The Sean McDowell Show - 10 Affirming Arguments for Same-Sex Unions: A Biblical Response

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Jesus never talked about same-sex relationships. Paul was only condemning exploitative relationships, not consensual ones. These are the kinds of arguments made in favor of same-sex relationships. Rebecca McLaughlin and I analyze these arguments and associated biblical passages, one by one to uncover, what the Bible really says about the top 10 affirming arguments. READ: Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships? Examining 10 Claims about Scripture and Sexuality (https://a.co/d/iJp0pru) WATCH: Same-Sex Unions: Everything the Bible Says About It (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogXQUY-0Rgg&t=21s) Make sure to subscribe and check out some of my other videos for more on Christianity, Theology and other aspects of culture! *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:43 Chapter 1 of her book 6:25 Why can't the Bible be "inclusive" 11:11 Christians should just focus on God's love 15:16 Jesus was silent on Same Sex relationships 19:17 God's Judgment on Sodom 23:20 We can't follow Old Testament rules 28:35 Paul condemns certain Same Sex relationships 34:29 Paul condemns lust not Same Sex relationships 39:02 Homosexual in the Bible was misinterpreted 43:23 Bible condemns slavery not Same Sex behavior 49:19 Unchosen celibacy yields bad fruit 58:21 God of love can't be against relationships of love 1:02:38 Advice to Christians with Same Sex Attraction 1:07:30 Ending Message

Does the Bible affirm same-sex relationships? Since the word homosexuality was not used in the Bible until 1946, is it a bad translation? These are a few of the claims and questions we are going to explore today with our return guest, Dr. Rebecca McLaughlin, author of the new book, small book, but it packs a punch, Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships? Thanks for coming back.

It's a joy to be here. Yeah. Oh, sorry. People have been asking for you to come back since the beginning for a lot of reasons, including your accent. But this book gives us a wonderful opportunity to dive in. So let's just jump right in. And in the first chapter of the book you tell kind of this story it's titled a tale of two testimonies so what are those two testimonies and why do you start the book there i wanted to begin by telling my own story and also the story of my best friend and the reason is my own story is one of having always grown up believing in Jesus. And actually, you know, from a pretty early age, I was very sure about who Jesus is. And I was also very sure that following

Jesus meant everything was different, and that I needed to tell other people about him. So sort of very eager, young believer from at least, I mean, I remember age nine, being sure about Jesus and wanting to tell my friends about him. I was through pretty much as long as I can remember, I've been attracted to other women. And obviously, you know, the fall that that took when I was very young was, you know, maybe different than it took as I went on in life. But I, for pretty much as long as I can remember, have been sort of holding these two things together, the fact that I am a follower of Jesus and I believe the Bible to be true and the fact that I am sort of seemingly naturally, I mean, at least as far as I can tell from my own experience,

I'm not making any theological or anthropological statements on that basis, but just in terms of sort of lived experience that what seems to arise in my heart is attraction toward women rather than attraction toward men. And I wanted to tell that story because I want the reader of this book to know that I'm actually not coming to these questions as an impartial observer or as someone who opened the Bible and hoped to find that it said no to same-sex sexual relationships for

believers. I would have been more than happy at one point in my life to have sort of found that it said the opposite. And I also wanted to tell the story of my best friend, Rachel Gilson, because she has a very different sort of path from mine in that she did not grow up believing in Jesus at all. She grew up in a non-religious home, sort of funnily enough, I was in England, she was in California, so very different parts of the world. She, as a teenager, became number one, quite convinced that there really was no God. She would certainly have identified as an atheist at that point in her life. And also she discovered as a teenager that the way that other of her female friends felt about boys was how she felt about girls. There's a particular girl in her high school who she started to date. But even aside from that girl,

she had sort of other sexual and romantic relationships with young women and didn't become a Christian herself until she was an undergrad at Yale University when sort of much to her own surprise, really, the Lord broke into her life in a sort of powerful and unexpected way after her high school girlfriend broke up with her and sort of plunged her into, you know,

the slough of despond and made her rethink a lot of things about her life. So she's also someone who has come to the Christian faith, actually initially really hoping that it did leave room for monogamous same-sex sexual relationships. You know, she very much was hoping that she would marry a woman someday. But her experience of reading the Bible, even at an early stage, was one of recognizing that the arguments that she'd been hearing from people who were claiming

to be interpreting the Bible faithfully on these questions and were saying, yeah, there is actually room for same-sex sexual relationships for Christians christians even from from the first it was sort of evident to her that those arguments didn't actually hold water and she's gone on from there to study actually you know much more than than i have um currently pursuing a phd in these topics and both of us have looked at the bible in the original languages both of us have taken time to kind of look at the cultural context that the New Testament was written into, etc. The more we study the Bible, the more convinced we've both become that it is very clear in its no to same-sex sexual relationships with Christians. But I think we've also both become clear that this does not result in an understanding of the world and of the Christian life that is shriveled and has less love,

but in fact, one that is beautiful and expansive and has more love. So I wanted to tell both those stories to start off so that the reader knows I'm not coming from the perspective of someone who just doesn't understand how two men or two women could possibly be attracted to one another. And I'm not coming from the perspective of someone who, you know, opened the Bible looking for my homophobic beliefs to be reinforced kind of thing. But actually, truly, as I've studied the Bible, these are the conclusions that I've come to. And I wanted to take the kinds of questions and claims that people make when it comes to sexual ethics in this area sort of seriously, and also to explain why I've come to the position i've come to and i don't really see another way of reading the scriptures it was a great way to start

the book because i had rachel on it's probably been about three years and it's still one of the more popular shows because her story is just so compelling especially when she steals a copy of mere christianity from a friend and then that convicts her, of course, becomes a Christian. But someone gives her a small book saying that the Bible is okay with same-sex relationships. So now you're saying, here's another small book I can give to somebody that now that I've studied this for years, I think better represents the scriptures. And I want the audience to know, in terms of a thicker, more academic book, Darren Belusick's book on same-sex unions is my go-to. I think an intermediate book, I think Preston Sprinkle's book, Responding to Arguments for Same-Sex Marriage, is middle level. But an intro one where you take the top 10 claims

we're going to look at, this is now my go-to book, and I think it's great. We're going to get into it, but I'm just curious how you might respond to somebody who would say, okay, Rebecca, saying that the Bible's not okay with same-sex relationships is hateful by its very nature. Why can't you be inclusive and accepting and tolerant of those who just interpret the Bible differently? Yeah, the question of the inclusivity of the Bible is actually one I feel quite strongly about, because on the one hand, the Bible is extraordinarily exclusive in the claims that it makes. Because the New Testament in particular is telling us that there is only one way to be made right with the God of all the universe, and that is through the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. Any other path, sort of seeming path to life or seeming path to knowledge of God, it is bankrupt and wrong. So there's an incredible exclusivity to the Christian message in and of itself. And there's also this extraordinarily inclusivity because this first century Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, who died on a cross and was raised to life on the third day,

then told his disciples to go and make disciples of all nations. And actually the Christian message is for every human being across the world today, regardless of where they come from, regardless of whether they're male or female, regardless of their age or their racial background, and regardless of their patterns of attraction.

So people sometimes talk as if believing what the Bible says when it comes to same-sex sexual relationships is barring some people from God's kingdom, so excluding some people from Jesus' kingdom on the basis of something over which they have no control. For example, like I said, if I could have sort of waved a magic wand when I was a teenager and had my same-sex attraction sort of evaporate, I would have done that. And it didn't seem to work. And, you know, not to say that God can't take these attractions away. I

think he absolutely can. But in my experience, that's not been something that's happened. At the same time, nobody is actually ultimately owned and dictated to by their desires. And the call to every person who wants to be a follower of Jesus is a twofold call to repent and to believe. And so actually, everybody, regardless, as I say, of their attractions, regardless of their history, regardless of any other kind of piece of their life or patterns of sin, is invited to come to Jesus and to be washed, sanctified, justified in his name. But everybody does that on the basis of repentance and faith. Amen.

And actually, it's up to the Bible to tell us what is and isn't pleasing to God, what is and isn't sin, and what does and doesn't need repenting of. So I don't think that believing what I think the New Testament is very clear on when it comes to sex, which is that sex only belongs in marriage between one man and one woman, is hateful. I do think it's a profoundly offensive message because at the end of the day, the Christian gospel is a profoundly offensive message. You know, it says that you and I, Sean, are so sinful that we needed the son of God to come and die for us so that our sin could be paid for. But it's also such a message of love because it means that even you and I, Sean, despite our sin, could be accepted by God because of Jesus' extraordinary love for us and coming to die in our place. So I do think it's offensive to our pride and it declares us sinners at our core, actually, the gospel, again, regardless of what our attractions might be. But I don't think that is ultimately hateful. I think it's ultimately a message of extraordinary love.

That's well said. I've been studying Galatians with a group of high school students, and they discovered chapter three, verse 28 in the middle, neither male nor female, slave or free, Jew or Greek, all are one in Christ Jesus. Rich or poor, black or white, all are invited to be in relationship with God, but on God's terms, because he's the one who created us and made us and designed our bodies and actually knows what's best for us. Well, we're going to get into this a little bit more. We're going to take these claims, and I assume they're not really in any particular order. Are they just kind of top 10 objections or is there a method to the madness? There is some degree of method to the madness, at least at points, but yes, we can. In fact, the first one is intentionally first and the last one is intentionally last. I will certainly say that. Okay. That makes sense. And the first one I was

going to ask you apart from this claim, so it makes sense to start here. So let's just take these one through 10, claim number one and get your response. And the first claim is that Christians should just focus on the gospel of God's love. In other words, why can't this kind of be

an agree to disagree issue amongst believers? Yeah, I actually, I love this question because the more that I've studied the Bible when it comes to sexual ethics, the more that I've become convinced that actually God's design for Christian marriage is about the gospel of God's love. And we see this repeated metaphor in the Old Testament of God as a loving, faithful husband, and Israel, God's people, as his all too often sort of unfaithful wife. And it's a language that's sort of used again and again in the Old Testament scriptures, but this marriage between God and his people is in crisis

because God's people keep cheating on him essentially with other idols, with sort of so-called gods. And when Jesus then comes and steps onto the stage of human history, he says he is the bridegroom. It's a very odd claim to make for a man who never married during the course of his sort of life on earth. But what Jesus is saying there, it's one of the ways in which he's stepping into the shoes of the creator God revealed in the Old Testament. So Jesus is saying, I am the bridegroom. I've come to claim God's people for myself. And we see in Paul's letter to the Ephesians in chapter five, a sort of beautiful description of the relationship between a husband and wife in Christian marriage, and how at the

heart of that, what that is centrally about is actually picturing Jesus's relationship with his people. And we see even at the very end of the Bible, in the book of Revelation, we see this great shout going out, the wedding of the Lamb has come. And we see Jesus's marriage to his church, bringing heaven and earth back together. So the gospel message of Jesus's love for us is right at the center of any understanding of Christian sexual ethics. And I actually think where often Christians who may even believe that the Bible only reserves sex for marriage between a man and a woman, many of the conversations that we have around sexual ethics are actually insufficiently Christian because we don't put Jesus at the center. And at the same time when people say, well, you know, can this not just be an agree to disagree sort of issue? Like, you know,

maybe you and I have different views on baptism. Can't we just have different views on whether the Bible affirms same-sex marriage or not? And the problem with that is the Bible speaks extremely seriously of sexual sin. In fact, for example, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, he says, do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? And then he lists any various forms of sin, including sort of sexual immorality and in general, and also including men who have sexual relationships with with other males. And he's listening these as things that will actually keep you from the kingdom of

God. This is profoundly important. And so if we don't, if we disagree from the scriptures about what sexual immorality is, then we're in a real mess. Because actually sexual immorality, unrepentant ongoing sexual immorality is something that's going to keep somebody from God's kingdom. So this is not just a sort of agree to disagree issue. This ultimately boils down to something which seems to have real implications for salvation. So I don't think we can just set it aside. I agree. Both affirming and non-affirming sides will say that they're on the side of love. Nobody says, yeah, I believe in a gospel of hate. Nobody says that.

But it raises the question, what is love and what does it mean to love our neighbors. So of course, Christians should just focus on the gospel of God's love. I've been reading Galatians and Paul like sums up the purpose of the law is ultimately given so that we may love people. But we can't separate what it means to love people from God's design for marriage, God's design for our bodies. And so

using them in a contrary fashion does not align with actually loving people. That's the argument that I think you and I would make. Great response. Let's move on to number two. And this one, I don't hear this much as I used to hear it, but it still bubbles up now and then. And this is claim number two, that Jesus was silent on same-sex relationships. Yeah, I actually hear it relatively frequently. People say, you know, if this is such a big deal, surely Jesus would have taught about it. And there are a couple of things I'd want to say to that. Number one, actually, if we read Matthew's gospel, we'll find in Matthew 19, that Jesus does specifically define marriage.

He's asked a question about divorce. And he says, have you not read that in the beginning God created the male and female? So he takes his Jewish audience back first to Genesis chapter one, when God makes human beings in his image, he makes them male and female. And then he also quotes from Genesis chapter two, where at the end, after the first man and woman, Adam and Eve have been brought together, there's this curious verse, which says, therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife and two shall become one flesh. And Jesus, so Jesus could have answered this question on divorce, actually only by quoting Genesis two, that would have been enough for the argument that divorce is completely counter to God's design. But he seems to almost double underline the fact that marriage is male-female by quoting from Genesis 1 as well. We also see a number of times in the Gospels, Jesus talking about what's often translated as sexual immorality. So there's a Greek word pornea, which was essentially a kind of catch-all term

for any sex outside of male-female marriage that would have been recognized by the Jesus as within God's law. And so the claim that Jesus never said anything that in fact said no to same-sex sexual relationships, I think is a kind of misunderstanding of the text and the context. But in particular, we need to recognize that Jesus' first audience, the large majority of Jesus' ministry was quite intentionally focused on his fellow Jews. And then after his death and resurrection, he sends out his Jewish disciples

to go and make disciples of all nations. And in the book of Acts, we see Jesus specifically commissioning Paul, who was not one of his original disciples, but to be the apostle to the Gentiles, who was sent especially to bring the gospel to non-Jews. And whereas among Jews, it was known from the Old Testament law that God said a very clear no to same-sex sex. From the average sort of Greek and Roman citizens perspective, sex between a man and another male was actually quite permitted in certain circumstances. And so whereas Jesus wasn't sort of needing to emphasize that to his Jewish audience, because it wasn't something that Jews

would have been clear on, Paul actually does need to emphasize that. And I think a useful comparison is the Old Testament is very clear that God's people must not worship idols. And if you read through the Gospels, you'll find Jesus actually doesn't spend a lot of time talking about idol worship, but Paul does. Well, why is that? It's because Paul is talking to people who've come to Christ out of a culture of idol worship in a way that Jesus isn't. So I don't think we can actually conclude from Jesus's apparent silence. I don't think it's really a silence, but apparent silence that this is just like a sort of secondary issue. Yeah, that's a great response. In one sense, we could say Jesus was silent on same-sex relationships.

Nothing follows from that. He didn't directly talk about idolatry in the way, say, that Paul did. You make that point. So just because Jesus doesn't mention something doesn't mean he positively affirms it. But he said enough about the nature of marriage and about sexual immorality to give us sufficient evidence to understand how he would directly view same-sex sexual relationships. Not to mention there was no debate historically about this until five minutes ago, historically speaking. There's been unanimity within the church. So great response. Now this third one is one that, well, I'll just, I'll let you answer it, give your thoughts on this one. But claim number three, God's judgment on Sodom isn't judgment on same-sex

relationships. Yeah, interestingly, this was a point made to a dear friend of mine who had been raised in a Christian home and in college started dating another girl. And she really didn't want to feel like she was leaving Christianity behind as she perceived this relationship. So she went to find a pastor who she thought would actually affirm same-sex sexual relationships. And, you know, she found a pastor who did. And one of the pastor's arguments was the people have completely misunderstood the story of Sodom in the Old Testament. So in Genesis, there's a sort of famous and kind of disturbing story of God's judgment on these two cities, actually, sort of Sodom and Gomorrah.

But in particular, Lot, who is Abraham's nephew, is sort of living in Sodom, and these angels come to visit him. And then there's all the men of Sodom, sort of young and old, come to Lot's house that night. And they say, can you bring out your guests so that we may know them? And they're not just hoping to have a nice little chat and kind of get to know these newcomers to town. It's actually no in the sense that we see it in other parts of the Old Testament

that have a sexual relationship with. And Lot's horrified by this, in the end the angels actually kind of prevent this from happening but God's judgment ends up falling on Sodom and you know the angel sort of of drag Lot and his family, or at least those members of his family, who will listen out of the city and God's judgment falls on Sodom. And people will sometimes look back to that story and say, you know, listen,

clearly this story is about God's no to same-sex sexual relationships. And sort of, you know, end of story. Like that's, we have enough evidence from the story of Sodom that God is, it says a clear no to same-sex sexual relationships. I actually think if the story of Sodom was all that we had on this question,

I think it would be vastly insufficient to answer our questions about same-sex marriage today. Because as you mentioned earlier, neither Christians who would say they do affirm same-sex marriage, nor Christians who would say they don't, would say they're on the side of, you know, hate. Likewise, nobody in this conversation

is saying they're on the side of gang rape. You know, the person who affirms same-sex marriage for Christians is not saying, I think it would be just fine with God if a whole gang of men came and sort of tried to rape two men. That's not what anybody's saying. I do think the story of Sodom sort of fits within the broader biblical

narrative, which does say a clear note to same-sex sexual relationships. I don't think it's utterly irrelevant. But what's really striking to me is that when Jesus references the story of Sodom, it's not actually to say, therefore don't have sex with people of your same sex. He references it to say, if the people of Sodom had heard what you have heard, they would have repented. And so it's going to be worse on the people of sodom have heard had heard what you have heard they would have repented and so it's going to be worse on the day of judgment for you guys talking to a sort of jewish audience than it than it is for the people of sodom and so i actually think the message of the story of sodom is at heart a gospel message that all of us had better make sure we have repented and believed in jesus because he is the only way to be safe from God's wrath against sin of all kinds. So I actually do think to a limited degree, I kind

of agree with my friends, you know, the pastor who told my friend, the story of Sodom doesn't answer this question. But I don't think it's because the story of Sodom is irrelevant. I just think it's sort of insufficient and it has an even bigger message for us. Yeah, that's fair. I think when we look at Genesis 13, the passages leading into it, Genesis 18, chapter four, and then of course, Jude and first Peter, there's a broader sexually immoral behavior that is taking place there that I'm not sure can be limited just to, you know, gang rape and the way it's specifically described. So I think there's something to this story that we can't simply dismiss, but this is never the passage that I turn to. It's not where I make the case for so many different reasons. But I was

really curious where you landed on it. So let's move to number four. And this is one that I hear somewhat frequently. It's inconsistent to follow the Old Testament on same-sex sex, but not on shellfish. Yeah, I hear that quite frequently as well. And I see where people are coming from. We know that in the Old Testament law, there are a number of things that God's people are told to do and not to do. For instance, I mean, I had with a a jewish friend and he he gave me his shrimp because um as a at least culturally practicing jew wow he doesn't eat he doesn't eat shellfish um as a christian i am i'm very happy to eat shellfish why is it because i i don't obey god's word well no it's actually because the new testament quite specifically in jesus himself in fact quite specifically um declares the the old testament food laws not binding for christians

and if we look at the the old testament law and we look at the new testament what we'll find is that old testament laws fall into roughly sort of three categories there there are laws that are specifically released so for example the prohibition on eating certain foods is specifically released in the testament there are laws that are specifically reaffirmed so for example the the commandment against adultery or and and as we'll come on to the commandment against same-sex sexual relationships and there are laws that are either not mentioned again or are mentioned in ways that leave significant ambiguity as to how Christians should respond to them. So for example, the laws about the Sabbath, I think Christians

kind of legitimately disagree as to what is required of Christians in terms of practicing the Sabbath today. Or, for example, the law about not having sex with a woman while she's having a period. I think the Christians can kind of legitimately come to different conclusions on that. But to equate the sort of eating shellfish to the having same-sex sex is to miss the fact the New Testament actually gives us very clear guidance on both of those things. And one, it's saying, yes, go ahead with the shrimp. And the other, it's saying, no, do not, but under any circumstances, have a sexual relationship with someone of the same sex. I think one of the ways we know, as you point out, if an Old Testament law still applies is if it's repeated in the New Testament.

I think there's other ways in this passage, like in Leviticus 18, where we can actually know that some of the commandments in that passage apply in a way that some of the commandments about, say, shellfish don't. So you cite Leviticus 18, and the commandment is, you shall not lie sexually with your neighbor's wife, and so make yourself unclean with her. You shall not, and it goes on into these commandments, and it ends with, you shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. This commandment, we're told at the beginning and the end of this chapter, to not be like the Canaanites and the Egyptians who were judged for doing this.

So these other nations were judged for their sexual immorality, but they're not judged for eating shellfish, which tells me there's something transcendent going on here in the kind of judgment in Leviticus 18. But I think it's also rude, as you point out later in your book, that the word that's used, elitism septuagint, when it says, a man shall not lie with a male as he does with a female. It is an abomination, is reminiscent of the creation kind of language that God made us male and female, thus would transcend that passage. So I think Leviticus 18, at least in terms of the prohibitions of same-sex sexual behavior,

still has something to say. Now, I don't turn to that passage. I don't lead with that passage, in part because of all the other questions and the difficulty that are raised from it. But I think for at least those three reasons, there's something unique about this commandment different from shellfish. Yes, I do think within that passage that the prohibition on sleeping with a woman while she's having a period would be the one that would call that interpretation into question. I think it's, you know know the one about not sacrificing your children to molek is very easy for us to say yes absolutely this is definitely advice today i think

the one about um menstruating women is sort of i would want to bring that into the new testament and look at jesus's um healing of the the women who've been bleeding for 12 years but i but none of my position on same-sex sexual relationships actually does not depend on Leviticus 18 as a chapter or even that particular verse sort of standing in its own right. It actually depends on the New Testament's looking back to Leviticus 18. Yeah, you're totally right about the debate within that passage. It seems to stand out as glaringly different than the other prohibitions. You know, Michael Brown, whose expertise is in the A&E, ancient Near Eastern studies, would say distinctly, yeah, having sex with a woman on her period is out of line. It's laid out clearly unless God overturns this. And then there's others who would say, well, this is an exception. They would have clearly

known was a part of being impure, not being immoral. But nonetheless, you're right. That is where the debate goes and Christians will differ on that. So fair enough. All right, let's move to number five. This is one of the most common ones that I hear for sure. Claim number five is that Paul condemns exploitative same-sex relationships, not consensual ones. Yeah. And the reason why this claim is common and why it really deserves looking into is because in the Greco-Roman empire, within which the Jews of Jesus' day were living, you know, as a sort of strange religious group sort of within this larger empire of all sorts of different religious beliefs and practices. It was pretty common for men to have sexual relationships with other males. And that would often be either with

somebody who they enslaved. So it was sadly and horribly common for masters to have sex with both their female and their male slaves. And there was also a tradition, and it was probably more a Greek tradition than, I mean, the Romans were a little more squeamish about an adult man having a sexual relationship with an adolescent boy, which was, you know, pretty, pretty common and well accepted in sort of Greek culture. The Romans, you know, yeah, were a little more squeamish about that. But it was still certainly a common practice for adult men to have at least romantic and most likely also sexual relationships with adolescent boys. And the question for a Greek or Roman man actually wasn't, what is the sex for the person you're sleeping with?

The question was, are you taking the active or the passive role? There was a sort of shame in taking the passive role in sex from a Greek or Roman sort of male perspective. And actually, as long as you were taking the active role, most things went. So a lot of what we would look back on in the first century that was same-sex sexual relationships between men and other males absolutely falls under the category that we would today recognize

as exploitative and potentially even abusive. However, that's not actually true in every case. It's not true that the Greeks and the Romans didn't have any concept of sort of mutual same-sex sexual relationships between consenting adults. We have plenty of literature regarding that. And in particular, when we look at the relationships between women in the Greco-Roman sort of empire of that time, sort of sexual relationship between two women, there wasn't this same association with a sort of, you know, an age gap or a status gap between the two parties involved. And Paul, you know, famously in Romans 1, actually talks about both men having sex with men and women having sex with

women as things that God is against. And so to say, well, he was only meaning to refer to exploitative relationships doesn't really account for that piece of data. It also doesn't really account for the data that there were a number of Greek words that Paul could have used to refer to a relationship between an adult man, for example, and an adolescent boy. He doesn't use any of those words. In fact, Paul seems to, he makes up a word that takes us straight back to Leviticus 18, and combines the word for male with the word for bed, and sort of uses that to describe a man having sex with another male. And it doesn't specify the age at all or the status or the nature of the race, anything. It's just this blanket prohibition. No.

So I don't think it's compelling to say it was only Paul was only talking about exploitative same-sex relationships and actually a number of scholars who would themselves land on the on the side of affirming same-sex marriage for Christians also would agree that yeah Paul isn't only referring to those it's actually remarkable how many scholars who are affirming basically would concede, for lack of a better term, that the Bible is against same-sex sexual relationships, but they get there another way by not considering the Bible authoritative and inspired in the way that you and I would, which is a very interesting move. Now, Romans 1, what's interesting about that is, you're right, it mentions men and women, and it says the men are doing likewise what the women are doing. But there was no female equivalent of pederasty. So if the men are doing what the women

did and the women were not engaging in pederasty, then the men are not engaging in pederasty. Plus they're both condemned, which means there's some level of mutuality in the relationship, which I know we're talking about Paul, but I think you see the same thing back in Leviticus as well. It's broader. And you know, it's interesting. It says a man should not lie with a male as with a woman. And then it calls it abomination moves on right before that it rules out kind of incestual relationship. Well, if you say incest is wrong, you actually have to define, is it a first cousin? Is the the second cousin is it a mother-in-law like and it lists all these and it gets to a man shall not allow another male it's an abomination in other words all sexual behavior between at least males explicitly are ruled out and then in leviticus 20 again both are punished and so it's fair to say that in Leviticus and in Paul, it's not exactly

the kind of same-sex kind of consensual loving monogamous relationships we have today, but it sufficiently maps on to help us understand how Paul would view them. So I think you're right in your response to that. Anything else before we go to six? Let's keep trucking. All right, you got it. So number six, Paul was condemning excessive lust, not same-sex sexual orientation. This argument again comes out of looking at ancient kind of cultural norms from the time and the observation that for many Greek and Roman men,

it wasn't they were saying, do you know what, I'm gay, and I'm only gonna have sex with with other males, it was more a, you know, for sure, I will get married to a woman who will have children. And I may well sleep with my female slaves as well as my male slaves, or if you're too poor to afford to own slaves, you would have used prostitutes. And so, and one of the ways that people at the time kind of talked about and saw same-sex sexual relationships was as sort of overflow of lust to say, you know, for somebody who could actually have been satisfied by having a sexual relationship with a woman, that, you know, these people are actually kind of taking it a step further and saying, in addition to that, I'm going to pursue a sexual relationship with other men or with boys.

And so it's certainly the case that there was sort of an understanding of same-sex sexual relationships that was predicated on excessive lust, and that Paul most there was sort of an understanding of same-sex sexual relationships that was predicated on excessive lust, and that Paul most likely was aware of that as well. It's not the case that that is the only category that people in the relevant parts of the ancient world sort of had for this. In actual fact, we see, you know, a number of ancient writings sort of prior to the time of Paul, a recognition of the reality that some people seem to be primarily attracted to people of their same sex, whereas others are attracted to people of the opposite sex,

and some are both. There's actually, they wouldn't have had quite the same sort of understanding of what people today would call sexual orientation, you know, our kind of cultural understanding then. But actually it was an alien to their way of thinking that this could be the case for some people. And again, if we look at the text themselves, so for example, if we go back to Romans 1,

Paul is not in Romans 1 talking about people who might have a relationship with their wife and then sort of be above and beyond that, seek out a relationship with another man. He's actually talking about both men and women sort of turning away from a monogamous relationship with the opposite sex and being, as he puts it, inflamed with lust for one another. So it doesn't properly account for the range of understandings in the ancient world when it comes to same-sex sex, nor does it properly account for the actual texts that we have. And it certainly doesn't account, again, for women having sexual relationships with other women, which typically weren't seen in those terms. That's a good response. Sometimes this is framed as like Paul was influenced by kind of stoicism and this out of control passion, wherever it was directed is misguided. But we see

Paul like describing his zeal previously for the law, his zeal for the gospel and the Lord in a way that clearly is not concerned with too much zeal. It's really the direction of where that zeal and passion is directed. So you have this great, great quote you include in here that says, desire and passion, and you quote the original words in Greek, are considered wrong in Romans 1, not because such desires are excessive. Paul never says they're excessive, but because they are satisfied in a sexual relationship that deemed contrary to God's will. So it's not the passion or the amount of it. It's the orientation and direction of that passion. I think if we just look in the context of Romans chapter one, read the verses before 18 through 21, Paul's talking

about how creation itself speaks about God. And we can see this, but we suppress it. And then he gives the example of the creation of our bodies that is built in, and we know that and we can see it, but we also suppress it. So it's clearly an argument about design and the way God has made the world to be and our bodies to operate. That's what's being condemned. So I appreciate you bringing this one on. This one comes up all the time. I think it's a misreading of Romans 1.

And just on that, the quote that you quoted from my book is actually me quoting from someone else's book, to be clear, lest anyone think that was original to me. Fair enough. Good clarification. Excellent. Okay, now this one's been really popular for the past two or three years. I hear this a lot, see it all over TikTok. And the idea is the word homosexual, translated as homosexual in English, wasn't used in the Bible until, say, 1946. It's a misinterpretation. And the follow-up to this is that it's therefore caused a ton of damage to gay people. Yeah, I have only heard this argument relatively recently.

And honestly, I think it is by far the least persuasive argument in the entire book that I'm considering. Because let's for a minute set aside the entire history of translation into English or into German, because I know some of the arguments made on the basis of some of the earlier translations into German, which took some of the language about same-sex sexual relationships and made it specific to pederasty or kind of abusing boys, essentially, that isn't what the original is saying. So let's set that aside. Let's look at the Greek and let's look at the Hebrew and see what it says. And when we look at the Greek of the language that Paul's using, we see that he is talking about men having sex with other males. Now, whether the word homosexual is a useful translation of Paul, for example, in 1 Corinthians 6, when he's talking about, you know, these people who are practicing these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And he uses this sort of word that he seems to have coined, arsenikoito, where he's taking the Greek word for male and the Greek word for bed, that in the Greek translation of the Old Testament,

which was commonly used by Jews of Jesus' day, both those words appear in the Leviticus commandment. He sort of makes his own new word to say, as far as we know, maybe somebody had used it before. Yeah, sure. As far as we know, he made it up. So more specifically, we could say that Paul is talking about men who have sex with males. Now, I think the misunderstanding can arise if somebody reads a translation of that. And I think

the 1980, was it 1984 NIV, uses the word homosexual in that context. I think the misunderstanding people have is to suggest that somebody who, like me, is predominantly attracted to people of their same sex, that somehow sort of by virtue of that, I am excluded from the kingdom of God. And that's not what Paul is saying at all. He's saying people who are choosing to follow their attractions and to live in unrepentant sexual immorality. And again, that'll that'll apply, whether your unrepentant sexual immorality is directed towards somebody of the opposite sex or somebody of the same sex, it's actually that unrepentant sin that is keeping people out of the kingdom of God. So, so I guess there is a

there's a potential confusion there, if people read that word homosexual or think of in terms of, I think in our culture, we often kind of collapse down someone's patterns of attraction into their sort of identity and say, you know, because this person is attracted to people of their same sex, they are gay. And this is sort of an immutable piece of their identity. We could make it sound like Paul is saying there are certain people who are kind of outside of God's kingdom by definition. No, he's not saying that. He's saying all of us must repent and believe,

and this is one of the areas where repentance is required. But the idea that prior to 1940, whatever it was, 7, the Bible wasn't saying that, and then we kind of pretended that it did is completely misleading. 1940, whatever it was, seven, the Bible wasn't saying that. And then we kind of pretended that it did is completely misleading. I mean, it's, it's not really, and it's worth talking about because people are so often misled by it. But actually, I think it's by far the weakest argument. I agree with that. Now it's pointed out that sometimes our translations, homosexual, homosexuality are confusing because they don't map onto what the Bible meant given modern

parlance. But the solution is to go back to what Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy chapter 1, and it's clearly referring to same-sex sexual behavior. That's what Paul is arguing, and I think you point that out well. We have three more. Claim number eight, the trajectory of the Bible is towards rejecting slavery and also towards affirming same-sex unions. Yes, I think this is probably the strongest of the arguments. I don't think it succeeds.

But I think if I were selecting which of these is the most sort of possibly persuasive, it would be this one. So the argument goes like this. A lot of people who, as I mentioned, would affirm same-sex sexual relationships or at least monogamous marriage for Christians would say, yeah, we know that the New Testament says no to this. But as we look at the New Testament, we also see the New Testament affirming slavery. And if we Christians today know that slavery is wrong, despite what Paul says, can we not also say that we know that same-sex marriage is right, despite what Paul says? And people sort of add on to that the idea that if you look from the Old Testament to the New Testament, whereas in the Old Testament you see substantial protections and provisions for people who are living as slaves. In the New Testament, you see all the resources that youending of the master-slave relationship that jesus

came and affected when he said even he the son of man didn't come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many you know you see the the way that um slaves are brought into god's people on a completely equal footing to free people which would have been you know massively disruptive i absolutely agree that the New Testament explodes the institution of slavery. And I actually think that if you look closely at the passages that seem to affirm slavery in the New Testament, you find that's not what they're doing at all. So for example, Paul's letter to Philemon, which, you know, the headline news of Paul's letter to Philemon is Paul sends Onesimus, who was Philemon's slave, but ran away back to Philemon. So they

clearly Paul affirms slavery. It's all very well until you read the letter and you find that Paul is completely subverting the master-slave relationship. He calls Anisimus his very heart, uses an incredibly affectionate language for him. He says he is his son, he's become his father in his imprisonment. He tells Philemon to receive him back, not as a bond servant, but as a beloved brother, and indeed to receive him as he received Paul himself. So he's saying to Philemon, instead of, as would have been expected in your culture, having a slave who'd run away, instead of coming back and beating him severely and punishing him for having run away instead you need to receive him back as if you were your most respected mentor i mean it's a massive reversion of the master slave relationship so i actually don't think the new testament affirms

slavery um if we look at the trajectory from the old to the new testament when it comes to to sexual ethics you know people will say well you, if there's an Old to New Testament trajectory on slavery that sort of pushes us toward the abolition of slavery, surely do we not also see a kind of trajectory from the Old to New Testament that pushes us toward the affirmation of same-sex marriage, even though we don't kind of quite get there. I actually don't think we do. As we've mentioned a couple of times, the New Testament very specifically reaffirms the Old Testament prohibition on same-sex sexual relationships between a man and another male. It adds in a specific prohibition on women having sex with women,

which I think was implicit in Leviticus, but not actually explicit. If you even just want to, I mean, counting verses isn't the most helpful sort of way to draw moral conclusions, but like if we wanted to count verses, you find more verses in the New Testament that prohibit same-sex sex than you do in the Old Testament. And perhaps most devastatingly of all to this argument, if you look at Paul's letter to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 1, Paul's prohibition of same-sex sex lies right next to his prohibition of enslaving. So it's actually really hard to kind of argue that we have, you know, if we read the Bible faithfully, we will find a yes to slavery and also a yes to affirming same-sex marriage.

I think we find a no to slavery and a no to affirming same-sex marriage. That's a great example. But I think it's the argument that probably takes the longest to address. You're right, though. The quick answer is to go to 1 Timothy 1.9, where it says,

the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, which is same-sex sexual behavior, and then right after it is enslavers. So it's actually condemning both. I think a helpful response to this is the book written about two decades ago by William Webb. He'd probably title it differently today, but it's called Slaves, Women, and Homosexuals. And he shows on slavery and women, there's a trajectory away from the patriarchy and the practice of slavery towards a more liberating position. But on sexuality, it actually moves more conservative, especially with Jesus. And you point out there seems to be polygamy at least permitted at times in the Old Testament. New Testament's like a man should have one wife.

Adultery, Jesus tightens it up. He's like, if you have lust, you've committed adultery. And even divorce. Jesus seems to tighten up some of the restrictions. So if anything, we see slavery and sexuality moving in opposite trajectories, which suggests something very different. We have two more. Claim number nine, this one on a popular level is one I've heard a lot over the past decade, is that unchosen celibacy yields bad fruit. Yeah, so this is an argument that people would make to say, look, we know that there are some people who have, you know, the gift of singleness,

drawing on some language that Paul uses in his first letter to the Corinthians. And so, you know, we recognize there are some people who are genuinely called to be single and have a sort of, in people's understanding, a particular gift for that. But that we shouldn't say that every Christian who is attracted to their same sex necessarily has that gift. And in fact, if we look at the lived experience of Christians who are exclusively attracted to their same sex and who don't live into those attractions, what we find is depression and misery and, you know, even potentially suicide. We find bad things that come from upholding the Bible's no to same-sex sexual relationships.

And as I think author Karen Keane put it in her book where she's arguing for same-sex marriage for Christians, she says, you know, should the difficulty of somebody living a celibate life, like living without sex for Christians who are attracted to the same sex, should that lead us to reconsider what the Bible says on these questions? And I want to hear people out on those experiences and those painful experiences that either they themselves or people they love have encountered. But I think there are a number of challenges that come

when we think about this particular claim. One is the fact that actually a large number, in fact, the majority of Christians who will be single for the whole of their lives are Christians who are attracted to people of the opposite sex. And they may not have chosen that path themselves. You know, I certainly have dear friends who would love to be married. But up to this point in history, there have always been more Christian women than men. And so actually, that's not going to be a possibility for even if, you know, even if every Christian man was called to marry a Christian woman, which I think are profound questions about that, given that Paul actually sees singleness as even more glorious than marriage. So we sort of have to say, okay, this is not an experience that is only for

the Christian who would otherwise be wanting to pursue a same-sex sexual relationship. It's true for other Christians as well. We also need to reckon with the fact that the Bible and Jesus himself warns us that following him is actually going to be very hard. Jesus famously said, anyone who wants to come after me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. I think it's somewhat symptomatic of the idolization of sex and romantic love in our culture in general and within the church that we cannot imagine anything worse than somebody going through life without a sexual relationship you know where some

of our brothers and sisters across the world are are facing imprisonment or martyrdom for their faith we think it's completely beyond the pale to think that a Christian might be told to add a faithfulness to Jesus to actually turn away from any of their sexual desire, not to pursue their sexual fulfillment. So I think we have real question marks there. I think we also have, and this will sort of bridge us a little bit into the last question. When somebody says to me, how can you expect a Christian who may only ever be attracted to some of their same sex to live as a lonely life, to be lonely for the rest of their lives? When somebody says that to

me, I think if we in our churches are ordering communities such that single Christians, for whatever reason, are lonely, we are utterly failing to live according to Christian ethics. Amen. I mean, actually, the repeated and insistent commandment of the New Testament is that we are to love one another. And it's not actually, occasionally, that is applied to marriage. Occasionally, that is applied to parent-child relationships the large majority of the time it's a call to brotherly and sisterly love

and actually the the fact that many single people in our churches are lonely speaks to a huge problem that we have of being insufficiently biblical. And in my church community here, up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the wilds of the pagan northeast in America, not by design, but just by, I guess, by God's providence, we have an extraordinary number of brothers and sisters who, like me, if they were not Christians, would be pursuing same-sex sexual relationships and would be maybe identifying as gay or lesbian. And all of us live in community together. I don't mean we're all in the same self, same house, nor do I mean that there's a sort of special community of only people who have same-sex attraction.

What I mean is I think our church is at least growing into the experience of community where everybody has deep love on offer, regardless of whether they're married or single, regardless of their patterns of attraction, regardless of whether they're young or old, life experiences, etc. That we are at least getting our hands a little bit around the extraordinary New Testament call to be one family and even one body together in Christ. And actually all of us, again, regardless of our attractions, regardless of our sins, regardless of our marital status, need God's family to actually be a real thing in our lives. We need to be known and loved. And when we take Christian ethics sort of out of that context, yes, it appears sort of shriveled and unloving. But when we put it back into the right context that the New Testament gives us, which is the family of faith, the community of love,

the body of Christ, it actually becomes incredibly rich and beautiful. You know, the passage at the root of this is really Matthew chapter seven, in which we know a tree by its fruit. Jesus is teaching the Sermon on the Mount. The argument is, if the fruit of telling people with same-sex attraction they have to be celibate is depression, loneliness, anxiety, then there's something wrong with the tree or the root, so to speak, the teaching. But as you point out, I think the context portrays bad fruit is not the difficulty of living out biblical teaching. It's lawlessness. It's disobedience. It's a failure to follow God's design.

That's actually what bad fruit is. So people who are making this argument, ironically, are actually promoting the very bad fruit is. So people who are making this argument, ironically, are actually promoting the very bad fruit that they claim to be making this argument against if we keep it within the context. Yes. And the sad reality is if we look around our culture today, we have unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety and suicide variation and unprecedented levels of sexual freedom and actually the two often go hand in hand the people who are pursuing sexual fulfillment in in a range of ways that are outside of of marriage are finding themselves and i'm not i i don't want i i'm aware of not wanting to sound like I'm sort of putting the blame on anybody for that experience.

But I'm just saying, actually, if we look at the human flourishing of a Christian who, like many of my friends, is saying, do you know what, I'm going to trust Jesus more than I trust my own desires. And we compare that person to someone who is saying, actually, if I don't have sexual romantic fulfillment, I'm not here anymore, kind of thing. That's what I'm looking for. I think the good fruit is very visible among believers who are saying, Jesus is more to me than my own sexual romantic fulfillment. And that love is coming to me in ways that are not about sexual romantic fulfillment,

but are actually about the brotherhood and sisterhood of believers in Christ. Well said. Well, let's move to our last claim. And that is that a God of love can't be against relationships of love. So give us your response on this one and maybe why it's last. a few months ago, having lived into a whole range of sexual experiences, including spending a period of time where she was exclusively dating women. She even has sort of tattoos of naked women on her body from that period. And she repented and believed and put her trust in Jesus last September. And just a couple of weeks later, she came to me and she said,

oh, I've just realized you guys have to love me. You know, she said, I could have joined any other group in Boston and they could have got to know me and discovered that I was weird and not wanted me anymore. But you guys don't have that option. You actually, you have to love me. And I said, yeah, the problem is you have to love us as well. It's a two-way street of unconditional love that we are called to as believers in Christ and when people say that the Bible has you know no vision for love between believers of the same sex I want to say let's sit down and read the Bible because actually you know if we look at what Jesus said on the night that he was betrayed

after one of his closest friends has walked out into the night to betray him, and right before another of his closest friends denies even knowing him three times, Jesus says, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends. we see in jesus ministry extraordinary deep love relationships that jesus has with a number of brothers and and sisters not literal brothers and sisters but you know his disciples yeah um and then we see in in the rest of the new testament as i mentioned this continual command to love which we somehow have tuned out um for example, in 1 John, John says, God is love and anyone who lives in love lives in God and God lives in him. And we often sort of quote that at the beginning of marriage service, because we think, oh, well, if we were at love, it's gonna be about marriage. No, you can read the whole of 1 John, you'll find nothing specifically about marriage. But you'll

find time and again, John calling us to brotherly and by extension, sisterly love. He says, this is how we know what love is. Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And so we ought also to lay down our lives to the brothers. So I think, and it's something that I've experienced myself, again, as someone who left my own devices apart from Christ, would certainly have pursued sexual romantic relationships with other women, and maybe would have been legally married to a woman at this point in my life now. But what I experience in love relationship with my sisters in Christ, which is not a sexual romantic love, but is a deep and real love,

and a love that has appropriate physical expression, appropriate sort of emotional expression, is something so much more beautiful than I could ever have had. And actually, if we say that romantic and sexual fulfillment is the thing without which no human being can thrive, we are ultimately denying the gospel. Because according to Jesus, he is the only one with whom we cannot live and thrive. And according to the New Testament, marriage at its very best is only an echo of Jesus's love for

us. And I think it's partly a symptom of our idolatry of marriage in the church that has led us into this position of saying, well, we couldn't possibly say that somebody couldn't kind of participate in marriage because they're only attracted to their same sex. I think we need a thorough kind of culture change within our churches, but one that is driven by the Bible, not driven by the culture around us. I love it. Could not agree with that more. Now, you walk through in your book in more depth each of these 10 claims, but let me

just close with this. What would you say to someone who stayed with us until the end, who has same-sex attraction? What hope, what encouragement, what words would you leave for that individual? I would say first that Jesus loves you so much more than any other human being ever will. And that may be something that you need to remind yourself of every day. It's something that I need to remind myself of every day. I'm guessing, Sean, it might well be something that you need to remind yourself of every day. I'm guessing, Sean, it might well be something that you need to remind yourself of every day because the lie that Satan always wants to tell us

is that God doesn't really love us and he's trying to keep something good from us. That was the lie that we saw in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, and it's the lie that's being told to every Christian every day today. Did God really say, are you really going to trust God? Doesn't this fruit look good? Following your desires instead of following Jesus is only going to lead you into death ultimately. But as I've already mentioned, Jesus says that anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And I think that is ultimately a promise for

the new creation. But I think it's a promise that we can start to get our hands around now. And that I myself have tasted in my own life, that actually what God has for you and for me in the rich love relationships that we can and should have with brothers or with sisters in the Lord is something that is beautiful and God glorifying and fulfilling. Now, what Christians sometimes do is they say, OK, you know, I get that the Bible says no to same-sex sexual relationships, but maybe I can find this like one other person of the same sex with whom I can kind of form this exclusive bond that's essentially a romantic bond, just like without the sex in it kind of thing. And that that is going to be the, that's the path.

I actually don't think that is the path. I think what the Bible is giving us is this picture of marriage that is by design exclusive and the only context in which sexual intimacy belongs. And that that picture points us in a particular way to Jesus' love for his people. And then I think the Bible gives us this picture that it sometimes calls friendship and it sometimes calls brotherly and sisterly love which is actually an inclusive love that is not just for one other person and it's particularly important for me and for you if you're someone listening to this or watching this who um is maybe drawn to want one exclusive relationship with one other person of the same sex it's actually particularly important for us to seek out multiple close relationships with multiple people, so that we're not just kind of orienting on this one particular person.

And that's where, in my own life, where I feel the love of Jesus, one of the spaces where I deeply feel the love of Jesus. I think the very last thing that I want to say is, it's really easy to think, okay, if I'm going to truly recognize that what comes out of my heart is in fact profoundly sinful, that can feel extremely depressing. actually, I think it's ultimately life-giving. Because the same Jesus who said that out of your heart and out of mine comes all sorts of sin, including sexual sin. You know, when Jesus was asked about sort of debating about whether it was important to kind of wash your hands ceremonially before you eat or not,

he says, you know, what makes you unclean isn't what goes into your body, what comes out of your body, in in fact what comes out of your heart and you like me are going to have sin of all sorts kind of coming out of our hearts and we need to be real about the fact that it is it is sin even my sort of sexual desires as and when they ever arise towards somebody aside from my husband those are sinful sinful desires. But rather than plunging me into despair, I need to also recognize, oh, the one person who knows me better than I know myself, the one person who knows the evil of my heart more deeply than any other human being ever will, is also the one person who loves me more than I can possibly imagine. And so we don't need

to gloss over our own sin or anybody else's in order to receive the love of Jesus. In fact, we need to recognize if even though my sin goes all the way down, Jesus' love goes down even deeper. And I would be a fool to sacrifice his love for the sake of any other human relationship. Rebecca, this is great stuff. When people ask me, hey, give me one book that responds to the common claims that the Bible's affirming, that's a quick kind of easy primer, your book will be at the top of my list. Does the Bible affirm same-sex relationships?

It's biblical. It's quick, easy to read. It's well done. Always appreciate having you on. Those of you watching, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other topics coming up, including like a deep dive on hellish near-death experiences. People have been asking about that.

So we're going to cover that. Former Muslim who's a part of the Iranian kind of national guard that they have telling his story, coming to faith and more. If you thought about studying apologetics, we got information below. Top rated distance program. Would love to have you in it fully online. And we have a certificate program for those who want a little bit more formal training, but not ready for a master's.

That's below. Rebecca, again, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.