Finally, we talk about sexuality, the queer community, and why we're affirming.
This is a very personal episode (as much as it can be for a couple of straight white dudes). In this episode, we chat about where we came from, where we are now, and how we got there. Within that conversation, we touch on the Bible, philosophy, science, reason, the beauty in the LGBTQ community, and much more.
This episode begins a four episode mini-series on human sexuality and LGBTQ issues.
The beer we tasted in this episode is Abraxas by Perennial Artisan Ales.
The beverage tasting is at 4:42. To skip to the main segment, go to 9:02.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity and discussion of suicide and abuse.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
Finally, we talk about sexuality, the queer community, and why we're affirming.
This is a very personal episode (as much as it can be for a couple of straight white dudes). In this episode, we chat about where we came from, where we are now, and how we got there. Within that conversation, we touch on the Bible, philosophy, science, reason, the beauty in the LGBTQ community, and much more.
This episode begins a four episode mini-series on human sexuality and LGBTQ issues.
The beer we tasted in this episode is Abraxas by Perennial Artisan Ales.
The beverage tasting is at 4:42. To skip to the main segment, go to 9:02.
You can find the transcript for this episode here.
Content note: this episode contains some mild profanity and discussion of suicide and abuse.
=====
Want to support us?
The best way is to subscribe to our Patreon. Annual memberships are available for a 10% discount.
If you'd rather make a one-time donation, you can contribute through our PayPal.
Other important info:
Cheers!
Well welcome friends to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. Today, we have an episode that we've been waiting to do for probably since we started the podcast. I think we've, we've been waiting to tackle this topic the whole time, and there's some good reasons we've been waiting, which we're gonna go into. Uh, what we're talking about today is LGBTQ stuff. Um, specifically though, we're going to talk about what it means to be affirming and why both of us are, and specifically how Randy being a formerly evangelical pastor got to that place because you weren't always, right. In fact, not that long ago
Randy:correct? Yeah. I
Kyle:you wouldn't have used that phrase
Randy:yeah. And it's only probably a year ago that you could say I've always a formerly evangelical pastor. So I mean, we could, a year ago, our church dropped the evangelical label. So you could really just say, as an evangelical pastor, this has been my journey. Um, and it's been probably for year and a half that I've decided yup. I'm fully affirming.
Kyle:Okay. Yeah. Interest. I didn't, I guess I didn't realize it had been quite that long. I guess I have been for, I don't know the better part of my graduate studies, so going on a decade probably, but I wasn't always either I'm in it. There's an interesting story there as well. So, uh, we hope that this will be one of many episodes revolving around these issues. There's a great deal to talk about here. And there's a great deal of pain that needs to be acknowledged and named and sifted through. And I think it's the responsibility of white, straight dudes like us to name that stuff when we have a platform to do so. And there's a lot of people we want to talk to about it as well. We've already recorded, at least by the time you're hearing this at least one episode with some really great guests that we're excited to bring to you. And I know there are going to be quite a few more, so,
Randy:yeah.
Kyle:So we've actually gotten several messages from people asking, when are you guys going to talk about this? Um, so here we go.
Randy:Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. And thanks for your patience. I mean, the reason that we've waited is because I'm not just a podcaster with Kyle and Elliot. A real lead pastor of a real local church that has its own process and journey. And some have no idea how many people from our church listen, but a good amount do Hebrew city people. And we, as elders of our church have been going through a process of finding where we land as a church, which isn't, it's not a slam dunk. That it's exactly where I land, but it would short circuit that process if people heard from me in the podcast where I land now before they heard that from me as a pastor, from us as elders from us as a leadership team. So Kyle and Elliot had been gracious enough to just hold off on this while our leadership have been processing this and it's been a year long process. And it's probably a third time around talking about where we land as a church. So these are complex things and we've just had to take that handle that delicately. So thanks for your patience listeners and it's time to dive in.
Kyle:yeah. And I will say that having sort of viewed from the outside, looking in, having talked to the people, pretty much all the people actually in that conversation over the last few years, as someone who is often frustrated by the pace at which churches specifically evangelical churches deal with this issue, or don't deal with this issue as someone who is frustrated by the language that gets used, someone who's frustrated by, and we're going to talk about this later churches that make a little bit of progress and then stop and think that they're done. And I know that there's a lot of people in the LGBTQ community that feel similarly, because you know, it's urgent for them, right. While we're trying to figure it out their, you know, their suicide rate is shockingly high and they're dealing with all this crap that we're largely responsible for. But so as someone in the position of kind of a pretty ready suspicion, you know, when the church says we're dealing with this, I really do believe that you guys have been dealing with this. And in an honest way, so, you know, there, there are objections I would have to various uses of terms that we're going to talk about that I think I'm willing to say don't apply to you because I think they're sincerely meant. Um, and I'm very, very glad that you got to where you got to and I'm interested in hearing more about how it happened.
Randy:yeah. Yeah. And maybe that can be another episode or a special kind of bonus episode is how the journey that our leadership have been on and how we got to where we are, where we are now.
Kyle:I think this will be super useful for other people there. Cause I know there's a lot of churches that are just don't have any idea how to even approach the issue.
Randy:Nope. Nope. Nope. It's a mess. Yep. Well as we always do, we have something here. Delicious. I think it's going to be delicious. You brought it Kyle. So I'm just going to trust you. What do we, what are we drinking today
Kyle:so this is called Abraxas. This is from Perennial Artisan Ales. They're a pretty good sized brewery in St. Louis. Okay. so
Randy:Louis beer.
Kyle:yeah. Yeah. So other than the one we tried before, Side Project, these are probably the best known beer makers in St. Louis. And this is one of their best known beers. So, this is one of my favorite adjunct stouts. So when we had a, a barrel aged stout before that was non-adjunct and we raved about it, I said, you know, we should, we should at least get you guys to try a beer with a bunch of extra stuff added to it. that's what this is. So how many extra things are in here that me and Elliot can try to name? So there are four ingredients in here that I'm not going to tell you what they are. Now this is not barrel aged, so you shouldn't get any bourbon presence or anything like that. There is a barrel aged version of this, but it's very difficult to get, I have some at home, but I'm saving that for a different occasion. Um, this is actually readily available. They release it every year and you can usually find it at any decent bottle shop, but this has actually five, the fifth one. You'll never guess, five adjuncts. All right, well, what is this again? It's called Abraxas.
Elliot:Cheers.
Randy:Oh man, this is everything I don't like in a stout. Just lays thick over your tongue.
Elliot:root beer,
Kyle:root beer is definitely
Randy:coffee. no no coffee. It's just the stout. The toasty thing.
Kyle:Yeah. That's just the toasted grain you're tasting there, which I guess if you're like Elliott and drink, shitty coffee, then that probably explain, explain the,
Randy:but it's going to be well,
Kyle:uh,
Randy:this all blends together really well. I'm not, I'm not getting,
Kyle:in previous years, one of the adjuncts really stood out. It's present in this one, but it's not as forward as it has been in other
Randy:years. I mean, let me take another swallow before I start saying things.
Elliot:I can't get over a grape flavor. It's just stuck in my head now.
Kyle:Yeah. That's weird.
Randy:I get normal things that I get with stouts toasty, coffee, chocolate. Little licoricey, little anise. It's bitter.
Kyle:It is a little bitter. Yeah.
Randy:But I don't think I'm going to get there. What about you Elliot
Elliot:Chocolate for sure. It's got the cocoa, but
Kyle:Alright. Cocoa nibs. There's one.
Elliot:Is it? Is there something, is there something fruity or sweet?
Kyle:Well, the cocoa and one other would be sweet. Although cocao nibs might actually be bitter. That might be where the bitterness is coming from. There is one sweeter adjunct.
Randy:I mean, I would guess vanilla
Elliot:creamier.
Kyle:there you go. Vanilla there's yeah, there's one that was very obvious before. And I'm wishing it was as obvious this time, because it's what, it's what makes this one of my favorite adjunct stouts and it's ancho chili peppers. And usually this beer hits you in the back of the throat.
Randy:powder, or they actually like put them
Kyle:as far as I know, I don't know, but I would assume it's actual chilis but That's fun. They don't say,
Randy:don't get any, anything
Elliot:Well, now that you say that there's like the flavor there, but none of the heat.
Randy:Or smokiness.
Elliot:that'd be fun though.
Randy:Yeah,
Kyle:Other years have been much more pronounced than that.
Randy:And then what's the fourth.
Kyle:cinnamon. Sure. Makes sense. Yeah. And lactose lactose would be the fifth that you'd never guess, but that gives it that Milky quality.
Randy:I mean, when you hear adjunct and they're adding shit to your beer, I instantly judge, but it doesn't taste like they added, you know, stuff to the beer.
Kyle:Yeah.
Randy:So well-balanced
Kyle:I guess, depending on what you're looking for, that's either a good thing or bad thing.
Randy:Right,
Kyle:drink this beer for the pepper. So I'm a little disappointed actually in this
Randy:Okay. All right.
Kyle:but it's a little different every year. It's a great thing about it.
Randy:I don't know how you guys do these stouts. I mean, this tastes like a barrel aged stout. It's got that richness that thickness that
Kyle:Oh yeah. I don't get any,
Randy:to it.
Kyle:I don't know. There's a, there's just something you get from a barrel that's hard to describe that this lacks.
Elliot:It's a fun tasting, but after an ounce or two
Randy:it's too much for you too, huh? Yeah.
Elliot:It's just so rich.
Randy:Welcome. Welcome.
Kyle:And this is pretty strong. I mean, this is 11 and a half percent and it only comes in like this 22 ounce bomber size. By the time you get to the bottom, I liked
Randy:the black, central waters. Black gold, much better than
Kyle:Yeah. They're not even in the same league in my opinion,
Randy:Awesome. All right, one more time, let's hear it
Kyle:Abraxas from Perennial Artisan Ales.
Randy:All right. Cheers.
Kyle:Cheers. So we want to take a minute to acknowledge one of our top shelf supporters on Patreon. We couldn't do what we do without our Patreon supporters. We're currently speaking into new microphones that we were able to acquire largely due to the support that we get through Patreon subscribers. So we want to take a minute and acknowledge Dianne Wonder. Thanks so much for your support.
Randy:Love you Dianne. Thank you. Also, we've been telling you guys since we started that reviews are a really big deal for us and they really are. Reviews get us up further in the algorithms more listeners, more community, more questions, more feedback, it's all good. So here's a review that was really fun Underwood music says"I started questioning my religious culture in my teen years and I've been un-indoctrinating myself for many years and it has been a lonely process, as I could feel my family's bewilderment and fears projected on me. But I feel so validated by these discussions. They confirm where I came from and how scary it was as a child to grow up in that evangelical tradition." Underwood music know exactly where you're, coming from. And we are so glad you're here with us on this ride and on this journey. Thank you for the review. Make sure friends, if you haven't left a review, you do that now.
Kyle:Yeah. And two places in particular that are really helpful for reviews are apple, apple podcasts. You can go into iTunes or apple podcasts. If you have the app and leave a review that way and Facebook, you can actually go to our Facebook page and leave a review directly there and even recommend it to friends from there. So this is a fascinating topic. It's also a sensitive topic. And we, we want to talk about, we can only really talk about our experiences with this, but we also don't really want to center ourselves because neither of us are LGBTQ. Right? So it's going to necessarily be about how we got to where we are on our views about this, but we also want to do our best to center the voices of people actually in the community and the influences that they've had on our lives, because I can't speak for you, but I am where I am on this issue more because of people I've known than because of books that I've read.
Randy:for sure. Wouldn't be here
Kyle:or, you know, arguments that I came up with or whatever. It's largely, for me, the result of close relationships. Yeah. So I think it'd be good if we try to keep those people in mind as we go through. Yeah,
Randy:absolutely 100%, they are why we're having this conversation. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle:So Randy, you're a pastor. You were not always affirming. You are now. Can you take us into that experience a little bit? Where did you used to be? Where are you now? If you can sum that up briefly and then we can go into a bit more detail. And what changed? Was there something that triggered the transformation? What was that like?
Randy:I mean, I grew up in a home, like we've covered already before early episodes. If you haven't listened to the I Kissed Fundamentalism Goodbye" and"Evangelicalism, Ugh," you check those out because they will give you a lot of foundation for where we're coming from. But I grew up like most of us, which is in. Pretty conservative, pretty fundamentalist. I would call it evangelical home, even though my dad was Lutheran, it's still felt evangelical. My, my mom was Baptist, so full, full on, and it was to be honest, a homophobic home and family and environment And I wouldn't, I never knew a gay person until I was in my low twenties. And I still remember seeing on the news some gay activists in a school were demonstrating and they were in a bathroom I think. And it was like dark camera, video footage. And there was a group of like five gay men and they, they were chanting. We're here. We're queer. We're not going away. We're here. We're queer. You know, and I remember being petrified. I remember thinking like, is that going to happen to my school? And I was literally scared. So that was, that was where I, where I came from with it all the way up until working at a restaurant in downtown Milwaukee and was a server. And this little sheltered church boy was exposed to a group of people that I didn't know existed and changed my life. 100%. They're the reason that I started a church and a got by the name of Brad, good friend of mine, is the reason that I started on this journey. He was obviously gay and made no bones about it. And I was scared of him at first. I didn't know if I would, how, how I'd get AIDS from him. I didn't know him, but I was, it was in my mind even, I'm not, I'm not, joking. And I started to see Brad for who he was, which is a beautiful man. I mean, incredibly wonderful guy. And we had one, one conversation we grew in friendship, grew and trust, and that's just because of his grace for me. But we had one conversation one night when we were sitting over martinis in it sounds so cliche sitting with the gay guy and drinking martinis. But but he just let me ask any question I, I wanted to, that I had, and these were questions that were Today, they would have been offensive. They would have been off limits, but he just, he, let me ask, have you been, have you known, you've been gay your whole life? Why are you gay? Would you be gay if, you know, would you be, would you be straight if you could choose? We had this incredible couple hours long conversation that just created a crisis in my inner life. My world went from black and white to gray in two hours. And ever since then I've been processing this. And ever since then, just like all of us it's been a journey. And then when I became a pastor became a lot more complicated because now people really, really care about what I think. And whenever I said something about sexuality, I would get emails from people outside of the church who were happy or upset about what I said, and I just felt the weight of it. Right. And I would say this is the one issue in the last, you know, 15 years of, of being doing what I do that has kept me up at night the most of anything is getting this one right. I've had so much fear of the Lord around this one of getting this wrong. And for a long time, I, I was on the side of I'd rather stand with"truth," quote unquote, you know, scare quotes, than, than like pronounce this. I felt crippled because all of my experience told me this is not sin. All of my experience told me you need to be affirming, but the scriptures didn't and I felt, I felt like, who am I to do something that's not scriptural Who am I to believe something that's not in the Bible? That's that was the thing for me that kept me, there were two things. That's the, that's the major one of saying like, that feels blasphemous. That feels dangerous. That I've got a lot of fear in me for, for going in a direction that doesn't feel affirmed by the scriptures. And then maybe even just as big was fear of my peers, fear of other churches, fear of my family, who's, you know, very, very anti-gay fear of losing my church, fear of everyone going away because that happened And that's happened to my, my friends and peers. So there's so much fear around it. That was what's That was... fear is what you could define the last 10, 12, 13 years with me in this conversation about.
Kyle:Wow, that's very raw and honest. I appreciate that. I wonder how many other pastors are in a similar situation. I like how you put it, like from the beginning, the experience of it and what you wanted to believe and felt like you should believe was clear; it was just the Bible holding you back and know commitment to what you thought was truth and what good theology was or whatever. And then fear. That's, that's remarkable. I re- the one, the one experience that really sticks out in my mind in relation to this and you and the church is we've mentioned that we used to do these Q&A things. Maybe we will, again, eventually after COVID right. And every, literally every time we did one, we'd get at least one question about this. Where, what do you know, what is the church's stance on this? Or what about this, you know, issue related to that. And I asked you several times, do you want to, do you want to answer those? And every time the answer was, let's not, and you had a good reason for it. Right? Cause we have quite a few LGBTQ people in the congregation and you didn't want to, like,
Randy:I don't want them to feel like an issue.
Kyle:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I would always ignore those questions and kind of edit them out. But we'd consistently get them every time. And then one Sunday, we got one and it was particularly eloquent. And you could tell it's coming from an honest place. And I remember I leaned over and was like, what do you think about this? And you're like, you know, I'll leave it up to you this time. And so I asked it and my, my recollection, and this is recorded somewhere, I think, is you breaking down and trying your best to honor the, the, the people in the, in the crowd that were personally affected by it, and just really openly transparently sharing where you were in it, which wasn't clear. Right. It was ambiguous, I think at the time in process. And yeah, that was powerful to me. I hope it was powerful to the people there too. So, thanks.
Randy:Yeah, no, I mean, I, I dunno if I can, we can edit this out if this is, I shouldn't say this, but I think the LGBTQ community are, it's just a beautiful community and it's, there's so much richness and love and unconditional love and standing with the oppressed, not just their own community, and just a warmth. There's a, there's a warmth about LGBTQ people that I think is unique that I just, I've always since Brad, I've just love, love, love LGBTQ people. It's, there's something about them that just resonates in me, connects with, for me. And that's where the heartache comes in because of these, you know, thank God, literally, we've got a decent amount of LGBTQ people in our church, even when we were, you know, outwardly non-affirming And that's, that's been a journey as well of how we've handled that. We've we were, I was very bait and switch with the gay community for awhile. Cause you hear grace a lot and love a lot. And then all of a sudden they'd hear me preach through Romans one or first Corinthians six. And they feel like they got punched in the gut and you never see them again. We grew, grew from that and, you know, engage with people about it and in conversational ways, but all that said, there's a reason for the tears. It's because of the, the years of holding this with just like so much humility and fear and trembling. And also just because of the love, the deep love that I have for, for this community.
Kyle:Yeah. I was hear... I heard somebody say recently, I can't remember who it was. It may have been somebody, we talked to that, that community, and obviously it's an umbrella of many different communities, but yeah. They're maybe unique in the sense that they've defined themselves according to love. Right. Was that someone we were talking to that pointed that, and you can say something to think about pride, right. But the good kind of pride where you're, you're extolling virtue in this kind of group solidarity and your ability to withstand tremendous abuse at the hands of the dominant class. And and, and just put, putting up with it because of your commitment to love. I mean, that's remarkable. I can't think of another group that is so obviously defined in that way.
Randy:Yep. Where, where dignity and honor and value and self-worth has been stolen and they respond with, Nope, I have self-worth and value and dignity. And and they respond with grace. Even though they're, they're kicked out and shunned and you know, the doors slam in their face, this is a community that I've seen respond with grace over and over again. I've seen the character of Christ in them.
Kyle:Yeah, for sure. So how much of your change of heart or change of mind, would you say was experiential in the sense of this kind of emotional transformation and you know, all the fear that's involved, but also knowing and loving these people directly? How much of it was that you don't have to put a percentage on it, but like how much of it is that versus the intellectual side, studying the Bible more closely, reading more books, you know, thinking through more arguments?
Randy:A lot. I mean, it wouldn't have been a dilemma if I didn't have any gay people in my life. And that's why it became so excruciating for me is because of the people that I love. And so having conversations like that, one in the, you know, third ward bar in Milwaukee with Brad and having more and more conversations of those and asking people's perspectives and their story and hearing about their journey, their excruciating journey of just being a human being; that was the first three quarters I would say. Right. And then the last quarter or third was reconciling this with scriptures and feeling like coming to a, honestly a just bold enough space to say, I don't care what happens if I come out as affirming, this is there's, there's something more important to me than the possibility of a church collapsing. Um, so, so a lot was experiential.
Kyle:Yeah. I want to talk about the Bible next, but how much of the"I don't care what happens; I'm doing this" was a kind of newfound confidence in the, the, I dunno, the theological coherence of this position or something like it was, it was it"I don't care if I'm wrong about the Bible; I'm doing it anyway," or was it"I'm really confident in what I think now"?
Randy:Yeah, it that's the one, I mean I've come to a place where I think that scriptures and the gospel are more like are affirming. Like I, I don't shy away from scriptures and that anymore. Once I got to a place where I said, I know I'm affirming, I think I've been affirming for years, to be honest with you. I've just been suspended. I've had this like cable locked to my back that is scripture and fear of rejection from peers and church members in other churches. Right. And not so much our church. Um, I've never been really scared of that. It's other churches and other church leaders, you know, a little bit nervous about, but once I got to an affirming space and could say first to my. wife,"I'm affirming," like,"yes," then it was like, this waterfall of this is obvious to me, and this is clear what God's heart is to me. And this matters to me now actually, like I went from, you know, closet affirming, but wouldn't wouldn't admit it to myself, even because of the scriptures, to, this last year and a half has been really hard, not being able to tell people besides just a couple that I'm affirming, because I want to honor the journey, our churches on that's been difficult because it's, it's become an important thing to me. And I think it's because I've, I've known it all along. I've believed it all along. And once, once you make that connection and say, yes, I think God celebrates and, and delights in it and delights in these people and loves them as they are and has a beautiful plan for their lives, once you get there, for me and my experience, and I'm interested to hear about your experience, then it's like full on Now it's like, I need justice. I want to happen I want, I want rejection in the church to just stop. And if I can, if I can help in any way, I want to. What's been your experience in that?
Kyle:Yeah. So, so my experience is a little bit different. I had a very personal experience that I don't want to go too much into detail about with an LGBTQ person that over time kind of, at least it was sort of the impetus for me to start thinking much more deeply about the issue. But I think what really happened outside of just like reading specifically about this topic and listening to people specifically about it was going to a different kind of intellectual space, which was just grad school and working on things that were completely unrelated, but that sort of chipped away at the foundations of my, what I thought was a"biblical worldview"(TM), you know, like the apologists like to say. And then, when I had occasion to think about it again years later, realized all the reasons I had taken, the kind of hesitant stance I had, were gone. So, um, it was more intellectual. Well, but, but it was always kind of married to the experience that I had and loving particular people that were in that community. So it was motivated by something very personal, but also, like everything in my life, had to be, needed an intellectual foundation which kind of happened without me realizing it. So, you know, once you've given up on the idea that the Bible has to be perfectly accurate about everything it says and that the authors of the Bible have to be completely correct about everything they say, even when they intend to say it, once you've left that behind, this issue becomes a lot easier as far as what should the Christian stance on this be? Because as you said, the hangup for most people is biblical. So, you know, I decided that Paul could be wrong before I realized I was affirming. And then when I had occasion to think about it again, I realized, oh, all the reasons that I had for not being this, I now no longer take seriously. You know, coming to a, a more empiricist view of the world where I think we ought to, certain questions have answers that can be investigated in the world. And those questions are identifiable; they have certain common features, and this is one of them. Like what, you know, what is,"What does natural sexuality look like for a species?" is an empirical question, and there's expertise about it. Right. And it's not in the church. And so, so like coming, coming to the conclusion that often expertise about important questions lies outside the bounds of Christian community. There's another one of those things that like chipped away at a foundation and then only later realized, okay, this is moving my position on this as well. So, yeah. So I don't know if that tells you that answers your question.
Randy:I mean, I'm tempted to ask you about just a little smattering of what the experts say and how they got there.
Kyle:So my soundbite is kind of I think it's an empirical question in the sense of the Bible. Even if you have what you would call a high view of scripture, even if you think, heck even if you're, if you're an inerrantist, I think you have to admit that this is unclear. And if, if you don't think it's unclear, you just haven't thought about it carefully enough. You just need to read more like, right. And
Randy:They would never say that. Well,
Kyle:so like, uh, I mean, if you think you can read Romans one and just know right off the bat, what he's saying, you just simply haven't studied hard enough. That's just, like, people who are actually informed about this, who take positions that I strongly disagree with, if they're honest, will admit, this is not clear. If there's anything it is not, it's clear. There's like a handful of verses out of the whole Bible that are so contested by people with PhDs that, you know, the average person in the pew has no chance of understanding this on their own. That's, that's just a fact. And I don't think it's even a controversial fact amongst people who know what they're talking about. So, so if we are willing to admit that much, that whatever the Bible says about this is ambiguous--it's not pointing one direct, not saying it's, you know, affirming, not saying it's not, it's just ambiguous, it's hard to tell. My take is, well, what do we know? And what we do know is how to identify the Holy Spirit when She shows up in a community. That's not ambiguous. We've got pretty good direction about that in, in the Bible. And so it's empirical in the sense that I think you can find evidence of the Holy Spirit's presence in an LGBTQ community if you look for it. It's actually not difficult. And it's actually much, much more obvious much of the time than it is in a lot of evangelical congregations I've been associated with. So is love and joy and patience and, you know, self-control and all that, is that being fostered, is that fruit being propagated in communities where someone's LGBTQ identity is being celebrated? And the answer is obviously yes. Obvious to anybody who's, who's taken the trouble to check. It's just there. So whatever you think about the Bible, the Holy Spirit doesn't seem to care that these people are, you know, openly practicing LGBTQ people, meaning they're having sex with each other. That's what practicing means. Maybe, maybe I should get away from that evangelical speech. Right. Practicing just means what they're doing with their genitals. They're they're not hiding it. They're proud of it. They're happy about it. And the Holy Spirit seems okay with it. So that's, that's what I mean, when I say it's empirical.
Randy:we'll just, we should have a little like, ding time we're going to get an email from something. Cause there'd be one there, right there.
Kyle:Yeah,"you've got mail." Yeah. And when I say it's, it's it's natural. And you know, there's another part of my sort of empirical take on the world that I developed is, what I mean is this is not unique to the human species. Homo sapiens are not the only species that have same sex activity. It's been observed in literally hundreds of species. We're not even the only species that has long-term monogamous same-sex relationships. We're one of the only, but there is at least one other than I know of. So like there's nothing, if you're, if you're to just look at the species, biologically speaking from an evolutionary standpoint, there's nothing weird about this at all. Nothing unusual about it, nothing surprising about it. It's, it's exactly what you would expect actually. So I feel like you could take two of our previous episodes and stick them together and get my view of this. Listen to our Bible episode; listen to our evolution episode. One plus the other gets my view of this issue. So, if you're going to trust experts about what the human species is naturally like, if you're going to trust experts about how brain chemistry works, if you're going to trust experts about how genetics works, for example, and if you're gonna trust experts about how you ought to interpret the Bible, you ought to come away, I think, with an affirming view of this.
Randy:Yeah. I mean that last one, there's plenty of scholars and experts don't.
Kyle:But marry it to the other ones and you'll have a pretty strong case. Yeah. Yeah. Because what I mean by that is if you just limit it to the Bible thing, you won't come away with an affirming view, but you will, you should come away with an ambiguous view, which means you're at you're confused. Your evidence is indecisive. And those other spheres that I mentioned, evidence is much stronger. And so unless you're, I think unjustifiably privileging the kind of biblical evidence that you're getting, you're never going to come away with a, like a confident, non-affirming view. Yeah.
Randy:Yup, yeah. I want to say from a church/pastor's/church leader's perspective, we talk about the Bible a lot with this one, and usually what I've seen leadership teams do, whether it's in response to the Supreme Court allowing, you know, gay marriages or, you know, something big happening in our culture and there's this need to respond and whatever. What happens usually is we go to those, you know, three to five verses in the scriptures, Leviticus 18, 1 Corinthians 6 Romans 1 1 Timothy 1 I think it is. And we just rehash those and say, yep, they still say the same thing. We're not affirming, you know, but I think that, that doesn't fall in line with church tradition, which goes back to what we've talked about here before, which is the Wesleyan quadrilateral, right? Where the scriptures certainly must be a part of how we discern this and how we, you know, get to a place where we can take a stance on something like human sexuality. But the scriptures are one part of that quadrilateral. And within that is tradition, which is something else that's kind of another nail in the coffin on the other side, but then there's experience. And that's, that's just this like hugely imbalanced part of the seesaw. And then reason. And you've been talking through why, why reason weighs in And so we have to bring in all of these things. I mean, when we've, when we've talked as church leadership about what we think about these things, we've done the biblical reflection, we've done the prayerful seeking of the Holy Spirit, but we've also brought in a therapist, and we've also listened to gay and lesbian people without any other agenda besides just to listen, who are part of our church, but also have been part of non-affirming spaces and churches for their whole lives and just listen to them. Those things need to happen in concert together. We can't just look at those four texts and say, it's pretty clear what they're saying, and so we're going to stand on it, when it's not, right. And maybe that's a good segue into the Bible part.
Kyle:Yeah. Yeah. So let's think about the Bible more specifically. Let me put it to you this way. So I just said that I'm perfectly comfortable saying Paul was wrong. So if it turns out that Romans 1 really does mean what it seems to mean to a lot of conservative Christians, right? Let's say we were to put Paul in a time machine and bring him to the present day and we educate him, we give him a few months or even years to get caught up and, you know, we give him books to read and whatever. And at the, at the end of it, let's say he's, he's very clearly non-affirming. Right? I'm fine with that. Cause I don't think Paul was inspired about that. Right? My view of inspiration doesn't mean that an author of an ancient text has to be correct about something that they couldn't possibly have envisioned because what we think of as sexual orientation literally didn't exist. Right? What I mean, they knew that men had sex with men and men, women had sex with women, but it was a completely different social context. I mean, what, people that we would now consider straight men often had sex with men in Roman culture. So like it's just a completely different thing, whatever Paul meant by that, we can't be sure that it's what we want to mean by that. But let's say we could be sure; I'm still perfectly comfortable saying Paul is mistaken and that's not a big deal to me. That's obviously going to make a lot of evangelicals or, or even mainstream Protestant Christians, pretty uncomfortable, to say nothing of Catholics. So do you have to go that far to be affirming about this issue? In other words, do you have to take a kind of low view of scripture to be affirming? I'm guessing your answer is no. So what has your experience with the Bible been like and what do you, how do you interpret those, like, you know,"gotcha" passages now?
Randy:Yeah, no. I mean, for sure, I would say no, you don't have to have a low view of scripture to say that the Bible is affirming. I think first of all, when you look at those clobber verses categorically, they're speaking to something different than what we are, for sure, that's a hundred percent. Now, there are biblical scholars and historians like NT Wright, who would say to think that we're, to have this modern arrogance to say that no homosexual relationships existed in the ancient world is categorically wrong. Caesar, you know, one point had a person that he was involved with in long-term relationship with another man. So I'll give him that, like, that's, that's the expert, but the word homosexual didn't come up in the Bible until 1946. It just wasn't in there. It wasn't translated that way. The Greek word was translated in 1 Corinthians 6 and in 1 Timothy 1, it was translated mostly as sodomy, sodomites, or it was translated as men defiling themselves, or it was translated as perverts.
Kyle:And no bias there right?
Randy:But still that word"homosexuality" wasn't in there until 1946 when the RSV, I believe it was the RSV Bible, started putting it in there. And, and then everything changed. And that's that's because homosexuality as we know it, the idea of a long-term monogamous relationship, is a unique and it's not what the scriptures are talking about. Leviticus is not talking about a long-term monogamous relationship where you're, a sexual relationship. It's talking about the biblical term of sodomy. It's talking about just the act of sex, same thing with Romans 1, I mean, you'd have to, you have to rewire the whole of sexuality and romantic relationships to get back to 2000 years ago, see, because 2000 years ago, nobody got married because of romance. That wasn't a It was, it was for income and it was for procreation, period. That's it.
Kyle:power, status.
Randy:Power, status, all that stuff, but mainly mainly procreation because having sons in particular made that you're going to carry on your family line of give you value as a mom. And it gave you status as a father, all that stuff. And Paul there in Romans 1, I think and scholars, I don't just think, but scholars think this, was talking about the natural and unnatural because when a man has sex with the woman, they can get pregnant and have babies and procreation happens. And that's the, that's the natural part of it there. So that's just a little example that these, these ideas and categories that we have today, like you said Kyle, are just non-existent in the ancient world 2000 years ago. And in the Roman empire, that's one. But the biggest thing for me that has lined this up in my, in my head in my heart and my spirit has been the way I approach scripture, which I think is having a high view of scripture--in my world, I call it a high view-- is looking at the metanarratives in the Bible, like, looking at the big themes. And I think when you look at the metanarratives in the Bible, I think, I think you would say the Bible and God are quote unquote"affirming." And to me that means that God, God made human beings to love and to be loved. Period. Like that's, that's part of the imago dei, and it might even be the most central part of what it means to be created in the image of God, is that God is a lover. God gives love. That's what God does really, really well. As a matter of fact, the Apostle John would say, God is love, and romantic love is part of that. And so I think all human beings have been created with this innate, you know DNA for, to give love and to receive love. And then I would say, you look at Matthew 7, Jesus' sermon on the mount, and he's saying here's the method of understanding and trying to figure out whether something's good or bad, of me or not. A good tree, cannot bear bad fruit. Just look at the fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit and a battery cannot produce good fruit. It's impossible. So just look at the fruit. And so that's what I, that passage--and I got it from Matthew Vines--that passage was the straw that broke the camel's back. Because if you look at the fruit of the way the church for the last 50 years has approached this conversation about human sexuality, it is a 110% slam dunk, bad fruit. There's just, no, there's no question. Bad fruit. I mean, let me give you some statistics just to show this bad fruit. There are 4.2 million homeless youth right now, 4.2 million homeless youth. Of those 4.2 million homeless youth, 40% are LGBTQ 40. Which blasts the numbers of what the statistics are of the percentage of LGBTQ youth in general.
Kyle:general, Yeah.
Randy:So 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ. Why? Right? Because of conversations like we've been a part of for our whole lives. LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely to be homeless than a straight youth. 120% more. There was a survey done last year, and polled 40,000 LGBTQ people. It's the biggest survey of its kind about mental health and the LGBTQ community, particularly youth. And it found that for LGBTQ people between the ages of 13 and 24, it found that 68% of respondents reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, 68%. 55% reported symptoms of major depressive disorder, and 48% reported engaging in self-harm 48%, half of LGBTQ youth harm themselves. And then 40% have seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year. And then you look at suicide statistics, a lesbian gay, bisexual trans person who come from a families that reject or do not accept them are eight times more likely to attempt suicide than the families who accept them. Eight times. We're talking about beautiful young people coming of age and living lives full of fear and anxiety, depression, self hatred, to the point that staggering, unacceptable numbers are ending their own lives because they'd rather kill themselves than face their family and face their church and face their pastors.
Kyle:Yeah, because I mean, those statistics aren't specifically about churches, but we'd be fooling ourselves if we didn't think that the church had a huge role to play in why those numbers are what they are.
Randy:Eight times more likely if you're LGBTQ person in a unaccepting environment and family to kill yourself, eight times. So that's just, that's statistical, right? So that's, that's just a little taste of it, right? We're not talking about the countless literal millions of people, probably who have had the doors of churches slammed in their faces and written letters when they came out and rejected, and said if, you know, 1 Corinthians 5, and said if you practice, if you're, if you're not celebate, you're not welcome in this church anymore. And we're going to have to kick you out. And we're going to ask our members to shun you and, you know, the countless people who would never even consider stepping in a church, because, just because of their sexual orientation. I'm just trying to get at this fruit thing that Jesus said. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit. This, friends, is very bad fruit. It's rotten to the core. It's dead, it's gone. And so that for me was just the straw that broke the camel's back. I don't want to be part of a institution and a movement that produces such bad fruit for so many people. I want to be done with that. And to me, that's biblical actually, I'm just doing it because Jesus told me to. Right. And then you could go into what you were talking about, Kyle, of the fruits of the spirit, where do you see them? Do you see them in the gay community? Do you see? I I'll just, I think I've told this story before, but I'm just going to say it again. Just a little snapshot was me and my daughter and Elliot walking in a Black Lives Matter march and it was put on by the gay community in our city. And there were trans people there, there were black trans people there, there were lots of queer people there. There were just all of them. And I asked my daughter, Sadie, what did you think of, of this day as we were walking home? And she just looked at me and said, those people love each other well, and that's, we're just talking about the fruit of the Spirit. It's just obvious and easy to see. So I think when you look at the metanarratives of scripture, it becomes obvious that for me, that what we, what I, as a pastor expect of people who, who, who dock in with my church and who give me some spiritual weight and authority in their lives. I have a sexual ethic that doesn't go away. Right? Like, it's not that now I'm affirming so I don't think that anything about your sexuality should be submitted to the Lordship of Christ. Not that at all. It's just that I want to have a consistent sexual ethic that says... human beings: it's best for us to hold our sexuality with care. And. If there's a person, whether they're gay or straight, who's propositioning people on the street.--real thing that happens in our church where we hear about a person who's straight, or we hear about a person who's gay, who's propositioning a person for sex on the street--I'm going to go to that person and say, bro, that is just not a good way to live. And let me tell you why. And I've got to like, here's what Jesus is calling you to it's, it's stewarding your sexuality in a way that's going to bear fruit. And that is not it. You can do that still with a straight person and a gay person and have a view of sexuality that says we need to submit that to the Lordship of Jesus. But I've seen married lesbian couples in our church who have beautiful marriages and have had kids. And we've blessed their families and dedicated their babies. And they have healthier marriage than most straight people, a lot of straight people in our church. And I think that we don't have to give up having a sexual ethic and holding a submitted sexuality to the Lordship of Jesus and still can say we're affirming.
Kyle:Yeah. Yeah. That's good. So let's talk about labels for a minute. Affirming is a label, right? Non-affirming is a label. There's a large community, largely online, the Side A, Side B debate, right. The Side A would be kind of the affirming side and Side B would be the sort of non-affirming side. There's also like branches off of each of those, like there are, you know, celebate LGBTQ people who are kind of Side B in their stance of how you should interpret the scripture, but also like very open about their orientation. Proud of it. Not at all, you know, in no way think that they're sinful or lesser for being that. Yeah. And they've written some great books, some of them, you know, and so that, that would be one side. And, so there's all these labels that sort of swirl around the debate. And one thing that I've noticed in particularly progressive evangelical circles is kind of a hesitancy to adopt a label and to want to, kind of do your own thing or to think that"Christian," you know, or"Jesus following" is a sufficient label. And what often happens in those kinds of cases from my observation is that the actual position becomes pretty ambiguous or pretty vague. So you'll get some, some pretty sounding language on a Sunday morning or something about how everyone is included and we want to welcome you, and we're glad you're here and we love you and we just stop short of saying"affirm," cause we know what that would imply, right? It would imply that if you were to apply for a deacon position or something in our church, we'd have to consider you equally. It would imply that we might have to consider letting you speak from the front. It might imply that, you know, whatever you could be, the treasurer or something, we'd, you know, we'd have to treat you the same as everyone else. And so we stop just short of that, but we definitely want, we don't want to be those people you were talking about where a gay person walks in the door and feels immediately condemned. We recognize the problem with that, but we're also not willing to actually make someone a part of our community, right. A full, a full member of our community. And so my, I'm a little worried that, that when we are hesitant about the terminology or when we think that we can invent our own terminology, we're maybe doing something harmful. So I'm curious because not that long ago, you would have been what I would call"welcoming, not affirming." Right. Which means we definitely say things from the front of the church regularly about how we love LGBTQ people and how we want them in our space, but also none of them are in our leadership, nor could they be. And it's actually church policy, even though maybe we don't announce it, that there are limits, right, on how, on how included someone can really be. So what do you think about the terms? I guess, how important are these terms? Do you agree with all the shit I just said, or like, do you have a different take on it? And, and how important have the terms been in your experience and what do you think other pastors facing that should do?
Randy:Yeah, there's so much there. Yeah, we would, we would have been exactly what you were talking about, which is, I mean, I would say at different points, we've been different things. Cause we were one of those, love takes the front and center stage, grace takes the front and center stage, and so we present as affirming and gay people, you know, hop in and it's great, and I feel good about myself. And as a pastor who has gay people in my church, they feel comfortable. And then they hear the sermon, you know, whatever. And they, they get the rug pulled out from underneath them. That was us. We did the bait and switch and that is not healthy. That's actually sinful and wrong, I think. That's deceptive. And many churches are there to be honest with you. There's many churches who like the idea of... they, they feel within them that we should have gay people here. We should have LGBTQ community here because I think that God loves them. Right. And I know that God loves them, so we should have them here, but I don't want to let them know our stance because then we get, then there's tension, then there's drama. Then there's, you know, all this stuff that happens. And so there are many churches who intentionally try to hide their, their position. And that, again, that's deceptive. And now there's that, that, that is not going to be acceptable for very long. I mean, just within the last five years, there's a website called churchclarity.com. And it's all about if a church is clear on their stance about sexuality or not, or if they're, if, if they're dangerous. LGBTQ people care about honesty and being upfront with what our position as a church is. And they should. Like, we owe them that. And so if you're part of a church or you're a church leader, who's in that space, I want to encourage you to rethink that. It's just not fair. It's not honest. It's sinful, I think. We also, though, I've seen, I've seen allies and people in the community, but more often than not, it's been the straight allies, who don't leave room for the process. Right. We. Churches and church leaders are expected to go from non-affirming to affirming in a week or in six months. And that's just not realistic for most of us. For most of us, this is a huge part of not just our spiritual journey, but also our family of origin story, and also our colleagues and peers also, you know, whether or not this church is going to exist, because there are countless churches to where if the pastor came out as affirming or the leadership came out as affirming or inclusive or whatever word you want to use, they would lose three-quarters of their church. That's just the fact of the matter. So I, I want to appeal to the allies, which I know is most of our listeners probably, and to anyone who's in that position of saying,"You need to speed up your process"; we got to leave room for process because if I didn't have room for my process, I wouldn't be where I am today. Right. I would just said, closed door, fine, non-affirming. So to me, the term"affirming" matters because the term"non-affirming" is so damaging, I think. I've hurt people by telling them that I'm non-affirming and the way they've taken that, and there's, there's a couple of people in particular where I hope they listen, and if they do, I want you to know I love you. And, um, there's been a rip in my heart for years because of ways that I've heard a couple of people. But when I say from upfront with a microphone that I'm non-affirming, they hear that I'm non-affirming of their humanity, and they hear that I'm non-affirming of them as a person. And I'm welling up with tears right now because I'm not okay with that. I would never, ever want a human being to think that I'm non-affirming of their humanity or of them as a person. And honestly, in those times, saying I'm not affirming didn't mean that I wasn't affirming of their humanity or their personhood. It actually, I was able to separate that. Right. Um,
Kyle:Um,
Randy:Yeah, I thought it was but in the time it was genuine and it was real and it was, it was painful for me too, to be kind of looked at in that fashion. But the reality is it doesn't matter what my intent is. The reality is what people hear when I say words. And when they heard that I'm non-affirming, they took that as saying not affirming of their humanity. So I'm not willing, I've just come to a point where I just don't want to be part of an organization that calls itself non-affirming.
Kyle:Even if you're of that persuasion, that that would say something like that and draw that distinction and think it's a good and healthy distinction to draw, I mean, let's think carefully about what we're saying and how we would feel if it were said to us, right. Is it a natural thing to think that your sexuality is not a central feature of your humanity, whatever your sexuality happens to be? Even if you lack one, right. I have an asexual friend, right. But that's a, that's a central feature of that person's humanity. It's not just what I do with my genitals, although that's very important. It's, it colors everything about me. And if someone were to tell me that, you know, your desire for women is I'm okay with the rest of you, but we're going to have to excise that part, but it's not you. Right. It's just, it's just that. I, it would, I would receive that as nonsense, not, not just offensive, which it would be, it would be a kind of nonsense because there is no part of me that's not bound up with that. Right. It's a funda- The word orientation is not accidental. Right? It's a fundamental directionality to the world that colors everything else you do. And it's just this such an artificial thing that Christians have invented, maybe we're, I'm sure we're not alone in this, but that you can just cut that out and still, and without remainder, you know, and still have everything central or important to being a human. It's just such an odd thing. Now I'm not talking here about the kind of celibacy, chosen celibacy as a vocation that you see in, in a certain, you know, Catholic communities, but also some Protestant communities. That's a separate thing because those people often are very aware usually of what they're doing. And they're, they're very intentionally sacrificing that thing to God. And if they didn't view it as a central feature of their lives, it wouldn't be a sacrifice. Okay. So, so the vocation of celibacy actually entails what I'm saying here, that it's a central feature of your life, and it's just such an artificial unmotivated thing to think that, no you can be, you know, we can affirm you as a person and a child of Jesus, child of God. We just need you to keep it in your pants.
Randy:Yeah, no, I mean, that's another part of the fruit conversation is, you know, maybe a number of people listening are saying, well, yeah, homosexual orientation is fine, but it's just the practice of it can like, let's just ask everyone to be celibate who is not heterosexual. And I think a couple things, one I think, and I'm going to use a harsh term here, but I think that's somewhat oppressive. I just think that's oppression to say because of this orientation you can't practice. But also, look at the fruit, right? Like I do think celibacy is a gift for some people that some people have, and for some people that's a calling, gay and straight, and that's beautiful and should be celebrated and applauded for those people. But in general, I think forced celibacy is really unhealthy and bears bad fruit. And all you got to do is look at the Catholic priesthood to say, what's been the fruit of forced celibacy, pretty bad, right? Like for some people I would say. Uh, Sean Blanchard, email us and, you know, like, come back on if you disagree with me, but I think it's a bad track record. When you force a group of people to say, you can't have sex. Usually. And this is philosophers would say, a prohibition kind of makes you want to it, right? Like that's just, let's, we're human beings. And also not everybody's called to be celibate. Like there are so many priests who have left the priesthood because they met a person that they love and that's more important to them to ministering the gospel in the Catholic tradition. That's sad and it shouldn't be that way. And then you get, I think the abuse and the forced celibacy cannot be disentangled. They are, there's part of forced celibacy and abuse, that, that is part of that conversation. And so I just think it's bad fruit. I think some people are called to it. Some people have been given that gift, and then the rest: far be it for me to tell a person you can't be a human being, which the heart of being a human being as being a sexual being,
Kyle:Yeah. Or, you know, at least having some kind of sexual orientation to the world, yeah, you I don't want to leave out our asexual friends here, but you know, that colors everything, everything in your experience, you know? And you know, there's a whole romantic component to that too, that we haven't even gone into that's, that's, can be non-sexual. So what, what do you say, cause there's probably some people thinking this that are listening to this, maybe secretively without telling their, their elder teams that they're listening to this, what do you say to someone who is thinking,"but isn't my core identity that I'm a child of God Christ alone. That's it. If I affirm someone else's sexuality as being centrally important, even definitional of who they are, aren't I adding something to that? Aren't I elevating something over it even, maybe, or making something equal to it?" Right? Because this is kind of thing you hear when, you know, you push back and say, well, how would you feel if somebody said, you know, you had to sacrifice your sexual expression for the rest of your life. And they'll say,"Well, I would resort to my core identity. Everybody has something to deal with. And if that was the lot that I was handed in life, then, then that's, that's the cross I have to bear, you know."
Randy:It's easy for a straight person to say.
Kyle:Yeah. So, so what's your response because I know there are people thinking that, how do you, how do you respond?
Randy:I mean, it's, that's, that's become like this thing that, you know, Christ alone Christ plus nothing, you know, I've had rabid theobros comment on my Facebook about like, when I say"Black Lives Matter" or talk about racial justice, they're like"Christ plus nothing. It's just Christ and the gospel." I'm like Christ means justice. Like Christ means freedom. Christ means liberation. Christ means love. Christ means grace and acceptance. Christ means honoring the whole person and seeing that whole person. And so I can say, yes, my identity, I'm secure, and now I'm gonna use some good charismatic language: I'm secure in my sonship. I'm... Being a son of God is the most central thing about who I am 100% I'm with you dudes. But that means more than just my sonship, right? Like the fact that I'm a son of God, this fact that I'm, you know, rooted in my sonship, it has carry over effects. It means that as a son of God, I'm about what my father is about. And that means that I'm about racial equality and justice, because my father is about it. That means that I'm about raising my children in a way that they get to know that they're called to love their neighbors over and above themselves. Even if it hurts sometimes. That means that because I'm a son of the king, that means that I'm going to advocate for people who are voiceless. It just means that because that's what my father is about. That's what God's about. It means standing up for an oppressed people group that 40% of youth are homeless and are eight times as likely to commit suicide if they're in non-accepting spaces. I think being a son of God and rooted in your sonship, or your daughterhood, looks like advocating for the people who are oppressed and on the margins, and this community is part of it. So being rooted in your identity in Christ is not something that is just this, like, that's it. And it's this tiny little needle pinpoint. It's... Being rooted in your identity in Christ means that I'm going to be forever growing in what it means to be a son of God, to be a daughter of God. And this is included in that conversation.
Kyle:That's really helpful. It makes you wonder, it makes me wonder, like, what are they, what are they think the content of that, that identifier is, right, when I say I'm a child of God first, only, that's it. That's my, that's my identity. That's the whole thing. And it has to have some content, right. It can't just be an empty signifier. So like, what do you think it entails as far as your behavior? What do you think it entails as far as your, your character? And if you can't specify it, then you have to ask yourself, why am I using this? Is it just a cudgel? Is it, is it a way of avoiding a difficult point?
Randy:That's the thing. I don't say this to be sassy or snarky. I say this because I really think it, that that argument that, you know, it's all about your identity in Christ and nothing else. I think it's a dog whistle argument. I think it's just people trying to avoid the necessity of the conversation. And and here, let me just give you a few more statistics, right? For those who are on that side, for those who are wrestling with this, we're just talking church stuff right here. Barna research group, which is very credible, I think it's an evangelical research group. They surveyed unchurched millennials, and they found that seven out of tens aren't interested in the church, particularly the evangelical church, seven out of 10. 70% of millennials aren't interested in the church. And even out of millennials who grew up in the church, six out of 10 have left the church. Are you listening pastors? 60% of millennials who grew up in the church have now left the church. And here's the statistics of why. Right? 70% see evangelicals as insensitive to others. 85% see evangelicals as hypocritical. 87% see the church as judgemental. And here we go, 91% of unchurched millennials see the church as homophobic or anti-homosexual. So here's the deal friends. We're losing, like, the church in America is growing in irrelevance, just like by leaps and bounds. It's this growing ball that's rolling down a hill towards irrelevance. Part of my experience and journey towards an affirming stance has been my kids. My kids go to public high school, and my daughter who's a freshman in high school. I would say a third of her friends in the last two years have come out as bi, as pan, as queer, as gay. I would say very much a third and my daughter, who's a beautiful person. I mean, she's just ridiculously Christ-like and loving and has a heart for justice. I can tell you, 100%, my daughter will not take the baton of a church that is not affirming. Won't happen. And she's one of many, many, many, many young people. And so I just want to ask, is this, is this a hill we want to die on because this is where it becomes a gospel issue for me. Like the gospel is too important to become irrelevant because we tied our wagons to this one, right. We hitched, we hitched our horses to it and I think we are going to get left behind if we don't have these conversations, if we don't see the scriptures differently. And it doesn't have to be that you divorce yourself from the scriptures; it doesn't have to be that you don't have a sexual ethic, that anything goes. Those are just, that's fear talking. We're talking about a gospel issue. That should matter to us, people in the church and us church leaders.
Kyle:Yeah. Yeah. It's good. So to close, what, for pastors out there who may be listening, who are struggling with this, or who can kind of see it on the horizon coming up in their churches and they don't know what to do. What's your advice having been through it?
Randy:Well, first I just bless you to just sit right in the middle of it. Don't try to avoid it. Don't be crippled by fear anymore. But the biggest thing is if you don't have LGBTQ people in your church, ask yourself why? Cause they're there, they're there 100% they're there. They just don't feel safe enough to come out. So ask yourself why they're not coming out. Ask yourself why they're not there. Come to grips with some things of, maybe we're not as welcoming and as loving as we thought. Right? And I say this with respect friends. I have friends who listen to this who are non-affirming. so I love you. And I'm, I'm just speaking from my perspective. I'm not trying to impose on you, but we have to ask ourselves if we don't have a whole lot of LGBTQ people, what does it mean about the gospel that we're speaking? And then once we hopefully do get some relationships, some LGBTQ people in our lives, just listen to them, ask them questions. What's it like to be you? What has it been like to grow up? Being you, being gay, being queer, being lesbian, being trans, being bi? And just listen. Don't assert, don't come in with any bias. We're so biased. We have all this confirmation bias, all this consensus bias. We have all these biases about this thing. Try to let those rest as far away from you and walk as far away from them as you can and just listen. And then look at Jesus. Ask yourself the nineties question: what would Jesus do? Like how would Jesus, where would Jesus stand on this? Part of my journey was initiated by another elder at our church who felt like the Holy Spirit was reminding her of this passage in Acts, I think it's 13, but it's Peter and Cornelius. Peter has a vision, and it's this sheet with all these unclean animals on them. And God tells Peter kill and eat, right. And Peter says, never have I eaten anything unclean and never will I God, because you said don't eat them. They're unclean. And God said, don't you dare call unclean what I have called clean. And what that means is that God is way back in the old Testament and the Hebrew scriptures, God declared those things as unclean, right? But God did something new, and God was trying to switch something in Peter to bring in a whole people group who were excluded from the gospel. And now God's saying, I want them in. And I'm, I'm going against what you've read in the scriptures. We see this in the Prophets all the time. God saying I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So all that stuff I said about sacrificial system, it doesn't get you anywhere when it comes down to it. I want a transformation of heart, right? God is always in the scriptures regularly, going back on what God said in the scriptures, because he's after something bigger and better, can we consider these parts of scripture? And can we say maybe the Holy Spirit's doing something like that now. Maybe the Holy Spirit is saying it's time. It's time for this whole people group to feel welcomed and loved and included in the gospel and loved by Jesus and loved by Jesus's community. Loved by the people who claim to follow this Jesus, who is the God who is love. Could it be time? Can we consider all of the scriptures? Not just the four clobber verses. And then friends, let's just talk. Right. Like, let's talk as pastors, let's talk as church leaders. Talk about how we're struggling with this, how we're not certain about it. It's okay. Like let's as church leaders and pastors be okay with each other's process of being uncertain about it, of having some doubts, being in process. Everybody expects us to have everything figured out. I know it. I know the pressure of it. It's going to feel so good and relieving when you tell people I don't have it all figured out. I've got a lot of baggage to work through and a lot of research to do, and a lot of conversations to have. That models something; that is discipleship. I could go on for a long time, but let's just have the conversations. Let's think critically about the scriptures. Let's seek the Holy Spirit and let's listen to the LGBTQ community.
Kyle:Yeah. And have some humility for God's sake,
Randy:Yes, gosh.
Kyle:Even if you're never convinced that, you know, the affirming interpretation of those passages is the best one. Or even if you're not convinced by the interactions that you have with people that you should affirm, you know, their, their full sexuality, as they want to practice it, at least have enough humility to admit that you don't know better than they do. You don't know better than the experts do. And you're making an extraordinary gamble with other people's lives. Yeah. And when you say I'm going to take this stance that implies a kind of certitude that I don't possess, that I know has these concrete practical consequences. Yeah.
Randy:And I would ask non church leaders, particularly who are allies or in the LGBTQ community to just pray for these pastors. Right? Because there is a real bottom line involved in these conversations for a lot of people, like, to do what I'm doing and say that I'm affirming, for many pastors and many peers of mine would mean they're looking for another. job. Their church either fired them or their church fell apart. And that means that that's, that's real, people's salaries and family putting bread on the table. Right. That's, that's all sorts of things. There's all sorts of unhealthy fear associated with that, but there's real stuff there and that's
Kyle:the pastor of a church with some money that is affirming, take a few of those people in, give them somewhere to go.
Randy:But it's, it's real. And I don't want to come across as pompous or like I got this figured out you guys I'm, I'm, still on a journey. And we can be gracious, more gracious with one another than we've been around this stuff.
Kyle:Yeah.