The Sean McDowell Show - 5 Dangerous Lies of Our Modern Age (w/ Rosaria Butterfield)

Episode Date: December 22, 2023

Should Christians use preferred gender pronouns? Is same-sex attraction a sin, or is it the behavior? Sean talks with Rosaria Butterfield about her latest book "Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age." READ: Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age, by Rosaria Butterfield (https://amzn.to/3GQjUZc) WATCH: The Toxic War on Masculinity, with Nancy Pearcey (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JHlE2grmCs&t=197s) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [SMDCERTDISC] for $100 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

Do we live in an anti-Christian age? What are the biggest lies Christians are tempted to believe today? And how do we boldly and compassionately live out the gospel in our cultural moment? Our guest today, Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, has written a fascinating and thought-provoking book called Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. I feel like we have moved from a post-Christian world into an anti-Christian world, and feel like we have moved from a post-Christian world into an anti-Christian world. And specifically it's because of... It's somewhat incredible. You and I have not really met and talked face to face until now. I have followed your stuff for a long time, wanted to connect. It's good to meet you. So look forward to this conversation. Thanks for carving out the

time to join me. Oh, the privilege and the honor is all mine, Sean. Thank you. Well, I'm guessing most people watching this are familiar with your story, but there's a good chance that there's some people who are not. And maybe they just need a refresher because this story really frames your recent book. So maybe just start off with giving us kind of a briefly summary of your journey to becoming a follower of Jesus. Right, right, right. And I think I'm so glad to start there because I know that my tone is much more direct in this book than others. And it's because this is the world I helped create.

And what I mean by that is I lived as a lesbian for 10 years, but I wasn't just a quiet lesbian who just wanted to be left alone. I was also a gay rights activist and I was an activist professor. I was part of the first crop of tenured radicals at Syracuse University, which is a tier one research university in the 90s. And after my tenure book was written, and I was pretty sure to get tenure, I started working on a book on the religious right. And it was very simple. I simply wanted to know why people like you just hated people like the person I used to be. It was a basic question. I'm not very sentimental. I'm an old Italian lady. I you know, I don't mind if we disagree. I actually tend to I'm an old liberal. And I genuinely believe where everybody thinks the same, nobody thinks very much.

So I didn't, I wasn't necessarily trying to be evangelistic or win everybody over to my cause. I just wanted to know. And this was 25 years ago, remember, we used to say leaving consenting adults alone. It's important that you haven't heard that phrase in a long time and we'll get back to that. That's true.

So when I was an activist professor, I helped write policy. I helped write the policy in New York that rolled into the gay marriage decision because it was part of the domestic partnership law. I spoke before the legislature. My job was to make homosexuality look wholesome. And I loved my students and I loved my partner. And I did all of this because I thought I was gay, and I thought gay was good. And that's just, you know, that was that. So in the process of wanting to study the religious right, I'm an English professor. So I actually have to do this thing called read, which I enjoy doing. But I had to read the Bible. And I knew I was out of my league.

I don't read Greek. I don't read Hebrew. I'm a 19th century scholar. So just very providentially, I wrote a somewhat bombastic editorial in the newspaper. It garnered a lot of blowback. And one of the people who wrote to me was Pastor Ken Smith, the pastor of then the pastor of the Syracuse Reformed Presbyterian Church. And unbeknownst to me, through the ministry of Pastor Ken Smith and his dear wife, Floyd, my life would change forever. And it would change forever because I would become a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And instead of wondering why people like you wouldn't leave people like me alone, I would become thankful for the evangelism and not just the evangelism, but the community into which I was now unfolded. That did not happen overnight. My feelings, my lesbian feelings did not change in an instant. I probably had 500 meals at Ken and Floyd's home.

I read through the Bible seven times. I wrestled with things. I talked with Ken and Floyd. They very much were discipling me in love. And I was the recipient of maybe an older understanding, and I believe a truer understanding of the gospel. First of all, Ken and Floyd did not, their primary concern was that I was not a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. So they made my homosexuality a secondary issue.

This is also before Obergefell, but I was an activist. So they knew that, but they knew that the biggest sin in my life is that I was an atheist and that nothing could be built upon atheism. So that was helpful to me. They said at their first meeting that they could accept me as a lesbian, but they didn't approve. That might ring heavy on our ears now, but at the time that was fantastic. Somebody who would just accept that I wasn't a blank slate, that I wasn't faking it and all of that. That was hugely, you know, it was greatly comforting. And when I became a follower of Christ, it was simply because I truly believed the resurrection was real and powerful. I didn't stop feeling like a lesbian at that moment.

I was not zapped. But what did happen is that as I was following the Lord, that I take a little step towards him and I'd want to run back to where I was. But the bridge that I had walked on, the Lord had destroyed. And so it happened in a series of things, betrayals, loss of friendships, understandably. It's a long story, but I don't want to suggest that it was an easy story. The church walked through with me every step of the way. But one of the things I've come to realize now is that at a certain point homosexuality is a burden and a

struggle and an issue but in our particular climate post-Abu Ghaffal post-Bostock changes in Title IX homosexuality is no longer just about how some people struggle with a sin pattern. LGBTQ plus has become the reigning idol of our day. And as a former gay rights activist, the church can look to me as one of the people who helped make that so. So it is a sobering and complicated mission but i do believe that i must speak into this at this moment thanks for that background i definitely would recommend your book i feel like i'm going to butcher the title but unlikely secret thoughts and unlikely convert we're going into into depth on that. One of the things that I love is that I believe it was Pastor Smith who sends you this letter,

and it's about your article on Promise Keepers, and it doesn't fit within the I hate you or you're awesome. There was a kindness and an openness that invited that conversation. That's so much of the posture I try to take with people who see the world differently. That's a story for another time. Now, this book, it's rooted in your story, but it's also rooted in a confession. And as I read the book, it seems like there's a confession about two things. Number one, there's kind of a mourning of the world that you feel like you helped create. But there's also this confession of once you became a Christian you held

certain views that you look back on now and say I also repent of those views is it fair that it's a confession of both absolutely absolutely and and and maybe we should spell out what some of those views are when I first became a Christian I was very opposed to any kind of change-allowing therapy, which is called either change-allowing therapy or reparative therapy. And I was on the war path against it. And friends of mine, you know, spoke into my life and said, Rosaria, didn't you and Kent, my husband's name is Kent, didn't you and Kent adopt two children out of foster

care with profound trauma? Yes, I did. Did you ever take them to therapy? Well, actually, I have sat in the waiting room of therapist's offices long enough to knit whole sweaters. Fascinating, Rosaria. Why would you deny therapy for people for whom their homosexuality is responsive to trauma? So I repent of that, that is cruel. I also repented of the sin of using false pronouns for people who identify as either gender dysphoric

or transgendered. This was more complicated for me because actually a very close friend of mine who was gender dysphoric, was one of the people who was my biggest sounding board when I was first talking to Ken Smith and reading the Bible. But what I came to learn, again, post Obergefell, post Bostock, the reason I'm saying this is that I understand God is, you know, not constrained by space and time, but I am, and you are. And so, so I came to learn that using cross using false pronouns,

which is called social transitioning, is especially harmful for minors who are struggling with their gender identity, whether it's either on the side of gender anxiety, which is dysphoric, a little bit like anorexia, kind of like, oh, I hate my body, or whether it's part of the social contagion, which is part of a world that says the only way to be a decent person is to be an ally to the LGBTQ plus movement, especially for young women, that role of ally inculcates a kind of empathy and support that is very hard to navigate if you're 14. And so all of a sudden, out of seemingly the blue, we're seeing one out of four young girls, teenage girls, believing that they're really boys. And they call that rapid onset gender dysphoria.

And that is located in a social contagion, very much like anorexia can be. You know, I used to be a gymnast. The whole gymnastic scene became bulimic and that's, something's not, something's going on there. And so I realized, I mean, not only was it a violation of the ninth commandment, but it was actually doing the opposite of what I was trying to do. I was trying to be missional. I was trying to meet people where they are i wasn't trying to fast track people to mutilate their bodies or to take hormones that would um that would really deleteriously affect their their lives and their futures and so i repented of that i repented of

that sin and then i also repented of some other sins that really had to do with, I guess, kind of using slogans instead of the Bible, if that makes sense. Kind of like mixing my theology with all kinds of stuff and realizing, wait a second, no, I really do believe that this Bible is my guide to faith and life. And even more than that, as somebody who was shocked to realize that my indwelling sin was so powerful that I couldn't really think my way around it without the Lord's help to realize that this Bible actually knows me better than I know myself. The way a friend of mine put it to me once is that, when we read the Bible, we sometimes think that

we're like in biology lab and we're dissecting the fetal pig. And then after you realize what's actually going on, you realize, no, you are the fetal pig and the Bible is reading you. And that was very much, very much what I experienced. So yes, I start with my confession and I will tell you that people,

I have not received overwhelming, you know, praise and thanks for that. Before I did this, I spoke with all of the people because nobody sins alone. Nobody ever sins alone. So I talked with all of the people, you know, other writers, other thinkers, dear friends. And 201, they said, well,

can't you just course correct? You know, like, can't you just stop doing that and start doing something else? And I thought about it. I really, I, you know, I love my friends. These are Christians. I wanted to take their advice seriously and i came to the belief and this is i talked to obviously my husband's a pastor and you know my session and so i talk with people and i just came to the position that it's fine to course correct if you just make a mistake you know like later today i'm going to take a child to a you know a sports event, and I'll probably take the wrong exit on the highway because I'm me, and I will have to course correct. And it's not a sin to do that, but

it's a sin to violate the ninth commandment. It's a sin to deny people the care that they need. It's a sin to manage the Bible in a way that is wrong and wrongheaded. And it doesn't matter that I had good intentions. It's a sin because it's a sin, not because I intended a sin. I don't know any Christian who wakes up in the morning and says, oh, please let me sin today. That would be ridiculous. It's absurd. So I did start with repentance. And another reason I wanted to start with repentance is I do wonder, and I'm sure you do too, why isn't God blessing the church right now? Why do we feel like we're really losing ground? Why do all the women who write to my website or stop me at Costco or come to my church, the burden is a prodigal child. What's going on? Why isn't God blessing us? And I think it's

because we have Aiken in the camp and I was one of the people hiding the booty under the dirt. So that's right. I start with repentance. That's super helpful. Now we're going to come to your five lies, but I'm wondering if I can just kind of probe in to get a little clarity on your position on pronouns since you mentioned it a little bit. So I'll give you an example that might help. Years ago, my dad shared with me a principle that he would refuse to speak to a segregated audience racially. And that's not so much an issue now, but 60s and 70s when he started, at times it really cost him something. And this might've been a decade or two ago. I started pressing. I said, dad, what about other evangelists that have done that? And he stopped me and he goes, he goes, son, this is the conviction God

has laid on my heart. That's between them and the Lord. And I thought, that's really interesting. There's a time where I confess my sins and say, others need to do the same. Or there's a time I just say, I was wrong here, and I'm speaking my conviction before the Lord. speaking what God has laid on my heart, or is it wrong for any Christian, any time to use a preferred pronoun in any context, and you're calling others to do the same? Exactly. Yeah, it is definitely the latter, and here's why. And I appreciate your dad's graciousness in that situation. The analogy doesn't work. People who experience either the medical condition of gender dysphoria or the social contagion of transgenderism are not a people group. They're not a sexual minority. They're not a people group like a racial minority. They are a particular group of people who are burdened

under an indwelling sin pattern. Now, you might say, but wait a second, wait a second, isn't, you know, gender dysphoria a medical issue? I believe it is. I mean, and I, you know, there are a number of reformed people who disagree with it, but I think it's a medical issue in so far as it has, you know has a diagnosis in the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But what you do with it is really important. And if you start on the path of social transition, hormonal transition, medical transition, in a post-Bostock world, that path is like a fast moving escalator. And it does often does not give people the time

that they need to count the costs of these profound decisions, these life changing decisions. And so, so no, I am not, I don't believe in the, it's a sin for me, but it's not a sin for you. If that were the case, I would just course correct. And I would quietly kind of work it out on my own and talk privately with my friends like Christopher Yuan and others, you know, we, you know, we are all in this together and we have our little, you know, but no, I believe it's a sin because what you are indeed doing is you are affirming something that is itself a sin. It is a sin to declare that God's created order is indeed evil or wrong or not true. And it is also a lie. So no, I did call others out to repent with me. And

as you and I both know, I live a lonely life, Sean. No, fair enough. More than anything, I wanted clarity on your position and why, and that helps. So at the root of it, it sounds like it's two things. It's a lie, misrepresenting something. Christians should never lie, should never deceive. And then second, behind using a preferred pronoun as well as its intention, there is an entire worldview and a movement that is contrary to creation. And just using that, even in a personal relationship, is contributing and allowing that movement when Christians are called to resist it. Is that fair?

That's totally fair. And one more thing is that the LGBTQ plus movement is the reigning idol of our day. And in the same way that you are not called to sacrifice your child to Malik, I'm not called to sacrifice my friends to this idol. This is not a pre-Abergefell world where someone could quietly, I don't know, kind of engage in maybe a fiction or a kind of delusion. In this particular world, we are in a very barbaric world. People who are either sick with a dysphoria and just think about it for a minute the medical analog to gender dysphoria is anorexia if you had a daughter with anorexia you are you would not think a sticker and a parade would help nor would you think that affirming her false view of herself would ultimately be a good solution. It just wouldn't, it wouldn't,

that, you know, it would seem quite frankly barbaric. But part of why we don't think it's barbaric is because we haven't, I don't think the evangelical church has really stood close enough to people who have indeed transitioned and now regret it. And just so you know, I mean, I'm mostly a mom and a grandma and a pastor's wife. I do understand that when I do speak, it's controversial enough that it appears that that's all I ever do, but that is simply not true. And so like, for example, days after the Liberty University address, which we're all still spinning from, I was speaking to my local school board, which, you know, I live in a very blue, blue, blue, blue, you know, county. And I had hard things to say to my school board about transgenderism and parental rights. And then what I also do is invite people over for dinner who disagree with

me. And Kent and my children and I sit down with people and we talk and we share the gospel. And then, you know, later in the week, I'll bump into school board members who are mad at me on Tuesday night, and we'll enjoy a nice time walking our dogs. And that to me is how grownups and Christians live. We speak the truth, we say the truth, and when our relationships's a sin, no, don't do it, is because this Christian world seems to be so enamored with a kind of social media infused way of relating to people. Well, I don't relate to people that way. I relate to people by having dinner with them, by spending private time with them, by getting to know as as people and and I think in that situation when you are genuinely in people's lives in real ways your words can be pretty strong and the gospel is a pretty strong word don't we agree amen

to that amen to that now I've got've got so many more questions for you on this, but I want to get to your book. Again, on five lies of our anti-Christian age, one of the first things that stood out to me is that you describe our culture as anti-Christian. I got another book in the mail yesterday that also described our culture as anti-Christian. I'm curious. Did you pick that? Did the publisher pick that? What do you mean by that? And why that designation?

Yeah, I know I picked it. And when I wrote Gospel Comes with a House Key, I called that, Gospel Comes with a House Key was published in 2018, but it was actually written in 2016. So a Bergafell had, you know, we just kind of had a Bergafell, but we hadn't, you know, we just kind of had Obergefell, but we hadn't, you know, like the dust hadn't fallen. And I called that a post-Christian world.

Oh, interesting. Okay. So I feel like we have moved from a post-Christian world into an anti-Christian world. And specifically it's because of the Obergefell decision, which not only legalized gay marriage in all 50 states, but also included a dignitary harm clause, which basically meant what Pastor Ken Smith said to me, if you said that to me today, but I don't approve. The dignitary harm clause says to fail to affirm someone's LGBTQ plus dignity is itself a harm. And so, and then add to that now the Bostock decision that came in 2020. We were so busy disinfecting our counters that we didn't, we missed that one. But that was where LGBTQ was added to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And that's what caused the change in Title IX. So when people say things like, listen, leave me alone. I want to use preferred pronouns and I'm a Christian. It's just a matter of vocabulary. Or I want to say gay Christian. it's just a matter of vocabulary well people don't get fired for their jobs from using vocabulary if it's vocabulary with a civil authority that stands behind it and can punish you for using it it's not just vocabulary it's an ideology

what the Marxist critic Raymond Williams would say, the difference between a word and a key word. So in a post-Christian culture, a word is a word. I have, I don't know, four synonym finders over there because I'm a wordsmith and I love words. But a key word is a word where the civil magistrate enforces you to either use it or not use it. And that's what you're seeing right now with the whole plethora of LGBTQ plus signifiers. So I was turning this section in your book that you were referring to where you said related to the 2015 Obergefell decision, the court did not expand the definition of marriage to include gay couples. Now, I thought the next line was going to say it changed marriage to a sexless institution. I'm sure you would agree with me on that.

We often hear that, oh, they just expand it and now allow gay people to get married. And my pushback is, no, we actually changed what marriage is. It used to be essentially a sexed institution. Now it's genderless. But the next line is what you're saying is the root of why you consider our christian our culture anti-christian is quote the court declared opposition to gay marriage a discriminatory act of animus and hatred so built into the supreme court is if we don't accept same-sex marriage for whatever reason good good intention, loving my neighbor, faithfulness to scripture, that by definition is considered animus from the government down, hence anti-Christian culture. Does that capture where you're coming from? It does. And I'm so glad you mentioned the difference between sex and gender, which is a very modern idea. This microphone is sitting on an

Oxford English dictionary that's so old, it doesn't even have that distinction. It understands gender to mean Genesis, to mean a biological term for how something is reproduced. And so the sex-gender distinction was a very significant 19th century feminist introduction that challenged the idea that when God created man and woman, he created us with a pattern and a purpose. So God isn't some like mad engineer. He creates a bridge and, you know, dives into a bridge. No, there's a pattern and a purpose. And what's so interesting for me today is that that sex gender distinction in as it's as it's moved throughout the generations, you know, from 19th century now to the 21st century with transgenderism. All we have is gender and we have no sex. So that, you know, it's interesting to me how a category mistake can really set people up to not know themselves.

And ultimately, that's the most amazing thing about being a Christian. Being a Christian is you get to see yourself as God sees you. And then you get to be what God wants you to be. And that is astounding. But I think there's also an issue beyond, and if I could just quote to you from something, I did not write this book. It's the New Reformation Catechism on Human Sexuality, Christopher Gordon. This is Christopher Yuan's pastor, actually, he wrote it. Oh, interesting.

And so there's a question. It's written like a catechism, so it's question answers. Here's the question. Aren't we able to make a distinction between biological sex and gender in search of our identity? It's a very big question today, isn't it? That's an important question. No. God established a natural order in the creation of male and female that is good for us as image bearers of a holy God. And so I hope we can talk a little bit about image bearing. To introduce gender as a new category of personhood, separate from the biological category of sex in pursuit of a different sexual or gender identity is unnatural to the creation order and harmful for the purposes for which God made us. And so as uncomfortable as

it is for Christians, most Christians don't want to be troublemakers. We don't want to be, we truly want to live a quiet and peaceful life. But in a world that says you must affirm something that is not true or it is kind and decent of you to um to go along with what your culture says is is the new world order about marriage you know the reason you can't do that is because you're actually called to love your neighbor and putting a stumbling block between your neighbor and the God who made her is hateful. It's unloving. It's unkind. And so that's where you really have to realize that your job is to love your enemies, not pretend your enemies are your friends.

And what Ken and Floyd Smith did for me is they they loved me I mean I was their enemy I was the enemy of Christ and for me coming to that realization was a profoundly important juncture in my Christian journey it it put into play what Thomas Chalmers calls the, you know, the disruptive or, you know, affection, you know, the, what is it called, the impulsive, the new affections that, you know, I have these new affections, and I can't not have them. But they don't, they don't correspond with my old affections. And so I think it was just a powerful moment. And I would say it was the moment that I felt the fear of God as the beginning of wisdom, not as a bad thing. I mean, it was in a very safe home with people who actually loved me,

but they told me the truth. I love that. Grace and truth runs through your book, which is something I try to model and live out. Don't get it perfectly, that's for sure, but that's the task we are called to. Right. So tell us maybe quickly, we don't have time to get into all these, but what are the five lies? And I'm curious how you picked these five lies as opposed to seven or ten. Well, maybe I should tell you how I picked them first and then tell you what they are. I picked them because I had so many moms and grandmas stopping me at Costco or stopping me at church or stopping me and I'm walking the dogs and saying, if Christ isn't divided,

why are Christians? My church says we need to major on the majors, but we can't agree on what the majors are, what's going on. And so I really sat down and I thought about it and I came up with three reasons that unleashed five lies. And the three reasons are we have failed to understand the importance of the Old Testament in our lives as Christians, that we have failed to see that the seeds of the gospel are actually in the Garden of Eden. The way one person, one book puts it, no Adam, no Christ. The second is we fail to read the times. We act as though it doesn't matter

that pronoun usage has a material force that could land you in trouble with your job. We have no, we haven't thought about what it means to actually be in a post-Christian your job. We haven't thought about what it means to actually be in a post-Christian world. And we haven't thought about how do you share the gospel in a hostile world without being hostile, but also without being somebody who is just simply carrying water for the other team. And then the third is that we have failed to actually love our enemies. And instead, we've been happy with their common grace, happy that the women who identify as lesbian across the street walk their dogs and cut their lawn. And we're settling on common grace.

And that unleashed these five lies. And what all of these five lies has in common is that they all have something to do with what it means to be an image bearer of a holy God, and what it means to rebel against the single most highest appointed dignity that a human being can have, and that is image bearing of a holy God. So, you know, in the same way that everybody's talking about critical race theory and critical theory, I theory of PhD in critical theory, I could write about that. But I don't happen to think that's the biggest issue of our day. Because to get that wrong is a little bit like having a broken leg. It's bad. Don't try to run a marathon on it. But you're gonna, you know, you're gonna make it. But if you get the creation ordinance wrong, that's like having a fatal heart attack. And that's where we're going. So first lie is the lie that homosexuality is normal for some people. It's a

normal sexual variance. The second lie is that pagan spirituality is kind and decent and biblical Christianity is harsh and unyielding. The third lie is that feminism is good for the church in the world. The fourth lie is that transgenderism is a normal gender variant. And the fifth lie is that modesty is an outdated expectation, and it's really dangerous for women. It sets women up to be abused. And what all of those lies have in common is they pervert in some way what it means to be an image bearer of a holy God. To be an image bearer of a holy God, you are male or female. That's it. You're male or female. And you know what? If you're indwelling sin, like my indwelling sin was, you know, homosexuality, you're still either a male

or a female. And if you struggle against gender anxiety, just in the same way that if you'd struggle against anorexia, you're still a male or a female. And so being made in the image of God means we need to grow to be more like God, not more like our sin. We need to grow to be more like God, specifically in knowledge and righteousness and holiness. But transgenderism and homosexuality come from the world, the flesh and the devil. So to say, no, I'm made in the image of God as a lesbian, it's just not true. It's not accurate. It's a category error. And it's ultimately not helpful for me in drawing closer to the Lord and growing to be like the Lord. I have thought for a while that anthropological questions are at the root of what some of the

deepest cultural divides are. What does it mean to be human? Where do we come from? Is there a design for how we're supposed to live? Do our bodies mean something? And of course, you very quickly can't answer that question without getting to where did we come from? Some blind evolutionary process, some creation account, however God created. So I agree with you on the central question related to origins and what it means to be human, really divine our culture today. Well, I think we could do two hours on each one of these lies, but let's jump in the first one that you have. And the specific title you wrote is that homosexuality is normal. And you write once gay, always gay., there's a direct quote I want to read to you and

then ask if you could unpack this for us. She said, homosexual orientation is a man-made theory about anthropology. Tell us what you mean by being man-made, maybe some of its Freudian roots that you discuss, and how that contrasts with a biblical view of what it means, a biblical anthropology. Right, absolutely. I wrote about that extensively in a 2015 book called Openness Unhindered, and Christopher Yuan has written about it extensively in his book, Holy Sexuality in the Gospel. So there's a lot of terrain already out there. But the idea is this, sexual orientation is a man-made category. I mean, insofar as, you know, if you study the history of ideas, you can look it up in the OED and say,

ah, where did it come from? Ah, it came from the 19th century. Ah, it came from Freud. And it came from specifically the idea that who you are is wrapped up with how you feel, and that you are the, in some ways that you know you are the person who best knows who you are you are the person your feelings are true and they're accurate and they're good um and that is not a biblical idea you you biblically speaking homosexuality comes from the flesh the fallen flesh it is forbidden in the law multiple places in the old testament and corresponding connections in the new testament and praise be to god it is overcome in the gospel overcome in the savior now overcome in the savior. Now, if I believed that my lesbianism was either a kind of sinless sexual orientation, a little bit like maybe being left-handed or,

you know, being Italian or whatever, then I would never repent of it. I wouldn't need to. Or if I believed that my homosexuality was a temptation, but not a sin, not a sinful temptation. And if I would use verses like, well, Jesus was tempted in all ways. And it's just a temptation. It's not a sin. Get off my back. Don't lay heavy burdens on me. On the one hand, I'm very sympathetic to those ideas because I once believed them all. And I can remember feeling that way. But on the other hand, it sets people up to fail. And if you look at James 1, what you see there is the life cycle of sin. You know, like in the same way that you have like those life cycles of the butterfly in your, you know, your kids, you know, bedroom when they were five, you know, the life cycle of sin. And so, so internal temptation, same-sex attraction

for some of us, right? I mean, praise be to God, I was not sexually abused. So it didn't come from some kind of an, and I praise God for that. It did not come from external trauma, but it came from something and it did not come from God. It came from the particular way that the sin of Adam shapes me. And the question then for many evangelicals is, am I responsible for the sin of Adam shapes me. And the question then for many evangelicals is, am I responsible for the sin of Adam or am I a victim? Am I a sinner or am I a sufferer? I mean,

I know the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to all of that, but the order is really important because here's why. When it comes to fighting sin, when is it easiest to fight your sin? When it's small or when it's big? Okay. And so if I'm told by evangelicals that I don't need to fight my same sex attraction because it's not a sin, get off my back, Sean Rosario, Get off my back. It's not a sin. And I don't fight it then. And I wait until it becomes a monster. How is that going to go for me? Like, seriously, I'm a pretty weak person. How am I going to fight a monster?

Am I going to win? Probably not. I've actually tried, so I can tell you I don't fight monsters well. So internal temptation, the sin for which I'm culpable, according to the fall of Adam and the Protestant understanding of sin, same-sex attraction is a sin over which it is a temptation. It is small. Think of it like an embryo. And then lust, desire, actual sin, obviously those are more extreme examples of it. And obviously those have greater culpability. But if I learn how to fight my sin as an embryo, I might have to still fight it a thousand times a day. And I might have to still fight it a thousand times a day and i might need to get up tomorrow morning and do the same thing but over time i will experience what we call um progressive sanctification and we aren't um you know i mean i'm you know i'm a reformed presbyterian so we don't do faith healings we don't believe that uh you know i have not yet been lobotomized, and I suspect you haven't either on your sin patterns. But we do believe the way the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, I love this language, your sin will be sufficiently

subdued. Okay, in other words, it's not you. You know, and you think about something like, like, you know, the compassion of God in giving us the Bible and something like Romans 7, where Paul says, why do I do what I don't want to do? It is the law of sin in me. That's his way of saying, this isn't who I am ontologically. This is how I am just currently smashed under the rocks of my indwelling sin. And to me, any Christian who denies a fellow human being the opportunity to repent of her sin when she has a chance to beat it is doing Satan's work. And this is where it gets tough. And you and I both know it because get behind me, Satan is something that Jesus said to a beloved apostle, right? So it could be that you're doing Satan's work, oops, accidentally. And if that's the case, you correct.

But if you persist, and let me tell you, I mean, I don't have to tell you this, Sean, because you've been at this rodeo for as long as I have, if not longer. We've had this conversation for over a decade. And Christopher Yuan and I have been in many, many meetings with people who think very differently than I do. And what I'm very concerned about is if you persist in denying people the opportunity to repent when their sin is beatable, you are doing Satan's work, there's no other way to put it. And if you keep doing Satan's work, after you've been told that you're doing Satan's work, that is a very serious matter. And what it, the serious matter is ultimately a denial of the articles of faith. And if you deny the articles of faith, you are committing heresy. And I know those are big words and everybody, but I'm a wordsmith. I'm trying to just break it down into its logical bite-sized pieces and share with you my heart, which is when I was really battling my homosexuality, I didn't have a pastor who came

to me and said, you're a gay Christian. Don't worry about it. It's not sin. It's just who you are. It's a little bit like left-handedness, you know, it's, or, you know, some kind of, you know, deafness. Don't worry. If that happened, I am fully confident I would not be talking to you today because I would not be a Christian because that sin would have beaten me down. You see, a Christian is not a sinless person. My goodness, go ask my children. A Christian is not a sinless person, but a Christian is a person who repents of sin, who knows what sin is and repents of it. And this, I think you wrote, did you not write a book on apostasy?

I thought you wrote a book on faith deconstruction. I haven't read it yet. I want to. It's not so much on apostasy. We address a little bit of apostasy. We write a book for those who are deconstructing in the sense of how do I stay faithful to Scripture and to Jesus amidst asking questions. And one thing to avoid is heresy. But it's not really about apostasy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, a good book that I've just, I mean, I just think this book is terrific. It's called The Pilgrim's Regress, Guarding Against Backsliding and Apostasy in the Christian Life by Mark Jones. And so it talks about, you know, how if you are denied the opportunity to repent, you're not going to make it. I mean, and so I wonder, again, you know, as a person who studies the history of ideas, as well as a person who's obviously unleashed a lot of bad ideas into the church and feels guilty and repentful of that. I do wonder if part of why we are seeing God not blessing us is any culture that is growing in its homosexuality and transgenderism is a culture that's judged by God. That's judgment. That's not a sign that we're being

gracious and kind and we have this wonderful new people group that we can just embrace and welcome as is and try to build the fruit of the spirit on top of this beast. To be in rebellion against the created order, it tears a person apart. But also to be sinning at the level of an internal temptation. That's what the 10th commandment is about. You know, and it was very, it was kind of shocking to me to realize, wow, there's a whole commandment that helps me. I mean, you know, helps at that time I wasn't feeling very helped, but you know, that kind of focuses my attention on my homosexual desire.

Okay, this is super helpful. And I think it's going to help people understand why you feel such a sense of urgency at this and what you see is at stake. And you lay this out very clearly in your book, which I appreciate. There's a lot of people who may agree or disagree with you, but you're laying out what you think and kind of forcing people to wrestle with some of these ideas let me push back a little bit here for clarity with a quote that you have you said biblical biblically speaking the sin of homosexuality is a verb not a noun it manifests itself in either action at the level of desire or practice or both so

you kind of answered this but flesh out is homosexual desire itself sinful or just the action and how do you see that comparing to heterosexual desire and sinful action? That's a great question. The way the Westminster Confession frames it, and I think this is really helpful, is that in desire is a motion. Desire isn't a passive, kind of like comatose state. Okay. And because, because we are morally responsible for our fallen nature. Okay. The sin of Adam is Rosaria's to fight against. Um, it is not someone else's. God did not give this to me. I love it. And my loving of my sin, my loving of my sin, and so far as the motion of the desire of it, is itself a sin. And so the sin of that is what the 10th commandment speaks to. Coveting is loving that which God has told you no to, even though it feels really natural.

And then in a book called The Doctrine of Repentance, I don't know how to do this screen. It's like I'm sitting in front of a mirror. Okay. You know, he says something that really hit me between the eyes. He said, loving a sin is worse than committing it. Now, you might say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's just not true.

And what he goes on to say is the reason loving a sin is worse than committing it is, he says to love sin shows that the will is in sin and the more of the will there is in sin the greater the sin willfulness makes it a sin not to be purged by sacrifice and so that kind of the tables on this idea that, you know, if you act physically, like you have homosexual sex, that is worse than having the desire for it. Now, I would say that obviously having homosexual sex is probably in my life, when I look back on my life and the sins that I've committed in my life and I've committed a lot of sins so I'm 61 years old I've accumulated a lot. Homosexual sex is a if you really want to hate your neighbor that's what you're going to do because it's you know it sort of captivates another person. And usually it would be a person you claim to love. And yet you are you are really violating that person. And so the difference between

now heterosexual, you know, sin is is vile and disgusting. And if you don't repent of it, you'll go to hell. I mean, bottom line, it's not a free pass. There's a difference. And this is where Murray and his commentary on Romans is extremely helpful, extremely painful for somebody like me to have read the first time through. And it basically, the summation is this, heterosexual sin is a sin against practice, right? Adultery, pornography, it's a sin against practice, but homosexual sin is a sin against pattern and practice, which Murray will say, and other reformers will that that um puts it at a deeper level of and they use this word and it's a hard word to hear degeneracy and so it is a serious matter and because it is such a serious matter it is not a matter of pluralism It is not a matter of pluralism. It is not a matter of live and let live.

The moms and the, you know, the grandmas that I talk to who have children who are, you know, prodigals in somewhere in the LGBTQ plus movement, the fear is not only that they have an indwelling sin pattern, like any other one, pick it, you know, I don't know, lying, stealing, you know, but also that their indwelling sin pattern has a civil rights authority to it. And I am absolutely convinced that should Jesus tarry, these days that we live in today will be remembered in the infamy of Malik. And so for a Christian to be of any use to a parent who has a child who is lost for now in this LGBTQ plus movement, you have to know firmly what you believe. And, and my encouragement is that you will encourage those parents to stay deeply connected to their children, um, as they're able, you know, sometimes the children will give

you the blackmail, but you know, you just keep trying. You keep, you know, I mean, I will tell you that I, there are times when in my early life and meeting Ken and Floyd Smith, I, I tried to disappear and Ken and Floyd were not exactly stalkers, but they came very close. They did not let go of me and parents don't let go of your children. But the other thing you need to do is retain your child's history. Keep the pictures, the baby pictures, the clothes, if you have to go buy a pod and put it in the backyard, do it. Because one of the ethos of LGBTQ plus is that you are reinventing yourself. And parents, if you can remember and retain that child's history,

that that's, that's going to be powerful. And they're going to need that someday, when they come back, that's going to be part of the trail that they're going to use to remember how much you love them and who they are who they really are. So don't make a false peace make you know have real love and real connection but not a false peace that was helpful at the end of the book to stay in contact in relationship with kids that transgender ideology denies both truth and history and to not lose that truth or that history.

Let me come back to my question before. I'm curious how you would answer this. You made a distinction between homosexuality and heterosexuality. Heterosexual sexual behavior is a violation of practice, but not in terms of what was the word you used? Not just practice, but in terms of pattern. Okay. Homosexuality is practice and pattern

what about somebody who's married to somebody the opposite sex they're attracted to somebody else of the opposite sex not their wife if they engage in that it would be both practice and pattern according to god's creation account right in the same way we're using pattern differently okay i suspected that's what what yeah you would say flush that out with that difference okay sure sure pattern and and i and i think this is a really interesting question i'm really glad you raised it because in general, I don't think Christians were ready to defend the gospel at this, in some ways, kind of low level. Like we were ready to defend the gospel in terms of, you know, the resurrection of Jesus and to learn. No, you have to really defend it at the level of the ontology of male and female. I think we were like, oh, really? Okay. All right. I'll get there but genesis 127 makes it clear that you

are ontologically male and male or female and you are ontologically male or female for a creational purpose and so heterosexual sexual sin you know is still heterosexual sexual sin. It is still sin, and it is a terrible rotten sin, and you will go to hell for it if you do not repent and all of that. So we are not minimizing it. But it is still sin at the level of practice, because the pattern is still heterosexual, male and female. And I guess let me add one more thing just to kind of wrinkle this up just because we don't have enough complexity here. And I do, I mean, I think about this all the time. I mean, I do think that, right, I'm sorry, you know, or just I had too much coffee today. Sorry about that. This is going to be bad for both of us.

But, you know, I would say, add one more thing to just make this complex. The sin that we commit as Christians, like the sin we commit as people who know Christ, is a greater sin than the sin that an unbeliever commits who does not know Christ. And so that's the other reason why Christians who claim, you know, to proclaim Christ to the world must do it rightly because you're handling the most important treasure that exists. I mean, there's nothing more precious than the gospel. Okay, so I'm'm gonna probe a little further for clarity so somebody like well take myself if i were attracted to somebody of the opposite sex not my wife say there were a desire there but i didn't sit on it in well that's a sin

okay so this is so an attraction to somebody because he's not she's not your wife yeah okay so and that's a sin in practice but not in pattern that's correct is that right that's correct that is correct but it is still a sin to desire anyone who is not your i think this sounds like i'm rebuking you and i don't mean it in that way, but you know what I'm saying. And I'm a biblically married person too. So to desire anyone who is not our spouse is a sin. And you know what God, and you know, I mean, you know, we've all, I'm, well, let me put it this way. I have been biblically married to my husband Kent Butterfield for almost as long as I have been a Christian hmm which has been God's one of God's probably God's greatest earthly blessing to me why am I here and not someplace else probably because of that

because I am married to an amazing wonderful husband who was tender and gentle with me and with whom I could work out a lot of stuff but to claim that it wasn't to claim that desiring anyone that isn't your spouse is anything i mean to claim that i'm going to get my double negatives mixed up yeah it's in everybody that's right it's okay and and you have to repent of it quickly but if it is if if it is a a heterosexual desire it is a sin it is still a sin but it is not a sin against the pattern because the pattern i'm talking about is male and female okay is attraction itself a sin If you look out and go, wow, that person, the opposite sex, beautiful, good looking, attractive, but you wouldn't quite say, oh, I have a desire for that person,

but you recognize a certain beauty and attraction. Is there a difference with heterosexual and homosexual attraction on that level that one has to repent of and the other doesn't? Yeah. Well, here's the deal. Same-sex attraction is a synonym for gay. So if somebody comes to me, and this happens a lot, people will come to me, come to the church and say, Rosaria, I struggle with same-sex attraction. I can guarantee you that that woman is not saying, you know, I'm a gymnast and I really... ...particular move on that gymnast, you know, that's not what she's saying.

She's saying, it's crossing a line. I know it shouldn't. What do I do? So yes, I would say that attraction can have absolutely the inordinance of the motion of sin. And it is especially so in a homosexual context. But yes, I would say the same thing. If you tell me that you're attracted to some lady named Jill at the, you know, the gym. And, you know, one of the ways that you're going to be good and godly is to kind of lean in on that attraction and steward that attraction for the glory of God. I will rebuke you soundly, sir. Okay, fair enough. I, in some ways, we're

nuancing this to death. But sometimes I'll say to my wife, we'll have conversations. I'm like, hey, which, which star do you think is most handsome? You know, we're some like, we'll have conversations and I don't think there's anything wrong with recognizing that insofar as it goes without taking the step that you go. I think that's true. But is that if somebody has that attraction to the same sex, you would say that is a result of the fall. And although the person didn't choose that attraction, still needs to repent of that attraction in principle. Is that fair? What I'm saying is that whenever anybody comes to me and says, I have same sex attraction, that person is talking not simply about an aesthetic appreciation of, I don't know, a chiseled jaw

or something else, but rather a lack of a kind of sad sense of unfulfillment that I can never be with that person. And this is where it might be really helpful to say something really stupid and obvious, but I'm old. And that is that men are men and women are women. And so the question of dealing with homosexual desires for men and dealing with homosexual desires for women, it's both sin. But I want you to know, I think it is a lot easier for women to deal with this. Certainly it was for me, and I will tell you why. And this is so old fashioned, you know, that you'll just have to find, now we'll nuance something else to death here. But I do believe that women's sexuality is responsive and men's sexuality is initiative.

And if you are struggling, you know, if you are repenting of the sin of homosexuality and you are biblically married, you will learn a lot by responding to what is good. I mean, don't you teach that for your children? Teaching your children to respond to what is good helps them love what is good. And so in my own case, having a husband to whom I could respond to what is good, helped me to love what is good. I think it is a lot harder to initiate than to respond. And you know what, I'm not a psychologist, I don't play one on TV. So I probably entered into a terrain that you and I will both wish I had never opened my mouth for. But I want to just say that because I don't think, I really genuinely don't think that your Christian life is measured by your feelings. I think your Christian life is measured by how much you are in grace and in faith

sacrificing for the Lord Jesus Christ. And we know that while progressive sanctification is progressive, we know that it's never going to be enough this side of heaven. And so because of that, the church does need to be enough this side of heaven and so because of that the church does need to function like the family of god because in providence some people will be single and those people need to know that they have always a place to belong on you know not just every holiday but every day that they're beloved and they're needed. But what we don't do as a church is we don't say that the anomaly needs to re-norm the norm in order to show respect. In other words, I don't believe that a church that grows in singleness is a good thing. Nor do I believe that because you experience the sin of

homosexual temptation, that means that you're called to celibacy. Now, you're called to obedience. You're called to obedience because everybody's called to obedience. But my goodness, if you really believe that the only way people can be biblically married is if they don't have any kind of indwelling sin, talk to your own parents. You know, like just everybody has to deal with that. But we are to be sensitive, but we are not to let the anomaly, which in this case would be singleness, norm the norm. In the same way that we're not to let the anomaly, which would be something like gender dysphoria or transgenderism, norm the norm. That's barbaric. I mean, you know, really, and I think part of how we got there

is the empathy trap. The idea that the highest form of kindness you can give to another human being is to stand in their shoes well it depends i mean if you're at a funeral definitely but if i'm drowning in the river don't jump in and stand in my shoes now it's not it's not toxic masculinity um you know fix them up oh for a second it was cutting out can you hear me okay yes are we back okay all right we got you well we are still on lie number one this is what happens when you get an english professor and a philosophy major but these particular things are really important and often not handled with enough care i think and assumptions are made there so let me ask you let me ask you one one last question and then and then we'll wrap up i imagine some people would say okay ros, some people are born with same-sex attraction,

didn't choose it. How do we tell them to repent of something they didn't choose without shaming somebody who often already feels so much shame and as an outsider in the church as it is? What does that look like? In other words, as a whole, really the question is, how can the church better love people with same-sex attraction? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, one is we don't think of them as people with same-sex attraction. We think of them as people. And as people, every person who walks through the door is going to track in a lot of mud on their shoes. Okay. It doesn't matter. There's nothing that the, the, the sin of, um, the sin of homosexuality, the sin of, um, homosexual temptation is no different theologically speaking than any other sin, like any other sin of the flesh. It is found in the flesh, it is forbidden in the law, and it

is overcome in the Savior. That is true for homosexual desire, as it is for lying and cheating and stealing. But here's how the church needs to be very careful. Homosexual temptation is the only sin that comes with two things, a civil rights movement that says, no, you're fine the way you are. You just need a sticker and a parade. And by the way, it'd be great to castrate your 14 year old, no problems. They'll be happy forever. Or a heretical gay rights movement within the church that denies you the opportunity to repent of your sin when you have half a chance of beating it. And so I would say this, Sean, if you're in a church, a real church, everybody is repenting something every day, all the time. And if you don't have a running dialogue, if you don't really

know how people struggle or what they need, that's a kind of dysfunction at the level of community that needs to be resolved. A church is not, you know, we're serious about wanting to grow in Christ. And we're serious about knowing that God's will for our life in the Bible is twofold. We are to grow in sanctification and pray that our faith faileth not. And that's true for everybody. But I don't, I'm not a Freudian and I'm not a side B gay Christian advocate. I think those are category mistakes to say that being born with same-sex attraction makes you a victim. No, being born in sin. You're not born with sin. You're born in sin.

Psalm 51 makes that very clear. And that is the most democratizing principle in all of scripture. And helping people to fight that sin and to grow in Christ is an enormous gift. How grateful I am that when I stepped through the door of a church in 1999, nobody told me I was a gay Christian and I please help the church better understand what homosexuality was like. No, they actually told me to repent of my sin and to grow in Christ and that born again Christians have victory over their sin. And one of the first things I did when I joined the church was I started meeting with Floyd Smith every week to try to learn about godly womanhood.

And those were so helpful. I had no idea. It was sort of ironic that I was a professor of women's studies, but I didn't understand why God made women or what women were for. Or I mean, I had never held a baby. There's all kinds of things that were just not. I was 36 years old. And so it was I'm so grateful that I went into, you know, the Lord brought me providentially to a church that knew that born again Christians have victory over their sin. Homosexuality is not different from other sins. It's not a special category that renders it a non-sin. And I've seen people have victory. And you know what? I've also seen the church rally around people for whom the

struggle is just deep and hard and long. And so you rally around those people. Absolutely. You know, Rosara, I've heard our mutual friend, Christopher Yuan, say to me one time, he said, you know, sometimes people will come to me and say, like pastors, I've got a congregant in my church who's wrestling with same-sex attraction. I can't help him. Can you? And his point was that we buy into certain ideas that really come more from critical theory and or intersectionality, that our differences divide us more than our commonalities do. What you're arguing, you're saying is, hey, we all have struggles.

We all have sin. We've all been born into sin. You said it's the great equalizer. This one of my colleagues at Biola, Thaddeus Willans, has written a great book on critical theory. And he says where it falls short is you can't divide the world up into the oppressed and the oppressor. The Bible says we are all sinful, oppressed and oppressor, all need to repent. Absolutely. That's a really helpful point. Now I've got to let you go because you got to go to Costco. I've got to go coach my 11 year old son's fifth grade team. I have

pushed this and nuanced it. My listeners are probably not used to quite this much nuancing, but these are questions that I had. These are questions I'm trying to work through. I really enjoyed your book. I don't know if I agree with you on everything yet. I'm not sure I'm working it through, but I can tell you I read it and I stopped many times. I went to my wife and I said, what do you think about this? Would you interpret it this way? And it really created a great ongoing dialogue between the two of us. Again, the book is called Five Lives of Our Anti-Christian Age. And I want to recommend it to viewers to check out, to read with, interact with it. And if you end up disagreeing, you have been forced to think and go back to the scriptures and conclude why,

which is I know a lot of the heart behind your book. Before I let folks go, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations coming up you will not want to forget. And also hope if you've ever thought about studying apologetics, consider studying with us at Biola. We have a full distance program, students all around the world. In fact, I just taught a class recently on a biblical view of sexuality so we talk about the resurrection evidence for intelligent design problem of evil and a biblical view of sexuality information

is below Rosaria I thoroughly enjoyed this thanks for letting me probe and push and try to get clarity on some issues and hope we can do it again soon I would love that Sean thank you very much you bet