The Sean McDowell Show - Christians and the LGBTQ Conversation: A Powerful Story of Redemption.

Episode Date: September 28, 2024

Rachel Gilson has a powerful story of finding faith at Yale. As a same-sex attracted atheist, she wanted nothing to do with God. But all that changed. I interview Rachel about her story and raise some of the toughest, pressing questions related to LGBTQ relationships. READ: Born Again This Way (https://amzn.to/3g49Mfy) SUBSCRIBE TO THE CHANNEL (https://bit.ly/3fZ9mIw) *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

Hey friends, we are so thrilled that you are joining us today. Since reading her book Born Again This Way and meeting Rachel Gilson, I've been looking forward to having her on the program. I have probably read 10 or 12 dozen books, if not more, on LGBTQ relationships because the class I teach at Biola, because of my speaking, some of the debates I've done, and this book is just outstanding in terms of being gospel focused and thoughtful. So I want to commend it to you. But first off, Rachel, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Yeah, it's my pleasure to be here. Well, your story really intrigued me because you and I come from such different backgrounds. Now you work on crew, Campus Crusade staff. And my dad's been on crew for, and my mom, I think four or five decades or so. He is, he's been around a long time. So I understand kind of what you do in the ministry there from growing up in it. But you came to this conversation crew from a very different background that I did. Will you share just your journey to faith a little bit with us to start? And then just for the audience, so you know, we're going to get into the book Born Again This Way,

and we're going to talk about some of the toughest, thorniest questions around the LGBTQ conversation today. And we will be taking questions and comments throughout if they're related to the topic, of course. And by the way, if you're new, make sure you hit subscribe because we have some other interviews coming up you are not going to want to miss on apologetic types of issues. So, Rachel, tell us your journey, an unsuspected journey kind of to faith.

Yeah. Well, I grew up in California in a super non-churchgoing household. So, like, we didn't even do Christmas and Easter. So, by the time I was in high school, you know, I'm trying to figure out what the world is. And I really realized two major things about myself. One was that I loved the world of ideas. Like I just wanted to figure out what was true, what was real. And, you know, public high school education isn't always giving you the best answers to those things. So I was digging around. But the other thing that I really realized about myself was, oh, the way that my female friends feel about other guys. I think that's how I feel

about other girls. And, you know, this was so I was in high school, this was 2001. You know, I like to joke, this was when Will and Grace was still edgy, not nostalgic. Yeah, right, right. Yeah, it's a different world. And so when I was kind of making this realization, I remember thinking, is there anything wrong with this? I kind of had a vague understanding that maybe it wasn't approved of for women to have relationships with other women. But since I wasn't in the church and I didn't have a strong moral upbringing, I kind of opened up my moral junk drawer, as it were, rifled around in there and said, well, I don't see anything in here that would say it would be wrong.

This was before the phrase love is love was part of the popular currency, but that's really what I came to. And so I decided, well, gosh, I'm just going to pursue it. And one of the things that was really prominent for me from both of those was that I grew up in a place that had a lot of cultural Christianity and a lot of real Christians too, but a lot of just sort of church going type vibe. And I ended up with the impression as I was heading off to college that Christians were people who didn't want to think for themselves. And they were also people who hated gay people, you know, bigots. So like, really, I thought of Christians as stupid bigots, you know, so it was like, that's a pretty rough characterization that we've probably earned sometimes. And what was, you know, when I think

about it, I was never mistreated by a Christian. So the fact that I thought that without even experiencing it personally communicates to me now, like, gosh, it was really part of the environment I was in, I think, which is depressing. So I moved off to Yale College because I was really excited to go to New England. I didn't realize that it actually meant being cold most of the year. And really quickly, those two parts of my identity that I mentioned came under direct attack. So one, going to a world-class university from a very small, under-resourced public high school meant that my image of myself as this intellectual giant got battered and bruised immediately. I was like, oh, not only am I not the smartest person here, I'm like

middle of the back of the pack, like overwhelmed by the kind of people that I was encountering on that campus. And then also during my freshman year, I got broken up with the girl I was dating at the time. And you know, teenage breakups, they're always very traumatic. And I really just felt at sea, you know, these pieces of my identity seemed unstable. And it was like, well, where am I gonna? Where am I gonna go? You know, I was like, well, maybe I could write for the school newspaper, except I'm not smart enough for that. Or maybe I could go to the gym more, except I'm very lazy. I really was kind of having an identity crisis, but there wasn't a point where I was like, oh, I'm going to turn to Jesus because, you know, I didn't believe in Jesus. That wasn't, that wasn't a thing for me, but. Probably didn't even cross your mind, huh? It

wasn't on your radar at all. No, yeah, it wasn't. Yeah, it just wasn't an option. But I happened to be, so after Christmas break, you know, come back and it was cold and I'm still sort of in this crummy place. And I happened to be in a lecture for one of my philosophy classes. And we were talking about Rene Descartes, you know, he's the guy who invented, I think, therefore I am. And how he builds a whole proof for the existence of God off of that little phrase, you know, and I remember sitting in the auditorium thinking, that is a really stupid proof for the existence of God, which I still basically think, but as I was sitting there kind of processing it, I remember wondering, well, you know, what if there's a better proof for the existence

of God, but kind of even that thought maybe sort of snapped to attention, like, no, we don't think that way. That's not for good atheists, you know? That's for stupid bigots. But then I was also like, well, you haven't thought about it intentionally in a while. Like, what if there's a really good argument you don't know, and, you know, I need to learn how to, you know, combat it. Like, maybe that's the angle. I just couldn't, you know, when you can't shake a thought. Sure. You know, I'm an older millennial, so I decided to ask the Internet. Like, that's what I did. So I would just go in my room, open up my gigantic Dell laptop, and just fire religious search terms into the computer.

Which is like, why would you ever do that to find out the most important questions? But it turns out it's more common than I even knew, actually. And so over time, I kept coming back to reading again and again about Jesus, which was sort of surprising to me, because I had had a caricature in my mind of who he was. This was 2004. I considered myself fairly politically liberal. And so I kind of figured Jesus was like an ancient George W. Bush wrapped in a toga or something, you know, it wasn't an attractive image for me. Okay. But I was actually reading stories about him. I was confronted with this character who was really tender, but also really sharp. I remember being,

particularly the stories where people would really come up and try to trick him, and he would just shut them down. I was like, oh, that's really appealing, which probably tells you more about my personality than you need to know. But I remember sort of feeling drawn to Jesus as a character, not even saying like, oh, I want to give my life to him, but just sort of, this is interesting. But I just felt like, you know, my sexuality was a barrier. I was like, okay, maybe I just broke up with my girlfriend, but I want to marry a woman someday. And you know, it just, it just become legal in Massachusetts. So I knew the future is with me. And I just feel like this is, I'm not even allowed to be interested in Jesus as a character. But the only two people I knew at Yale who identified as Christians were these two girls who were dating each other. And one of them was training to be a Lutheran minister.

I met them in the marching band because I am not cool. And I remember thinking, well, maybe they know something I don't know, you know, so I went to them, okay, how do you work this out, because to me, it seems contradictory, I remember these sweet girls, I remember them being like, oh, yeah, you know, it's all been a bit of misunderstanding, like, the Bible actually supports monogamous same-sex relationships, they probably didn't call them that, right, you said probably a different word. But I remember thinking, oh, really? Like, that's so interesting. And, you know, they gave me a packet of information that was going to tell me how to correctly interpret these Bible verses. And I love a packet, you know, so I took that thing back to my room. And I was ripping through

it. And I remember finding it really persuasive. Like the arguments that the packet was making clicked for me and it made me excited. But I also thought, well, you know, maybe I should actually read some of the Bible verses like that they're talking about. I don't know much about the Bible. I didn't own a Bible, so I just had to pull them up on my computer. And as I was, you know, reading them on my computer screen and then looking down at the packet and kind of going back and forth I just ended up with this sinking feeling of like oh I don't think this actually works with the original texts it's not like I was a bible scholar um but I ended up I was a history major yeah One of the number one things you learn is you respect the texts.

And as I was making that jump, I was like, oh, I mean, these girls are sweet, but I don't think this is what it was. And I kind of felt duped, you know, like that was stupid to think. So I just, I was like, you know, I'm just, this is a dumb hobby. I need to start reading about this. And I started doing my homework, you know, and actually focusing on things. I never really did start doing my homework that year, unfortunately. But I did happen to be in the room of an acquaintance a little while after that, probably, I don't know, like a week or so. And she was a non-practicing Catholic. And I'm pretty sure this was the only time that year I

was in her room, but I was standing in her doorway, and she was getting something, like putting stuff in her bag near her bed. And she had a bookshelf right inside her doorway. And one of my favorite hobbies is to look at people's bookshelves and judge them. Like yours is a little too small behind you for me to really dig in and examine. But if I were in your house, my face would be like right up in there. And I remember she had a book on her shelf. It's The Spine Said, Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. Okay, so I have clearly since learned that this is a famous and important book.

At the time, I didn't know what the heck it was, but the title really appealed to me. And I thought, oh, I want to read this book. You know, I've only been reading the internet, but this is a book. The thing is, I was too embarrassed to ask her, like to borrow it, because I didn't want people to know that I was interested in it. It seemed weak, you know, and foolish. So I just stole the book. Like I just pulled it off the shelf, put it in my bag. Like I had no moral compass.

And it's not that hard to hide. Oh my goodness. Hang on a minute. I'm dying inside because his whole argument, he begins with the moral law and you stole a copy of mere Christianity. I see where this is going. Keep going. I love it. So I'm working my way through this book and finding it super interesting. And I remember being in the library one day in between classes. And I don't remember where I was, like which chapter or things like this, but I was suddenly sitting there in the library reading this book and realizing, oh, not only does God exist like a generic store brand Zeus kind of thing, but the God who made me exists, like the holy God exists. I didn't know the vocabulary word holy in terms of what it meant, but that sense of his transcendence

and his perfection, and the fact that I was going to owe him an account suddenly became very real to me. And honestly, I was afraid. A lot of curse words running through the mind. Wow. Because I knew that I was arrogant, that I lied, that I cheated, that I was sexually immoral. I was selfish. I was reading a stolen book. It's sort of like just push all the chips into the guilty category. I did not have a lot of redeeming features about me. And so I sat there, like feeling honestly afraid. But really quickly with that, I also realized that part of the reason Jesus had come was to place himself

as a barrier between God's wrath and me. And that the only way to be safe was to run towards him, not away from him. Wow. So I was sitting there thinking, I don't want to become a Christian. That is really lame. It is exceedingly lame. And there's all kinds of things in my life that I want to be true that I am real sure will not be true if I say yes to this. But I also realized I can't pretend the gospel isn't true just because it's inconvenient for my life. Like that's the height of stupidity.

Like I'm not going to get a better deal than this. I need to, I need to take it. So, you know, I didn't have like a nice crew campus minister with me, but I kind of knew I was like, okay, I need to pray. So I just sort of shut my eyes. I was like, fine, I'll be a Christian. And then I went to my next class. Just like that. Wow. About 16 and a half years ago. How long ago was that? Say that again. 16 and a half years. 16 and a half years ago. Okay. So you became a Christian.

You still had this component in your life in terms of the same-sex attraction. You write about some of that in your book. What was that journey like moving forward, given that you didn't buy that scripture said this is okay and compatible with following Jesus? Yeah, so it was interesting because immediately in my discipleship, I knew that what the Bible said was no to same-sex lust and sexual and romantic relationships. I knew that. And since I've learned Greek and Hebrew, and it turns out the Bible still says no, fine. But what I really struggled with early on was, why do you say no, God? Like, what could possibly be wrong with this? It's not hurting anybody. And I kind of felt, you know, like a bargaining with God, like, if you would just tell me why you say these things, then I

would obey with perfect joy and execution, you know, right? Which is ridiculous, of course. But as I processed this with the Lord, and with my, you know, fellow friends, I realized, hey, maybe I'm asking the wrong question. Really, the Lord confronted me, I think, kind of pressing on me. What if the most important question isn't why do I say something? What if the more important question is, can you trust the one who's asking? Because if I'm only willing to obey when I both understand and agree, how am I not making myself God? It seems like I'm shifting the place of obedience to myself. And really, the Lord brought me back again and again to what we see in the Garden of Eden. It's a really interesting scenario to me early in Genesis, because, you know, he creates

these people, puts them in a beautiful, wonderful place, gives them this grand vision, and only one prohibition. And we could understand, you know was if the prohibition was a little more obvious like hey y'all here's your rule don't murder each other because like we know intuitively that murder is wrong if you don't know intuitively that murder is wrong like we we seek to get you medical help you know what i mean right right and um instead the prohibition was don't eat this fruit that's related to the knowledge of good and evil. Like even vegans eat fruit. You know what I mean? Like there's nothing within the rule itself that would lead you to believe to not do that.

The only thing you have is God's word saying the day you eat it, you're going to die. And so you have this prohibition that doesn't actually make sense necessarily based on just your own data. And you have God's word. And that's exactly where the serpent got Eve. He gets her to doubt God's word. He gets her to look at the fruit. And she realizes it's delightful to look at. It's going to be good to eat. It's desirous to make her wise.

That's right. God must be holding out on her. Why would he not want her to have this good thing? So I think even before sin enters the world, it turns out God wants us to live by faith, not just by sight. She had all the evidence in the world to know that he was for her. But still in that place, she looked at his word and she said, no, I can't trust that. So she ate, Adam ate, we all lived downstream of that bad decision. But it really felt like I was again and again doing the same thing with sexuality. According to all my data, I was like, I don't get it. I don't get it. This looks good.

But I had God's word saying, if you do this, you're going to die. And so he was really asking me, like, can you trust me, even with this most vulnerable part of yourself? Like, have I proven myself trustworthy? And it taught me something so helpful for my own discipleship, which was, if we ever try to base ethics on anything that isn't first and foundationally the character of God, we're going to go adrift somewhere. Like, is he good?

Is he good to us? Can we actually trust him with our whole lives? And it doesn't, you know, we still need to study ethics. We still need to know what he says, but at the core is this character. And I saw in Christ,

like, his dying for us, I mean, that alone, that Sunday school answer, like, yeah, it makes him trustworthy, but even before he died, I mean, the fact that he was willing to come at all, like, he didn't owe us that. He was under no obligation to come and save us. He could have justly condemned us, and we, standing there, would have been like, yeah, God, you have to do this, we're evil. And so I think it was so helpful for me to have that at the beginning of my discipleship, again and again, having to come back to Christ. And honestly, the early couple years of my Christian walk were like an open dumpster fire like if I were my if I were my 35 campus minister self meeting with my 19 year old self I would be like this

girl is not going to make it you know constantly ping-ponging between bad old patterns and new Christian patterns and just trying to figure it out. But what brought me back again and again was that the love of Christ is better. Now, you describe that very honestly in your book, Born Again This Way. I mean, it's a very frank, honest account of your story, which I appreciate. Now, you have a line I want to read to you on, obviously, you know it because you wrote it, but on page 75, you said, without the beauty of Jesus, we won't leave the safety of our LGBT family. Now, I'm curious if you'd unpack that because, and let me frame it this way. You've been talking about how part of

your discipleship was trusting Jesus. So what about somebody who says, I don't trust that this is God's word, and I'm not asking for apologetic for the Bible, I don't trust that this is God's word, and I'm not asking for apologetic for the Bible. I don't think Jesus is God. How can you tell me homosexual behavior is wrong? Do you A, challenge that ethic, or B, just say, you know what, let me take you to Jesus, or C, some other option I haven't even thought of? Well, I do think, I think there's probably a number of valid ways. But for me, what I found most helpful is talking, because I mean, I've done, I do campus ministry in New England.

We are extremely unchurched. You know what I mean? Yeah, definitely. It's the opposite of the Bible belt. So most of the students I'm interacting, you know, they're coming from non-religious backgrounds, that kind of thing. And so this question does come up. And I've honestly found it most useful, I think most helpful for the person I'm talking to, because the questions about sexuality are legitimate, right? They're legitimate questions. Like what God says about our bodies is really important. And so I always try to affirm that those are important questions and explain like, hey, I don't think what God says about how we use our bodies makes any sense if you don't know him. So I think what he says about the body is going to make best sense if I tell you some background things about who Christians understand him to be.

And I think if we work in that direction, even if you don't believe me by the end, I think at least my worldview will be more intelligible to you. And I've had a great amount of success with that because I'm trying to show them that I respect them, that I respect their question, that I respect their ability to think for themselves. You know, I'm not, I'm a big believer that you can't argue somebody into the kingdom, even though I think good, good arguments are an excellent resource for kingdom work. And so I, I always want to anchor it in who Jesus is, because I just think, well, and I think the reason for that, to give a potentially longer answer, is sometimes the way the church has framed questions of sexuality has been a little bit like screaming the word no over and over again. That's right. Yeah. It's not really helpful, nor is it how God designed sexuality to be experienced. God is mostly about yes, not mostly about no.

And so sometimes when we talk about ethics in a way that's cut off from God's character, we end up emphasizing the no's. Here's what not to do. Or we can even emphasize what we should do in a way that's kind of sterile and cut off from his character. So like one answer could be, well, the Bible teaches that marriage is one man, one woman for life, which is, you know, fine. That's a fine definition. But I actually think if we start with the character of God, we start to see how who God is shapes what marriage is. So therefore, marriage isn't a thing

that's, I mean, it has a lot of flexibility, frankly, between cultures. Some of the ways we do things are different, and that's totally fine. But some of the backbone of marriage has to remain the same, because it's saying something about who God is in relationship to his people. And so in order for it to tell the truth, it has to actually work as he's designed it. So for me, sexual ethics are immediately and intimately connected to the gospel. So if I haven't shared the gospel, it's functionally going to be unintelligible. So essentially, the heart of the question is what kind of universe do we live in? Is this a materialistic universe in which there's no design and ethics rests upon us? Or is there a God who cares about us, designed us to be in a relationship with him and trust him even when things don't perfectly make sense?

Is that the heart of it that I capture? Absolutely. And I was 100% a materialist before I became a Christian. And so I think, because I still feel the logic of that worldview, like I get it, if there's no God, to me, materialism makes the most sense of the world. I think because that still resonates with me in certain ways. I want to take it seriously. I think it fails as a worldview, but I also understand where it's coming from in a lot of ways. That's super helpful. So you are married to a man.

I have a six-year-old daughter. She would want me to say six and a half. Oh, good job. My son's birthday was yesterday, and he's been counting the days for half a year. So he turned eight. I know the drill. That's right. Talk to me a little bit about what that was like for you, given your past, given the assumptions you had about marriage.

What was that transition like? Because there's a lot of people that say you shouldn't exist or don't exist or your marriage is by definition dysfunctional and that's not true. No. In fact, I think my marriage is shockingly functional. So one of the things that's really important to say at the front end of this conversation is that I am married to a lovely man named Andrew, but I still experience same-sex attraction. One of the difficulties that the church faced in the 80s, 90s, it sounds like a radio station, 80s, 90s, and today, right? We had this period where the way we tried as a church to grapple with same-sex attraction was to make people straight. They thought that's the goal. And so some people were encouraged to enter into opposite-sex marriages,

encouraged as being light. Some people were strongly pressured into entering opposite-sex marriages because they were basically promised that that would cure them, right? That that would make them straight. And that did a lot of damage to a lot of people. It did damage to the same sex attracted people. It did damage to the people that they were married to. It created a lot of brokenness. And so I just, I want to be clear, and I do this in my book, but I think it's just helpful even in the front to say, marriage is possible. But it's not the preference, and it's not about performance. You know, marriage isn't something you enter into to prove that you believe God's sexual ethic. And so I think when, when Andrew started expressing interest in me, it did sort of, um, uh, I was like, what am I supposed to do with this? You know, I was like, this isn't what, this isn't exactly, uh, wasn't my plan A. And what it did

honestly was force me back to the text because I should say, as I got to know him, I was like, gosh, I do think there's so many ways we're compatible. And I do see that I'm attracted to him, but it almost felt like this little flame, you know, that you kind of have to cup your hands around it, lest the wind blows it out. You know, it seemed like this thing, it was real. Whereas some of my relationships with women had been these, you know, big fireworks, butterflies in the stomach, kind of like the thing that you see in romance in our culture. I was like, wasn't that what you're supposed to base marriage on, not this? Like, culture tells me one thing, and I'm starting to feel confused.

So I went back to the text. And really, as I studied, I came away with understanding, okay, here's a couple things. There's nothing in the Bible telling me that I have to be straight. I want to clarify that. I do understand that my same-sex attraction is fallen. It is a result of the fall and is not how God would have designed me to be. However, I'm not responsible for removing myself. There's nothing I can do to change those temptations. God can remove them if he wants to, but he hasn't. My response instead is to be faithful in the midst of them. And every single believer is called to either be faithfully married

or faithfully single. And actually, you can do either of those callings no matter your attractional pattern. If you're attracted to men or women or both or neither or potted plants, you know what I mean? It's like, it sort of doesn't matter. God will give us through his word and his spirit and his people exactly what we need to fulfill our calling. And so if God were calling me to marriage, well, he would only need to give me attraction to this one man. I don't need to be attracted to every man to be faithfully married to this one guy. In fact, sometimes it's convenient not to be. That's true.

And so and then as I looked at the text and examined what marriage is, I was like, well, well, goodness, marriage is about the gospel. Like marriage is called to be lifelong faithfulness because God's relationship with his people is faithful. Marriage is the place of procreation and household building, like through adoption, because God's relationship with his people builds households and creates newness of life. It's fruitful. Marriage is supposed to be the place of sexual pleasure because God's relationship with his people is deeply intimate and deeply

pleasurable. But also, God's relationship with his people requires male and female. Because everywhere in scripture, God is represented by the male partner and his people are represented by the female partner because marriage is supposed to be this picture of the difference, the love across difference that's created when God is united to his people through Jesus Christ. And of course, some people are like, well, couldn't you just marry different personality types? So people are into Enneagram, like, shouldn't just like an eight marry a two something you're like well or or like even ethnic difference you know like you could have an asian american who marries a white american that's different like sure like there's a lot of beautiful and valuable differences

between humans of all kinds of types but there's something about male and female that is a deep, like it's cellular level difference. And, you know, we read in Genesis about male and female, we are equal, fully human, equally, fully image bearers, equally, and yet different, like actually different. And so that picture of what marriage is reflects the gospel so well. And I was like, gosh, I see that marriage, you need to be able to have a sexual relationship in marriage. That's an important part of it. But it's really not all of it. And honestly, romance doesn't have to be the main ingredient.

If you have it, fine. But this is a decades-long building project. This isn't a – I think I used the metaphor in my book. It's not a weekend staining your deck. It's building a cathedral. And I thought, no, I think I can do that gospel work with Andrew. He is – we love the same things. I think we'll be better together than we are apart.

And honestly, I married him because I thought that's what God was calling me to do. I loved it. So people want to hear, you know, when you're working with college students, they're like, oh, tell us your love story. And I'm like, well, it's not totally a typical love story. But, you know, we just celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary last year. And, you know, there's been so I still experience same-sex attraction but oh no re re we are reconnecting here with Rachel. Hang on. I think we might have lost her right in the middle of the live stream. Oh, you're back.

Did I get you? Yeah. Keep going. Am I here? We lost you for about 15 seconds. That's no problem. I was going to say, my internet just died. All I was saying is, am I here?

We got you. I'm so sorry. It's okay. You're great. There's a way that there's been healing in my marriage that I just didn't even expect. There were other broken ways I was related to sexuality that the stability of marriage confronted me and also encouraged me. So it's been a gift, but I think also it's just really important to say we need to do a better job of supporting single people in the church, because most sex-attracted disciples are not

going to end up in opposite-sex marriages, and this doesn't, and honestly, there are a lot of people who are opposite-sex attracted who also end up single in the church, and we're designed for intimate love. And so if we're not forming deep relationships with each other and being family to each other, then we're not loving with the love of Christ. When people look at our churches, they should be seeing single people and families and married people thriving together. I think that's going to be the best apologetic for what biblical sexuality is. Amen.

I love it. By the way, in your book, one of the things you said that I thought was so interesting is you said going into a marriage with same-sex attraction, you didn't carry some of the same illusions that other people may have, and you were aware that it was going to take effort, and it gave you an advantage. And I thought, that's such a smart way to think about it, shedding some of those cultural illusions and getting down to what is marriage about? What's it going to take?

What's the gospel focus for it? I think it's beautiful. We have a great question here. Sean Redford, thanks for watching and for weighing in. He says, hey, Rachel, love your book. Question, it is often Christians that construct a God who affirms LGBT values, who are hardest conversed with on this topic. Amen. What, what are some practical tips for these conversations? Yeah. I mean,

I couldn't, I agree. I would like a hundred times more rather talk to an atheist sometimes than affirming Christians. Um, I do. I think it's a harder conversation. And usually it's a harder conversation because we don't see scripture the same. So one of the things I want to do when I'm talking, and it depends on the relationship too, right? Like if I've got a good friend, then I've got some, a different approach. Like, I really did. I got an email from a good friend of mine last week, who she was saying, like, hey, I really think that God supports same-sex relationships, and I just can't, I can't reconcile with what you're teaching, right? Like, a good friend of mine. And so she and I are beginning a conversation that's really different than, like, you know, someone I'm meeting quickly

after a Q&A or whatever. But I do think one of the most important questions is okay so tell me what you think the bible is like let's walk through together i'll tell you what i think it is you tell me what because that's going to help me because if we're if we have a really different view of scripture then it's going to be pretty hard for me to move forward with that conversation. Now, I'm not interested in being salvation police, as it were, like deciding, you know, like, you're not a Christian or whatever, but at the end of the day, I think it's also wise, you know, to pick our battles. Now, someone who does take scripture seriously, that can be a different conversation. And I think what's so helpful to recognize is that most people, from my experience,

most Christians who have a high view of the scripture and either take an affirming view or are leaning affirming, do so because they deeply care about LGBT people, because they deeply care that LGBT people experience love and joy, family and intimacy. And if I don't take that seriously, if I don't want those things as much as they do, then it doesn't matter how many Bible verses I can quote. I need to be able to match that kind of love. And so I think one of the things that can be helpful is talking through what does the Bible actually say leads to joy? Because somewhere in there, it can easily slip in that what God wants for us is to be happy, which is hard to argue actually biblically, but it's drenched American Christianity. And the way to be happy is through a romantic partnership.

Sometimes we talk about it as if it's only sex, but it's not just that. It's the desire for a romantic relationship. And kind of everywhere in our culture, you're not a real person. You haven't really arrived until you have a romantic sexual relationship and so people see their gay friends and like well i want them to be happy i think hey man i want them to be happy too i just um i just don't think romance is all there is it it can be a beautiful gift but it's a terrible savior and i think that helps us talk through um where is joy because american well it's not just american but we are trafficking deeply in the way for me to really be free is to obey my desires and that's part of what buddhism reacts to right they say like desires are all lies we need to run

in the opposite direction deny them i think instead what we see in the bible is god himself that's part of what buddhism reacts to right they say like desires are all lies we need to run in the opposite direction deny them i think instead what we see in the bible is god himself is a desirer he desires us so it's not that our possessing desires is bad is that we're broken compasses i have to have him tell me what's good i don't know it on my own. When I line up with him, it's usually accidental. So I want to say like, again and again, my desires don't care about me. They lie to me. They're not going to wipe away my tears. They're not going to be there for me when I get old and I'm dying. They don't own me. Jesus owns me. And the difficulty with the affirming conversation is sometimes it is actually playing a tape that's saying a different place of where joy

and meaning is found in biblical Christianity. And I think if we can have that conversation out in the open, it can help each other. Right, because what do we see? The most abused Bible verse, I think abused Bible verse, I think, Matthew 7, 1, judge not lest you be judged. And people are like, so I can't say anything. And you're like, it's literally in the Sermon on the Mount. He's taking the law and making it tighter, right? Because judge can mean two things. It can mean discern, or it can mean pronounce guilty or innocent. Jesus isn't telling you to not be discerning. He's telling you, you don't have the ability to pronounce whether someone's guilty or innocent. Because later in that paragraph, he says, hey, why are you so worried about the log in your eye? Or why are

you so worried about your brother's speck when you've got a giant log in your eye? And sometimes people want to say, what he should have said next was take the log out of your eye and sit down and shut up. Actually, what he says is, take the log out of your eye so that you can help your brother with his speck. So if someone identifies as a Christian, I want to at least, in good faith, come together over the text together and see what does the Lord say. And sometimes we're not going to get anywhere and we need to cut our losses. But other times, especially with deep relationship, I think it's worth it to hang in there and have conversations together. That's a really helpful way. I love that you didn't start by just saying, let's go to Romans 1 or 1 Corinthians 6 or Leviticus 18. Let's ask the question,

what kind of book is the Bible? Is it a book that's holy, that comes from God I should submit myself to? Or is it a different kind of text? It's ultimately a question of biblical authority and where does joy come from? So I think the way you frame that is fantastic. I see a question, if you have questions for Rachel, go ahead and put them in the box and we'll get to as many as we can. If you're joining us, give us a little thumbs up, help spread the word on YouTube Matrix. Here's a question from Kay Stevenson. Says, this is a hard question, but what does intimacy look like? I have lifelong friends since my teenage years. My friends know about my same sex attraction. These relationships are intimate, but no one asks how I'm doing. Yeah, that is a hard, yeah. It's this really interesting, I really appreciate that you asked

that. There can be this strange tension for the same-sex attracted disciple, where in some contexts, it's all your Christian friends want to talk about. I'm going to ask you like, how are you doing? How are you doing? How are you doing? Because they kind of worry that your same-sex attraction must be this giant problem for you all the time. And sometimes, like any of us dealing with sexual temptation, it is a big deal and we do need to be asked about it a lot. But sometimes there can be this thing where people don't want to ask about it, either because they assume we're fine, or maybe because they don't know how to talk about it, they feel afraid of offending us. I had a single friend, actually, a straight single friend,

who realized as she was getting older and she was unmarried that people were stopping asking her about if there was any, you know, boys in her life, and she was likemarried that people were stopping asking her about if there was any you know boys in her life and she was like oh are they kind of giving up on me in a way like what does this mean because she longed for a marriage yeah and so I and so I do think it's important for us this is really hard to do but I think it's important for us, for those friends who are at the closest level to let them know that sometimes we do need to be asked, you know, if we're not being, and that can feel really vulnerable because you're, you know, anytime, sometimes those conversations feel weird when you're just bringing them up. But I think if we're able to communicate and say like, you know, you, I'm not married, you are my family in so many ways and I think it would help

me feel seen and known if just every once in a while you ask how my heart is doing in relationship to this like it doesn't have to be all the time but you know sometimes we sometimes we really want to be seen just seen but um we need to we need to ask for what we want. And it's hard because we're broken sinners, and sometimes we ask for what we want, and we don't get it. People let us down. We let other people down, right? It's super messy on the ground. But I think intimacy, the best intimacy from the Lord is that we are fully known and fully loved. And in our close relationships, we move closer towards that approximation of being more and more known and not being rejected, actually being affirmed and accepted. And maybe, you know, the places where we're obnoxious and sinful being

corrected, but still taken in, you know? So we have to ask for those things, I think. That's a great response, that sometimes letting people know what we need rather than assuming it is one step closer to getting those needs met. Kay, thank you for having the courage to ask that question. You're certainly not the only one. Oh, gosh, no. We have a question.

It says, is there a biological basis, and I know I'm going to butcher your name rajesh karan that is the best i can do is there a biological basis for same-sex attraction or for gender issues well if science had an answer so the difficulty is you know sometimes we want to know what where does this come from right the question of origins but the difficulty is, you know, sometimes we want to know where does this come from, right? The question of origins. But the thing is, for as much money has been dumped into studying these questions scientifically, it is so complex that we really, in some ways, just don't know where it comes from.

There are studies that suggest that there are some biological bases for these. But it's not as easy as like, my parents both had brown eyes, so I had brown eyes, you know, it's like, it's a super complicated pathway. And even less is known about gender dysphoria, because the science on that is so young, which also I think, helps us to say little as we wait to see what we know. But I think the helpful thing for Christians is that, well, we know from our understanding of the Bible that not everything I experience naturally issex attraction out of the blue seems to arise spontaneously, or whether I kind of know, hey, there were some experiences that shaped me this way, either way, I know what I'm supposed to do in response to temptation. So I think sometimes there's been in the church

this hunt for origins as if we could identify it, then we could, you know, nip it in the bud. I think usually that's a wild goose chase, and it distracts from useful energy in discipleship of saying, you know what, no matter where this comes from, Jesus is going to give me the resources through the Holy Spirit to say yes to him and notice him. And I don't, I just most of the time find it unhelpful in the day-to-day living as a believer. Yeah, that's fair. That's, that's a very helpful response. I've seen the APA consistently say there's probably some nature, probably some nurture, but we don't really know. There could be a range of pathways and causes. You, you have pretty strong convictions about reparative therapy. In fact, you call it a false gospel.

Could you tell us your thoughts on that? Well, and you know, I had an acquaintance of mine very gently rebuke me for lumping too many things under the reparative therapy umbrella. And I was like, okay, that's a good word because the difficulty with the way that word is used like in media is that it can cover so many, it can cover all the way over on someone just wanting to talk through their unwanted same-sex attractions over to this extreme end of people

getting attached to electrocution to try to shock the gay out of them, right? So we do want to be careful whenever reparative therapy comes up that we know what's being talked about. I have several friends who've been through various types of reparative therapy. The best case scenarios were that people actually had a place to talk about their same-sex attraction in the church. For a while, it was kind of the only spot to do that, and they got maybe some help in saying no to their desires. But in the movement, there was this strong, just over and over drumbeat that being straight was going to save you. That being straight was the answer. That being straight was the goal of discipleship. And the difficulty is, I mean, the success rate of that was so miserably low.

And it's not because people weren't trying. There are people who threw themselves desperately into that program. When we make promises that are not in the Bible, we do spiritual damage because we make God look like a liar. Wow. And he's not a liar. Wow. That's it. he's not a liar. Wow. That's a strong word to keep in mind. If you have other questions, you can jump in here.

For Rachel, we have a little bit of time for a handful more. One question I have is you describe in your book, you walk through when you became a Christian, it still was a theological process for you for some time and a relational process, still struggling in a relationship. And you describe in the book, just going one weekend back to know a girlfriend and just feeling awful about that. Again, really appreciate your honesty in the book. Absolutely love it. I'm going to hold up one more time. Those of you watching this conversation, pick up a copy of it. You will

not be disappointed. It's my highest endorsement on a book of this kind. And I don't say that lightly, but what encouragement would you give for the church to just be loving towards those who have same-sex attraction? Because like you said, one error is to talk about all time. One side is to ignore it. I had Christopher Yuan on i interviewed him maybe six or eight weeks ago and he said sometimes there's this air of like people will say to him well i don't have same-sex attraction i don't understand and he's like well you're human you understand more than you think so what what advice would you give for christians just to be better at this yeah and i do i I love Chris's words on this because,

you know, he does such a great job. I really appreciate his last book, Holy Sexuality, and the gospel was so good. Um, I think, so I have a friend who ministers in this space. His name's Bill Henson. He runs a ministry, particularly that helps families with LGBT youth kind of, um, walk through discipleship space. And he's got these four steps that I really like, so I just borrow them heavily. He says there's four steps we can do to love LGBT people in our life well, whether they're in the church or outside the church. They might look differently, whether they're disciples or outside, but they're kind of similar pathways. So one, we listen. We listen.

We just want to be able to hear. We want to be trustworthy. That's a form of love is listening. That's great. Which includes, like Kay was saying, asking. We can't listen if it never comes up. And we want to respect. Like if they're not ready to talk, that's totally fine.

But creating an openness. We want to invest. We want to actually show that sometimes there are still places where LGBT people are kind of held at arm's length in the church or same-sex disciples. Like, I want to give one example. There are still some churches who have a strong presence in their mind, this stereotype that men who experience same-sex attraction are pedophiles. And so they don't want men in that category to work in the children's ministry. Okay, so this is just a really difficult real-life thing. The difficulty with that is that overwhelmingly, people who are pedophiles are men, but they're men of every attractional pattern, right? So it's not that pedophilia isn't something

we should think about as we're running children's ministry. It's just that it's actually harmfully stereotypical to assume that a same-sex attractive man is going to deal with that more than an opposite attractive man. More likely. Like, honestly, there are so many straight male predators who walk into church scenarios, take the trusting environment, play is to make sure that people are actually getting to use their giftings in the church or that we're seeing, we're building them up and not using stereotypes to exclude them from certain things. We're just going to say, like, no, I'm going to invest in you. Like, you're important. I want to see how the Lord's made you and figure that out. But it goes along with protect.

I want to invest and protect. So outside the church, honestly, that looks like protection from things like bullying, harassment. It's still true that LGBT people suffer rates of homelessness and suicidality and substance abuse and intimate partner abuse much higher than the general population. There was this really interesting long form article, I think in 2017 in HuffPost, you know, this gay man who was sort of, he was trying to figure out things have never been better in this country for gay men. So why are we still so sad? And he went to this clinic, this woman who worked in like an AIDS hepatitis clinic in,

I think the Northeast, you know, the Northwest somewhere I think, the northeast, you know, the northwest somewhere. And she was like, you know, it's not that gay men don't know how to save their lives, because you're talking about why are gay men still getting AIDS at such a high rate? Because we understand what happens. She's like, it's not that they don't know how to save their lives. It's about them knowing whether their lives are worth saving. And so we love and worship a God who has made every human in his image. We understand that every single person is worthy of the blood of Christ. And so whether we agree with somebody's politics or not, or how they use their time or not, we can protect that person from harm and from harassment.

But also inside the church, it means protecting disciples from those kinds of unhelpful stereotypes, jokes that are not funny, that are homophobic, even outdated language. Sometimes, you know, you'll hear things, people love to talk about like the gay lifestyle. It sounds like a tampon commercial, you know, where you're like, you know, you can sort of like, now you can swim and go on boat rides. It's like, what is the gay lifestyle? Oh, my goodness. If I didn't think the gay lifestyle, like, kind of sounds amazing, you know. It's like, according to the Internet, it looks, you know, it's sort of, I think sometimes as evangelicals, we chafe when people say all evangelicals X, you know.

Absolutely. That's right. Not all evangelicals X. And so I think, that's right. Not all evangelicals X. And so I think we need to think about that when we discuss who LGBT people are. It's like not all LGBT people, anything. And so invite, oh, invite, listen, protect, invest. We need to just invite people into our lives,

into our churches. Invite, listen, invest,ite. Listen. Invest. Invest. Protect. Protect. I love that. All four of those make a ton of sense. Thank you for sharing those.

They're all Bill Hattons. They're not mine. Yeah. Well, you delivered them, so we'll take it. A couple questions for you. One from Megalos Schemos, that's the name that's coming through, says, have liberal Christians or LGBTQ affirming people reacted negatively to your book or your ministry? What's been that feedback or dynamic like for you?

Well, I'm pretty familiar with what the liberal arguments are. So the pushback I've seen to me seems like any of the pushback against what the Bible teaches. You know, they're either going to attack the Bible, they're going to attack. Well, one of the things that I think actually is important, people will attack my ministry because they believe that the biblical teaching is harmful to LGBT people. The difficulty, of course, is that it's actually Christians who have been harmful to LGBT people, not the biblical teaching. Christians are the ones who have excluded and been hypocritical, you know, like kind of winked at straight sin, like, oh, guys, look at pornography, what can we do? But then treated same-sex attraction as if it's like the worst possible thing you can experience. So hypocrisy is harmful, not recognizing that every single person needs the grace and truth of Christ, that every single person experiences and expresses their sexuality in a way that's fallen.

That is harmful. But God's vision for the dignity of our body isn't harmful. So I think some of the criticism just helps me understand that some of the things that have attached themselves to God's actual words are like unhelpful barnacles on a ship that we need to peel off. They're not biblical. They're things that we've added sometimes through our ignorance, sometimes through our sin. And so it's a good call whenever we get criticism to feel, to look at what's true here. There's probably something, a kernel of something in what they're saying that I really do need to take seriously. And so I'm working on having that be my response when those kinds of things come up. So it sounds like really humility, trying to lead the way is- Trying.

Which is a Christian virtue. Humility does not come naturally. Well, it doesn't to me either. I don't think any of us, but that's a really good word of encouragement. Last question I have for you is one of the arguments that we hear, and you kind of hit on this, is that it's the non-affirming culture that is what brings harm to LGBTQ people. Now, one response that I've heard to this is to compare, we'll look at, say, Sweden and other highly affirming cultures. There's no statistical difference in the number of, say, gay people who are sad and who are just hurting emotionally speaking. So that doesn't tell us what the cause is, but it seems good reason to question the narrative that culture alone is the

cause. Do you find that point convincing? Anything you would add to that? Because that comes up all the time when I'm in conversations. So you're basically hearing it's our non-affirming culture that's causing all the problems. Yes. It's our theology that brings the harm. Yeah. And so, I mean, honestly, if you're living in an environment where you're constantly getting harassed,

I mean, that's going to harm you, right? So there are still places in America where kids are coming out to their Christian parents and getting kicked out of the house and told they get no money for college, right? That is harmful. That does not represent Jesus to anybody. And that's not like something that happened in 1990. That's still happening in 2020. So we want to be clear that there is harm that's happening however the fact that we see these types of things like in sweden and other places

obeying our desires is never the road to fulfillment now not all of our desires are bad but when we make them ultimate they're they can't give us what they sell. I remember reading Rosaria Butterfield on this one. She said, your non-believing gay friend's problem, biggest problem, isn't that she's gay. It's her unbelief. If we are not connected to Jesus Christ, it doesn't matter what we have in the world. We're, we're going to fill ourselves with sex or money or power or drugs. Like, you know what I mean? We can't, we are not designed to create our own meaning. I remember even, you know, reading some interview,

Tom Brady, after he won his like, you know, 20th Superbowl or whatever, being like, is this it? Yep. Right. You're at the pinnacle. People worship you whatever, being like, is this it? Yep. Right? You're at the pinnacle. People worship you and you're like, is this it? So it's not surprising to me that even in places where the stigma has lessened, and like, honestly, I'm not against the stigma lessening in the sense that it promotes the safety and well-being of all people, but it's not the answer to the soul's questions. Christ is the answer to the soul's questions. Christ is the

answer to the soul's questions. I think that's beautiful. I love that you keep bringing this back to the gospel and the deepest yearning that we have of the human heart, I think is fantastic. There are a couple more questions in here, and I apologize, I'll respect. One more question. This one's been copied a couple times uh was sent earlier sorry i missed it uh this is it i promise rachel uh my sister-in-law is interested in christ but has a lesbian sister and feels like she would betray her if she draws closer to god how can i encourage her meaning her sister-in-law, without building any hostility? It's a great question. Thank you, Tyler. That's a fantastic question. And I think

it gets to the complexity that when we're considering these topics, we're never just considering them in a vacuum. We're thinking about these topics because we experience same-sex attraction or because someone in our life is gay and we care about them or you know i mean there's there's hundreds i mean you me the people who are watching we probably have hundreds of stories of how this is connecting to real lives and and that really matters so i think one of the ways we want to encourage people is we want to take the fact that she feels like she'd be betraying her sister who's a lesbian. It's really important to dig into. Perhaps the church has really harmed her sister. Maybe there are ways that she's been hurt by Christians, right? So I think

it's important, like that step of listening. You might not have access to the sister, but like coming alongside your sister-in-law and saying like, hey, like, do you know, tell me more about why you feel that way. Have you experienced, have you seen your sister being harmed? Like what is, what's behind that? I think there's a lot, there's a lot of potential legitimate reasons that are behind that. But we want to hear really well because otherwise we might provide an answer to not the question. And then once we've listened well, I want to think through highlighting that the gospel is the best case scenario for all of us, and that for every single one of us, it's going to confront things in us. There's nobody who enters the kingdom and like, ha ha, the gospel said, I'm good to go.

The gospel calls us all dead. So I think if we have promoted a gospel that says gay people are problematic, but I'm pretty good. I just need a little dusting off. That's an illegitimate gospel. Amen. So I think we need to be able to communicate a gospel that says all of us do not deserve this. All of us do not merit this. And the gospel is going to confront us deeply at different places, but equally deeply if we're being honest in front of the Lord. But it's also going to affirm us equally deeply that the gospel is a threat to us in our sinful self. That's why Jesus says we have to take up our cross. But to me, more compelling even than saying we need to take

up our cross, which is true and is a part of the Christian life, is that parable he tells in Matthew where he says, the kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field. And when a man found it, he went and in his joy, he sold everything and he bought the field. The gospel sometimes means we have to sell everything, but we're doing it for joy. The joy of what we found makes it worth it. And if we're not able to communicate a gospel that shows Jesus as that treasure, then I think we have places to grow. Rachel, this is great. I want to commend those listening. I think you can sense in your voice a very pastoral, loving, just caring heart for people, a commitment to the scriptures and a commitment to the gospel. This is one of my favorite books on really just the journey to faith. Finding God at Yale in itself is fascinating, but as it ties to questions around the larger LGBTQ conversation, Born Again This Way by Rachel Gilson just a fantastic fantastic text thanks all those

for great comments great discussion people were going back and forth on stuff that we were saying a ton of people saying they appreciate your ministry and love your book so some really positive feedback again if you've been watching this make sure you hit subscribe because we have some interviews and videos coming up you will not want to miss in fact there's a good chance i'll have william demski on one of the founders of the intelligent design movement uh he's kind of retired from it but he said he'd come back because he's a co-author to give me a sense of where the movement is at and what we can learn from it so him and next week have a colleague of mine from biola greg gan, who has written one of my all-time favorite books. He's one of my first Christian buddies at Yale.

Oh, that makes perfect sense. I didn't even think about that. He's a colleague of mine at Biola now. Oh, his daughter served on one of my staff teams with me. Oh, I love that. Oh my goodness. I love Greg. He's awesome. His book, Our Deepest Desires, is one of my favorite apologetics books that I would seriously say is a game-changing book for people how you do evangelism and think about culture. It was one I put down and I've been telling everybody about. Oh, he's the real deal. He is very smart. Calling him on a bio, a thoughtful evangelistic heart.

Make sure you hit subscribe. You'll not want to miss that next week. By the way, if you ever thought about studying apologetics, I teach a full class on biblical sexuality. evangelistic heart make sure you hit subscribe you'll not want to miss that next week by the way if you ever thought about studying apologetics i teach a full class on biblical sexuality if you ever thought i'm gonna master's there's information below about our apologetics program or if you say i'm not ready for master's too busy we actually have a certificate program and we will send you readings videos and kind of guide you through the process and for watching this below there's actually a pretty significant discount,

so you won't want to miss that. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you to Megan for doing a great job in our apologetics program, moderating this, and I look forward to seeing everybody next time. Rachel, don't take off. Everybody have a great evening. We'll see you soon.