Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 83 | United Methodist Church

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

We dive into the recent decision by the United Methodist Church to reinforce its stance on biblical marriage and the role of LGBT members in the church. Copyright Blaze Media All Rights Reserved.

Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to Relatable. Today we are going to talk about a subject that a lot of you guys have asked me to dive into over the past couple of weeks. We touched on it very lightly last week, but we're going to get a little more in-depth today. And that is the decision by the Methodist Church to strengthen its stance on traditional marriage and the role of members of the LGBT community inside the church. So let me give you a breakdown of how that all came about. And then we're going to zoom out a little bit further and talk about the trend of accepting kind of homosexuality and gay marriage in America, how that's changed, particularly how that's changed in the church. And then I am going to address an Instagram post that a lot of you guys sent me in my

Instagram messages. And we're going to talk about what the Bible says about all of this. So let's start with the decision by the Methodist Church. So on February 25th, a couple weeks ago, members of the United States, Methodist Church convened at a general conference in St. Louis, the top governing body of the denomination, the general conferences legislative committee made up of 865 delegates. Some of these people are clergy. Some of these people are lay people. They voted on three different plans. One plan was the one church plan. One church was the simple plan. And another plan that they voted on was the traditional

plan. And all of these had to do with LGBTQ people within the church. The one church plan would allow individual churches to make their own decisions and regional conferences to make their own decisions regarding the members of the LGBTQ community and how they could serve as clergy and if they could be married in the church. And then you have the simple plan which would remove all language about the practice of homosexuality out of the Methodist book of discipline. One was actually the traditional plan. So according to religious religion news service, the traditional plan would strengthen the enforcement of language in the denomination's rulebook stating that the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching and that self-avowed

practicing homosexuals cannot be ordained as ministers appointed to serve or be married in the church. So 53% of these Methodist delegates voted for the traditional plan. Some churches and some clergy members and some lay people have been saying that they're going to leave the denomination. obviously they're very upset by this decision. Some say that they are saying, but that they're going to kind of defy this plan and they're going to continue to perform same-sex weddings.

No matter where you stand on all of this, the division that's happening within the Methodist Church, just as if it happened in any other denomination, is very sad. And the pain that it's causing people on either side of this issue is also not something to take joy in. Now, a lot of conservative Christian, to a lot of people who believe in conservative theology, of course,

are happy that the traditional plan passed with a slight majority, but we should also be assessing why this is happening and how we actually got to this position that we even have to have this kind of discussion. So let us acknowledge kind of the context of all of that because it says a lot about not just where the Methodist church is, but really where we are as a society and particularly where we are as the Protestant faith in general.

So Pew Research did a study, 2017 that analyzed the view on homosexuality of all Americans from 2001 to 2017. So if you looked in 2001, the opinion of all Americans, 57% of Americans opposed 35% of Americans favored gay marriage. At 2017, 32% opposed 62% were in favor. So that changed a lot over 16 years of the public opinion on the morality and the acceptance of gay marriage. The vast majority of people today, whether they're Christian or not, would say that, yes, homosexuality should be socially accepted, and gay marriage is something that should be, that should be, of course, legal and should be something that is celebrated in the same way

that heterosexual marriage is. A pupil from 2015 looks specifically at Christians and said 54% say that homosexuality should be accepted by society. So the majority of Christians in 2015 said that homosexuality should be accepted by society that is up by 10 points from just eight years earlier. So again, we saw a large shift from before Barack Obama's presidency. I'm not necessarily tying this to Barack Obama quite yet, although I have done so in previous podcast. From before Barack Obama was president to the middle of his term and then to the end of his term, we saw a really big shift in ideology and immorality and in views on sexuality in America.

People got a lot more liberal, particularly on social issues. Gallup found that 41% of Protestants specifically view gay relations as morally acceptable. And so that's a little bit different from Christians in general. There are less than half of Protestants, at least I think this was probably in 2015 as well, who view gay relations as morally acceptable. And then a Pew study from 2014, looked specifically at the United Methodist Church, the denomination that we are studying right now,

and said that 60% of the United Methodist Church believes that homosexuality should be accepted. And that is, again, up nine points from seven years earlier. The most liberal in this particular study that looked at the various denominations and their views on homosexuality, the most liberal were the United Church of Christ, Anglican Church,

both denominations of the Lutheran churches were fairly liberal, although one was more liberal than the other. Episcopalian, extremely liberal in this regard. And of course, the Catholic Church is far and more liberal on the subject of gay marriage than Protestant churches are generally. Most conservative was the Southern Baptist Convention, assemblies of God in seventh-day Adventist. But every denomination within the Protestant Church and the Catholic Church also has increased in its approval of homosexuality over the past 10 years. Of course, we know the Supreme Court case, Obergefell, that ruled that gay marriage should be a right in the same way that heterosexual marriage is a right. And public opinion really changed with that. Before

Obergefell, the majority of the country, a slight majority of the country still wasn't on board with gay marriage, still wasn't really on board with homosexuality. But after that, after Bergerfeld was ruled that homosexual, homosexual marriage is a right, public opinion really shifted. So the question that we need to ask as Christians, which we've addressed many times on this podcast before, especially when we talked on the episode about what Lauren Daigle said about her gay friends and the acceptance of homosexuality within the church, we really kind of dove into what the Bible says about that. We have both Old Testament and New Testament verses. that say homosexuality is a sin, it is not the marriage that is condoned by God. It's not seen as

marriage to God. So, of course, you have the verses in Leviticus, but then you also have that reiterated in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 6, 9, 1 Timothy 110, Romans 1.27. A lot of people ask me, okay, if we say that homosexuality is a sin, because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin, well, do we also apply that to other little verses in the Bible that say certain things are a and that, you know, we shouldn't eat shellfish and things like that. No, there are cleansing laws that Christians no longer abide by or no longer have to abide by. And there are moral laws that are reiterated in the New Testament. And sexuality and the definition of marriage is one of those moral laws that is reiterated in the New Testament. And for the Christian, it is not only because

it is a physical law, as we've talked about many times on this podcast, it's not just a physical mandate, it is also a spiritual reflection. And so Ephesians 5 talks about how a husband and wife reflects Christ and the church as the husband is the head of the wife. So as Christ is the head of the church. And it talks about the different dynamics and leadership that a husband is supposed to lead and serve his wife. And a wife is supposed to respect and submit to her husband. Now, that is not supposed to be some subduing structure where the wife has no freedom to talk or no freedom to make decisions. Marriage is in many ways of partnership, but the husband is supposed to be the spiritual head, the head of the household, lead his family. He is going to have to give account to God for

his family. So the question is not just whether or not physically homosexuality is okay and whether or not physically creation was set up like that, but also it's a spiritual question as well. okay, well, if God says that marriage, earthly marriage, is a reflection amazingly, miraculously of the gospel of Christ in the church, then where does gay marriage fit into that? The Bible is very clear about the differing roles between husbands and wives and how that is a spiritual demonstration of Christ in the church, and that is not given to us in the depiction of gay marriage. It's given to us in the depiction of a man and a woman and a husband and a wife.

I don't want to mess with spiritual realities. I don't want to mess with a spiritual demonstration of the gospel that is made manifest through Christian marriage between a man and a woman. This is not just nitpicking a couple verses. Trust me. Trust me, if there were actual theological answers, if there was a theological, a sound theological way that we could accept gay marriage as on par biblically with heterosexual marriage, then,

it would be easy. We wouldn't have to have this discussion. I think most people would be more than happy to just say, okay, great. If this is a theologically sound position that, hey, gay marriage is just as holy and just as honorable to God and is just as biblical as heterosexual marriage, then fine. We don't even need to have this cultural divide. I certainly do not rejoice in having this debate. I certainly don't rejoice in causing what is now seen as a controversy. I certainly don't enjoy being a called bigot or being called archaic or being called backwards or my love of people being questioned simply because I believe in what the Bible says. If there were an easy out, if there were an easy way out of this in which I could still adhere

to the Bible and still say, yes, I am completely for a gay marriage, then I would do it. But there's not. And it's primarily not only because the moral law is not only in the Old Testament, but also in the New Testament reiterated, but also because of that spiritual reflection, spiritual component of a husband and a wife reflecting Christ in the church, there is really no biblical out. You do hear a lot of people saying, well, the Bible's only talking about homosexual sin being a sin in the context of prostitution, in the context of abusive relationships, and the context of relationships that are like a pedophile relationship. But there's

really no sound theology or sound research that backs up those views, especially, especially when you look at it in light of creation, especially when you look at it in light of Ephesians 5, which makes clear, like I said, that it is a reflection, it is a symbol, it is a reiteration in an earthly way of Christ in the church, the husband and the wife, the leader, and the one who submits. The Bible is extremely clear about that. And like I said, I wish there was a way out. And there's not. I don't like taking the hard position on this. I don't like knowing that this podcast causes controversy and causes people to think that I hate them because of that, because I don't. I don't. But unfortunately, we have a lot of voices, we have a lot of voices, even within Christianity,

who would tell us that in order to be kind, in order to be loving, in order to be like Christ, we have to say that this is not a sin. And we have to say that gay marriage, is on par biblically with heterosexual marriage that we need to forget the spiritual components of a marriage between a husband and a wife. We need to forget what the Bible says. We need to just forget about creation. We need to roll with the punches and we need to catch up to the times in order to not be a bigot in order to be truly like Christ. And you get a lot of people being convinced by that. Why do you get a lot of people being convinced by that? Because it feels good. It feels good. You're probably like me and you don't want to cause trouble either. Believe it or not,

I don't. Believe it or not, I still care sometimes whether or not people like me. I still wish that I could just say, you know what? You do you and live your life however you want to live your life, which of course, I don't believe in any laws stopping people from living their life on a basic level. But I wish that I could just say, you know, what morally relative, your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth. Trust me, it would probably make me feel a lot better about myself, knowing that I'm not going to get into a whole lot of controversy, but God calls us to something higher. God calls us to something else. God calls us to something different. It is not our job to make people feel good about their non-theological stances. It is not our job to make people feel good about their

sin, about my sin, about your sin, whatever sin it is. That is not our job. And in particular, There was an Instagram post by a Christian author, influencer that a lot of you guys know that we've talked about on the podcast before. I won't read her entire Instagram caption, but a lot of you guys sent it to me. She is, she says a quick, heartfelt note to my LGBTQ darlings, especially the dear young gaybies, beloved by Jesus. And then she says, you are incredibly precious and wonderful and needed. You are loved.

you are the church, you should be able to lead the church, you are of his heart, you are of Jesus heart, you are of my heart, and she talks about how much she's learned from this community, and then she ends with the church is only as kind, as good as true, and as rich as its widest point. We are hopelessly shrunk and reduced without you. Thank you for loving the church when she hasn't loved you back. You are a marvel, and I am so proud to be your sister. So on some of these things, I completely agree. People, no matter what your sexual orientation is, no matter what your gender identity is,

you are made in the image of God. And because of that, you are just as valuable and you are just as valuable as anyone else. You have just as much worth as anyone else. God wants you to be saved just as much as he wants anyone else saved. He doesn't look at you and think that you are dirtier than any other kind of sinner. You are not less than other sinners. We are all dead in our sin apart from Christ. Every single one of us, certain kinds of sin don't make you more dead than other sins.

If you know what dead means, it means dead. There's not different stages of death. You're just dead. And so all of us who are apart from Christ are dead in our sin. And all of us, when we are called into Christ are called to forsake our sin. We are called to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, think about how painful and gruesome that is to take up a cross of crucifixion and follow him. All of us are called to hard things. All of us are called to sacrifice. our sins and our fleshly desires. And we're called to something hard, but we're called to something good. We're called to something different. And the problem that I have with this Instagram post isn't that she said that they are loved, that they are valuable. Of course you are. Of course you are.

You're just as valuable as I am or as anyone else's. Like I've already said, you're made in the image of God. You are an image barren because of that. You are of incredible worth. So that is not my problem. My problem is equating, this last part, equating kindness and goodness and love with saying that what you are doing is not sin when the Bible says that it is. That is saying that you know love better than God does. You know kindness better than God does. You know goodness better than God does. And if the Bible's version of kindness and goodness in love doesn't make sense to you that you get to change it and that you get to say, sorry, God. what you said is it good enough for me. It doesn't make sense with the new cultural changes.

It's not culturally convenient for me. And so I am going, I'm going to reject that definition of love and goodness and kindness. And I am going to give them my own because it feels better for them and because it feels better for me. I am just not willing to say that I know better than God does. I'm just not willing to say that about myself. Like, I know, how finite I am. I know how little I understand things. I know how little I even comprehend about the Bible and about God and about what's good and what's bad. And I look back on different stages of my life when I might have thought that I was making the right decision, but I didn't. Like I think back to a stage of my life in college where I thought that you do you was the best imperative that

someone could give me, that I was drinking, I was partying, I was hooking up. I thought that I was doing, all of the right things and all of the people who encouraged me, I thought that they were the loving ones. I thought that they were the ones who really believed in me, who really wanted what's best for me. And now I look back and I see some of the regrets that I racked up and I think about some of the mistakes that I made and just how stupid I was during that time. And I wish I had woken up to the fact that the people who were loving me were the people who were telling me, stop. Stop. And so what I think is important is that we don't equate love to telling people that everything you do, and everything you think and everything you feel is okay because it's not.

Like, I don't trust myself enough to say that about myself. And so I can't trust someone else who is also finite to say it enough about them. Like, I don't trust myself to redefine love better than God did. I don't trust myself to redefine sin better than God did. I don't trust myself to redefine good and bad because I'm the same me who maybe changed a little bit and thanks to Christ, but I'm the same me. who made poor decisions in college and thought I was making the right ones. So why would I think that my same finite mind now would be able to redefine something as

eternal and as great as sin or as love as goodness as kindness? I hope that's making sense. So I have a significant problem with equating kindness and openness and love to disobeying the Bible. I'm just not willing to give definition. that I say are supreme to what God's word is. I refuse to believe that the God who said that he is love, that he is love is wrong about defining love.

And defining love is speaking truth to your neighbor. That is what love is. It is also, of course, it's hospitality, it is grace, it is forgiveness, it's kindness, it's listening to someone, it's looking them in the eye and telling them that they are made in the image of God. but it is also not being afraid to speak truth. Rosaria Butterfield wrote a letter in the Gospel Coalition in 2016 to this particular Christian influencer and author.

And she addressed what this author had said about gay marriage being holy and about it being the same as heterosexual marriage. And she said, I won't read the entire letter, of course, but I will read part of it. She says, if this were 1999, the year that I was converted and walked away from the woman and lesbian community I loved, instead of 2016, this woman's words about the holiness of LGBT relationships would have flooded into my world like a bomb of Gilead. How amazing it would have been to have someone as radiant, as knowledgeable, as humble, as kind, and funny as Jen, which she has all those things, by the way, saying out loud what my heart was

shouting, yes, I can have Jesus and my girlfriend. Yes, I can flourish both of my tenured academic discipline, which was, queer theory and English literature and culture and in my church, my emotional vertigo could find normal once again. She goes on to say, maybe I wouldn't need to lose everything to have Jesus. Maybe the gospel wouldn't ruin me while I waited, waited, waited for the Lord to build me back up after he convicted me of my sin and I suffered the consequences. Maybe it would go differently for me than it did for Paul or for Daniel or for David or for Jeremiah. Maybe Jesus could save me without afflicting me. Maybe the Lord would give to me respectable crosses, manageable thorns.

Today, I hear her words, words meant to encourage, not to discourage, to build up, not to tear down, to defend the marginalized, not broker, unearned power, and a thin trickle of sweat creeps down my back. If I were still in the thick of the battle over the indwelling sin of lesbian desire, Jin's words would have put a millstone around my neck. And of course, Rosaria Butterfield is someone who lived as a exquisite. gay woman who had a partner for decades of her life and then came to be a Christian and changed. Now, we've also talked about on the podcast that when anyone is saved, when anyone is saved, no matter what your prevailing sin is, whenever your predominant sin is, you are being saved

from unbelief to belief, not from a liar to not a liar, not from gay to straight, not from stealing to not stealing. That's not primarily what you're being saved from. You are repenting from unbelief and you are being saved and you will be sanctified in Christ and you will be given the power. We will all be given the power to put down our sin to deny our flesh and to follow Christ. Does that mean we won't struggle? Does that mean that we won't be tempted by sin? Does that mean that we won't sin? That we won't mess up. Of course it doesn't. Of course it doesn't. But it does mean repentance from our old way of life, whatever that old way of life was, and walking in Christ. And I just, I just fear, I fear honestly what people, of all backgrounds, of all different

sins, I fear them following someone like this Christian influencer and missing out. And we all, we all should fear that about our own salvation. we're working out our salvation with fear and trembling, the Bible says, we should all fear that we're missing out by not laying down our sins and following fully after Christ, that we're not fully experiencing the joy and the freedom that Christ gives us in salvation to him. So that is why it is not loving to say that any kind of sin is okay. And look, it's a hard position to take. It is.

You are going to be made fun of. You will be persecuted. you the day is coming when people dig up these old podcasts old podcasts they'll be old maybe when they're dug up or maybe not when people say wow look at this girl she is so unloving she's so unkind how dare she say these things but they're biblical and far be it from me to redefine love redefine sin redefine goodness and kindness is something other than what what god says um and so what we are called to do is we are called to see everyone as image bearers we are called to see everyone as value and as valuable and as as worthy as a human being that is. And we are called to speak the

truth and love. We are called to be hospitable. We are called to be generous. We are called to be kind. But that doesn't mean that we are not allowed to say what the Bible says and that we are not allowed to speak truth. I think a lot of people think that they are, it is. in not saying something about hard things. And I'm not saying we need to go out all the time and just talk about controversial issues for the sake of stirring up controversy. Of course not. Of course not.

But they need to be addressed when they should be addressed and when the situation calls for it. We shouldn't be afraid to talk about these things. I think a lot of people refuse to talk about it or refuse to voice their opinion. One, because of course you're scared and I'm scared too. Like I totally get that. You're scared of being called names of not being accepted. but often we kid ourselves into thinking that the only reason we're not talking about these things is because we want to be accepting when it's actually because we want to be accepted.

And the Bible, the Bible has already spoiled that for us. Like, you're not going to be accepted. You're not. The world is totally going to push you away. And you're totally going to be condemned. And you're totally going to be persecuted. And I'm not saying we have it really hard in America. We don't.

Our form of persecution is like, you know, you get kicked off social media, which in this day and age is big. but we're not thankfully, we're not getting, like our freedom of religion isn't actually being prohibited and quite yet. And we are not being completely silenced and our churches aren't getting burned down. We're not getting killed for our religion. And so, of course, we have a lot to be thankful for, but are you going to be pushed to the outskirts of society? Are you going to be marginalized because you're accused of marginalizing other people? Yes. And so I'll just tell you right now, it's going to be a lot easier for you to follow this Christian influencer. It's going to be a lot, it's going to be a lot more convenient for your life and you will have

probably a lot less, a lot less worry about fitting in if you don't take these biblical positions. If you try to find a way to make every culturally convenient position biblical, your life will be easy. It'll be easy. and that's why the Bible says you need to count the cost. You need to know what you're getting into before you follow Christ. So if we want to be culturally convenient Christians, and if we want to be liked and loved by everyone,

if we want to be accepted by the mainstream, then sure, we can be woke, social justice, intersectional, okay with everything you do, you, moral, relativistic Christians, that's fine. Now, the question I would ask you is, why, why the Bible, why Jesus, and maybe get another hobby. You can be an agnostic and believe all those things and you have a lot more time on Sundays. But that's the question all of us need to ask.

And it's a question that I wrestle with all the time, that I'm constantly asking myself, how is my life really different? Oh, because I have a podcast and talk about hard things, people do things that are a lot harder than I do. They sacrifice a lot bigger than I do. They love a lot more than I do. They're a lot kinder than I do. I certainly am not perfect in any of this stuff at all.

and I'm learning. And so that's that's my take on all of that. And I always try, it's really difficult, but I always try to be as soft and as gracious as I can without compromising the truth. But I want you guys to be fully equipped and fully prepared when you see this kind of stuff in the mainstream and when you see your friends following this kind of stuff, because you will. And it's going to be really hard to have conversations about this. I do encourage you to. I encourage you to talk to your friends about it. it and not in a condemning way, not in a, well, don't you know what the Bible says or are you an idiot? That's probably not going to go over well. But I encourage you to have conversations with your

friends who think differently than you do. For example, if you saw that a friend liked or commented on this post and you're actually close enough to this person to have a productive conversation, I would encourage you to just ask questions. Just ask questions about, you know, okay, what did you get out of this poster? Or what? you think about it or what do you think about the united methodist churches decision where do you stand on that and just be a genuinely curious and try to have a conversation with them and point them to the truth of the bible the truth of ephesians five and uh the truth that god gives us and i'm not saying they're going to change their mind they may never change their mind and they're probably not going to

change their mind in that conversation and i'm not saying you should cut them off uh from friendship or that you should be rude to them try as you can to stay calm because they probably won't this is an identity issue for a lot of people. It's not just a behavioral issue. It's an identity issue. So people get extremely defensive about it. So love your friends who disagree with you, but don't be afraid to engage and to have those conversations because what's behind it is not just someone's thought on gay marriage,

but also what your thought is on the Bible, what your thought is on God's word, what your thought is on how God defines love and who God is. what kind of authority do you think God really has? And you don't have to know everything. People are going to have a lot of questions for you. And if you don't know, you should just say, you know, I don't know. That's a really good question. Like, I've never thought about that before. Okay. Even if you still disagree with him totally and you know that they're wrong and you know, okay, I think that their comeback for this probably wasn't right, but I don't have an answer for it. Be humble and be like, you know what? That's a really good point. Let me think about that.

would you mind if I got back to you or would you mind if we reentered this conversation or okay let me think about that and I'll research that but have you thought about it have you thought about it this way try to stay as open and as humble as you can I know this is hard and I know that you get a lot of pushback for it but it's important to have these conversations it's important not to shrink away and it's really important for you to notice the signs of a false gospel when you're looking at at these very popular influencers. So I hope this helped. I hope this was a sufficient discussion about the United Methodist Church. If you guys still have questions on it, of course, let me know. And I love you guys. And I love the suggestions that you give me and the questions that you have.

They're always very thought provoking and good. So I will see you guys next week. Remember, three times a week next week. And it's going to be really fun. So share this podcast. If you want to rate this podcast, if you like it, send me in the email, send me a message. if you do have any questions or need any advice. As always, I am here. Okay, I'll see you guys next week.