys, which one am

23:39

I going to go to? Because I don't know the particulars. I only know the generals. I have to make a particular conclusion based on general probability, which is it's going to be safer amongst the first crowd.

23:50

Yeah. I mean, that analogy might have made sense 10 years ago, but now the ballerinas might be guys and the bikers might be

23:56

Trump supporters. I know, I know. No, I get what you're saying though. Yeah, no, that's a good point.

24:01

And so I think the emphasis that you're bringing, which is different, is this protection that we should view this group of people in a suspicious way and protect ourselves and our children, especially from their influence, which means building a barricade.

24:17

It doesn't mean that they cannot, like Jesus welcomed sinners into who were repentant to eat with him.

24:25

It doesn't mean we can't do that, but it does mean that we're not going to cater to these people.

24:31

We're not going to leave them unsupervised around our children or make them the heads of our children's ministries or things like that.

24:39

But they do. Yeah. And that's what happens. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even, yeah, it's for sins.

24:48

We talk about this. We're kind of like, yeah, this is true. I struggle for the rest of my life. I'm especially neurotic.

24:54

I had these problems growing up on my family and under certain circumstances or around dogs or something. I'm always nervous.

25:00

I'm 55 years old. I'm still struggling with these things. We're all like, oh, we all understand. And yeah, there's going to be a struggle and we're going to adjust things so that the temptation in your case is alleviated.

25:10

Well, the temptation for gay men are younger people, younger men, younger boys, even.

25:17

Yeah. Yeah. That I know I've seen some stats on that. And so tell me what

25:23

Christian ministries then I know for this audience, perhaps some of this might be familiar, but like which ones are compromised on this and just pushing the needle in the wrong direction, trying to normalize homosexuality or like you said in chapter two, this this queer culture, it's not necessarily full fledged homosexuality, but it's this acceptance of this supposed cult.

25:48

It's not even real culture, but the style, this aesthetic that will then be the spoonful of sugar to help someone fully embrace homosexuality down the road.

25:58

You mean side B? They call it side B? Yeah. I mean, like there's so many ministries that are put,

26:05

Cruz, obviously the latest example, but. Yeah. I almost put Cruz in the book. I had so much stuff and that was just starting up then.

26:12

Cruz, the Cruz stuff was starting to get really bad at the time. Well, living out is one of the most people haven't heard these ministries,

26:18

I don't think. Maybe Sprinkle now, Preston Sprinkle has been moving around more on social media. His group there, the

26:25

Center for Faith, Gender and Sexuality, I think it is. He's teaching all kinds of dangerous, whacked out stuff.

26:33

He's okay with two lesbians living together as long as they're just hugging and not kissing, that kind of garbage.

26:41

These ministries. Now, the ones people have heard about, such as the Gospel Coalition, TGC, had someone,

26:48

Sam Albury, as an editor there and has written a number of articles there. He may still be writing there.

26:53

He's from living out. He doesn't have a problem. He doesn't think same attraction as such is a sin. When he was asked in a conference once, if you could lose it and God could take it away from you, would you let him?

27:06

He was struggling with the answer. He was struggling with saying, yeah, it shouldn't be a struggle.

27:12

A drunkard says, God, take it away from me. A homosexual would say, God, take it away from me. It's not complicated.

27:17

Once they start hemming and hawing, there's a problem. Yeah. I think I've seen that clip.

27:22

It was from a few years ago, if I'm not mistaken. I think Sam Albury and even

27:28

Preston Sprinkle seem very defensive when you start saying these things, I've noticed, because they've both gone after guys like Jared Moore, you know, online when he starts going down the road of concupiscence and you guys justify this desire in you.

27:43

And they're just like ready to read him all their orthodox statements about marriage.

27:49

We believe marriage is between one man and one woman. We believe there's only two genders. Right. And I think for most churches, that's enough.

27:56

You just say that. And they think, well, you're not compromised. You're a conservative like us, but, but they're not. And that's what you're saying there.

28:02

They are compromised. They're just maybe they're, they're, you know, some of the previous steps that it would take to get to those positions.

28:10

They're bringing those or ushering those in. Yeah. That's why I spend time in one of my later chapters, five or six explaining the law of God and how to apply it.

28:20

One of the games they play is, there's nothing in the Bible that tells you you're supposed to be straight. Yeah. And it also doesn't say much about the difference between men and women in particulars, nor adulthood or childhood.

28:31

So you can marry a child and what's going on here. What kind of game are you trying to play? There's a thing called natural revelation.

28:37

The law of God is written on our hearts and the Bible is not a manual in that sense and assumes a number of common principles.

28:44

And that's one of them that we are created to be straight man and woman, Adam and Eve were brought together, not

28:50

Adam and Steve, as I used to say, and that really means something right now. And I unpacked the implications of that and how to apply

28:57

God's law. They don't want to mess with that at all. Alberry blocked me a long time ago. Oh, did he? Okay. So I guess you've gotten the same response as Jared Moore.

29:05

So is God anti -gay? You have a whole chapter on it. And I think maybe that's the dividing line. A lot of these guys would say, no, of course not.

29:13

He accepts everyone where they're at. And you say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

29:21

A thousand times. No, that's a, that's a terrible Alberry again, did that in his book. His book is

29:27

God anti -gay. That was the title back in 2015. His answer is no. He literally says no.

29:34

And then he continues on to play this kind of verbal game. Well, God's kind of against what we all are by nature. Well, then the answer should have been, yes.

29:40

Right. What are you trying to get at here? We find out later, of course, that he denies the same sex attraction as such is morally culpable.

29:48

I've never said this on publicly, but I've had this, I've wondered this many times, whether or not some of these organizations like the

29:57

Gospel Coalition, like even perhaps Desiring God, I'm trying to think of like some of the major T4G, some of these organizations that have brought in people like Sam Alberry or Preston Sprinkle or other like side

30:10

B proponents, whether they are engaged in taking advantage of mentally unstable people, you know, like you, you look at a

30:19

Sam Alberry or a Preston Sprinkle, Preston Sprinkle, maybe not as much. I think he knows what he's doing. He's, he's kind of, it seems to me from the limited, well, it's not that limited.

30:29

I watched hours of him in that crew thing. It seems like he knows what he's doing, but, but guys like Sam Alberry or Rebecca McLaughlin who experience what they're teaching on, they, they just don't seem like stable people to me.

30:43

Like they got a lot of hangups, a lot of insecurities, and now you're putting them on a stage in a very vulnerable position.

30:50

I just don't think that's right from, from a passionate standpoint. That's a good, that's a good observation.

30:57

It's implied in my book. I point out they have their kitchen floor moments. Ed Shaw, one of Alberry's buddies has a book and he's part of the organization

31:05

Side B and all that. And, and he describes it that way. Alberry admits it, that kind of, not that same language, but they struggle with depression more or less.

31:13

They're not, they don't use the word, that's exactly what it is. It's one of the comorbidities of this group. They just suffer two to three times more than a typical person.

31:21

Yeah. Yeah. And you, and you look at Alberry when he's sharing his story and he's saying how, you know, what's it like to never, to know that you have to give up the dream of having a family and getting married.

31:32

And, you know, and you look at him and he's depressed. He's, you know, you're like, get the guy off the stage, man.

31:39

Like he needs help. Get him in the, get, get some counseling, some real compassion here. Us or them.

31:45

Right. Right. We have more compassion. I think so. I think so. And they make these people experts simply because they have this experience.

31:55

Correct. That is a big, I, oh, it drives me up the wall. You know it. I'm sure you've seen it. A lot of our viewers recognize this big problem in the churches, even reformed churches, because there were some reformed men who endorsed that book, for example,

32:07

Alberry's book. You're like, why? It's like, they want this token guy. Look, we got a gay guy. He converted. He's kind of talking like he's reformed a conservative.

32:14

Nothing of the kind. Yeah. We do that with a lot of stuff, unfortunately. I think we do that on the racial lines.

32:20

We do that on gender lines. Like if we can find someone who's not a white male to say the same thing, we'll all kind of back up behind them.

32:27

And I, you know, I grew up charismatic and that was one of the things. Let's get these great stories. He used to be a drug addict and he used to be a hell's angel guy and he converted.

32:35

Look how wonderful he is. What happened to the stories of this guy grew up in the Christian church. He was baptized and he never strayed.

32:42

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with you.

32:47

And I think moving forward, especially if, as we said at the beginning, and I don't have stats on this, this is more just me observing, but young, young men seem to be a lot more open to Christian.

33:00

I'm seeing this in my own church, people showing up out of nowhere, you know, no one witnessed to them.

33:05

They just like, I just feel like I should, something's missing. I need to be here. Right. I think that putting that guy in front of them, the drug addict or whoever who's converted, that does not do as much as here's the guy who actually, this is the model.

33:20

This is what you want. He grew up, received Christ, lived a fairly clean life. That's what they're looking for.

33:27

That's the stability that they're missing in their own lives. And the more that we platform instability, which is what this is,

33:33

I think the more unstable we look as a whole, because we're saying these are our leaders. These are our examples.

33:39

They're doing it better than all of the rest of us. And that's just not true. And so, yeah, yeah.

33:46

Good, good points. What do you, what do you say to pastors who are, let me give you a few scenarios.

33:53

Okay. So a pastor who has in his congregation visitor or visitors who are coming, who are homosexual, at least that's, that's where they're coming from, but they're curious about the church.

34:08

What do you, what does the pastor do with that? Well, obviously you can sit down and talk with them.

34:13

Presumably in this case, they, they're telling you they're, they're gay. Yeah. Yeah. And you make the stance known about what you teach and the call of repentance in that regard, maybe over lunch or dinner or something like that.

34:25

I have met gays. I've had them come to my church. It's not like I have no experience in this regard.

34:30

You're in Colorado. I figured. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So it's one sense.

34:38

You don't do anything different. The difference is if you're well instructed, I'd be happy to just sell chapter two for my book.

34:46

You know, read that and understand what you're dealing with in this regard. You can help them better if you know where they're coming from.

34:53

We all know this. You can help them avoid temptations and struggles. So I have run across talking and sat down at lunch with a homosexual guy.

35:03

He was asking some questions and I didn't know much at the time. I was just beginning to write my book and unfortunately I didn't give the best advice, which was go back to your ex gay group and maybe they can help you.

35:12

That's not my advice anymore. You don't want gays hanging out with gays, gay men, especially. Oh no, no.

35:17

That's a recipe for disaster. Yes. They did that at Liberty university a few years ago. Oh, I didn't know that.

35:23

Well, a few years before that I was a student there, they had a group, an accountability group and it turned into a gay hookup group and I know a guy, you know, like basically his son, you know, got involved with that and uh, it was just, they had to disband the whole thing.

35:40

So yeah. So, so that being said, um, what about someone who struggles and I do mean struggles, like they don't want these desires, uh, they're fighting them like, like a heterosexual man, you know, who, uh, is struggling with pornography or something like they don't want to do it, but there's times they fall to it or they, they, the desires just kind of come up and they're attending your church.

36:06

Maybe they've grown up there and through whatever course of life, whether it's experiences or, um,

36:14

I think usually it is experiences. I don't, I mean, some people tell me this just wells up within them, but I have my doubts because of Romans one,

36:20

I don't know that I don't, but, but whether regardless of where the source of this is, they have it, what do you do to counsel them?

36:30

Well, a lot of the counseling, again, is very similar to what you do with other problems, which is you identify what the sin is in particular, identify what triggers it, the, the, the circumstances of the temptation, particular attractions and the like, um, and then do what you can to avoid accountability.

36:47

And that regard is important, you know, talking with them, which, which becomes a bigger stress upon a lot of churches as a lot of the churches are struggling themselves, especially in bad places like Denver where it's becoming so expensive, people are leaving and the churches are getting smaller.

37:01

We don't have a lot of resources to more or less, uh, be someone's accountability partner all the time. And that's one of the struggles we're going to find in the future.

37:09

That is such a good point. Um, Oh man, I was just thinking about this the other day because we're in social breakdown and that's affecting everyone.

37:17

It's affecting me. Uh, and yeah, I don't, I guess I don't mind saying this publicly, like the social breakdown that's happening in, um, in, in my own, uh, my own family, essentially like that takes my time.

37:31

It takes it away from other things that I could be doing that are productive at times. And I'm not the only one in that situation.

37:37

And so, you know, church ministries, I think end up getting downsized as this happens in people's families because your priority is your family.

37:45

And, and so we were just, I was just talking to someone on Sunday about the church I attend. And like this,

37:51

I was telling, I remember the nineties, right? I remember one that long ago, but I remember, you know, people were dressed nice.

37:58

They came to church. We sang hymns. Uh, families were generally stable. We were constantly doing hospitality and it was really rich.

38:07

It was great. You know, we were in each other's homes and now, you know, hospitality doesn't happen as much.

38:12

And people have these family obligations that they didn't. And you know, my ex wife, sisters, you know, whatever, like relative brother -in -law's living with us because he was doing drugs and he's, you know, like there's all these complex factors.

38:27

And for a pastor, especially of a small church, you can't be everyone's accountability, but buddy, you can't counsel all the marriages that are dissolving, like, and you have to protect yourself too.

38:39

Like you, you have to take vacations, you have to rest. Um, so yeah, I'm glad you said that because this problem is growing and it's like,

38:48

I don't know that the church has the resources to be able to fully deal with. We're not even talking about it.

38:54

Yeah. In my experience, I'm not even talking about it. Just us on social media are a little, we're trying to expand it, of course, and thankful for that.

39:00

But yeah, it's like, where's the conference? Where's the people? Hey, let's, let's deal with this. And the SBC, the

39:05

NAPAR churches or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, the conferences ended up being what we were just talking about was like there's not actually a way to approach and deal with it.

39:15

So, um, so you have to assess your own time, but then, I mean, some people say like, treat it like any other sin.

39:23

Do you treat it like any other sin? Not thoroughly. I said, it's similar to many ways

39:28

I have my qualifiers. And one of the things you end up probably doing is could be an anklet, you know, a tracker

39:36

Johnson. If you remember, uh, ex PCA pastor, Greg Johnson, the gay pastor there.

39:41

Right. He was one of the first speakers at the first revoice. He was a speaker at the first revoice.

39:47

People forget about that. He was already telling us he was out without telling us he was out. He gives a story about the guy with a tracker on his ankle because he's so sexually compulsive.

39:58

Just, I got to find a gay guy somewhere in public and copulate. And that kind of,

40:06

I mean, church wanted, I mean, that sounds crazy, but that's exactly what happens. You can have computer tracking, right?

40:14

You lock down the computer, you take their phones from them. You know, you have to do that with teenagers, perhaps, like you said, heterosexuals, there's, there was heterosexuals that are sexual compulsive as well.

40:24

Although again, it's orders of magnitude worse with a gay comparing compulsive compulsivity with compulsivity.

40:32

You got to lock down a computer and take their phone from them. Sometimes you got to treat them like kids. If that's just one of their problems, people don't want to hear that.

40:37

People don't like that. They don't want to go to church that takes that seriously. They want to, they want you to take it a little less seriously. Yeah. Johnson, for example, wants to take it a lot less seriously.

40:46

Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I think limiting the choices of people who cannot make good choices is a necessity and, you know, sooner or later, uh, probably sooner rather than later, uh, the government is going to really clamp down,

41:02

I think, on more and more things in our own lives, simply because not just this issue, but there's such a social breakdown.

41:09

And when you don't have families, you're going to have more crime and that's going to need a response because the ordinary citizens who are living in a decent way need to be protected.

41:19

Um, and so, yeah, the same principle, I guess we go into the church, uh, pastors, you know, it seems like a horrible thing to take someone's smartphone or their computer, but that might be what you need to do and just say, look, you know,

41:31

I'm not counseling you unless you get rid of those first. Yeah. We can't make them do it. That's the first thing.

41:37

Right. But they need to know what they're getting into. If they come into our churches and saying, I have this problem and they're going to probably not tell you the extent of the problem.

41:45

Porn is almost always involved. And again, I have chapter three, celibate gay is the way we're side

41:50

B and all very, uh, Wesley Hill hints at it. They don't tell you outright because they don't gonna tell you the whole lifestyle.

41:55

If they even know about it. I think someone like Aubrey is pretty naive about it. Uh, but Hill's like, well, you know, they're, they're looking at your website, your web pages and what you've been browsing through when you feel depressed again.

42:05

I'm like, what's he talking about? Well, I know what he's talking about. Gay porn. Yeah. Johnson admitted to gay porn.

42:10

Remember that Greg Johnson. He was interviewed by Moscow group, the round table on politics, cross politic.

42:19

Oh yeah. Or so. And they were asking him questions. He came out gay that February and he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:25

And he said, I'm, I have a gay, I have a porn addiction is the word he used. I have a porn addiction. He didn't tell you it was gay porn addiction.

42:32

We all know he's gay. It had to be gay porn addiction. Right, right, right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that I don't have stats on it in front of me, but I think that's probably the on -ramp is that it's porn and it goes,

42:46

I mean, there's some guys though. And I know I'll get guys probably watching this interview because I had guys in the past who say, look,

42:52

I was raised in a Christian home and then 12 years old, things start changing.

42:58

And I never, just never liked girls. I always liked guys and I'm a guy and I don't know what to do. I don't know how to categorize that or what to do.

43:05

I know the answer, but, uh, but this seems to factor very prominently in their stories because it kind of gives them a reason for, um,

43:14

I guess having less shame or like, you know, they didn't do anything to choose this.

43:20

It's unchosen. You hear that word a lot, unchosen desires. And so who did it come from? Was it from God?

43:25

Then God obviously didn't give you these desires. So, um, I don't know. It gives them some kind of a comfort though, that I don't think that they should have.

43:34

So this is, this is the awkward. It's awkward because socially we're always taught you got to take someone at their word.

43:41

If you deny it, you're the mean guy. And how dare you undermine their story?

43:46

It's their story, not yours. Right? Again, the studies show chap, you know, chapter two, it's a gay life in my book.

43:54

Uh, and then I have an appendix on it. The social science studies, even more stuff that I haven't directly referenced.

44:01

And we're talking 30 to 40 % admits how many more are hiding about it, that they were molested gay men.

44:08

So it seems very strong. The evidence seems very strong to me anyways, that, um, that more often than not they've been molested.

44:15

There's something else going on in the background and you can't help them if they're not going to even admit that. Yeah. There's a biological component to this, isn't there?

44:23

Like if you, there's no biological component at all. The last study I saw, they're like, we can't find anything.

44:29

Well, I didn't mean like a DNA thing where you have a gay gene. I'm talking about like, if you had a molestation experience.

44:36

Oh, okay. Sure. And there's a biological component in that. Now you associate orgasm with that experience you had.

44:43

And it's kind of like ingrained in your mind. And, um, and some guys, I've seen comments that like they want to treat it as strictly biological.

44:53

And then, and then unfortunately, sometimes the, uh, the remedy that is proposed is like, well, look at straight porn now.

45:01

And then you'll write, write that. And, but that, it seems logical to someone who thinks this is purely biological and you just need to.

45:08

So, um, what do you, do you have anything to say about that biological element there that there is a damage in your background and you have, you have brain channels,

45:19

I guess, for lack of a better term that have now made these connections that shouldn't be there. Does that change the way you deal with it?

45:26

Yeah. For one thing that we can talk about that is important. Uh, the, the problem we've had in my experience anyways, as a pastor, uh, in Christian circles, some evangelicals reformed as we forget how much we are biological creatures.

45:40

And it's not just, Hey, just by sheer force of will, I can just overcome what it means to be a man or a woman.

45:46

It's not how it works. Testosterone is a real thing. It has real effects on men. That's why they're taught when they're really young.

45:52

The best of the families teach them when they're really young before they even get testosterone, they have self -control control yourself, young boy, right?

45:58

Right. Because when testosterone comes, it's going to be even harder to control yourself. And it's different for women.

46:04

And so the experience that we have that this conversion, I use the air quotes and they get molested and they're assaulted this way.

46:10

And it seems really weird to us of only because I think we don't realize that biological connection, like you said, the neural pathways, we don't know a lot about this.

46:17

That wasn't the focus of my book. Obviously. Um, I have again, some references in the appendix on these things.

46:23

But yeah, men seem to learn more by example and experience than words show me, lead me, and I will do these things.

46:30

And unfortunately again, when they're young like that and it can mess them up. So secondly, this can be a long standing, they can be converted because conversion is salvation of sinners.

46:39

It doesn't make them perfect. That perfection doesn't come till heaven. And they can struggle this for the rest of their life.

46:45

And the church is going to be unprepared if we're telling them, Oh, we're born again. All your problems disappear.

46:51

Biological effects, consequences of sin, even upon you. Oh, just disappears all of a sudden. When you're a

46:57

Christian reform, people teach this stuff. They don't say it that way, but it's implied in the way they're talking. No, it will be a struggle and it'll be hard.

47:05

As I point out, it brings us back to, you're going to have to have an accountability partner. Probably. Yeah. And in some cases though, it's not the rest of your life.

47:14

And that, I mean, that's what we should be looking for is that there's an end to this, even on this side of heaven that, that Christ in mortification, you talk about this, that Christ takes this.

47:24

Let me give you another scenario. So someone is in your church and they are, you know, they think they're transgender and they show up dressed as the opposite gender of what they actually are.

47:38

And this is a question that I know churches are gonna have to navigate more. I've wondered on a

47:43

Sunday morning, if that happened, what do you do from the pulpit? Do you, do you call it out?

47:48

Do you afterward have a private conversation? I mean, do you bar that person from coming? Because if you do, you could have a lawsuit on your hands.

47:56

Yeah. See, this is kind of interesting, isn't it? And so that's the advantage that the side B and the winsome lights, like what's a

48:03

Gere Greer, like to talk about God whispers about these things is they don't want to make a stand.

48:09

They don't want to push back. They want to avoid all these problems. It seems to me, but we can't, we have to look at face on.

48:16

That's part of what it means to be church leadership and not blink. The scenario you give is interesting as the other ones we're in so far as this one, they're theoretical to when they're real and practical,

48:28

I think, and in my limited experience and what I've researched and the like, and the logical inferences thereof is that if they're coming, it could be an accident.

48:39

They're looking for another church or they're looking for trouble. They're not going to find, they're not looking for conservative churches.

48:46

They just simply aren't. They show all over and over again. They don't care about us. The fact that hate us, they rather have liberal churches because they let them do whatever they want to do.

48:54

And so if they do show up in those cases, I'm more inclined to the second one, which is they're looking for trouble. It could be a street prostitute or whatever.

49:02

And so under those particular concrete situations, so you have more details to your scenario, sure they can come in and you can have an open door, but if you're armed and equipped with my book, another plug, right?

49:14

You pay attention, you watch them and hopefully you have somebody who's big and strong and he can keep an eye on them if something gets out of hand because these people, especially trannies are unstable.

49:26

They're unpredictable in many regards. Yeah. All right. So last,

49:32

I guess, question then regarding your book. So how do you want the book to be used?

49:37

Do you want this used in small group studies? Do you want pastors to read it? And then what do you want people to do once they read it?

49:44

Yes. I don't care how they read it. Okay. Especially the leadership needs to read it because they're the ones who are the gatekeepers and set the expectations and set the policies of the churches and the presbyteries and the general assemblies.

49:56

The OPC, for example, a few years ago, somebody, a couple of people tried to get grace. If you recall, um, um, to bit of it,

50:04

I can't ever pronounce that name. Boaz, Boaz, Boaz, Oh, Davidian, Davidian, Davidian.

50:09

Yeah. Okay. Uh, his organization, their grace. I can't, Oh, right, right. Yeah. I know he was involved with the stuff too.

50:17

Yeah. Oh yeah. That's right. I know who you're talking to. I that's how I know him. You know, from that, that group is not going to give you what

50:24

I gave you about the facts. Yeah. Okay. And they're going to come along and say, we're the experts. We're going to help you avoid sexual problems that of course they usually mean heterosexual problems.

50:33

And they kind of turn a blind eye to pay attention to their stuff. And I have researched them in that regard. They turn kind of a blind eye to the homosexual thing.

50:40

He gave a quote about the predatory actions of pedophiles, for example. And he didn't give you the rest of the quote.

50:47

I have the book in which it's again, order of magnitude greater amongst gays. Uh, so that's why this book and this stuff has to come out.

50:57

The churches are playing with fire in this regard. People have endorsed these books. Like I said, Albury's book, even in a park churches and the like, and don't realize what they're dealing with in this regard by letting down their guard, uh, to this community, which they would not let their guard down to mention mass murderers.

51:15

It doesn't have to be mass murder. It's just other things that we have a high creep value. Like something's wrong here.

51:20

Like going to that, that, that, that dark alley in New York city. We know something's wrong here. It doesn't have to be a dark alley either.

51:26

There's something wrong with this group. And I give the evidence there's something wrong here. This is a warning for the church and also an encouragement of how to be a

51:33

God affirming church to stand firm against the temptation and the walls of the devil and the tsunami of pressure upon us to declare

51:41

God whispers about homosexuality. It is nothing of the kind. It is a gross, heinous sin beyond most other, not all other, most other sexual deviations.

51:52

In fact, all kinds of sexual deviations built into that system. In fact, and God has given us his word to protect us and protect our children and strengthen them, that they may grow and stand firm against the world of flesh and the devil.

52:05

And this louding, especially this month where they're just shouting it from the rooftop everywhere. Our kids are going to run across this and this book, especially

52:12

I hope at the end will help encourage them. You want to be a pro God church, not a pro gay church. You don't want to be soft on sin.

52:19

And those who are converted and they do convert will be like the drunkard will be like other sinners who say,

52:25

I want to hear it preached clearly and fully. I don't want you watering down about the sin I'm fleeing from and fighting against, because if you do,

52:33

I'll find another church. That's when you know, these people are serious about fighting this sin. And I see the opposite over and over again.

52:41

I saw the opposite with Tim Keller, unfortunately, and the TGC in them. They just don't seem to get it.

52:47

Yeah, that's an understatement. Well, PastorMathis .com is the website, Providence Church OPC in Denver, Colorado.

52:54

And on Twitter. What's your Twitter handle? SeanMathis1972.

53:00

Is that the year you were born? Yeah. Okay. All right. So check PastorMathis out on Twitter and we'll go from there.