Theology in the Raw - 640: Revoice Conference and Faith, Sexuality, and Gender with Dr. Nate Collins

Episode Date: March 26, 2018

🎵 Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in a Raw. I'm so excited to have my special guest and good friend, and in many ways, one of my mentors, especially when it comes to sexuality and gender. Don't laugh, man. That's exactly what you are. I'm so excited to have Dr. Nate Collins on the show. Nate is not a stranger to Theology Niral. He's been on here before. And I'm so excited to talk about his book, All But Invisible, and his upcoming conference called Revoice, which I'm so excited to talk about. Nate, thanks so much for being on the show.

Thanks. Good to be here, Preston. Why don't we jump in with Revoice? And I'm so excited about this. I think it's one of the most needed things for the church today. And I know that for both you and I, you know, we're knee deep in the conversation about sexuality, faith, and gender. And so, it is kind of our thing, but I think this is an absolute gift for the church. So, let's just go back and why don't you start, what is Revoice as a movement, as a conference, and then maybe get some backstory about how it came about? Sure. Yeah. So Revoice is a conference ministry that we are kicking off this summer. This is the first of the conferences. Hopefully,

it'll be an annual thing. And it's basically a conference that's primary purpose is to support, encourage, and empower gender and sexual minorities so that they can really experience the life-giving character of the traditional historic Christian sexual ethic. So it's primarily to support and empower and encourage that population of people. But I mean, anybody who loves LGBT people and wants to participate and show up and learn and encourage as well. They are obviously also welcome. But yeah, it's a multi-day conference. We have three keynote speakers and about 26 workshops, all of which are aimed right at this conversation about how to make the traditional conservative sexual ethic livable for LGBT people. And it's in St.

Louis, right? July 26th, 28th. Is that July 26th or 28th in St. Louis? So, and they can go to, is it just revoice.com?

Is that the URL? Revoice, revoice.us. Revoice.us. Okay. So revoice.us, you can go get information on how to register. What is it like a hundred,

a hundred bucks or is there an early bird special or well we just sold out of the early bird so regular registration is 150 we are limited around 400 people and already about 130 people have signed up so um we're anticipating a sellout crowd that's what we're hoping and praying for so jump on it so this this is, I mean, it's for both LGBT Christians who are living, and this is going to bias it, but faithfully to Jesus, meaning, I mean, they're trying to, you know, work out their sexuality in the context of a historically Christian view of marriage and sexuality. But it's also for, so is it primarily for people who are actually gay, lesbian within that traditional sexual ethic? Or I know it's also for allies,

straight people like me, I'm going to be there, but do you have any estimate? Like, is it going to be like 50, 50, like parents with gay kids and also gay people or, or is it so hard to tell?

And just to be clear, it is for both. I mean, straight allies and LGBT Christians, right? Yeah. And I'll say, I, you know, just in my own journey with education and where I've seen ministry opportunities for me, I had always, I've always thought that I would be in church equipping type roles and going to churches and helping them just have this

conversation better. But last summer and last fall, it just became clear to me that there was a real need for conservative LGBT Christians to have some public place or venue or event to really call their own where they could gather and be encouraged and supported. And so for that reason, it is primarily for that purpose, but that by no means means that other things won't happen or that other purposes aren't involved as well. And so we have about, so of the 26 workshops, I would say about two-thirds of them are aimed at supporting LGBT people themselves. That doesn't mean that straight people are not allowed to go to those workshops. It just means that they're workshops that will primarily directly benefit conservative LGBT people.

So we have three workshops on different areas of mental health and LGBT people. We have a couple of workshops on finding community as an LGBT conservative Christian who you're looking at being single the rest of your life. We've got a couple of workshops that are aimed specifically at celibacy and how to make celibacy livable. So those are the types of workshops we have for LGBT people. But we also have about eight, maybe nine workshops that are more equipping type workshops. And if you go to the website, revoice.us, we have about half the workshops listed on the website. And you can sort them based on whether they're supporting workshops or whether they're equipping

workshops. So for example, you, Preston, you're teaching on how to be a straight ally, and that would be an equipping workshop. We've got a pastor who is going to teach a workshop specifically for other pastors on how to make your church a welcoming place and a safe space for conservative LGBT people. conservative lgbt people we've got another workshop that's just aimed at people in general so non-pastoral staff on things that they can do at a lay level to uh to contribute to the safety of of this of the spiritual environment there at their church so yeah it's a good it's a mix we don't know what the actual breakdown is going to be. I thought about putting a checkmark or a selection box on the registration on your sexual orientation, but I thought that would be a little too intrusive. I know that other conferences like GCN, now known as Queer Christian Fellowship, I'm pretty sure they have that option on their registration. But I don't know. Did they change their name to Queer Christian Fellowship?

I didn't know that. They did, yeah. This past January, they announced the name change to Queer Christian Fellowship. Okay. Okay. Interesting. You know what? I just realized that we haven't – you're gay, right?

Yes. I might have a lot of listeners right now saying, well, what are these two straight dudes? You know, so why don't you just, so let's, let's back up now. And again, I just want to say revoice.us for people who want new information. And I do know a lot of, I mean, I got a pretty good number of people listening to the podcast who are gay, lesbian, queer, same-sex attracted, gender dysphoric, whatever, you know, who I really hope that they go on the website and consider coming out to this. I think it would be just an amazing time of refreshment, encouragement, and challenge and relationships. And I'm just, I'm so excited about it.

So let's back up. So you're gay and a Christian. relationships. And I'm just, I'm so excited about it. So, let's back up. So, you're gay and a Christian, and you have a PhD in biblical studies or New Testament from the Southern Baptist Seminary. Also the author of the book, All But Invisible, Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality, which is an incredible book put out by Zondervan, sexuality, which is an incredible book put out by Zondervan, which is an amazing publisher, by the way. So tell us quickly, well, not quickly, as long as it takes, your story. Well, people who have been listening to this podcast may have already heard it a while back, you were on last year, but maybe give us the quick version of your journey in faith, sexuality,

year, but maybe give us the quick version of your journey in faith, sexuality, and marriage, and all that stuff. Sure. Well, I'm 37 years old, and so my journey has spanned quite a bit of ground just in the way that Christians have dealt with this issue and had tried to talk about sexual orientation. So, well, like when I first came out to my dad, he says this, I don't remember it. I'm kind of glad, but he says that the way I said it was, dad, I think I'm a homosexual. And I just go, you know, gag at myself right now for using that language. But I mean, that points probably to how repressed I felt, to how early on in the journey I was in learning how to reconcile my faith and orientation.

And I was 19 years old when I came out to him. I had only come out to a couple of people at that point, but he was a good friend. And so, and it is one of my best friends to this day. Yeah, I grew up in a Christian home i i grew up in a christian home i grew up in a third world country as well my parents were missionaries um so i really and obviously i was a teenager in the 90s and so i mean the conversation was in a very different place culture was in a very different place um back then um and my way of coping with my attention was just to ignore it. So I was barely even

self-aware enough to have the common experience that people have today of just praying every night before they go to bed, God, please help me wake up straight instead of gay. I didn't even think about it that much. That's how distressing. That's a common experience, you'd say, I mean, almost across the board. Oh, I don't know. I mean, I've actually heard a lot of people talking about, um, praying every night before they went to bed or every day. God, please take this away from me.

Please take this away from me. Make me normal. Please. Can't I, why can't I be normal? I think in Andrew Barron's study,'s yeah it's a it's if i remember correctly it's it's like over 90 or something when people first experience kind of attraction same sex it's unwanted and they pray whether they believe in god or not they're praying out to somebody and and uh yeah yeah wow yeah so i mean i i think i probably did that some but i

don't have this strong memory of that being characteristic of my teenage years or anything. And then I went to college, went to Moody Bible Institute. That's where I met my wife. And at this point, you're like, wait, wife? Yeah. So, yeah, my story is not what I would say a typical story in the sense that it sense that, uh, it's something that a lot of non-straight people will want for themselves. Um, I had always wanted to get married, always had ideas of having a family and, you know, and, and a lot of gay people do have, uh, desires for

family. Um, it's, it's the, the, the opposite sex, opposite sex spouse that sort of gets them tripped up. And I just thought, you know what? It only takes one person. Just meet the right person, and that could be my story. And that's what ended up happening. So I ended up meeting my wife and my future wife in Bible college. We started dating about a year and a half after we met, and I came out to her that summer. And her response was, well, I'm already in love with you, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

And whether we would continue to grow closer to each other and eventually move forward to marriage, or whether it would just become apparent that that was not what God wanted for us. And things kept moving forward. We kept spending time with each other and learning more about each other and growing closer together emotionally and thinking spiritually about our calling in life and how my calling could make her a better Christian and how her calling lived out with me could make me a better child of God. And the interesting thing is, and this is what I've found with most mixed orientation marriages where one spouse is gay and the other is straight, that are working and that are thriving. What usually ends up happening or had happened in those marriages

early on in the relationship is that the attraction that they feel towards, that the gay spouse feels towards the straight spouse isn't sexual. It isn't physical at first. It's just emotional and the emotional and spiritual connection. And then the physical and sexual aspects tend to follow at that point as you continue to get closer and closer to each other. And what begins to develop is not a generalized opposite sex orientation or straight orientation, but a one woman or a one man orientation that sort of operates on a kind of a parallel track maybe to the otherwise default gay orientation. And that's my experience.

I identify as gay because I have a latent gay orientation that is operative pretty much every day. But I also have a one-woman orientation towards my wife. And that is something that, I mean, I praise God for because I'm married and I want that. But marriage is also based on the commitment. You make vows and you stay together. And so, we've had rough times in our marriage, like most marriages, and some of the rough times have been related to my orientation. And at those times, we have to remember that no relationship that's meaningful is going to be easy. And so, the perseverance that we have by God's grace to keep moving forward and to keep drawing

closer to each other really just makes the meaningful times even more meaningful for us. That's great, man. So, yeah, I don't think I've yet, I've yet to meet Sarah. I don't,

I think, I mean, maybe a little, I don't think you have now. It's crazy. Summer. Wow. I'm so excited.

She's doing a workshop too, right? Yeah. Yeah. She's teaching work. She's co-teaching a workshop on spiritual abuse. Oh, wow. She's going to,aching a workshop on spiritual abuse. Oh, wow. Yeah, she and another guy named David Gill.

David Gill, he has an MDiv from Covenant Presbyterian Seminary. They're going to teach about spiritual abuse and just, yeah, how LGBT people in particular have been impacted by Christianity in ways that are not helpful, unfortunately. Let's go there. I don't know how much you want to talk about this, but let's go back in time about eight months to August of 2017 when a bunch of Christians released something called the Nashville Statement. It was kind of a big deal. Well, you know, it's funny, Nate. I was in San Francisco in front of a couple hundred pastors in September, early September, and I asked, how many of you have heard of the Nashville Statement? And about 10% raised their hands. So even in the world of the World Wide Web, when everything's kind of local,

it is interesting how it does seem to be somewhat... Because I mean, in my world, and obviously in your world, it was a huge thing, huge. It was like what everybody was talking about for weeks. But that is still maybe wasn't as big in everybody's world in the same way. But I'm not going to define.

I think most of my listeners know what the national statement was, you know, the statement about where that certain portions of the church or people, you know, stand on issues of sexuality and gender. Can you, do you feel comfortable talking about it? Sure.

Sure. Well, real quick, just another quick, and it's like you've had, you were in that group with that group of pastors and 10%. About a week or two after the national statement, I was in front of another group. It was a mini conference. Some pastors, a lot of pastors perhaps, but a good portion maybe of the LGBT people as well. It was about a total of 150 people, and asked that question who has heard the national statement and every single person raised their hand wow wow so yeah it's it's weird i mean i don't know

what demographic you have to fall in to have heard of the national statement i know i know but it was on it was on some radars and it was not on other radars it probably is denominational and even geographical like i mean just think about you know i know the gospel coalition maybe not as an organization but that kind of that crowd you know they are they are bigger uh from kind of east of the mississippi it seems like you know and that's where a lot of influential people in in that crowd are and and that was in san francisco and it's the west coast vibe yeah is it is different man i mean they yeah i mean they have their kind of local people that they look up to and um yeah i mean there's people that are so well known in their circles that are unknown in the rest of America. So I think it could be geographical and even denominational too.

So, I mean, in a sense, both you and I, and I've been very critical of this statement, within, I mean, I would say, I don't know if you would, I think you'd say this, maybe. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the way I frame my critique is this is within the context of we're in agreement on some foundational significant theological things. This is not one side arguing against another side.

But I would call it an in-house conversation about how to address something that both of us feel needs to be addressed, for lack of a better term. And I still, I mean, I know a lot of people say, oh, I agreed with the statement. I could sign up. I just disagree with the tone. It was the wrong time. It was the wrong way. You need to, all this stuff.

And I was like, well, I definitely agree with all that, but I actually do disagree with some of the content. But at the same time, we both have, me and every signer would agree on some foundational things about marriage and sexuality. But from the perspective of somebody who is gay, who is committed to a historic Christian sexual ethic, what specifically for you and maybe people who are like you in your category, whatever. What was it about the statement that was the most hurtful? So there's a couple of things and they're different. I would put them in different categories of the kinds of things that hurt. In terms of the actual content of the statement, one of the major things that was hurtful for me was the denial in Article 7. That denial says, we deny that adopting

a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God's holy purposes in creation and redemption. I'm pretty sure that's verbatim. I've memorized that and said it over and over again because people have asked. That sounds, yeah, that sounds outright. Yeah. So, like, so that seems to basically categorically rule out anybody who has decided that using the gay label as an identifier for themselves is okay

for them. And if you read my book, you know clearly where I stand on that. I lay out a case for a way of using the gay identity label for conservative Christians in ways that are consistent, I believe, with God's purposes in creation and redemption. Christians in ways that are consistent, I believe, with God's purposes in creation and redemption. And so that denial pretty clearly seems to rule me out and rule others like me who would identify as gay, but also are committed to a historic Christian sexual ethic. So that really hurts. I have friends, close friends, who signed the national statement, who are among the initial signatories of the national statement. And so to have that sort of a frontline attack on me and whether or not I am Orthodox, the document postures itself as a marker of orthodoxy. And to be ruled out like that from people that I normally would identify with and consider my people, that really hurt. That was a betrayal for me, a rejection. And so that leads to the question, well, how did they get away with that?

And the way they got away with it is not consulting anybody like me in drawing up the national statement, not involving any gay Christians who would disagree with that to be a part of drawing it up or to be in the initial the meeting where everybody met to to hammer through things which really consisted of four one-hour speeches and then one hour of of back and forth so really they deliberated this thing for about an hour which is a massive failure of process in my opinion and this is i mean secondhand information i wasn't at the meeting i wasn't invited to be i didn't know anything about it yeah yeah i mean obviously what's that which is fine i've got enough on my plate but i i don't know it's and i'm not like oh how come but i mean it's kind of like i think i hopefully would be have something to say or be in the conversation at a level enough where they would at least be one of the couple hundred people or a hundred people or whatever that were kind of invited to that. But whatever. Exactly.

But I do know people that were there or that did offer critiques or feedback. And it wasn't that they didn't enlist feedback. It's that as far as i can see um none of it was heated you know i've talked to a few people that said they gave you know pretty extensive and and like hey i i agree with it i think this is good here's several things you should consider and nothing was really listened to it was my impression i don't want to be you know like spread gossip if that's true it is if not whatever but that's that's that was kind of the vibe that was there but um so how so um i mean this has really affected you right now i mean you and your wife and and a lot of people in your

for lack of better terms your community or your people who are you know uh wrestling with their sexuality under the historic christian sexual ethic like or the you know, I don't actually love the phrase side B. I know, you know, it's kind of popular, but for lack of better terms, in the side B Christian community, has the experience been similar to yours? Has there been a lot of pain or is it really just you and your wife who've had a hard time with it? No, it's, it was extensively, it was was extensively – it was devastating. I would use that word without reservation. The day it hit, I saw that community just or not evangelicalism was still their group. If people could talk about our experience in the way that they did, in sort of the cold, clinical, heavy-handed way that they did,

then, yeah, I saw rampant questioning of whether or not evangelical Christianity had space for them. I've heard stories of pastors using it against LGBT people and people having to leave their churches. And so the content of the Article 7 denial, for example, is one thing. The other thing that's really missing, and you mentioned earlier the issue of tone, that is a massive oversight. to do without acknowledging the hurt and pain that conservative LGBT Christians have experienced from other conservatives, let alone that the larger, broader LGBT community outside Christianity has experienced from churches. To completely neglect to mention that in a document that's addressing this question is starting off on the polar opposite wrong foot. Anytime I think the church is aiming to speak prophetically about something like that,

where there has been pain and suffering and persecution of a marginalized people group, then the first thing that needs to be clear is that Christians are repentant for that, that there's a posture of humility that needs to be informing every step of that conversation. And that posture is, I believe, 100% lacking in the national statement. There would have been an adequate opportunity to put it in the preamble, to put a statement of apology or regret or some reference that, yeah, we realize we're speaking to people that we've hurt. If that had been there, then it would have been a completely different statement. But the complete lack of that awareness that humility is required for this conversation to be Christ-honoring, this document to be a gospel-centered document, humility is

required. That was so even, I share a similar passion to maintain theological integrity in the church. And it's almost because I share that same passion that I was so upset and discouraged by the time, because until we start apologizing and acknowledging wrong and changing our posture and doing all these things, we're not going to maintain theological integrity. Well, no, because, well, it's just as much a matter of theological integrity to see the social justice side of this conversation, that the church has sinned against image bearers of God. And that has, that's a theological problem. That's a theological, that's every bit as much a theological conviction as whether or

not we maintain a traditional historic Christian sexual ethic. That's part of what it means to live out a traditional Christian sexual ethic today is recognizing that the pain and harm that we've caused non-straight people in the past is real and to this day is unrepentant for. And younger, especially younger people, let's just say under 30 or maybe even under 40, if we don't have that tone of being apologetic and not harming people and extending love to all of God's children, until we have that, people aren't going to want anything to do with our theology. So we're like, no, we need to make sure there's theological drift there's theological drift you want to stop theological drift start loving like crazy and start apologizing for how we've done harm

and then maybe people might actually say oh okay well if i if if i can do that and hold to the theology i can do that but if it's an either or people are not going to want that theology so and christian leaders who don't do that will have zero credibility. Exactly, exactly. And not because they're wishy-washy on biblical authority, but because they're not living out the gospel in this conversation. Right. I was really, and I know we kind of live in different worlds, Nate, but I mean, I was,

And I know we kind of live in different worlds, Nate, but I mean, I was, I guess, kind of encouraged in a weird way with how many people who I would say are pretty conservative that didn't like the national statement. I remember when I was on vacation and I rarely, rarely do it. When I'm on vacation, I'm rarely ever on vacation. I'm always plugged in, always working. And I was in hawaii and sure enough literally on the plane flight i think is when it was released and my phone is blowing up what do you think about this what's going on how would you respond and and i sat there for a few

days and i couldn't stop thinking about it so i'm like all right honey i need an afternoon to write a response because i just i'm not gonna build vacation until i um do this and so i wrote that and i was like oh gosh you know it's gonna be farewell press and sprinkle forever and I'm already not in I don't know I don't know what that crowd thinks of me I don't know if they know what to do with me but um I was like okay this is gonna be the final kind of nail in the coffin you know I'm gonna be written off by anybody who's the slightest to the right of me I was shocked at how many people who i would say are very conservative were texting me emailing me saying man i totally agree with you thank you

so much that's exactly you put kind of words of how i was feeling or i one of my good friends says that he signed it but then when he read my thing he wishes he didn't sign it and um so i was shocked it kind of encouraged me that this isn't kind of like oh if you're you're more left-leaning or more progressive, you didn't like the national statement, but if you're really staying true to evangelicalism, you're for it. No, there was a lot of people that would typically resonate with, yeah, let's stand our ground, let's maintain theological integrity. They're like, ooh, but that's not how we should go about doing it. Yeah. No, that is encouraging. It's interesting that what was intended to be a consensus document is perhaps not garnering as much consensus as they hoped, maybe.

I don't know. Because I've heard, once I get out of the bubble, I've heard similar feedback. So yeah, I hope that's right. Yeah. Hey, Nate, we're going to finish up here in just a second, but I want to talk about your book just quickly, All But Invisible, Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Face, Gender, and Sexuality. Can you tell, give us a couple of quick snapshots, some highlights in this book. And what I love about the book is it's so clear, Nate, and yet it's a very thoughtful, it's like, it's not an academic book per se. It's almost like an accessible academic book, or we can say

maybe a thoughtful, like popular level book. And I love that it rides that middle space. like popular level book and i love that it's it rides that middle space um but what are some key things there that you feel like man that you maybe some of the more provocative parts of it or or some key ideas in the book if people are interested in the red meat yeah yeah so uh just i guess first i can just describe how it's broken down um i don't think it's one of those books that you have to read from cover to cover, the whole thing, to come away with something. There's three main ideas, three main points. The first is I address what I call the vision to make the historic Christian sexual ethic livable for non-straight people. We don't have a vision. We have not figured out how to cast a vision that makes the conservative Christian sexual ethic livable.

And so I flesh that out over three chapters and end with just some positive suggestions and go through the different patterns of living that a non-straight person who is committed to an historic Christian sexual ethic can find themselves in, whether it's singleness or mixed orientation marriage or intentional community, and probably the edgiest of them would be something along the lines of a celibate partnership where two non-straight people who ideally are minimally sexually attracted to each other decide just to do life together. And I think it's ideal if more than two, so perhaps three, end up in that kind of a situation. So it just makes it crystal clear this

is not a marriage by any means this is nothing this is not a marriage that's a different category i get this question quite a bit actually now uh what celibate partnerships and should two gay people live together uh even if they're not engaged in sexual relationships and um it actually came up the other day in a sexuality conference on just can a boyfriend live with his girlfriend? And I said, here's my response to that would be, well, there's no verse I can point to that they're in sin. Only sexual relationships are specified. I think boyfriend and girlfriend, it'd probably be unwise. Yeah. But this is kind

of a different yeah i don't want to map that onto your question at all i think it is different totally but what about the whole like temptation and is this wise and and why put yourself through that kind of whatever um what would you say to that i think i know what you'd say to it but i'd love to hear from you yeah i mean again i think it's wisest when there's minimal sexual attraction involved, but you can never predict whether that'll arise or not in a relationship. And so the key difference is that a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is by definition open towards marriage, open towards eventually sexual expression if God leads the individuals involved towards marriage. Whereas a celibate partnership, by definition, is not moving towards marriage. It is designed to actually enhance the individual's involved ability to be celibate. And so you would not want to be in a celibate partnership with somebody

who you're not able to be celibate with that's not consistent with the definition of a celibate partnership and this is going to be such a dumb footnote but for some of my straight listeners maybe it might be helpful just because you're same-sex attracted doesn't mean you're sexually attracted to everyone of the same sex like this is true so i mean sure i you know there could a guy and a girl be roommates together and it's like well you know what there's a ton of girls that theoretically i'm married so what happened i mean there's tons of women that yeah i like look we can live together we can we can live in the same room and ain't nothing's gonna happen you know like yeah so i think some

people just think oh if they're same sex attracted to the same sex well gosh they're just gonna be you know having raging sex all night you know it's like come on dude like just think through a straight lens and then map that on this so yeah yeah so yeah that's that's the first part and then real quickly the second two parts are basically looking looking at big ideas that I think we need to talk about. The first one being orientation. What is orientation? What is it theologically? Because right now, all of the discussion basically, I think, assumes a lot of Floridian presuppositions about orientation.

And so I end with a suggestion that we recenter orientation around the perception and admiration of personal beauty instead of around sex. I think that that is a more robustly Christian idea, that we are intrinsically beings that recognize beauty in other image bearers. other image bearers. And when there's a pattern for that recognition, i.e. predominantly in the same sex or predominantly in the opposite sex, then that's what I would call an orientation. Now, does sexuality figure into it? Well, of course. We are also sexual beings, and so inevitably, I think that orientation is going to be experienced in some way in the context of sexuality. But I don't think that sexuality itself is at the center of orientation. And what that does, I think, is it frees non-straight people up, and I think straight people, to think non-sexually about people they're attracted to.

And to think in ways that could deepen, perhaps, relationships with individuals that they might experience a degree of attraction to. You have a phrase on 164 about affectionate intimacy, and he distinguished it from sexual intimacy, but it's still intimate, but almost like more than just maybe, well, it is friendship intimacy, but I love that phrase and just the whole, I love how you open up the complexity of what intimacy is. Well, so I talk about affection intimacy, but then I also talk about unitive intimacy and how unitive intimacy can be physical in the example of sexual relationships, but it doesn't have to be physical. It can be emotional. And I'll use the example of David and Jonathan where it says Jonathan loved David as himself and it talks about his soul being knitted to the soul of David.

I mean that's a unifying kind of intimacy that they had, but it was emotional. It was maybe even spiritual in a sense. And I want to leave the door open for two gay people to have that kind of intimacy with each other because that's not something that the Bible ever condemns. It just condemns acts of physical sex. So that's the second part, what is orientation, and then I try and bring it all home with five long chapters on identity and how do we figure all of this, how do we relate all of this to the idea of having a Christian identity that's primary, but then also having a gender identity like man and woman. And then what I say, what I suggest is having also secondary gender identities that further specify what kind of man or what kind of woman someone is based on an orientation. And so

straight would be a secondary gender identity, but so would gay and lesbian. That's super helpful, Nate. I'm excited. I mean, I've gotten so much out of this book. Your two chapters on gender were, I think, so clear and so helpful because that conversation is so convoluted and hard to kind of get into. And so much great stuff here.

Thanks for writing it. Nate, thanks so much for being on the show. Again, your book is All The Invisible. And I highly encourage everybody listening to check out revoice.us and consider going to the Revoice Conference. Nate, thanks so much for being on Theology and the Wrong. Thanks so much for having me, Preston.

Good to talk to you. All right, take care, bud. Thank you.