Sexuality, Scripture, & the Soul of Christianity 2 of 2

so the number one question that was uploaded that was submitted is what are preston and justin's thoughts on individuals born with ambiguous genitalia or abnormal chromosomal makeup not X Y or X X all right sure so right so intersex is the term that's used for folks who are you know normally we think about males have X Y chromosomes and have you know certain genitalia and certain hormones and females have xx and different genitalia and different hormones and there are lots of different conditions in which those don't all line up the way that they normally do and so somebody may have chromosomes that we normally associate with one sex but external genitalia that we would normally associate with the other sex or whatnot and there are whole bunch of different conditions and they're collectively grouped together under the term intersex there are a lot of things that could be said about it I would argue I know you're gonna disagree with me I would you don't know that I would be surprised surprise me Preston go ahead I would argue that the fact that that that intersects conditions exists is evidence that gender is not such a clear-cut super important thing to God that that everything else needs to hang on that so so for me if you say that when a couple gets married that either that marriage is a beautiful holy thing that we should celebrate that's blessed by God or it's something disgusting and immoral and sinful and maybe puts them in danger of of hell as a result of living in unrepentant sin and the only difference between those two is the gender of the partners if we're gonna say that that says that gender is like super super super important to God and if that's the case then the fact that intersex folks exist some of them are good friends of mine it really makes me it makes it really makes me question all that there's a lot that could be said there but that that would be my short answer Uriah do you disagree with some stuff yeah I think the intersex question is often thrown out very broadly without getting really specific so when people ask what about intersex I always say well which of the sixteen to twenty conditions are you talking about so like late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia which affects quite a number one or not one in a hundred ish people you know some of the symptoms are 10% of women have a larger than average clitoris room stopper and 50% of men have a kind of receding scalp oftentimes there's infertility there's no ambiguity in whether this is male or female there's another condition called micropenis and I'll let you fill in the blanks of the symptoms of that condition Klinefelter's there's another popular one which is of an extra X chromosome so X X Y the conditions there are full male anatomy sometimes the testicles are slightly smaller and oftentimes maybe above 50% there's infertility sometimes oftentimes people with Klinefelter's go to the grave never even knowing they have an intersex condition so it's important that we don't use intersex as a broad-brush for whoa we don't we have no clue whether this is male/female chromosomes or one genitally and other that is that that is a small subset within the larger intersex umbrella in fact Leonard Sachs has done research on this he's a MIT graduate professor or something super smart guy he says like 99% of people with an intersex condition present pretty much no ambiguity in whether they are biologically male or female so we don't want to say intersex means neither male nor female so with other Kadesh conditions like congenital adrenal hyperplasia which affects about one in every 12,000 people you do have like XX chromosomes and male genitalia I've got a friend who is xx XY female genitalia male genitalia complete blend of male and female and I guess that's how it worried I don't see intersex is a third sex in fact most maybe most intersex people according to the is ma the intersex Society North America they don't even argue that intersex means like a third sex other sex I would see it as a blend of male and female characteristics within the 1% of people who have a one of the 16 to 20 intersex conditions so and I know I look I I come from a reformed tradition that can be I got so many things that fill in a blank here I don't like just punting to theological systems or whatever but if there was a thing called the fall what they call it that or not if you just think that things aren't the way they're supposed to be and sometimes people are born with AB let's say abnormalities I don't like birth defects can sound very negative what would it look like and we do know that exist right I mean that's anybody would acknowledge it some people are born with AB with with things that would not reflect maybe God's original design in creation or whatever what would that look like if there was a thing called the fall if that touches every aspect of our human nature sometimes psychology sometimes part of our body sometimes whatever sometimes our desires what would it look like if this thing called the fall had an effect on our sexual anatomy to me it doesn't sound outrageous to say it might look like something like the intersex conditions Justin where can i download spiritual warfare don't answer that we don't have enough time for those of you who are asking I just kindly ask that you ask in accordance with the tone and the courtesy to others so please I just want to say thank you for both of you being here I've read a lot of your work and I appreciate both of you and the tone that you set and I try to do that in my own life as well one of the questions that I am gay and Christian and Saida a completely so and it took me a long time to get there so I'm pretty it's pretty important to me I guess you may want to define a because I don't cool with the gays well that's the side a yes I name would be my position in this conversation um my question I I think I've never heard a great response to this I think it all comes down to what is sin right what is sin and and for those who who maybe take the Bible more I mean it really does have a lot to do with how you view the Bible also so sin well the Bible says this is wrong it's a sin but for me anyway like 98 percent of the sins listed in the Bible I as well as with people of many other faiths as well as my atheist friends would go yeah stealing hurts somebody stealing lust Envy gluttony murder these these are sins that the Bible lists as sins but they have a very clear and obvious detrimental impact on either me or the people to whom I I do them I've never had a great response from anybody or a compelling response that says what is sinful about me loving and committing my life to another man what is sinful about that beyond the Bible says it is how does that hurt me how does it hurt anybody thank you I think it was directed at me thank you it's Matt right thank thank you for being here - it's a grits first of all this is a fantastic question I hope if you're here and you believe in a traditional view you wrestle with this question and III would say I don't think we can reduce sin to whatever does or doesn't harm another individual I do think that that is one way of ethical reasoning that if it doesn't if it's consensual and it doesn't harm another person then it must be okay I don't think that reflects New Testament ethics I think there are various moral impulses for determining what is sin what is not certainly harming another person might be one aspect of it holiness is a major theme in the Bible be holy for I am holy and some things just are good in and of themselves because they constitute the holiness the other nough stat reflects God in some way and another moral impulse is something to Stoics used to actually talk about and I think judeo-christian ethics reflects it is simply living according to creation as the way Stoics used to put it or a judeo-christian way of putting it would be living according to god's creational design like that is a moral good in and of itself whether it harms doesn't harm well it doesn't harm but I mean even if we even if something might not harm another person it still might be not according to God's order of creation so I think there's I would say a judeo-christian way of ethical reasoning there's usually multiple moral impulses lying behind that not just if it doesn't harm anybody then therefore it must must be okay and even like I mean secular moral philosophers or ethicists like like Jonathan Hite my favorite writers you know he talks about six different from an evolutionary perspective he's a secular ethics this six different moral impulses that that humans have from an evolutionary perspective you know care and harm is one of them but there's like five others like submission authority and and loyalty and betrayal and others that that reflect kind of the moral impulse so I would say I always begin with what is marriage what is God's designed for marriage and sexually and I believe sexual expression belongs within marriage and so we look at what is the purpose of marriage what is the purpose of sex and I would say we go from there I think marriage does reflect a unity I mean I'm going to long so let me just it reflects that the the coming together of unity within diversity that we see in creation which is why marriage is woven into the fabric of Genesis 1 and 2 and really the entire scripture storyline I do think there is a procreation not mandate that must flow from marriage but I do believe that this relationship called marriage is ordered toward procreation even if it doesn't always result in in procreation but I don't know that's I hope that helps a little bit Justin did you have that um required to that as well well you know IIIi think I actually I actually agree with you that harm to another person is not the only factor some of the later stuff I'm low but you know yeah I mean III I'll go with you that far yeah I I won't say any more about that just to give more time for questions but yeah yeah please Justin I'm a huge fan of yours and Preston I'm hoping to be a fan of yours when I read your book but I just so I I lead a Bible study for the LGBTQ community which is exciting for me and the community that's involved but one of the questions that I was wrestling with my pastor with was that and you alluded to it Justin when you guys were talking about scriptural evidence on movement and you were talking about slavery and I think you also brought in like women in leadership or women in equality at the same time but one of the things that my pastor brought up to me which kind of has brought me into a deeper study is that we don't see or he doesn't see a movement of the homosexuality concept you know we we started out with so I'm just gonna start there like what are your guys thoughts or do you have any thoughts about that yeah William Webb is a guy who looked at those three categories in a book in 2001 where he looked at the scriptural trajectory on women and slavery and and same-sex relationships he called it homosexuals but and yeah I would agree with that that that we see sort of more of a oppressive view of women in the Old Testament moving towards liberation like you see an ethic they call it an ethical trajectory moving throughout scripture from more of a you know man it's a misogynistic culture and God's moving them away to more liberate liberation and equality moving them back to Genesis wanted to slavery same thing I think some of the statements in the New Testament you see Paul kind of gutting slavery from the inside out it doesn't quite a Bala [ __ ] but it's moving that direction whereas with the basic definition of marriage and whether same-sex relationships are ever allowed we don't see any movement in Scripture we don't see any movement in Scripture on whether people God's people should care for the poor despite how some people are yeah so so so there are dar samu the ethical trajectories in scripture with same-sex relationships in marriage William Webb nor do I do we see that movement now Justin's gonna disagree yeah so well so here's the thing so Webb's redemptive movement heuristic is is just like you were saying a minute ago that the question of whether something does harm to another person is not the only question we have to take into account when we look at whether something is sinful or not I think this very specific method of interpretation that looks at this very specific thing whether the whether the Bible takes a position that is substantially different from what the culture was taking and whether we see movement in Scripture on there you know I think it's actually a very helpful thing to look at but I don't think it's the only thing I don't think you can build your whole theology on only looking at that in isolation and I what I appreciate about Webb in his book which is slaves women and homosexuals is the name of the book what I appreciate about him is that he does wrestle honestly with this question of how can we when we look at passages of out women's role in church or about slavery say well that's influenced by the culture and so we don't apply those directly today but then we look at a passage it you know about that condemns same-sex sexual behavior even in the context or it very clearly tells us the context is idolatry or gang rape or something and say yeah but that applies to all same-sex sexual behavior including in marriage today you know like how do we that feels inconsistent I think it is inconsistent and I think but I applaud him for wrestling with what is a standard uniform way of approaching these that would give us these different answers I think the mistake he makes is that he's trying after the fact to come up with a method of interpretation that will give him the answer he's already decided he wants and when you have only three things you're looking at and you're trying to come up with a method of interpretation that will give you an answer on this this and this and you already know what the answers are supposed to be it's not that hard to come up with a rule I mean if we're I'm a math geek if I give you a rule that's like you know the numbers 5 yes six no seven yes you know what's the rule well you know you could say well you know maybe it's the rule is odd numbers or maybe the rule is prime numbers or maybe the rule is every number except six like it's it's it's easy to do that after the fact when you know what the answer is supposed to be and I think that his method is also much more helpful when you're looking at an issue like slavery or women's role where the Bible mentions it a lot of times and you have a lot of evidence versus something like same-sex sexual or something like same-sex marriage which is never mentioned in those scriptures or same-sex sexual behavior which has only mentioned a few times and in very specific circumstances I think in that case the noise outweighs the signal and it made it makes it really hard to tell anything from that the only other thing I'll say about that is if you took this approach to folks you know several hundred years ago in the church and said let's apply this to slavery I think they would say that you were heretic I it was clearly not obvious to them that the Bible was leading in this direction it's only obvious to us now looking back please and we are short on time so sorry do your best to keep the questions quick and concise so we can get as to as many as possible thank you both so much for the tone that you are setting and in bringing this conversation forward my question is about marriage because traditionally and historically marriage was more of a contract that generally put women in the role of property and as bearers of children and that was kind of their obligation they did and this these concepts around equality in marriage are very new and very modern and we have as Christians allowed ourselves to be open to the movement of God to look back at Scripture and re understand what those things mean and allow that to shift our understanding of marriage that it is no longer considered to be a contract and it is considered to be something that two people enter into by choice and through equality and mutuality and I I am curious why we can't allow that shift but not extend that to the LGBTQ community and not see that that same partnership and choosing is an extension of what we now understand marriage to be I'm starting to feel bad because you're getting all the hard question yeah great fantastic question I would um marriage as a as a but he say contract you mean like like arranged marriages or something like that right or more than that or okay so well well let me just say that so like there were there wasn't really one cultural view of marriage or there were several different things going on in the ancient world Stephanie Coontz wrote a great book called marriage a history and looks at all these different kind of cultural forms in which marriage marriage took a lot of them were misogynistic and demeaning not all of them though but these are all like and you see some of this in the Old Testament this is where I think within the Old Testament law when God comes down meets Israel he reveals to them an imperfect law to meet them where they're at he improves upon kind of their surrounding culture that's why we see some Swift from our lands we look at some of the stuff in the Torah we're like come on like really like if a man has two wives make sure you don't you know treat the son of the unloved wife that you know he's like whoa what just nip it in the bud tell him not to have two wives right well he he meets them where they're at to move him along to where he wants them to be now sex difference as a fundamental part of what marriage is is built into Genesis 1 and 2 and again that's always gonna be really significant for me I do believe that whatever ethical movement we see in Scripture is moving toward a Genesis 1 into ideal again Genesis 1 and 2 equality of women goodness of creation sovereignty of God intimacy of God the I mean the Grace and personal nosov God there's these fundamental themes there in this sex difference but the coming together to sexually different persons in a one flesh Union is woven into the fabric of that so that when I talk about marriage being between a man and a woman I'm not talking about just some cultural artifact that was you know in the day of Israelites culture it is built into the very fabric of creation so I do think it's different and even today even if even when we consider marriage in terms of you know romance and falling in love like that is our cultural moment now maybe it's good maybe it's not but it's not like we have finally discovered like what marriage is all about is to humans falling in love and and there's lots of romance involved in everything like that's that's our last 150 year cultural moment of of marriage yeah I feel like I I feel like you're getting the hard questions so I'm used to going to spaces where like I'm getting all the hard questions so I'm kind of just sitting back being like okay you can deal with that line of I won't say anything else other I feel I feel bad Oh No there we go I'm just gonna break that's right no you stay here I'm just they see it's weird by the way it's a stress with the success we have stress balls because this is a stressful conversation and they have smiley faces on them so you should give these out everybody shoot shirts I feel like now we're gonna talk about sexuality you're always taking it there I know next week we're gonna talk about gender identity so you need to stop I'm sorry just follow that up good luck well I mean it's more evidence of the civility of this conversation that you can all laugh together even after using our stress balls so might I I may be able to at least refocus our conversation I'm really interested in this diagnosis of the American church I grew up in an extremely conservative church community so I have a real insiders knowledge of sort of a conservative view on this whole conversation and I want to use an analogy that's very different than the ones we've been using we've sort of been talking about slavery isn't I'm sorry can we get to a question quickly I'm just so sorry no no I understand my analogy is I as a fan of abandom I hope somebody's heard of here called Petra and they were a part of a 20-year controversy where the Evangelical Church in America condemned them for playing rock music and this is important because it took them that long of receiving condemnation from the pulpit to change people's minds and say actually the Holy Spirit is working through this now I look at Justin and I see Petra because what whatever else you think about the things he's today I see the Holy Spirit working in his ministry in his life the same way a lot of people in the 70s and 80s saw the Holy Spirit working in Petra and I wonder in 20 years are we going to look at this as the same thing and say did the evangelical Christians again and thus following the same pattern missed the opportunity for the self correction or reformation of the church when you start to see a pattern and this is not the only example it makes you start to doubt the epistemic judgment of the community as a whole does that make sense as a question and I want to know what you think about that and and how you see yourself as not being a part of that that history you know I want to say I don't think that's I appreciate what you're asking but I I want to kind of jump to Preston's defense here for a second I just want to say like I I see the Holy Spirit at work in in in Preston's life and in the work that he's doing and in in churches that are on Preston's side of this and I I want to be and I write I mean I've asked similar questions myself so like I really appreciate you know what you're saying you're very kind to me thank you but I just I I do want to jump in because I don't the end of since we've had several tough questions per person here I don't I don't want person to get beat up on I want to say I think that it's important that we recognize the Spirit working even in spaces where we don't have everything right all the time because we don't have everything right none of us have everything right and if we have to get everything right in order for us to be the church then we'll never be the church so yeah I appreciate ya I mean I don't know I don't know how to respond to that maybe in 20 years we'll see that I'm Petra maybe in 20 years we'll see that just as Petra and I'll let you know in 20 years I don't know I mean it's just no please well thank you for both for being here questions for Justin so Preston said that you to agree on polyamory is this correct yeah I spoke for you so I don't know so yeah so so I yeah my my view is so this is this is this is the thing I don't living in the LGBTQ world with a lot of LGBTQ friends as I do I have friends in a lot of different situations I have friends who are in polyamorous relationships I know that they have been in many cases beaten down in some of the same ways that I have and so I do not go around talking about polyamory it's not an issue that I've made my issue it's it's yeah it you know that said yeah Mike my position has been consistently one of advocating for monogamous marriage yeah could you work through that scripturally for me so I can better understand how you process Scripture in terms of why I you're not affirming polyamory so well now I get to be Preston [Laughter] so I this well let me start by saying this is not an issue that I am it's not because it's not an issue I normally talk about it's not something that I have a quick answer ready for you as you might have imagined president I both speak on the rest of this stuff so much that there's certain topic questions that we get asked a lot we've got quick answers to might might my short answer is I I do see some of the same redemptive movement stuff that Preston has you know talked about and and we talked about earlier in a move away from the old testament support of polyamory and the issues that were going on there and I I I don't think I don't see I don't know how to say this in a in a way that's going to be helpful and this is part of why like I would rather that churches when they're talking about some of these issues take time to get to know people and have these conversations before things become a big thing so you so your your and I don't know if this is your intent or not but you you've quite cleverly put me in in the position that Preston is in which is a position where my theological view is a view that I know some of the people in this room might be hurt by and I recognize that and that's actually precisely why if I were going to publicly like talk about it and get in into it I would probably want to sit down with some of the folks who are affected first and talk about how to talk about this before I we feel comfortable like having a conversation it's not because I don't know what I think but because I want to be that Christian who I spoke of earlier who knows well enough to know what I don't know and to have enough humility to admit that there are things that I could learn and there are things that I could put better and I I i wish i there are bible passages and arguments that come to mind right now and i'm just not sure that they would be super helpful right now so that's not a great answer for you but that said if it's an issue of interest to you and you want to talk about it at some point let me know and i'd be happy to have the conversation because it's not a conversation i've had much of quick quandary about that not now i get definitive whatever but like I don't if marriage if sex difference is irrelevant for the meaning of what marriage is then if marriage is simply based on consensual love between two humans I think the two in that equation is somewhat arbitrary if sex difference is also arbitrary so I to me I don't and this is not please I I've been accused of the slippery slope every single day so this is not a slippery slope argument take the sexual ethic that affirms same-sex marriage I think very logically should affirm polyamory as well personally and you have more scriptural evidence for polyamory polygamy is very different than polyamory but it's it I mean may be a step in that direction so I think you do have more I would say a more biblical evidence for polyamory than the same-sex marriage okay can we both so much can we have this I'm so sorry against polyamory by the way I would rely mean Paul yeah I think polyamory is rooted in male and female coming together so the two becoming one flesh there are two sexually different persons I think are both equally similar so because I affirm sex difference in marriage I also affirm that the numbers should be you can absolutely argue though the two becoming one flesh is the two becoming one flesh and is not dependent on on gender I mean that's I think that's a separate issue I think that is a slippery slope argument but okay I'm so sorry it's got to be the last question I apologize we were just short on time so please thank you for the rest of you I apologize I want to thank you both for the curve to come up here and just to share with the church because I think one of the the brokenness in the church is that we forget that we all fall short of the glory of God and only God is holy and but I do have a question for Justin and you had mentioned before that the Adam and Eve thing and so I'm just referring to Genesis where after God had made the animals and he said he blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply after he made Adam and Eve he blessed them and said be fruitful multiply and even on Noah's Ark with the animals God bring one male and one female and so seems like part of God's blessing is for multiplication and reproduction and I don't see the same thing with same-sex marriage same-sex relationship unfortunately breaks my heart because and it leads to there's no reproduction there's there's no that it pretty much leads to extinction which is not what seems to be in God's designed for us so how would you I mean yeah yeah thanks for that question so um hmm that one I'm more used to talking about so yeah so I the a couple things about that I said before and I'll say again I think what we get in that passage is descriptive rather than prescriptive in other words it's it's telling us what happened but it's not saying every marriage must be like this one now when you've got Adam and Eve you're trying to populate a whole planet obviously it's important that they have a reproductive union that's no longer the case you know we have an earth now of it deals with questions of overpopulation and all those kinds of stuff there are plenty of children in need of adoption where we're not facing a shortage of you know that the humanity is going to go extinct if some people don't have kids Jesus when Jesus talks about marriage in a different context talking about divorce he says you know the not everyone can accept this teaching but but you know those who can accept it should accept it in other words this allusion to the idea that there can be a teaching that is for a lot of people or even the majority of people but everybody's situation is different we've all got our own raw materials some couples choose not to have kids some couples are not able to have kids my parents tried for 10 years to have kids before I was born and had been told by all the doctors that they weren't gonna have kids as it happens the doctors were wrong but sometimes there are situations where people even if they very much want kids can't or people get married at a point in life late in life where reproduction is just not going to happen but the church does not say to those couples you can't get married because you can't reproduce so I think that while reproduction is a is a wonderful outcome of marriage for many couples I don't think that reproduction is required for a marriage to be a marriage that would be my my answer breast in 60 seconds I don't think it's descriptive but I do think it's prescriptive I mean the language in 224 in Genesis a man shall leave his father and mother he doesn't like Adam and Eve so he's not even talking about Adam and Eve anymore per se he's making a very generic statement in Genesis 2:24 and Jesus picks up on that like it's not just a Genesis thing it's not just an Old Testament thing like Jesus reaffirms that the when he says not everybody can accept a statement he's not talking about not anybody can accept male-female marriage he's talking about you no later than that remember Jesus is talking about staying married he's confronting divorce and Peter says well gosh and we can't divorce our wives then who can you know well who can do this you know and Jesus says not everybody is gonna be able to see how to stay married and stick it out when it gets tough so yeah I just I don't think there's strong evidence in favor of sex difference in there it's just being descriptive and not not prescriptive I would say my five seconds summary yeah I don't think marriage has to result in procreation for it to be a valid marriage but it because I believe primarily sex difference is part of what marriage is it is it is structured toward procreation I think that makes a difference but that raises probably more questions well we'll take all the questions that were submitted and we'll do this again shall we yeah all right everybody please thank Preston and Justin oh my goodness look at this [Applause] so my friends and the Church of Jesus thank you so much for being here and may we all exemplify the grace humility and love that was just modeled for us and incarnated for us through these two wonderful gentlemen and may we as the church be that incarnation of love and grace as we go go in peace thank you so much for coming [Applause]

Channel: Spark.Church

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Length: 37min 9sec (2229 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 15 2019