The Sean McDowell Show - A Big Conversation on Same-Sex Attraction and Sin (w/ Rosaria Butterfield)

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

Is same-sex attraction a sin that needs to be repented of? Is it heretical to deny that we are morally culpable for our sinful desires? Did Jesus have sexual attraction? These are some of the issues dividing the church today, which Rosaria Butterfield and I discuss in this episode. Let us know what you think. READ: Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age by Rosaria Butterfield (https://amzn.to/3L40Skg) *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

Is same-sex sexual attraction itself sinful or morally neutral? Did Jesus have sexual attraction or sexual desires? Should Christians ever use the term gay Christian? Believe it or not, these are the kinds of questions that are tearing apart certain sections of the church today, and we need clarity and biblical fidelity more than ever. Our guest today is back due to popular demand. You know who she is. Rosaria Butterfield is the author of Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age. If you're not a Christian, you are welcome to join us for this conversation. But just,

you have been warned. This is an in-house Christian conversation. That's where we're headed. Rosaria, thanks for coming back. Sean, thank you so much. It's a great honor to be here. Yeah, we planned this weeks ago and it's been in the back of my mind because there's so many of these questions that I'm personally trying to make sense of. And I found your book was incredibly helpful. You sent me some other books, some reports that are from different churches that we're going to get into. But let me just start with your experience framing this. So in Five Lives of our Anti-Christian Age, you describe a recent repentance different than when you came to Christ years ago. In terms of how you approach same-sex desire, gay Christianity pronoun, and other related issues, maybe just kind of tell us what prompted that and really why.

Right, right. Absolutely. Well, first of all, in the book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, I shared my testimony. And I do get the sense that people only read half the book. And it's okay. I sometimes do that too. But anyway, and that's okay. But I think if you had read the whole book, you would have realized I'm a lot more conservative than you thought I was because part of the things I mentioned at the back of the book were the sermon that Pastor Doug Komen gave at my wedding

to Kent Butterfield that really foregrounds things like biblical submission, just some of those things that I just don't think everybody was tracking with. But anyway, I came to Christ in a pretty messy, radical way, not the way we want our children to come to Christ. We want our children to know Jesus from the minute they remember their first word and to be filled with his grace and meaning and purpose until the day they die. But some of us have a more inelegant entrance, and mine was that. And one of the realities, I think, of coming to Christ with as much sin in

my life as you have is I was processing a lot of it i was writing and reading and thinking at the same time that i was still very much and i hope i'll be doing this until the day i die growing in my sanctification so in some ways what i would say about the repentance that starts five lives of our anti-christ Life, is probably we all should be repenting of the things we said 20 years ago. I would hope. But especially if what divided these books is a Supreme Court case, Obergefell versus Hodges, that redefined harm and legalized gay marriage in all 50 states. Now, the legal, the redefinition of harm is the important thing, because when I came to Christ, I came to Christ with a pastor who said to me, Rosaria, I can accept you as a

lesbian, but I do not approve. But the dignitary harm clause of the Obergefell decision in 2015 would almost make that a hate crime because right now you would be harming someone to not uphold and affirm their LGBTQ, not just their life, not just their love, not just their desire to buy a house together, but their identity. And identity is an anthropological issue. And it's a biblical issue. And what happened after Obergefell was I was realizing that there was a new movement afoot within the church. And I was not speaking with clarity.

And the reason I wasn't speaking with clarity is because i was still struggling at a certain level with i was holding on to some of my sin and um you know and i suppose i still am right i mean if you and i talk 20 years from now we'll say this but but you know i don't know don't know. Because I don't see myself clearly. But the Obergefell decision put a lot of things into focus for me. That and some other things that happened, like, you know, the Biden administration put an anti-bullying legislation into public schools that required, that redefined bully as someone who doesn't show empathy and embrace as an ally the LGBTQ movement. Now, that's big news, right?

And then the redefinition of Title IX. And so what I tell people is I almost feel like I was on the ball field. You know, one hates to use the old ex-lesbian examples, but here we go. I'm on the ball field. I'm running the ball down the court and I'm running in the wrong direction, wearing the wrong jersey. And so that's why I wanted to stop and say, wait a second. I think that evil satanic forces are playing on our Christian compassion and asking us to empathize with things that we need to sympathize with. They're asking us to stand in the shoes of someone, but they're not giving you the whole story. Like, if you think that all you need to do to be a Christian is to show empathy to the quote-unquote trans folks out there,

then you need to be willing to hear what transgender surgeries look like. And you need to understand that you might never urinate again, like, health, in a healthy way. Like, you might be catheterized for the rest of your life and maybe you're 18. like you need to so before you stand in somebody's shoes you need as a christian to hear the whole story and my concern was we weren't so take for example something like reparative therapy part of why i was opposed opposed to reparative therapy is it didn't seem to me that it would make

any sense for someone to want to no longer be gay if you weren't a Christian. It seemed to me that what would make you want to live in sexual holiness was Christ's commandeering your heart and life, and you coming to the powerful realization that your sin cost him his blood. And another way to say that is as Christians, justification comes before sanctification. But my other reason is I had heard a lot of people were harmed by it, that they're, you know, people were hurt by these, uh, procedures and these therapies. And so I came out pretty strongly against reparative therapy. And then, um, in Canada, there was Canada bill four that declared that, biblical witness of male and female and the biblical upholding of marriage as something between a man and a woman was itself an expression of reparative

therapy and that was a hate crime. And so there I am. And you know, the worst is that if you write about these things, you might find your name in these documents. And so I realized I needed to understand it. So I actually asked Christopher Yuan, because he knows everybody, to introduce me to people who would be advocates for this and who have studied the question of harm. And that led me to the Christian Medical and Dental Association, which has a kind of warehouse of information. And lo and behold, there was a recent study, very large study.

I asked my friend who's a statistician who helps me with reading studies because I'm an English major. The only thing I can fix is your broken metaphor. So I need to help on these things. And it was a large study, large enough that it really was solid. And you know what it declared is that, is that even when people did not experience orientation change, they were not harmed by the therapy. The therapy often got them closer connected to some of the root issues that were causing their homosexual desires or their gender dysphoria. A lot of those were childhood trauma, and they were benefited by shining a light on that. I remember talking to a therapist friend about this, and I said, I don't know, what do you think about this and I said I don't know what do you think about this and he said Rosaria if um people sued me or thought I was a crackpot because their goals for therapy were not

met 95 of my clients would sue me you know that that's how therapy is people do go in with goals and they're often are not met but but hopefully they're not harmed. And sometimes some other things have fallen out. So, so that study was really important to me. And that made me write an article, a short article. It wasn't a big deal. It was like a page. I just put it up on my web page. And I, I, I repented of the sin of calling reparative therapy a heresy. I said that I, you know, here's the article that I read that I found on the CMDA website. My primary concern was that people were harmed by it, and if people aren't harmed by it, I don't have a problem with it. Now, as a Reformed Presbyterian, that would not be my first way to go. I'll just tell you that. I would

go biblical counseling before I would go that route. But I'm not your mama. Do what you want. So that's one of the things that I felt that I needed to repent of because I was watching the world use my words from Priya Birgafell against the fair proclamation and the compassionate message of the gospel. So that would be one. Does that help? Do you want me to go on or do you have some? No, no, I understand as a whole, what you're saying is you,

maybe it was certain language and certain ideas more adopted from the world, embedded into a Christian way of seeing things going, wait, timeout, Where have I gotten these ideas? I need to rethink this. I've let the camel's nose under the tent, so to speak. Right. Now, this isn't going to be a whole session on reparative therapy, but maybe make a distinction. You talked about biblical counseling versus reparative therapy. What do you see as the difference between those two? Boy, that could get me in super hot water because I am not a therapist.

My husband is a biblical counselor. And I would say probably the primary emphasis in biblical counseling is to understand the difference between the inner man and the outer man and to grow in sanctification and in some ways leave the rest on the field um uh so so the uh it wouldn't have quite as tight uh an expression of orientation change and again i think i shared this book before this is a very helpful book um i think i gave did i give this to you? You did, yeah. Okay. The New Reformation Catechism on Human Sexuality. And it definitely, yeah, yeah.

So everybody should know, Sean and I were in the speaker's lounge of a conference and we didn't mean to clear the room by having a full-on conversation about this, but somehow people didn't understand that we actually really like each other and really disagree. So anyway. Fair enough. But one of the things you're going to hear in this is the body of Christ should not avoid or shun those who struggle against any sexual sin. Instead, believers with a spirit of compassion should bear each other's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Sexual sin is it runs really deep.

And we may or may not get into this, but you probably know more women who used to be lesbian who are biblically married with children than you know men who used to be homosexual who are biblically married with children. Maybe not, I do. And so I think there are some pretty sensitive reasons for that. And so I don't think we ever want to be in a position

where we are holding up a kind of social marker as a proof of sanctification. And so that would be the big difference big difference I would say but that's gonna get me all kinds of hot water because I'm neither a therapist nor a biblical counselor and that's fair we can move on because sometimes the term reparative therapy it's like prayer is thrown into it and you know counseling is thrown into it it's a nebulous term that's basically some views at times to critique anybody who doesn't want to live out their certain sexual attractions but i would say both both forms of therapy would say that god changes people

okay god these people he changes the affections of your heart um um but the emphasis is on god doing that not so much the therapy doing that. So. Oh, fair enough. Okay. All right. So let's keep going on. There's some specifics I just want to want to get into that you talk about and it's in this report about even using language.

This seems to be a concern that you have. And I increasingly share that concern that language has power and shapes the way we see the world. But do you think Christians should even use language like sexual orientation? And typically this is understood, and you could give a different definition if you disagree, but like an unchanging, enduring, emotional, romantic, or kind of sexual attraction that's a part of who I am in my experience? Should we even use that language? Yeah. You know, I certainly don't think we should invest in that language. I'm not really big on being the language police, but that is not a category of personhood. But Genesis 1, 27, 127, 26 to 28, really is that we are made as image bearers of a holy God as male and as female for creational purposes. The problem with the category of sexual orientation as an anthropology

is that it competes with the idea of image bearing as an identity. And this is how. It suggests that how I feel is who I am. And that's just not true. And you would, you know, I mean, anybody would tell you that. If how I feel is who I am, I'm dead before the day even starts. The other really important problem with it is that it is deeply I am. I'm dead before the day even starts. The other really important problem with it is that it is deeply Freudian. Its origin, it really started as a kind of fringe 19th century idea.

And it really didn't become something that Christians dealt with until this idea of gay christianity which is a homegrown idea and let me just back up i get really tired of um people blaming the world for the things that the church has done all right this idea of gay christianity is something that was grown in the church and it combines a great deal of both false teaching and false teaching is just an error like if i say i found that in the gospel of john and i found that in luke that would be an error so it combines false teaching but it also combines this other word which is called heresy and that is something about which church councils have already rested their case. So that's my concern about it, is it gives people the wrong idea of who we are before a living God. It also suggests falsely that a woman

who would call herself a lesbian woman, or a man who would call himself a gay man or a person with gender dysphoria who might use the word transgender woman, that that's a different kind of person. And that's not true. There is nothing ontological about that. What a lesbian woman is, and I was once one of those, is a woman with a indwelling sin pattern and I think the reason that it got so wonky for the church is many of us were having a hard time explaining the kind of sin an internal homosexual desire is. If sin is like a robber and everybody's telling you, the best way to deal with sin is lock your doors. And you're like, okay, buddy, I am locking my door, but what do I do with the robber that's in the closet waiting for me? And that was really helpful. There's a book

called The Enemy Within. Actually, Pastor Ken Smith gave this book to me 28 years ago or something like that. And if I can just read to you a section, because this really helped me. He says, the law of sin doesn't work on us from the outside. We carry it in us. It is not a written law simply directing us by decree. It is inbred, working, compelling, and urging us from the shadows of our heart. Paul calls it sin living in me. Romans 7, 17, the evil that is right there with me. Verse 21, another law at work in the members of my body and the law of sin at work within my members, that's verse 23. In verse 18, he says, I know that nothing good lives in me,

that is in my sinful nature. The law of sin is in some sense, Paul. And so for me and for others who have dealt with an indwelling sexual sin pattern, and I think that's probably a lot of people, Sean, you might actually to grow in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, and this internal pull that is calling you to something that God hates. And the challenge for indwelling sin is how to learn to hate your sin without hating yourself. And Romans 7 is the key. You have to do what Paul does. You have to say, it is not I, it is the law of sin in me. But it's not going to change if you don't have the right tools for dealing with that sin. And it's not going to change if you don't deal with that sin in its earliest possible iterations. You see, sin isn't a moral flat thing. Sin has an essence. The essence of sin is both privations, it lacks something, and it has something. The problem with sin is it desires that which God hates, and it rejects that which God loves.

And so sometimes we act as though sin is something we control. And I think that's a very dangerous thing. So, yeah, so there you go. So does that help? Yeah, that does. So like practically, would you say somebody who seems to experience or does experience ongoing same-sex sexual attraction, is it just, hey, this is a person who experiences same-sex sexual attraction? And I ask because there's some people who say it's just, it's clumsy, doesn't fit my

experience. I'm just going to use this language. Is it fine in that case for you? Like timeout, that language is loaded with Freudian assumptions and is dangerous. How do you navigate that? Both. I would say I don't like, you know, I experienced same-sex attraction and I don't like I'm a gay Christian. And I'm going to tell you why. The gay rights movement will be ready and Satan will be ready to pounce all over you for that. It was a lot safer to come out 30 years ago than it is today. And I don't think it was terribly safe 30 years ago anyway, but what you are dealing with is not some unusual specific problem to your own unique, complex makeup, you're experiencing Roman seven. And so it seems to me

that it would be a lot safer to say it this way. If you are experiencing desires for that which God hates, he abhors those things, then two things. One is you need a good, trusted friend. And I don't mean Twitter. I mean, okay, that is not a good, trusted friend. I mean, you know, a pastor, an elder, your parents, you know, and, but you also, you know, there's a high degree of sexual abuse among people who have this not, you know, never ending kind of pulse like desire. So if you need help, get help. There's no shame in that.

There's no shame in needing to get help. But if you declare in a kind of morally neutral way hey this is just who i am you know i'm left-handed i have freckles i'm gay you know i you know i'm short um i'm allergic to cats or you know whatever what you're doing is you are putting that in the wrong category. Because what that is, is properly understood from what I read to you from Chris Lundgaard's book as indwelling sin. It's a specific kind of sin. It's not like the actual sin of going and stealing your neighbor's car. It might not ever even get outside of your heart, but it's the kind of sin that Romans 7 talks about. Why do I do what I don't want to do? These are the sins of desire. And it's also the kind of sin that the Tenth Commandment talks about, Exodus 2017, thou

shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife. The prohibition is not against taking. I mean, don't take your neighbor's wife. That's obvious. But the prohibition is against coveting. And this problem becomes really urgent right now when we think about transgenderism. I'm not saying that issues of homosexuality aren't urgent. They've shipwrecked people's lives.

But usually most of us in the gay rights movement have not mutilated our bodies. We just haven't. And it used to be that the gay rights movement was about consenting adults and leaving them alone. And now we're talking about, you know, the trans child and medical procedures. And, you know, it was almost like 30 years ago. Christopher and I were talking about this, too, the other day. Coming out was a rite of passage. You would say, I am gay and And you would practice it in the mirror

and you'd say it to your parents, no matter how old you were. And you'd say it to your colleagues and you'd say it to your students. And it was a rite of passage. But it seems like now cutting off is the rite of passage. You cut off your parents. You cut off all the people who disagree with you. You cut off your body parts. And so I think we're at an urgent place where the church needs to stop waffling on this. Indwelling sin is a sin. It's a sin that God understands. It's a sin that Jesus has died for. And when we learn to repent of our sin at the root, and I understand that means we have to drive a fresh nail into it a thousand times before breakfast. That's miserable. I don't like that either. We will gain victory over it. I've known, I know one person who put a punching bag up in his room. And when evil and sexual thoughts would grab him at night, he would get up and he had his

Bible verses in hand and he would start to punch. He got very fit and he gained victory. And what I mean by victory is the sin gets to be smaller and less dominating. And the grace gets to be more pervasive. Now, were any of us lobotomized? No. And in fact, no one with a past of sexual sin is free of body memories. We will have those until glory. And so we don't want to live in a world where we act as though we're living in glory right now.

We're not. This is not, I don't know if I have to tell you that, Sean. This is not glory, but this is grace. And grace is good. Glory is even better. And by body memories, you know, for me, I don't, I've been, you know, praise God, biblically married for 23 years. And that has really been part of how God has helped me and truly healed

me. But, but, you know, still, if there's a smell of a certain laundry detergent, you know, I can get pulled back into the dark side of things. But I, I wouldn't be better off. I mean, and this is the other thing, I would not have been better off if when I was searching this question of, is there a God? Did he create me? And does he want to know me? Does he care about me? Should I care about him? I would not have been better off if I had met a pastor who said, well, you're just a gay Christian. And what you should do with these feelings is commit your life to celibacy. The reason I wouldn't be better off isn't what you might think. I don't know what you think. But I don't know what you think. I don't know why I even said that.

But the reason that it would not have been helpful is when you're sinning, you give glory to God by repenting. God doesn't ask you to add works righteousness to your sin. So like if I'm sinning and I'm like, i'm just damaged goods i'm never going to be any better sean this is who i am i'm just going to commit my life to celibacy but i don't repent of my sin i don't call because i don't call it a sin i'm like hey this is who i am this is how god made me that really doesn't give glory to god and you're not going to get God's blessing without it. You know, repentance is done unto life. And repent is the first word of the gospel, right?

I think it's Mark 1.15, you know, repent and believe. And so, now, yeah, don't be a jerk. Don't act as though the repentance that goes with an indwelling sin is somehow grosser or more disgusting or you know but we shouldn't withhold or discourage people from repenting of their indwelling sin because that's the only way it's not going to grow and that's the problem that in 2015 no 2012 so i wrote secret thoughts you had wes writing. You had a number of people writing these narratives. And the thing about Indwelling Sin is it's a little bit

like finding a baby tiger and bringing it home. I don't know if you've ever seen a baby tiger, but they just look like a little Garfield kitten. They've got really nice stripes. And after a while, you've got it and it's growing a little bit. You notice it's a little big. You know, they just, they've got really nice stripes and, and, and after a while, you know, you've got it at, you know, and it's just, it's growing a little bit. You notice it's a little big. You probably think your landlord won't want you to keep it because it's a little bigger than the average cat. You buy it a collar and leash, and then you, you know, write a memoir and you say, well, I'm in the process of stewarding my same-sex attraction. I'm, I'm in the process of stewarding my same-sex attraction. I'm in the process of navigating my same-sex attraction. And then 10 years later, the cat is a tiger and it eats you alive in your ministry and

everything you wanted. And we don't want that for people. We do not want any more shipwrecked lives because of sexual sin in the Christian church. I don't want that. You don't want that. And the only way to prevent that is to make sure that people know what sin is and to learn how to repent of it at its root. And that gets us to this Latin word concupiscence, which strangely-

All right, hold that thought. We're going to come back to that. This is really important. I'm glad you brought that up. Latin word concupiscence, which strangely... Hold that thought. We're going to come back to that. This is really important. I'm glad you brought that up. One more question before we get there. Sure. Some might say, okay, Rosaria, I'm with you,

that we should try to root out sin in our lives, but they might make a distinction between same-sex orientation and same-sex sexual orientation. And so it's same-sex orientation or attraction might include things like a passion for same-sex beauty, the nature of conversations, pop culture, this kind of stuff. And so those are things you and I would not say are sinful. I would say, well, this is first of all, that's Nate Collins. And I think what he says in his book, All But Invisible, is he calls that an aesthetic orientation. So he wants to make a distinction between a sexual orientation and an aesthetic orientation. You know, the problem with

that is it's very hard to know when that line gets crossed it's very hard for me to know so i was not surprisingly an athlete my whole life i have spent i spent most of my teens and my 20s watching female gymnasts i was a gymnast i was a runner you have to spend a lot of time watching tapes of how people land a particular move and i could not for the life of me tell you where that line would get crossed between appreciating the beauty of, you know, of, of, of, of just a beautiful athlete and sexual design, sexually desiring her. And the reason that you can't distinction, make that distinction. And I can't make that distinction and I can't make that distinction is it requires that we look in the wrong mirror. What we need to look to is the cross.

And what Jesus says is that if we make a moral assumption about ourselves, I am this kind of person. And you don't even find that in scripture you're already kind of swimming you know in the deep end without a lifeboat um but then it's so it always connects i have spent i don't know what how many 20 years with young women coming to me wanting me wanting to talk to me about their their same sex attraction um not once has it ever remained at the level of aesthetic and so what i would just say is i think that that's a way and i understand it i've done this for years. I probably am doing it in this interview right now. We always want to clean ourselves up. And the other thing that's hard is that those were the years when every interviewer wanted to know good biblical answer. The question was always, you know, autobiographical. So what I would say, Christian, look to the cross. If you are finding your eyes dwelling on something and you know where this is going to get you. It's not there yet, but you know where it's going to get you.

It's a sin. Because it's the embryo of sin. I mean, in the same way that an embryo has all of the DNA of a human being, but it isn't outside of the womb yet, right? That's the pro-choice, quote unquote, the pro-abortion argument. But it's still, you know, we on the pro-life side would say, but it has every bit of the DNA that it will need to be a human being. And therefore, it is a human being.

The same is true for our sin. We have to deal with our sin in its embryonic form and not make excuses trying to dodge how guilty we are. Because it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to have people constantly examining where you are, quite frankly, on the pervert scale. And that's something I used to be called 30 years ago when I would testify before the legislature in New York about gay rights. And it's something I'm called now when I testify before the legislature about parental rights. So it seems to be my word. I don't like the word. It's embarrassing. It feels creepy. I mean, I don't think I was a creep embarrassing it feels creepy it feel i mean i don't think i was a creep but it makes you feel creepy so so i make no distinction between the two because the one

is simply the waiting room for the other and i have yet to meet anyone for whom uh there's a clear demarcation line that isn't crossed. So it sounds like this is a move that's trying to make a distinction in kind between an aesthetic orientation and same-sex sexual orientation. And you're saying maybe it's a distinction in degree, but not in kind. And so that's a helpful way to look at it. I don't have same-sex sexual attraction. I try to understand i listen to stories and i think there's a lot of people and you could tell me if you see it

differently who just feel like the church doesn't understand me and they hold me at arm's length and so i want to find something redemptive in my experience and things like how i view relationships maybe i identify more with many in the gay community than I do the Christian community. My pop culture does. So it seems like it's a way to try to redeem and capture something that's a part of who they are. But you're saying, if I hear you correctly, you could still have the things that make you you, but don't try to tag that onto this same-sex sexual orientation. That's where the problem comes in. Right. And I would also say, don't think that excessive visualization of something that you

know you find seductive is not going to lead you down that road. And that would be true for all of our eyes, that we are to guard our hearts carefully. And I would say we live in a culture right now, especially with young people, and I have a real heart for young people. Maybe because I've become officially an old person, but I have a real heart for young people because they have so much. They are just bombarded through social media and through other things. And so, and I, you know, I can't remember if you were at that same conference, but I was at a conference recently where we learned that 80 to 90% of the young people, the Gen Zers who were seeking to be missionaries couldn't because of a sexual sin that they just hadn't conquered and it wasn't all about gay it was a lot about about a lot of things but i think what we're

pornography masturbation and i think a lot of what we're seeing here is that we have not taught people that there is a healthy war to have with your sin and you don't have to explain yourself you don't have to excuse yourself because we are all in the same boat what you need to do is learn how to go to war and i feel like this whole generation read too much shel silverstein they all want to go to the beach nobody wants to go to war um and so i i think that they would be better off. I think they would feel the victory that book, The Doctrine of Repentance. And the first ingredient is that we recognize, we see sin as sin. And if we miss that first ingredient,

we're setting ourselves up to have to repent of our sin when it grows to be a giant. So if I tell you I'm not sinning, Sean, I just have same-sex attraction, it's just how I'm made, it's like being left-handed and having freckles. And you don't call me on it. I'm going to have to at some point, because I'm a Christian, I'm going to have to at some point fight that sin when it involves a woman and a mortgage. And that's going to be a lot harder. Sin has a kind of fire and resolution to it that I don't think we appreciate. So let's go to this Latin term that you referenced a minute ago. And I do appreciate,

before we jump into concupiscence, you said we all have the same war. And this is one thing the report you this is in your book that it's not unique to people who have same-sex attraction now actually that would be let me ask you one more question before we go to this because here's a question i get asked in time let's say okay sean maybe you struggle with lust or greed or whatever the sin would be but you can be married to some of the opposite sex and you're saying some with same-sex attraction who's not attracted has okay the same kind of less struggles but i'm not even attracted i can't even get married to somebody so how can you say your struggles akin to mine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I would,

I would, I would slow that down. Okay. Okay. I would slow that down. Um, because it really depends on what you believe homosexuality is. So I, I was, I came into a church that taught me that homosexuality was a lust of the flesh. It was forbidden in the law and it was overcome in the savior. Now, if I had been told that homosexuality is not a lust of the flesh, it's a sexual orientation and it doesn't change, it's fixed, it's immutable, you know, probably you and I wouldn't be chatting. I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe we would because you're a nice guy and you enter into circles. But I don't think we'd be chatting like this. So what I would say is,

and this is true for anybody dealing with an indwelling sin. In some ways, an indwelling sin is a little bit like what you see underneath your eyelids. It's that close. It's that intimate. You sort of can't imagine life without it. But God would like you to imagine life without it. God would like you to imagine life without your same-sex attraction. God would like you to imagine life without your homosexual desires. Now, if you agree with me that homosexuality at the level of desire, same-sex

attraction, homosexual desire, is an indwelling sin, would you also agree with me that you have parents who likely have indwelling sin patterns i've never met a human being on planet earth whose parents do not have indwelling sin patterns i mean i i if you show me the people i'd love to meet them i know my children certainly are not in that case so why do you think it's just a question you know and i would go really slowly on this i wouldn't bombard them with it but why do you think your indwelling sin pattern is so special and so different than everybody else's because the bible doesn't say it is the bible just doesn't say it is definitely the world says it is but most definitely freud says it is but the Bible doesn't say

it is and so I would say look to Christ look to the cross and deal with it one thing at a time you know you when I was first exploring the Bible my brain was so busy

I was fighting with it I mean I'd sit down to read the Bible and I don't have ADHD that I last I checked you know I can sit down and read something and I have great clarity, but with the Bible, it was like, there was this war going on. And I remember talking to a friend in the church and this friend said, you know, Rosaria, I don't think there's any room for the Bible in your brain because you have all this junk in there. I think you need to get rid you got to make some room and i think that's true sometimes so don't tell god what he can't do and don't tell your pastor that your indwelling sin

is different than every other indwelling sin pattern on the planet you're not that special you're very special and we love you but you're not that special concupiscence is the great uh neutralizer in some sense which brings us finally to what we even mean by this term right so at root as i understand it it's the idea that we have natural internal desires that result from original sin. That's what's meant by concupiscence. Yeah. Go ahead. Clarify, add. Can I? Okay. So this book, look at the size of this book. Hold it to the side so we can see it. Or in the front, kind of in the middle. I can't see it right there. Right in the front. There we go. A little bit. Keep going over to the middle.

Go all the way to the middle in front of the mic there it is okay okay got it okay this is the book it's thick enough you could do bicep curls with it if you get tired of reading it it is called ruined sinners to reclaim sin and depravity in historical biblical theological and pastoral perspectives there is probably the best article on concupiscence now I love Jared's book because it's written for a lay audience it's written you know you do not need to be and I'm certainly not a theologian but there's an essay in here by Stephen Wedgworth called the heart wants what it wants and that is is the definition of concupiscence. Concupiscence is not just

from a Protestant perspective. It isn't just the consequence of original sin. It actually is it is that it's sin itself. Now, the way that this gets challenging, and this is where you guys might be, everybody listening is like, oh boy, who cares? But the reason this is really important is if it is actually sin, then we have a moral responsibility to it. So nobody's saying pray the gay away.

I mean, nobody's saying that. What I'm saying is what the pastor said in my life, what Pastor Ken Smith said, and he didn't like hammer me with this. It's not like he like, you know, but what the message I certainly got from him, from his teaching, from the pulpit ministry was you are responsible for your indwelling sin.

Okay. You are responsible for your original sin. It's not about pray it away. It's the Holy Spirit is not responsible for taking it away. You are responsible for repenting of it, for mortifying it. And what Wedgworth says here is for Protestants, concupiscence is always sin. Whereas for Roman Catholics, it is a sin in the unbaptized and a potential sin in the baptized. And so in 2018, Denny Burke and I wrote an article on concupiscence, and we published it in the Catholic journal Public Discourse, which was really good because we wanted to raise this question, is this revoice debate actually a theological debate between Roman Catholics and Protestants?

But if it is, if you are a Protestant and you deny that concupiscence is a sin, the reason that we would call it a heresy is church councils have already weighed in on it. It was such a big deal in the early church. It goes all the way back to Augustine. And now you might be saying, well, but it's just me and Jesus here. Why do I care about what the church council says? And I would say that's because as a Christian, we are all part of that responsible group that Jude speaks to when he says, you know, the faith delivered to all the saints. So those are our great cloud of witnesses. And so anyway, so as we weighed into the weeds here,

I just wanted to say, I think it's really important. Okay, so this is helpful. I realize this is a dividing line between Catholics would agree we have original sin and desires that don't line up with how we should live according to God's design. But we are not morally culpable for those desires unless we act on them in thought or in deed. Right. Now, Jared's book shows – But Protestants don't say that.

Okay. So this is where I don't – I'm not an expert in church history, and Jared argues that when you go back, you look at Zwingli and Calvin and all these guys. who might not be reformed, some of the original reformers, who would line up with the Catholic view. Even some conservative scholars today, who on some issues might be more conservative than me, would hold the Catholic view on this. That's possible, but I think you would then need to... I think it would be then the onus would be on you to explain why you are embracing a heresy. I mean, so then if you do that, okay, but don't call me a meanie when I say, why are you embracing a heresy? Because there's a lot at stake in this. You see there are, and I don't, you know, I don't want to get us in trouble. Okay. My first name is Rosaria. I'm named after the rosary. I went to Catholic schools throughout. I loved the nuns, but goodness gracious, I do not want to be where

the Roman Catholic church is right now on sexual sin issues. And I don't think you do either so the issue is when you find if you're ezra or nehemiah and you find the law in the bunker which is i think maybe what we're talking about here you see the issue of concupiscence is one of those laws in the bunker and now that it's out it would be a ridiculous excuse to say but joe over there is really conservative and he believes it. Well, the law is out of the bunker. We need to look at it and not measure it against the error of man, but the power of scripture to redeem your life.

And if we have been wrong on this, and I think we have, by we I mean if we have allowed a heresy to enter into Protestantism pretty loosely, and I think we've done it because we thought we were being compassionate. But I want you to know that withholding repentance from someone at the moment when they could be to sin is not compassionate. And so I don't want to compare it to fallen men who made the same error. I want to compare it to scripture. And now if we are having an Ezra moment, let's get the law, let's dust off the law, let's read it, let's repent, let's embrace our brothers and sisters in Christ, and let's read it. Let's repent. Let's embrace our brothers and sisters in Christ and let's move on Okay, so here's maybe I'm not fully understanding this and just still working it through but if you look on page 76 of way Jared's book I saw that you had that right there. Yeah. Yeah. I've got a lot of books This is you're the same as me. I could grab 20 within four feet. Yeah, and I'm short.

Jared Moore has a book called The Lust of the Flesh, and you kindly gave this to me at the conference we were at, and I've read it. And he says, this is the footnote, 107, on page 76. It's a huge footnote. He says, there are many other contemporary Christian sources that argue similar errors and he cites some people. He he says each of these examples teach that same-sex attraction is not sin and then he lists some conservative people down there that would be very conservative i'm not

going to mention names but these folks are i mean even posts from desiring god and others that seem to agree that same-sex attraction itself is not sin now i haven't read those articles i'm taking jared's word for this hopefully i'm understanding it i have okay let me just back you up i have and i know you don't want me to name names so i'm not going to name i'm going to really try sean this is only you got to do i've got it but i want you to know that i personally know at least three of these people who have repented for having held this position oh because it's because it's wrong and so what i want to say again is okay we aren't i don't think it would be very helpful to hold up

fallen men who prior to the see the bergafell decision really put pressure on us to, you know, it kind of, it kind of shined a dark, it brought a kind of darkness into things that really made us be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. There's not, there's not quite as much room

in the middle road as we thought. So I know at least three of these people who have publicly repented of this position. So I don't think they want to be brought into the... Now, should Jared have said that? Probably. Did he know that at the time? I don't know if he did. Because that's the same thing with me. If you were saying, oh, Rosaria Butterfield uses pronoun

hospitality, well, in three of her books she did. So I can't fault you for quoting a book where I wrote that. So no, let's not look. Yes, I understand a number of us. I would be in here too. A number of us believed what was not true. And we wrote about it because you know what? We're fallible. And now we have read the, you know, I think you have the AIC report from the PCA GA 48. We've read, you know, I mean, Jared has done a great service. I mean, he has just, you know, poured through the annals of church history. I don't even want to tell you how much coffee I would have needed to do that. Stephen Wedgworth has written a very comprehensive, long essay which brings up some of the same characters

that Jared does. And so now it's a new day. And I will tell you that the people that I am most wanting to hear from, I mean, because I'm busy and old. So everybody that changed their mind from 2010, I don't want to hear from. I mean, like, I just don't. But the people who themselves were sexual strugglers in the same way I was,

I want to hear from those people, and I have. There is a movement afoot, especially of men who had walked down the revoice tunnel, who had believed, and, you know, I don't want to, revoice is revoice, but the issue, the theological issue is they believed that their same-sex attraction was a morally neutral temptation from which they needed to flee,

not a morally culpable sin from which they needed to repent. And they were wrong. And they got way too close to the fire. And now they're very clear on where they stand. And so, you know, we can maybe talk about some of those, you know, some people have made pretty public statements on it. And so I, you know, we can talk about those people perhaps, but, but I'd rather not talk about people. I'd rather talk about the fact that scripture teaches

a very simple biblical truth. And that is that if you desire something that God hates, that desire, even if unchosen, Romans 7, and even if unacted upon, Exodus 20, it's a sin that needs to be repented of, not a temptation where you need to flee. And back to the analogy of the robber in the closet. If the robber's in the closet, Sean, where do I flee? If the sin is under my eyeballs, where do I flee? And it's not acceptable to ask the Holy Spirit to do my work. I cannot pray for deliverance. I cannot say, say Holy Spirit take this away from me when God says mortify your sin it's it's it you know and I would say repentance is a simple act of obedience but it is also an act of love so does that put that yeah no no that's that's that's that's really

helpful so I just want to make sure understand when we like use the term use the term heresy So does that put that to – Yeah, no, no, no. That's really helpful. So I just want to make sure I understand. When we like use the term heresy earlier, I think of things like rejecting the Trinity, things like saying Jesus is not divine. Right. Salvation is by works. Right. So like what's the heresy? Jesus was not human.

Right. You're putting this in the sense of, or you're saying that the Protestant church. Church history. Yeah, fair enough. Church history. You're saying church history, the major councils within the Protestant church have held essentially unanimously that even the desire for any kind of sin itself. So not just same-sex attraction whatever that is itself that is not ordered towards a way that we can live out in line with god's design for ourselves right that is sin and we are morally culpable for that we don't flee it although we do at least minimally

flee it we repent of it and to say that's not sin is akin to rejecting the Trinity. Is that fair? Well, let me back you up. I don't know if it's, I'm not a church historian, and so I don't know if that analogy would be quite as tight. But I think your question is, what's the big deal? Why would it rise to the level of heresy? Why isn't it just false teaching? Okay, like, okay, it could be false teaching. It could be, you said it was in Luke and I found it in John, ooh, you know,

or something like that. And the reason is because the idea that specifically your sexual sin is a morally neutral temptation, employs a false unbiblical anthropology. And at the same time that it denies that repentance is foundational to the gospel so those are the two big problems in saying my same-sex attraction is a morally neutral temptation from which I must flee rather than a morally culpable sin and since Steven Wedgworth is a lot smarter than I am I could quote him on it if that would help you. No, that's fine. But those are the two biggies. The biggies are the question of ontology and personhood and the question of the role of repentance in the gospel.

Okay, so as I understand it, and maybe I'm wrong and I'll get some emails on this, but there's quite a few reformers would hold the view that you hold, the Reformed Church. But there'd be a few. Reformers would hold the view that you hold, the Reformed Church, but there'd be a lot of Arminians who would say, we have original sin, it's affected the way we think in every way, but it's when we act on it in thought and deed that we become culpable. So we're not damned for these desires we didn't choose and didn't, yeah, we just simply didn't choose because original sin, even though we all will act on these at some point, it's our actions themselves that bring the damnation. Right. And I would say this, I think a lot of that is going to hang on whether you believe Romans 7 is Paul as an unbeliever or Paul as a believer.

So if you believe that Romans 7 is just an unregenerate man, then you believe that Paul was an unregenerate man. Now, I don't think that's a Protestant reading of Romans 7, but I would rather back it up and say, well, how did you get there? Um, but here's what I would say. Just, you know, like, notes from the front line of this. Okay. Um, I...

I was confronted with the sin of my homosexuality when I had a woman on the mortgage to my house and written in a domestic partnership policy and someone I genuinely cared for, right? I want to be careful using the word love because I think that the biblical understanding of love is not lust. I think the biblical understanding is love. Love means I love people the way God loves them.

And obviously, I was not loving my lover the way God loved her. But nonetheless, that was a hard time. I mean, it took a long time. It was a rough repentance. I almost didn't make it. And there's no question that it would be easier to repent of a sin before another human being is involved in it. Think of some of the scandals we've seen in the Church of Light. So think of these men who have had secret lovers. It would have gone better for them had they repented when it was a desire rather than

something that involves another human being. It also is a lesser sin because what I was doing is not loving my partner. I was sinning against her. I was sinning against her and I was calling it love. And so I don't, you know, I went from a Roman Catholic church to a Reformed Presbyterian church. But I would say this, just common sense would tell you that if you withhold repentance from someone when their sin is small, but expect them to go to war when it's big, you're not going to see some positive results all the time.

I mean, you'll see some, but it's a lot harder. And what we're seeing right now are shipwrecked ministries and great shame that is brought to the christian church so you are right to say dear christian do not think concupiscence is a gay issue all the things that came up this week that i can think of were heterosexual men yeah with secret women and you that's what sin does sin tells you that you can control it and you can't but I will tell you that if they did believe in the doctrine of concupiscence and their elders in session did and so you know and there was enough teaching that anytime you desire that which God hates that's a sin kill it kill it now they you know, they might've been a lot

better. They would have been a lot better off than they are right now. So I can't, I can't dive into the annals of Arminianism because they don't really understand it. But I will say common sense tells me it's a lot easier to fight your sin when it's small, rather than when it becomes a giant. When it grows to the full born tiger, by the way, is a good illustration. I'll remember. I'm with you, by the way, in the sense of, and this is more of a recent thought for me. Reading your book was one of the catalysts of, I don't know that I thought for a long time that attractions or desires that I didn't choose. I was morally culpable for those. Just watch your eyes flee from it. But then, you know, as I reflect upon it a lot, it's like, wait a minute,

that's a desire that's really greedy. That's a desire that's really selfish. That's a desire that's lustful. That's a desire that's fill in the blank. I started thinking, okay, that comes from within me. There is something broken within me. Now that brokenness could be original sin, or it could be some other choice that I made in my life that, you know, weighs into it as well. I don't know where that came from, but that comes from me. And so I think you're right that there's a moral culpability there, not just for same-sex attraction. Of course, that's the issue today that everybody's discussing and debating. That's kind of brought this to the surface. In the past, it's been other issues. But I think that's powerful in terms of fighting sin, in terms of repentance and how we grow. I don't know.

I don't know yet if I'm willing to call it heresy. And I just have to think about that a little bit more. And you know what? Don't quote me. Just look at the church councils. I mean, like I'm not, I don't, and you can decide whether you thought the church councils were correct. But what I would say is also important is to talk about Jesus, the sinless man, whose sinlessness is what we need. Not his sinning like we do. And just to quote Jared again, I don't think it's in his book, but he has an article or he has a line in an article that says, no, your same-sex attraction is not being tempted like Jesus was. And I think that that's really, really important. And that footnote you mentioned,

one of the people in that footnote who turned around on this and wanted to talk to both me and Christopher Yuan about it, right around the 2018 mark, that was a big kind of watershed moment for a lot of people. The reason he wanted to turn around on that was he just saw how dangerous it was. It was terrifying. And a lot of those people in that footnote are people in ministry. Sure, that's right. Yeah. You know, it is a fall from grace from a man who holds the keys to the kingdom is huge. You do not want to see that. I'm speaking as a pastor's wife. You want to protect your pastor, protect your elders, protect the church. And so I think the issue had to do with,

you know, because repentance is part of how you slay sin. And do you want victory? I mean, in some ways it's, what is it? Is it John 5 when Jesus says to the man by the well, do you want to be made well? You know, I mean, it seems like kind of a throwaway question, but sometimes our sin is like an old friend, right? It's kind of, not necessarily an old good friend,

but just the companion that you've known your whole life. And it does feel, it feels like you've had an amputation when the Lord removes an indwelling sin from you, or at least gives you victory over it. So I would say a way that we can be helpful to people in this is to, first of all, be people who love the truth more than we love our own reputation. And so just square it up, you know, like, you know, read the books that we've talked about, or assess, you know, access them, or think about it, and just line it up with scripture. That would be the first thing to do. You know, the second thing is to be more alert in evangelicalism for the propensity that we have to create slogans and ministries and kind of parties around things. And what I mean by that is it's a lot easier for me as just, I'm just a pastor's wife. I don't have a ministry.

So I realized the Lord, the Holy Spirit convicts me that I've sinned by calling reparative therapy, a heresy by using transgender pronouns by dah, dah, dah. And you know what? It costs me to repent nothing because I don't have a ministry. I don't have anything to lose. I really have nothing to lose. I am a simple individual human being who can claim Psalm 103.12, as far as the East is from the West, the Lord puts away my sins. I don't forget it. He does. And I go on. And if nobody wants to read my books now, because I said stupid things before, it doesn't matter because I don't have a job to lose. But for people who have parachurch ministries who are invested in these heresies, I think we need to go to them quietly behind the scenes

and help them get out before the Titanic sinks. Because the Titanic will sink. It's, you know, sin will eat you alive. It's its job. That tiger will grow and it will eat you and everything you wanted alive. So if this concupiscence issue is the sin that I believe it is, and if we are having a little Ezra moment here where we have, in some ways, found what was always there to find,

but we just weren't looking, and now we know we need to go to those parachurch ministries and say, it's not safe to continue. I know you have a lot of mouths to feed. I know you have a lot of t-shirts to sell. We can't care about that. We have to be truth tellers. And I was just in my devotions this morning and I was in the, you know, I would do the Old Testament, New Testament, and it's Leviticus 19, 17. You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor.

Now, it doesn't say blast him on Twitter. It says go to him and reason with him. Now, I am really trying to follow your rules. I'm not mentioning any of the names of these parachurch ministries, but you know that I know who they are. And they are not safe. And the Christians in them are not safe. Because they are promoting something that does not help people repent of their sin and turn to Christ, but instead leads people on the path of the kind of destruction that we have seen

this week with people's ministries being literally blown up by a sexual sin that got too big and too hard to handle. So one of the things that partly persuaded me towards the idea of Compute the sense itself being sinful is that sometimes we look at certain attractions and they don't offend us as much as other attractions and I don't know how somebody could say that even an attraction Sexually for a child is not something you have to repent of because if you say that same-sex attraction or whatever else we want to put in there and i don't we don't even need to pick on that particular traction because it's a leveler like you said then that means any attraction itself is not sinful

unless you act on it so sometimes we need to take a more extreme example. Although probably 50 years ago in the church, you could have just mentioned same-sex attraction and it would have had the same effect, which raises the question potentially, how much has our thinking been shaped by the cult? I think that's a very fair question to ask, but I don't know how you get around that. Now, it sounds like you agree with me on this, but so don't know how you get around that now. Right. Sounds like you agree with me on this, but the, so then we get to this question. Somebody goes, okay, Rosaria, whether it's the children, whether same sex attraction, it's like, I didn't ask for this. It's shameful. I'm embarrassed. Uh, how do I even tell somebody and deal with this

without shame and just over, because part of the narrative is, and I think we've seen it done, is that it's just overbearing for somebody to deal with this and has the negative mental health effect on the other side. What is you think compassion and practical help looks like if we conclude that concoop compute i can't even say it concupiscence itself is sinful right right well what we do is we open our bibles to romans 7. and we say oh lord i am so grateful that you understand that you know that i did not choose this um and I am not in any way feeling like I can deal with it on my own because it is big and pervasive. And maybe it came from someone sinning against you. Maybe it was prompted. There are many, many stories of gender dysphoria with men who have been sexually abused and they

cannot stand the sight of their own genitalia because it constantly brings them back to that. But here's what we don't do. What we do do is we say, Lord, I need your help. And we go to a trusted pastor or an elder or a parent and we say this is my roman seven problem and i need help i need to be protected but let's be clear that suggesting that what you really need is like a sticker and a parade and you need, you know, just be compassionate. Well, no, you need to get out. I mean, if that is, if you are having a dysphoric relationship to your own body, that will kill you. I mean, the, you know, medically speaking, the analog to gender dysphoria is anorexia. No one would go to an anorexic daughter and say, yeah, you're really fat. You know, you're right.

I affirm you. I mean, it would just be cruel and unusual. And so I think what we need to do, and this is why the issue of concupiscence is so important, we need to put it in the right category. Sin. This is sin. It is not a sin that you chose, and praise be to God, it's not even a sin that you have physically acted upon. But it is not a sin that will stay put because sin doesn't stay put. So we need to help you have the tools you need to kill the sin and that those tools might involve therapy those tools might involve um you know realizing that someone has sinned against you in a profound way but what we don't want to do is become lovers of money lovers of self people who just protect each other's reputations because, you know, because what? We're infallible? We're not infallible. Nobody's infallible except for the Lord himself.

But here's what I would not recommend doing. I would not recommend saying I'm a gay Christian. And that is because you are automatically putting your sin in the wrong category. And I understand it's psychologically easier to do it. It's because it in some ways takes you off the hook. You know, like I'm innocent. Well, no one is innocent. No, not one. So I think we have to be willing to just look at this, you know, soberly, maturely as Christians. Look at this doctrine of concupiscence. Look at Romans 7. Look exodus 2017 and think about it

are we really serving our brothers and sisters by by suggesting to them that they don't need to repent of sin but instead they should have a party do we really believe that there's a separate category of personhood called and then fill in the blank, right? I mean, one, and you were right, minor attracted person is one of those. That is a sexual orientation, soon to be, if it's not already, in the APA. Do we think that's the direction we need to go? And so I think we just need to have the courage to be Ezra and the courage to say, with the best of intentions, we ended up with a really damning theological tradition and we're going to stop now. And there's no shame in repenting of our sin. It just shows that God was right all along. So that's not a newsflash.

God was right all along. Okay, there we go. Now put that on a billboard. But I think that's what we need to do. And I think for people in these parachurch ministries that are fronting a heresy, it won't last and it won't go well. My message to you would be the same to the man who is courting a lust for a woman in his church and he thinks he can get away with it. It won't last long. Sin has a way of rising to the surface. And if you're a Christian, sin has a way of rising to the surface because the Lord Jesus Christ loves you so much that he wants you to deal with your

sin now and not be condemned with it forever. Because that we can't bear. We cannot even imagine what it would be like to not have a savior. So the great news is you have a savior. If you're a Christian, you have a savior. And it doesn't matter where you are. This is the day. This is the day of salvation. This is the day the Lord has made.

This is your Psalm 103 12 day. We have to help our friends do that because sin cannot be covered up with a bunch of parties and T-shirts and slogans. And this post-Abergefell world is really marching very quickly. People talk – I just came back from the ADF conference. That's Alliance Defending Freedom. That's the lawyers who are defending, you know, our religious liberty. And there are a number of lawsuits with some, and the plaintiffs that we heard from were just, you know, it was heart-wrenching because the public schools have become conveyor belts for transgender activism. And it's legal to not tell parents what is going on with their children. I mean, it's crazy to me.

I got a phone call, you know what, a couple of months ago before school ended. My grandson got a shiner on the playground and I needed to pick him up. And, you know, okay, you know, some kid punches him on the playground and I get the phone call. But if he wanted to be called Julie and transition,

legally, I wouldn't get the phone call. So I think there's a lot more at stake than our own reputations. And Christians have to be willing to repent, see our errors. But I can talk privately with you about that footnote and let you know. Oh, sure, yeah.

Because you need to know that, that there's public repentance. Interesting, okay. So two more questions for you, if we can. Okay. And then we'll wrap up. One I said at the beginning, I want to intro to you,

so I feel like we got to go there. And I'm really interested in what you're going to say too is on page 105 you say oh now okay which book now this is your book sorry okay and i'll just read it it's really one line it said tempted without sin and it talks about the temptation of Jesus had no sin from Adam and no sin from his own action. Right. So the perversions that have become part of the sinful story of modern life were not things that Jesus experienced. Right. In the very bottom right, you said Jesus did not experience sexual lust directed at either men or at women. Now, I think every Christian could say

Jesus wouldn't have even had sexual desire for men because that is disordered according to God's design for men and women. And we talked about that in our last conversation. But Jesus is a male. He had a male body. Could he have had sexual desire within itself without it being sinful? And I ask because go ahead.

I'm laughing because it's so this is one of those moments where our own kind of notions get get played in here. So for women who come from my history, for women who have not chosen it, I mean, I don't know if I chose it or not, but I didn't choose it, but I certainly acted on it. Homosexuality, the idea that Jesus would lust after a woman is the most appalling idea because if if he did that then he first of all he couldn't be our savior amen because he had to go to the cross with that without without but who would want to be that woman see that's the thing is that when you lust after a human being that's a human being. How could Jesus then die for her if he lusted after her? I mean, like even just saying the words feel really gross. But anyway, this is where subject position is really important. So you as a man, you're like,

oh, he couldn't possibly. And me as a woman who used to be a lesbian is like, oh, he couldn't possibly. And so I guess we just have to arrive in the fact that we are fallible. Agreed. Let me say this. My point was more so that there's a difference between opposite sex attraction can be redeemed and carried out. Same sex attraction never can. So Jesus simply couldn't have had same sex attraction because that in itself is a disordered kind of attraction. Right. But he also could have lust after a woman. Yes. And this is the distinction between attraction and between lust. And I guess my question is, we can be attracted towards things that are good within themselves. And sex is a good that God has given us bodily.

So what would have been wrong for Jesus to desire that? I think the only way outside of that was to say Jesus' unique calling as a Savior to not be married means he wasn't even attracted in that fashion to a woman at all. Is that what you would argue? Absolutely. And I would also argue that, I mean, and this will get us deep into Christology, which is a wonderful subject and a very important subject. But what we need is, we don't need a savior who is low and compromised. We need a savior who went to the cross. And I think one of the important things to realize is that Jesus being tempted without sin means that he actually

fought the fight that we don't even want to engage in. So it's not to minimize. It's not that the temptations that Jesus faced were a sham. They're so the book of Romans will take us. The sin of homosexuality is a sin not only against practice, right? A thing you do, but it's a sin against pattern. It's a sin against the created order. And that does make it, now I would say that, because I had, in my 20s, I dated men.

I even tried to be sexually active with men. And I absolutely believe that my heterosexual sin is just as vile as my homosexual sin, from my perspective, no question about it. But when you think of the ethics of sin, the essence of sin, sinning against the created order

is a little bit like having a fatal heart attack. You know, like, okay, you kill the created order and you're dead. So I would never want for somebody to hear me minimize heterosexual sexual sin, because as we said earlier, that's all we're reading about right now. You know, that's all we're seeing right now in the church it's very serious it is corrupt it is awful but we need to think of sin again not only as an action but an essence and so the sinning against the created order basically means saying that you don't think the seeds of the gospel are in the garden. You can just kind of be a New Testament Christian. You can get rid of the whole Old Testament, nothing in there. And I think

that would be really, really dangerous. I would say this, and this is just that we live in a very, very perverted world. We live in a world that is just awash in sexual sin. And the kind of, you know, I mean, all pornography is evil, but there's almost a satanic darkness right now in what the internet is producing and what many Christians are imbibing. And so, yeah, I mean, it's really dark out there. And yes, some sin is worse than others. And we know that. I mean, even in saying that lust of your heart is like adultery, that's true. But we know adultery involves another person and it is worse and its

consequences are worse. Yeah. The report you gave me makes that very clear that we're guilty for concupiscence, but it's not the same as actually carrying it out in terms of its gravity. Right. You know, it is interesting, the temptations of Jesus for for food food is a good thing the temptation to be protected you know by his angels which he would be and the protection for his kingdom which would be his but it's the wrong time and with the wrong authority you know it's interesting jesus was not tempted with you might think some kind of prostitute or sexual temptation given that role in the history of the world. It's not even present. And that's a really interesting thing. I hadn't thought about

why not, because most rulers, that's probably the first thing you would tempt them with that and money. Right. Okay. So last question for you, this report, again, I'm going to link to it below. It's called the report on the Ad Interim Committee on Human Sexuality to the 48th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, 2019 to 2020. I think it's fantastic. And it has two things here on using the term gay Christian. I'm going to read a little bit of this and then just get your reaction here. So it starts off by saying, to juxtapose, this is page 11, to juxtapose identities rooted in sinful desires alongside the term Christian is inconsistent with biblical language and undermines the spiritual reality that we're new creations in Christ. So strong language that using that terminology undermines new creation Christ. But then I thought it's interesting in a statement on language on the next page it says we affirm that those in our churches would be wise to avoid the term gay christian so they didn't say it's sinful they said it's wise we do but so on the flip side it says we

recognize that some christians may use the term gay in an effort to be more readily understood by non-christians and you and i know people use the term because in an effort to be more readily understood by non-Christians. And you and I know people use the term because maybe for missionary effects, for people on the outside, that might be their motivation. They might say identify with these people in certain fashion, whatever. They use it. And this report says, we recognize some may use it in an effort to be more readily understood by non-Christians. The word gay is common in our culture, but we don't think, again, wise for churches to police every use of the term. Our burden is that we don't justify our sin struggles by affixing them to our identity as Christians. So if I read it correctly, and there's more in the back on page 29 and 30. They're saying we have real concerns about using this language, but we don't want to police everybody using it.

And we're more concerned with what underlies the language than the language itself. And again, on page 30, it's like we believe it is generally unwise to use the language of gay Christian, and then gives away about how they think we should respond to fellow Christians who do so. Do you agree that it's unwise? Or do you think it's actually sinful to do so? Would you go further? I would go I would go further. And, of course, that is a committee report. Okay. And what a committee, a committee report is just that it's a committee that is meant to study a subject, and it would then provide it to the General Assembly, and the General Assembly would have to decide what to do with it.

It is intentionally made up of a wide spectrum of both what's called teaching elders and ruling elders. And you had people on there who would go to revoice conferences, and you have people there who would speak very directly against revoice conferences. So you can imagine the kind of collaboration that was needed to get even that language there. I would disagree. I would say it is a sin. But you might say, well, Mrs. Butterfield, who in the world are you to say that?

You're not a teaching elder and you're not a ruling elder and you're not an officer. And all of that would be true. But I do think that, and that was a 2019 report. We're now at 2024. It's changed a lot. We are seeing the fruit of that. And I don't think it's good fruit. But overall you know that that report god used that report very powerfully um and this is public uh he's given one um interview on it stephen moss was the founder uh co-founder of revoice and um a member of the pca and that report came out, and an older PCA pastor came and put his arm around him and basically said, son, we need to talk. And that's a good thing. The Bible inculcates a very tender relationship among the generations. And this man did not shame him,

did not deride him, him but he said read this report and repent of your sin at its root and stephen records in a in an interview he gave that um he didn't want to do it but the holy spirit really worked on him that um that this older man came to him in love came to him because he was concerned and that it would not be wise to deny the Holy Spirit's work in even all of that. And so the next day, I think they were having the Lord's Supper at church and he repented of his sin at his root. He said, Lord, this is a sin. The desire itself is a sin. And I want't I want to I want to be done with it and um and he started to experience victory in ways that he hadn't before and he's now biblically married um and so and

again I don't want to make I don't want to make it sound like you know the only people who are actually healed of their homosexual you know I mean you know it's But it's a good thing. Biblical marriage is a really good thing. And so, yes, it's a report. It doesn't have teeth to it per se. But boy, God put some teeth in it in Stephen's life and I suspect in the lives of others because that's the thing about truth. True doctrine may hurt. It may sting because it likely will point out that you have been walking in the wrong direction. But ultimately, if you're a Christian, what the sting of the truth of the word of God will do is it will bring profound relief because you don't have to carry that load anymore.

And you're not sure what's going to happen when you repent, but you trust Joel 2.25, that the Lord will make up for the years the locusts have eaten. And that is very good news. And so we don't want to get to a place in evangelicalism where we are so focused on having a company profile, so focused on how many mouths there are to feed in a parachurch ministry that we can't actually repent of the sin that needs to be repented of. God will bless these parachurch ministries if they do it. And I shudder to think what will happen to them if they don't. I've got a ton more questions for you. We will have to do this again in due time, if you have the time. But it's amazing how much this conversation has shifted, even in just five years since 2019, 2020. I read all of it, but I shared a lot of it with my wife, and we've been talking it through. Again, it's called Five Lives of Our Anti-Christian Age.

And even if you end up disagreeing with Rosaria at the end of the day, I think she's raising some questions that the church needs to deal with right now in a very serious and a biblical fashion. You've got a lot of authority to speak into it. So check out Five Lives of Our Anti-Christian Age. Thank you for coming on and sharing. We will definitely do it again. Yeah, sounds great.

Thank you, Sean. Lord bless you. Bless you too. Before you go away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other conversations. This is one on topics of sexuality. We will revisit because it's just so hot and pressing in our culture in the church today. So make sure

you hit subscribe. If you've thought about studying apologetics, we'd love to have you in class. We've got a full distance program and I teach a class regularly on biblical sexuality every couple years, resurrection, problem of evil and others. Information is below. We also have a certificate program. We'd love to walk you through how to do apologetics if you're not quite ready for a master's and get you some formal training. So check that out. And we will see you next time. Thanks again, Rosaria. Thank you.