Theology in the Raw - 724: #724 - Nonviolence, Hell, and Sexuality: A Conversation with Brandon Smith

Episode Date: February 18, 2019

On episode #724 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Brandon Smith. Brandon is a writer, pastor, professor, and podcaster. His new podcast Church Grammar is now available on iTunes. Follow Brandon Smith on Twitter Check out the Church Grammar Podcast Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I have on the show today my friend from a distance, Brandon Smith. Me and Brandon have known each other for a few years. Most of our relationship has been through social media, but we've gotten a chance to hang out a few times in person. And Brandon is just a brother from anotherada. He is doing a PhD under Michael Byrd at Ridley College in Australia. And he's just a really good thinker. He swims in Southern Baptist circles. Well, I almost said but. I'm going to say and he is a very, he's a free thinker and he likes to think outside the box. And we have a dialogue on a number of issues and just really resonate. I resonate so much with his tone, his thoughtfulness,

his posture. And I've really been looking forward to this conversation for a while now. Now, what me and Brandon decided to do, he's launching his own podcast. It's coming out like right around the time when you're listening to this. And it's called, I believe, gosh, I keep forgetting the name, Theology Grammar, something like that. And it's a podcast that's going to be very similar to Theology in the Raw in the types of people they interview, the types of conversations they engage in. So Brandon asked me to be on his podcast. And I said, hey, why don't we do a joint podcast? So what you're gonna listen to is a joint podcast between Theology Nara, my podcast and his podcast,

Theology, I think it's Theology Grammar. He's gonna kill me if I didn't actually get this right. Because as you'll hear in our actual interview, I kept stumbling upon, I kept forgetting, you know, the name of his podcast. Anyway, love you, Brandon. You're awesome. And you're going to enjoy this conversation. We talk about, primarily it's him interviewing me. So he wants to know, like, what was I studying during my dissertation? What was my sort of intellectual background? And then we went into talking about nonviolence, the annihilation view of hell,

and questions related to sexuality, kind of the, some of the controversial topics that I've engaged in. So a lot of this is kind of me talking, and he says I want it to be that way. I want to lead the discussion, but I want to throw you some questions and just hear your thoughts on them. So I think, well, yeah, some of you who are avid listeners to Theology in the Realm might already know kind of my nitty-gritty thoughts on some of these things, but I think we had a wonderful conversation. It was really a good back and forth,

so you're really going to enjoy this. If you want to support the show, you can go to patreon.com forward slash Theology in the Raw. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I really appreciate the support of my 200-plus Patreon supporters. And if you would like to join the Theology in the Raw community,

then go to patreon.com forward the Theology in the Raw community, then go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. It gives you access to premium content, Patreon only podcasts and blogs and communal discussions that we have on my Patreon page. It gives you access to me in a sense to ask questions and so on. So if you want to join the Theology in the Raw community, go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the rock. Okay, let's listen to this intriguing conversation between me and Brandon Smith. Preston, are you ready for this? Are you ready for this crossover podcast?

Well, we'll see at the end how it goes, if I was ready or not. You know, the Avengers promoted the last movie as the greatest crossover event in history, but I don't think they were ready for this podcast. Yeah, exactly. This is like Avengers on steroids, for sure. I'm way overhyping this thing. We're going to let people down immediately. In case you're wondering, you are listening to a joint podcast from Brandon Smith and myself. So I'm representing Theology in the Raw, and Brandon is representing? Church Grammar.

Church Grammar. I didn't know that was the title of your podcast church grammar like grammar girl do you ever listen to grammar girl on uh on podcast i do not listen to it but i've used grammar girl many times when writing so i know i know what you're talking about yeah no actually it came from uh robert jensen's uh theology is the grammar of the church ah so i got that idea of so yeah so this't actually, the podcast hasn't launched yet. So actually not very many people know it's called church grammar yet. So you're not in the minority or anything. I haven't heard the name Robert Jensen in about 10 years. That's a theologian that most Americans aren't aware of. That's interesting. Yeah. You know, I like to be

hipster about my theologians, you know, bring back old sweaters and Robert Jensen. That's the two things I'm trying to bring back right now. Oh, that's awesome, man. All right, dude, where are we going? What should we dive into? Okay, so I'm in the pilot seat here, I guess. So first question, your listeners were probably thinking maybe that they wouldn't hear you talk as much as normal, but I'm going to let you do most of the talking. So there's no reprieve from Preston for the Theology in the Raw listeners today. All right. So tell your story a little bit. Talk about your testimony, becoming a Christian, and then sort of how you got into academics, your PhD program, kind of all that stuff. Sure. I'll keep it short, just so if we want to drill down deeper in a

certain season of my journey, we can do that. So raised in a sort of christian home my dad and mom were divorced at 10 my mom was a christian uh my dad is and was not is not so i was raised with my mom um in sort of a kind of a nominal christian home my mom was a solid believer i i i was uh intellectually would you know, affirm Christianity, but I knew hardly anything about it. You know, I would feel, I had a pretty strong moral conscience, so I'd feel guilty if I did bad stuff. So I wasn't like a full-on prodigal, but I just, I didn't really live out my faith till I was 19 and realized that I need to either live like the world and stop calling myself a Christian, or if I'm going to call myself a Christian, I should probably live like it. And, um, you know,

if you're Wesleyan, then I guess I'll say I made a decision to follow Jesus. If you're reformed, you can say, you know, God grabbed ahold of me and dragged me kicking and screaming into the kingdom. Now, you know, you can say it's both, right? Here we go. Yeah, if you're Greg Boyd, then, you know, God was the most shocked person. No, just kidding. I recently hung out with Greg and we went around and around on that stuff.

Anyway. I love it. Let's see. So yeah, just said, all right, I'm going to do this Christian thing and immediately fell in love, absolutely fell in love with the Bible. And because my Christian past was kind of nominal, I didn't have a ton of baggage going into that. Like I genuinely, and I still have this, I mean,

if anybody knows anything about me, you know, my posture is I want to go with the text leads, even if it leads me away from previously held convictions. And I really had that from day one. It was like, hey, this is the Bible. Let's follow it. And I learned early on that certain subcultures within Christianity and certain traditions practically, not on paper, but practically have more power and authority over a person's beliefs than simply studying and reading the Bible and drawing conclusions directly from the text. And so, but I was, you know, when I got saved or resaved or whatever at 19, I was in a somewhat, a pretty conservative environment. It wasn't like, you know, I hear

some people talk about their oppressive fundamentalist environment. It wasn't, it wasn't that bad. Like, you know, I could wear jeans at church. It was fine, you know. But, yeah, it was, you know, a conservative environment. So I ended up going to Masters College, which is John MacArthur, or now it's Masters University, and then went on to seminary at Masters Seminary, where John MacArthur is the president. And so it was a MacArthur environment.

And I honestly loved it. I mean, my two years at Masters College I transferred in were two of the best years of my life they were amazing it was so so good exactly what i needed i was just in love with studying the bible and then when i wanted to go to seminary um you know the advice i was given well okay so seminary is down the street like i literally didn't have even a concept that there were other seminaries. I just thought there was seminary and that was the master seminary. Um, this was before Google, I guess this is before Google, but I, you know, I just, I was very just innocently just, Hey, just tell me what to do kind of person. So, um, I would say halfway through master seminary, which I, again, I had a good experience overall there. They're very biblically centered. They emphasize languages and they have the professors radiated this kind of, if I can say post-fundamentalist piety, you know,

so my professors were known for, you know, praying several hours every morning. They probably still pray for me. Maybe the content might be a little different. But yeah, I had a little different. Um, but yeah, I had, I had a good experience, but I would say halfway through, I started to, well, I would say I stopped if I can say drinking the punch. And I don't mean that, that may come out more pejorative than I mean it. I, I just started to explore other ways of thinking and I started to realize that the way I'm studying the Bible and, and drawing conclusions doesn't necessarily resonate with every jot and tittle of what that environment says I should believe or says in a very black and white way.

This is the right answer if you study the Bible correctly. I was like, I don't know. I don't know if I'd line up with that. And it was through studying the Bible that I was, in some cases, coming different theological conclusions, or at least wanting to explore different theological options, not necessarily wanting to go there, but just saying, well, what does the Bible say about, you know, open theism or Arminianism or the charismatic gifts and, and so on. So long story short, I ended up going to Aberdeen University for my PhD, which was just, I mean, academically was just the highlight of my life. I was in an environment with about 25 other PhD students.

24 would be probably evangelical and from about 23 different denominations. And I just fell in love with the sort of, if I can, you know, in Protestant terms, the sort of ecumenical aspect of the faith where I was hanging out with people who came from very different theological traditions. They still love Jesus. They still absolutely love the Bible. They had good reasons for what they believed. And there was this, I just really love that diversity of having, you know, such common ground in terms of, we love Jesus, we love the Bible, we love the gospel, but we have different takes on these secondary theological issues. And so got done there. I got a job at Cedarville University, taught there from 2007 to 2009, then got a job at Eternity Bible College, taught there for a number of years. And then now I'm in

Boise, Idaho, where I'm the president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender, which I've been doing for almost exactly two years. That's the longest short of it. Yeah. So it's interesting because I think one of the reasons why I wanted to have this conversation, why I enjoy your friendship and appreciate your friendship is your willingness to be able to say, I'm going to go where the text leads me to go, even if maybe it upsets people who don't want me to go there with the text. And I got to believe a lot of that came from, you grow up learning to love the Bible and want to follow the text where it leads. But some people grow up loving the Bible and want to follow the text where it leads, but they don't really try to follow the text too far, or they don't want to ask questions. I have to believe your Aberdeen

experience kind of taught you to say, okay, I'm not the only person who's ever thought about theology, never thought about the Bible. And that's kind of, I got to believe your Aberdeen experience kind of taught you to say, okay, I'm not the only person who's ever thought about theology, never thought about the Bible. And that's kind of, I gotta believe that's, that's helped shape sort of who you are now as not only am I letting the text lead me, but I'm also going to listen to different perspectives, appreciate them and decide if that perspective is better than the one I currently hold. Yeah. You know, as my Aberdeen experience, and honestly, this trips people out but i i owe my biblical posture to largely to john mcarthur i mean in my early days his zeal wild-eyed zeal for the actual text of scripture is what had fueled me has shaped me and still has had its foundational effect of my life now where we differ is will be, we differ on several things,

but I mean, you know, we differ obviously on several theological conclusions, maybe the tone of how we go about things and maybe some pastoral, you know, implementation questions or whatever, but the heart of, you know, the Bible is our authority. Let's go where it leads is, you know, yeah, I owe that to MacArthur. Also, yeah, at Aberdeen, and just when I was at Aberdeen, you're going to conferences, you're hanging out, you're basically steeped in British evangelicalism, which I found that I'm so much more, I resonate so much more with British evangelicalism on the whole

versus American evangelicalism. And what I mean by British evangelicalism on the whole versus American evangelicalism. And my, what I mean by British evangelicalism was, well, it was crystallized in a comment that I got. I was teaching at Nottingham University for a semester, and I was the only evangelical teaching there. Most of them were, you know, very, either very liberal or they were, you know, my New Testament colleague was Maurice Casey, who's an atheist, you know, and he knows, he knows that the Greek of the gospel is better than I know the English. And so. Yeah, a giant of historical Jesus studies and denying many things that we confirm about Jesus.

Yeah. And it's so fun talking about the New Testament. Like sometimes you forget that he's an atheist. At the end of the day, he just doesn't believe it, but it's still an amazing historical document. Anyway, you know, I was there and I remember asking by the chair of the department, I said, would you ever hire like an evangelical full-time? And I know I'm here to kind of fill in, you know, for Richard Bell is on sabbatical or no. Yeah. Yeah. Richard Bell is on sabbatical. I was filling in for his classes. And he said, I quote, he said, oh yeah, you know, we wouldn't mind hiring an evangelical if they would just stick to the text.

And he wasn't trying to be humorous, funny, not at all. Like that was literally what he said. Like he said, look, we want people who for the text of scripture that he is, doesn't, he kind of doesn't want to put up with an evangelical who is more concerned about maintaining certain theological beliefs or hobby horses or political views, you know, is how, you know, British evangelicals kind of look at Americans as way too wrapped up in the politics. And, and that really,

it crystallized something for me because that had been my experience. I kind of took that as kind of reflecting on my entire experience living several years in American evangelicalism and then experiencing British evangelicalism. And I'm like, you know what, I think that is exactly how I feel. That, you know, why can't we just stick to the text of Scripture as evangelicals? And it was kind of a sad commentary on the evangelical church, but it is what it is. Yeah, doing my PhD in Australia, there's very much a British evangelical vibe there.

And Michael Bird being my supervisor, I'm experiencing that and going, I feel in some ways I feel more comfortable here, especially when I'm in a classroom with people who disagree with me wildly on some pretty basic things. I mean, not whether or not Jesus is God, but, you know, egalitarianism, inerrancy, different things like that, that people have different views of. And I just enjoy being in those environments. I enjoy the conversations. I enjoy being challenged. I enjoy being able to ask questions that I may not

be able to ask in other contexts because I'll be burned at the stake for even asking the question. So I appreciate that a lot about that sort of environment for sure. And yeah, totally. Yeah, the Australian brand of Christianity is very similar. I would say it's kind of a halfway between maybe British and American. There is a conservatism in some churches in in australia that um that is similar to the american church but yeah it's definitely uh uh has this kind of british flavor um yeah there's definitely that there's the sydney the sydney presbyterians are the ones that are most known for kind of being

the closest to american conservatives yeah yeah yeah that's true um yeah i never i you know i never understood that you know we said like you're you're allowed to ask hard questions and stuff. I never understood environments that don't allow that. And yet I hear from people all the time. So even though I was raised in a conservative environment, it wasn't that oppressive. So it just shocks me that people are like, oh, yeah, I wasn't allowed. I would get criticized for even asking a question, you know, like, I'm like, yeah, that's just insane. Like as Christians, that should be the DNA of our, of our existence.

Right. Yeah. During my undergrad and graduate work, it just depended on the class. There were some classes where we had great professors who were like, we're going to read everything. We're going to interact with everything. You're going to appreciate everything. And then there were the ones that, you know, had been through some of the inerrancy wars and Bible wars. Not saying that I'm trying to deny inerrancy because I'm not, but sort of, we can't even ask questions about what all this means without being told that we're slipping down a slope. And we're like, I don't even know the slope exists. I'm just asking, I'm just asking questions. I'm not trying to run down a slope. So anyway, we could probably go on about that for a while, but your dissertation was on Paul and Judaism. That's kind of where you did

your focus of PhD stuff. You even have, people probably don't, many people don't know this. You had, is it your dissertation, I guess, that's published in one of the leading scholarly theories in the world. Not enough people know that, but I stumbled across it in the Vanderbilt library a while back, just sort of looking at other stuff. And I was like, hey, that's my friend Preston Sprinkle, the Preston Sprinkle. He's publishing this stuff. He doesn't just talk about controversial stuff all the time. You know what? I started in my academic career.

I wanted to be one of those ivory tower academics that nobody understands and write books and articles that nobody reads. That's actually what I wanted to do. But at the same time, I've always had a foot in the church. So it was kind of this crisis of identity. But yeah, I was so... One of my most favorite emails I've ever gotten is when the publisher of that... It's called the WUNT series, W-U-N-T.

I used to be able to pronounce Wischenschaftlich und something, something anyway. Yeah, I was about to try to do it. And I was like, nah. I used to be able to do it back when I used to know some German. But yeah, I would say it's probably the second most prestigious kind of new place to get your dissertation published. And there is one that's higher. It's the, oh gosh, it's the Cambridge one. They only publish like two or three dissertations a year. So it's not the high, and I didn't even go for that. I was like, ah, there's no way I'm going to waste my time. But so I sent it to Voot and got it published. And I was, I just was blown away. It was so exciting. So did you just sort of get a little bit bored of it after

a while, kind of tired of doing the Paul and Judaism stuff? You feel like you kind of went that way? Or was it just that your perspective shifted on what you thought was important? How'd that kind of happen? Yeah, kind of both. You know, I had been knee deep in Paul and Judaism since early on in my seminary career. So I started seminary in 2000, yeah, 2001. No, 2000. And I would say it was about 2002 when I started to read a lot of N.T. Wright, started to read, from your alma mater, I mean, Tom Schreiner and Doug Moon. Got into the whole Paul and the Law debate, Paul and Judaism.

And then I became just enamored just with first century Judaism. And I got tired of people telling me what the Jewish literature says. So as I explored PhD programs, I was like, look, I don't even care what I write on. I just want to become an expert in the actual original literature of first century Judaism and around. I want to, you know, when people ask me a question about first century Judaism, I'm not saying, well, N.T. Wright says this or Tom Schrenner says that. I'm going to say, well, here's what the actual Jewish literature says. And so that's basically what I did. I mean, I would say, even though my degree is in New Testament, I would say at least two-thirds of my study and reading was just on what we call early Judaism or Second Temple Judaism. You know,

yeah. So I mean, so if you go from like 2002 all the way to, I wrote another book for IVP on Paul and Judaism Revisited, which is kind of my final kind of, it was kind of like, here is for the last 10 years I've been studying the Jewish versus Pauline or Christian view of salvation. Pauline or Christian view of salvation here is after 10 years, kind of the fruits of my labor. And I would say after that, yeah, I, I got kind of, uh, I get, yeah, I, it's like, I need to move on. Like I've kind of exhausted the literature. And also I think, you know, when you're in that kind of context, especially Pauline studies, the amount of secondary literature you have to keep up on is just, I'm like, I don't want to spend the bulk of my life reading all these different scholarly views on you know this word and that word like for me

it's like that's just can you imagine i mean and some people are called to that and i feel like i was called to that for 10 years or so but i didn't want to spend the rest of my life reading secondary literature and keeping up on my german and French and all that stuff. When at the end of the day, yeah, I wanted to, I kind of transitioned. I really wanted to speak directly to the church. And that's when the whole race and hell thing came up. And I just fell in love with that kind of writing where I'm writing to the average person and just normal language, but still keeping the research behind the scenes, you know, as, as precise as I possibly can. Yeah, it's, it's funny. I was just thinking, you know, when you're doing all that

work, you're talking about the literature and the secondary literature. I just wrote an academic article for Currents and Biblical Research just on basically surveying the scholarship of Christological monotheism, just looking at, you know, looking at Wilhelm Bousset and looking at Maurice Casey and looking at these. And I, by the end of it, I was like, this is, you know, seven, 8,000 words. And I could have done 40,000 words and still not exhausted all of the arguments about the divinity of Christ and what monotheism even meant in the first century and just all those kinds of things. And then you've got like, you know, Barclay's book, Paul and the gift comes out and you have people saying well everything i wrote for 10 years makes no sense now compared to this new book by barclay

so it's a full-time job for sure yeah totally totally yeah all right well let's transition into some of the other things that you've published we've got i've got a huge list here we're not going to get to all of it but a couple of things um like i said earlier one of the things i really appreciate about you is that you're willing to sort of you're willing to change your mind if you think the text is leading you there you're willing to sort of, you're willing to change your mind. If you think the text is leading you there, you're willing to have good, humble conversations with people you disagree with. You're always pushing people toward theological humility and like, Hey, we can disagree on this, but let's not burn each other's houses down, that kind of thing. And so I appreciate that about you. So I think one of the things that

will be helpful is just to talk through some of the things that you've changed your mind on and why you did. We don't have to go into like a blow by blow of why you believe this and that, but just sort of your journey on some of these topics. So let's just do a kind of a bullet point of some of these. My first one, the first one is my favorite one of yours, which is Fight that you wrote in 2013 on Christian nonviolence. That's probably, I've read almost everything that you've published and that is easily my favorite and probably the most influential on how I view things. So, and I may have told you this before, I can't remember, but one of the things I did when I first, I read the book on, on Kindle back when I read books on Kindle still on a plane. And I went to, you have like your, your frequently

asked questions in the back. And the first thing I did before I read any of the book was I went to the section of what do you do with the intruder in the house? And cause I just, I have this, maybe I'll change on this eventually. I have this thing of when I read guys who, or gals who are writing on nonviolence and pacifism. And I had a guy that was a coworker and a colleague of mine at the Criswell College where I used to work. And it was sort of that thing of, well, okay, what would you do? Okay. Nonviolence, pacifism, I'm down with nonviolence by and large. What do you do if a guy kicks in your door and starts attacking your wife? And the guy literally said to me, I would get on my knees and pray and hope that God pulled him off of my wife. And I was like, that's just I don't maybe maybe I'm not godly enough. But that's untenable for me.

Yours was really good and nuanced because you said, first of all, let's let's let's think about this. Why do you assume that the person coming in the house is there to kill you? Why are you running downstairs with your gun cocked, ready to shoot somebody? So I thought that was a good question that I hadn't thought about before. But you also said, I'm not saying I'm gonna go down there and blow the guy's brains out, but I am gonna attack him, I might tackle him. I mean, I'm gonna physically try to restrain him from hurting my family if he tries to. And I was like, okay, if Preston's willing to say that, I'm in., I can go down the road. But like, I just, again, maybe I'm not sanctified enough, but I can't imagine a scenario. And basically what I've told my wife, we have two little girls and my wife, all of our bedrooms are upstairs. And I've told my wife, basically our strategy is

if our alarm goes off and somebody comes in the door, we grab the girls, we go upstairs in the room and lock the door. I have a shotgun in the closet, which I've never fired in four years and hope I never do. If somebody is aggressively coming in to the room, room and lock the door. I have a shotgun in the closet, which I've never fired in four years and hope I never do. If somebody is aggressively coming in to the room, trying to kick the door in, whatever, that's when I'm going to face that dilemma. If they're downstairs, if they want to take everything downstairs,

that's fine. I'm not running downstairs with the gun cocked, ready to shoot. But I am still in that little, I'm wrestling a little bit with how much force am I willing to use if I feel like it's the difference between protecting my family's life and not. So tell me three, just kind of how you got through, you know, from one position to the other on nonviolence and how you grew in that and even some thoughts on what I just said.

Well, yeah, I want to pick it up where you left off there a little bit. You know, the sort of killer at the door scenario. And this is what motivated me to even write the book is usually when we ask the question about violence, you know, what would you do? We, we leap over what the Bible actually says. We ignore Jesus. Jesus has no voice in our ethical reasoning. We simply say, if somebody breaks into the door, of course I'm going to kill him. And then when I raised the question, cause I would get in these conversations, I said, well, what does Jesus want you to do? And it was almost like they'd look at me like, what does that matter? I'm like, well, you know, any Bible college, any ethical class,

secular or sacred, whatever, is going to say, you need to build your ethic first. And then you use that ethic, which you've constructed from some moral authority, and then you apply that ethic to these different situations. But I kept seeing, quote unquote, and I will use the scare quotes, Bible-believing Christians not explore or even care about what the Bible says. It's almost like they don't even want to ask the questions just in case they might be challenged in what a Christian ethic might actually say. Rather, they just go to sort of pragmatism or practicality or emotions or, you know, just American, you know, masculinity and say, well, of course, it's a no brainer that I'm going to use violence to protect my family. Now I'm going to go back and maybe find some verses that support that.

I'm seeing people do this. And they're just like, I'm like a deer kind of headlights. Like, can you not see, am I the only one in the room here? Like, can you see? And then like,

you know, what's your authority? Oh, I'm a Bible believing Christian. I'm like, well, no, you're not like practically in this question.

You're not because you purposely have not actually even cared about asking the question like a thorough, thoroughly. I really want to know what would Jesus say to this situation? And to see people's not even interested in that question. So I would say that the non, as much as I am passionate about nonviolence and I'm, you know, it's, it's, it is very dear to my heart.

I would say I was even more motivated in that book and even that topic in sort of exploring and in some cases exposing how quote-unquote Bible-believing Christians, when it comes to tough issues, they practically, they just kind of set aside the Bible and rely on other moral authorities like their own sort of human reasoning. So that's kind of an underlying motivation in the book. Also, in terms of the killer at the door argument, I'm not, and I don't know if this came out as clearly in the book as it should have. If I had it do over again, I would have made this crystal clear throughout the book that my main concern in the book is not promoting what I call absolute nonviolence, which is what I do hold to.

So I wouldn't. Ethically, if I did use violence to stop a killer at the door, I would say I am actually, that is not a moral good that I'm doing. I don't believe in the lesser of two evils in that situation. But that's not really my main concern. Look, if the main problem in Americanism and American evangelicalism was that if, you know, some killer busted through their door, pre-programmed to do nothing but simply rape his family, and that that Christian was going to use violence to stop that, that's not the problem. I mean, I'm not saying that doesn't happen. I'm

saying statistically, and I don't mean this, I mean, this actually statistically, you are more likely to get struck by lightning than, you know, if you are not cheating on your wife, you're not sleeping with somebody else's wife, you're not involved in gangs or drugs, or there's other things going on the odds of you if you're living a good moral decent life of somebody coming into your house pre programmed to not steal anything you offer them, know five your entire bank account you offer them keys to your cars and he's like no i am here just to kill you and your children there's nothing you can do to stop me the odds of that happening statistically are is much um uh less likely than getting struck by lightning so do people get struck by lightning sure yeah that's not the main problem the main problem is you have this underlying militaristic spirit within, I mean, obviously, obviously it's in America. We are the most militarized country that the world has ever seen, more than Rome even. And that spirit has trickled down and shaped so many aspects of how American evangelicals think. So if somebody says, okay, look, I'm with you on the

non-violence thing, but I'm going to kill the guy who breaks into my house and is trying to kill my family. I'm like, fine, fine. I'm perfect. Agree to disagree. My main passion isn't absolute non-violence. It is when Christians, when people think of Christians, they should think, oh, that is a non-violent religion. And then we can parse out secondary, you know, lesser to evil, you know, secondary cases or whatever. We can do that, but that is not the reputation we have built. We have wedded ourselves. We have married the beast in many ways and absorbed, knowingly or unknowingly, explicitly or, you know, unexplosively, this militaristic spirit that shapes how we run our churches. It shapes how we respond to our neighbor. It shapes how we try to win arguments with our spouses. It shapes sometimes how we

parent. It shapes how we run our businesses. There's this overpowering power with more power kind of spirit, which is, I don't care if you believe in nonviolence or not, that is simply contrary to the very explicit thread in the New Testament. So that, oh, that's a long, long answer. That was really the main driving force behind me writing that book. Yeah, that's helpful. And I think, yeah, the only place that I just wrestle with it even textually is, I mean, again, I'm basically there. I think where I wrestle with it is living in a fallen world. And somebody is, you know, there is a call to, to protect the oppressed, to protect the weak, to protect those who are not protected. How, you know, what is my role in that, particularly with

my family, or if I'm out in the street and I see a woman being attacked by somebody, am I willing to go tackle the guy, maybe deliver a couple of blows if I have to, to subdue him and then call the police. But my goal is not to choke him out. My goal is not to have a gun in my waistband to shoot him with. But that's where I wrestle with, okay, what's the level where intervening and using some sort of force, violence is maybe not even a word, maybe it's just force, which is a different definition. Yeah.

And that's part of the complexity of this conversation is the definition of violence. I didn't realize before I did this study that there's whole books written on that topic, and it's a lot more complicated than people realize. So, yeah, I wanted to keep it simple. I wanted to spend about one page on the definition of violence and then move on. But, yeah, I do think there's a difference between force and violence. I do think intentionality plays a role. So one person could slice your skin with a knife and another person could slice your skin with a knife. If one's a doctor and one's a mugger, the action could be exactly the same, but you're going to say one's a violent act and one's not.

So I do think intentionality does play a role. But yeah, you do have tensions in Scripture, I think, on that. I guess I would still bring it back to, yes, defend, yes, protect, yes, all these things. But is violence the Christian means of protecting and defending? And do you have a verse to support that? the verses that are sometimes brought up, like the cleansing of the temple or the Luke 22, go buy a sword or whatever. I think those are super weak and misunderstood. So that's just where I kind of still scratch my head.

I think ethically, I do think ethically, you can make a really good case on a 30,000 foot level for lesser to evils and that kind of reasoning in these tensions. So again, I put that in the distant secondary category. Man, let's talk about that. That's fine. We can explore that. I still, is violence the Christian means, or I put it more theologically, viewing life through the lens of the cross, which reconfigures everything, can you still say on this side of the cross that violence, using violence, is the

Christian way to confront or defeat evil? If you put it in those categories, rather than just kind of a secular categories of, oh, he's a mugger trying to hurt this old lady or whatever, but if you put it in more theological categories, I think you can make a really good case that violence is not the Christian means of confronting evil. Confront evil? Absolutely. But I just have a hard time finding it in the New Testament that violence is a means to do that. Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think your book is really helpful. I mean, even for people who are listening to this and saying,

I don't agree, Preston's book is a good, it's not just sort of, I'm here to beat down the NRA and the Second Amendment and whatever, and conservative Christians and Republicans, it's not that sort of argument at all. So like, it's a very helpful book. So if you, if you, if you just want to explore it, Preston's is a good sort of nonviolence. That's very, I think, clear eyed biblical, uh, the tone is right, which is, is half the battle sometimes on these conversations. Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right. Let's, let's move to another topic that doesn't get anybody upset ever, hell.

So this is something that you've more recently, I know for years you sort of battled with, man, I'm just not sure, you know, you wrote Erasing Hell. That was kind of clearly a defense of eternal conscious torment. Although you guys do have some caveats in there that sort of like leans toward annihilationism or, you know, terminal punishment, or at least says like, there's an opening here that this could be possible. So you didn't got, you guys didn't just totally, you know, not have it in the book at all, but what has it been the last maybe year and a half, two years where you sort

of said like, okay, I'm here now. Yeah. I need to, uh, it's a bit on my, uh, docket to record kind of a A to Z blog or or sorry, a podcast, walking through my whole transition and why I do not hold the eternal conscious torment. Going back to Race and Hell, though, to be clear, this is the first thing that comes up saying, oh, so you don't believe what you wrote in that book anymore, right? Or you went away with what you're arguing for. Yeah, that's not fair. Well, no, we were not actually arguing eternal conscious torment versus annihilation

versus universalism. The main question we were asking is, is there a hell? And if people go there, can they be rescued from hell? It was really... It was a reaction to love wins, right? It began that way, And then it became much, much more of a broader,

uh, exploratory question. What does the Bible say about hell? And so our main driving point, I mean, 98% of the ink spilt in the race in hell was, uh, asking,

answering and promoting the view that hell, there is a hell people will go there when, after they die, if they're not Christian, if they don't believe in Jesus. And that is irreversible. That was the main thing. Is hell irreversible? Now, we did explore in about two pages the question of, okay, well, we've already shown there is a hell, it's irreversible. Now, how the you know people's time in hell last and

then we kind of got into annihilation versus eternal conscious torment and we yeah a little insight i because of what i was reading and studying even then this is 2011 i wanted to say we lean towards the traditional view and i think it was francis and i kind of went around and around he's like well we need to put it stronger than that. Let's say heavily lean towards. And I was like, can I live with that? I'm like, yeah, sure. Okay. I don't want to distract people from the main point. The main point is not annihilation versus ECT. I wanted to make sure that annihilation was presented as a much more legitimate option than people had originally thought. Um, but I still, even at that point, I was like, man, Matthew 25 and, uh, revelation 14 and revelation 20,

and they're still in church tradition. I was like, ah, I still see the weight of evidence in favor of ECT, but I hadn't really, again, all the research I did for that book was more on the Jewish view of hell. And, uh, is it reversible? It wasn't really exploring the duration. So after the aftermath of the book, then ever since then, I've kind of in the back of my research time, when I have space, I'd kind of, you know, you know, go in and kind of, I kept exploring the annihilation versus eternal conscious torment view. And every, I mean, look, I,

let me preface everything I'm about to say with, uh, um, how do I, how do I say I, I, there's incredibly smart God honoring Bible, believing people who not only believe in eternal conscious torment, but they can, you know, show from scripture why they believe it. And it's obviously has been the dominant view in Protestant Western Christianity for the last 1500 years. So, and I want to respect that. And I do respect it tremendously. It's why it's taken me so long to change my view, but every...

I appreciate you respecting me on that, Preston, because I'm still there. Okay. So every, since 2011, every time I opened up the question and laid the two options out, looked at the passages, looked at the arguments, when I would read a traditionalist argue their position, it made me doubt the traditional view because I thought that the arguments were so bad. When I read the annihilation position, the textual, like digging into the actual exegesis of certain passages, I'm like, that makes perfect sense to me. Like, you know, Isaiah 66, when it talks about God returning and judging the wicked, and there's this massive slaughter, and there's all these corpses laying around for people to say, yeah, so what that really means is they're living forever and ever in a state of eternal conscious torment. Okay, so I'm doing word studies on what slaughter means, what death means, and Isaiah 66, looking at the images that are used there and cross-referencing how those images are used elsewhere and asking the question, do these images convey the idea that though the

body is dead, there's something in the person that still is living? And I was like, there's no textual exegetical evidence for that. Or when Daniel 12 says, God will raise the righteous to eternal life and the wicked to eternal contempt. And people say, see, that means eternal conscious torment. So I do a word study on contempt. And I realized you can't get that exegetically that eternal contempt means suffering forever and ever and ever and not quite actually dying out. Now I know I'm just picking apart a few paths, but these are examples of when I did the nitty-gritty exegetical work, I was seeing these really smart traditionalists, really smart, no doubt,

but just implementing an exegetical method that they don't themselves teach elsewhere. We're supposed to look at the context, look at how images are used elsewhere, do word studies. And when I was doing that exegesis, I was like, I'm sorry. I just, I, every time I did that, I was like, this passage seems a favor annihilation. So, and we can get into specifics if you want. We don't need to, I don't, I don't need to do that, do that.

But when I did that, I mean, so to give you an example, when I was doing this, people were kept, you know, to try to keep me on the, you know, on the, you know, people were scared I was going to the dark side. So they kept throwing all these articles at me. And I remember one, a few people said, look, okay, just go read D.A. Carson's The Gagging of God. He's got a whole chapter on annihilation.

Please go read that. And you will, I mean, he of God. He's got a whole chapter on annihilation. Please go read that. And he just absolutely annihilates the annihilation position, pun intended. I'm like, okay, okay, good. I don't want to go here. It's like job secure. There's like, it doesn't. Well, I know I'm jumping around.

Let me just back up and say too that I came at this question with the firm belief that God can do whatever he wants. If God wants to cause people to suffer forever and ever and ever, that actually, right or wrong, emotionally didn't even really bother me because I'm so zealous for the freedom of God. God is creator, I'm not. He does whatever he wants. If that is his view of justice, then that's his view of justice, then I have to deal with it. So I, in a sense, almost wanted the ECT position to be the most valid. And so I eagerly said, okay, I'm going to read the guy going to God. And D.A. Carson is among the most smartest evangelical thinkers there is. I mean, just hands down, the guy is just off the chart, ridiculously brilliant.

And I'm reading his critique of annihilation, and I'm just, you know, I'm looking around like, does anybody else see? Like, this is just horrible. Exegetically, it is the most uncompelling argument for the tradition. I really mean that. And I don't think he listens to podcasts, but I really, like, just the rest of the book is amazing. Everything he writes is amazing. I'm reading his critique and I'm like, have you actually understood the position? You haven't countered any exegesis. You're strawmanning this and pulling out arguments that just don't work. And then you sit back and say, see, therefore, I'm like, there is no therefore here. So again, people ask me, what has pushed you to the annihilation?

Largely, it has been, to me, the uncompellingness of the traditional critiques of the annihilation exegetical arguments. So again, I get fired up when I talk about this. So it comes out stronger than I hope it comes out. It's just, this has been my personal journey and kind of how I've emotionally wrestled with some of the exegetical arguments going back and forth. So yeah, I would say, and I'm going to say,

I'll just say it boldly. The annihilation view of hell is among the clearest doctrines I've ever seen in scripture. A lot of other things I believe, I'm still reformed. I believe in, you know, eternal security, all these things, but I can always find some good support for the other side. I'm like, given the weight of evidence, I kind of lean towards this view or whatever. I lean reformed. I lean, you know, that you can't lose your salvation, but man, Hebrews 6 is tough. There's several tough passages. With this one, aside from, I mean, the one verse that I still, um,

is probably the most supportive of eternal conscious torment would be Revelation 14, 11. But even then, as I look at the different ways we can understand that passage, I'm like, yeah, it doesn't have to mean that. Like there's several other very valid ways of interpreting that verse, but every other passage, even Matthew 25, what is it? 46, where it says, you know, the righteous will go away to eternal life and the wicked to eternal punishment. Even that one, which I thought was a slam dunk in favor of UCT as I looked at the language and how these words are used elsewhere i'm like it doesn't actually doesn't have to mean that so anyway long response yeah so let's like a give like a a short version of because i know you've got to get going here pretty quick um i've got time i got like 30 minutes but okay well we're just gonna

we can go an hour then if you want uh so there is a when people hear i believe the annihilation view i know you like to use terminal punishment sometimes too when they hear that view they think well this goes against tradition you know augustine others which hey i think i i one of the reasons why i have a hard time with it is i do i have a hard time going against what what tradition is traditionally said for thousands of years unless unless I'm just really, really, really convinced by the text. Like if I were as convinced by the text as you are about it,

I would, you know, I would be there too. But I think one of the things that happens that's really problematic is people will say, well, that's not an evangelical option. You can't be an evangelical and believe in this.

And John Stott kind of blows out of the water all by himself because everybody loves John Stott. But what, so what is your kind of response to, Hey, I'm an evangelical and I believe this. And John Stott kind of blows it out of the water all by himself because everybody loves John Stott. But so what is your kind of response to, hey, I'm an evangelical and I believe this, and here's why this is still an evangelical option. Sure. So when people say, you know, well, wait a minute, the entire history of the church has not believed this. I'm like, okay, well, let's be a little more precise. That's not entirely fair either. What's that? I said, that's not entirely fair, actually, either. But Augustine really kind of really put the hammer on it, you know, for about a thousand years.

Yeah. So it's really from Augustine on. Now, we have to be really clear. We're talking about the Western church. And so there's an entire Eastern tradition that would have diverse views on the afterlife in terms of punishment for the wicked. views on the afterlife in terms of punishment for the wicked. So it really, we're talking about 1500 years of Western Christianity that has by and large endorsed the eternal conscious torment view.

And I would say largely because they simply assumed Augustine's sort of exegesis. We don't see the question of how really explored too thoroughly after Augustine. Augustine was kind of the last major figure, well, one of the early major figures to explore it, and people kind of rely on that view. It's very easy to see where Augustine got it from. I mean, he came at the question with the presupposition that the soul of a human being is indestructible, it's immortal. So if you approach the question will

people live forever or will they have some or what will the life cease if you come out that question assuming that the soul is immortal annihilation is not an option you know it's like if you assume that the sky is blue and then ask the question is the sky blue or red it's like well of course you're not going to say you say red because you already come out assuming it's blue. So, and I, you know, obviously Augustine is way smarter than I ever will be. So I'm not belittling that, but it seems very clear that he came at this question

with a neoplatonic assumption about the immortality of the soul, which I would leave as not biblical. And even most biblical scholars, wherever they're at in the question of hell, would say, no, okay, so the Judeo, the Hebraic, and even New Testament view of humanity is that we are mortal, and that immortality is a gift given to the righteous. It's not simply an intrinsic part of humanity. It's why when, you know, they kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden, they said, you know, we need to kick them out lest they eat from the tree of life and live forever, not lest they simply exist forever and ever because that's who they are as human. No, being a creature,

being created is to be a mortal human, and you are dependent upon God for the gift of immortality. And that's why the view annihilation, I don't actually like the term annihilation because it, you know, poof, people have this idea of like being poof, you're, you know, annihilated out of existence. There's no, it's like material remains. And that's not really, that's why a lot of people say, you know, conditional immortality that living forever is contingent upon faith in Jesus Christ. So yeah, that yeah, that's, uh, uh, that's an important way to friend the question. Also, um, I think we have to understand that when we talk about, well, we have to understand that hell precisely Gehenna, the Greek word Gehenna is one metaphor or one way to understand the afterlife for non-believers. And so let me explain that more. I mean, you have Gehenna is used of where non-believers go when

they die. You have other images like the lake of fire, outer darkness, outside the city. Like these are all equally kind of images that the biblical writers, in particular, the New Testament writers and Jewish writers in the first century, talk about the future state of, I'll say, the wicked. But the central question is not, when we look at the biblical text, it's not what is the duration of hell? How long will people be there? What is its nature? The overarching question is, what is the final state of the wicked? And this is important when you go to the Old Testament, because when people often have this conversation, they say, well, the Old Testament doesn't say anything about this question because it doesn't mention hell.

And that's true. It doesn't mention hell. Sheol is not hell. But that's not as significant as people make it out to be, because the Old Testament says a lot about the final state of the wicked. And in the overwhelming Old Testament evidence of the future life is God's going to return. He's going to judge the wicked. And that judgment is often in terms of, it uses images of being slaughtered, being crushed, being destroyed, you get the impression from the overwhelming Old Testament weight that the final state of the wicked is not a state of existence.

It's a state of non-life, of death. And I mean that in the literal sense, that they had life on earth. When God returns to judge them, there will be a cessation of life. You don't have anything in the Old Testament that even hints towards some sort of ongoing existence of the disembodied soul of the righteous who are in eternal torment. So then you ask the question, okay, but the New Testament has the authority to sort of reverse that or add something to that. But then if you look at the broader use of images, when the New Testament, especially Jesus, talks about the final state of the wicked, use of images when the New Testament, especially Jesus, talks about the final state of the wicked,

the overwhelming evidence is, again, images that would convey the cessation of life. So it's within that overarching context of what is the final state of the wicked that we should ask the sub-question, okay, this idea of Gehenna, let's explore that on a more particular level so i don't have all this you caught me off guard with this but i i could cite all kinds of i told you that if you give me the outline you said i don't want to i mean i could pull up my notes here i mean i could pull up my notes here and and and you know quote some passages but let's just sit there because i kind of took a long time but so that's yeah and my whole point is, look, I am, text after text, after text, after text, after text through a biblical theological lens, asking the question, what does the text say about

the final state of the wicked? Yeah. And if people want to read more, I mean, you've got, you've done tons of blog posts on this, on PrestonSprinkle.com and your old Pathios blog. So there's plenty more stuff out there if they want to read more of the textual stuff. You know, Chris Date does a lot of debates where he just, I mean, he's like your classic, I've got 14 verses and I'm about to exegetically ninja you on all 14 verses, you know. So if you want to listen to those, that'll help you a little bit too. I think it is a little bit of a straw man on the conservative side to say, this is what tradition says and therefore I believe it. I think tradition matters and we should definitely care about what the church teaches. We should care about creed. But but you know, as evangelicals, we also need to really care about the text.

So one more funny story. I saw as a part of a conversation last spring where there was a traditionalist, there was a person on the fence and there were two annihilationists, me and Chris State were the two annihilationists. And the question was, you know, came up to the traditionalist. I won't say his name because I think it was just kind of telling. You know, he kept pushing the historical argument. Like, look, this has been the view of church history. Like, this is not some secondary issue. This is an important thing.

Church history, okay, you know, if there was diversity in church history, that'd be one thing, but there's this unanimous opinion, which I think, again, is overstated. And then somebody said, well, what if, you know, the text, what if the text says it? text, what if it's, what if the text says that? Like, what if tradition got it wrong? Like, we're still Bible-centered people, right? He's like, well, yes, but yeah, the weight of tradition kind of overwhelms whatever you think the text might say. Like, it was really pushing the church history card really hard. And then somebody asked, are you, are you a Baptist or a Presbyterian? And he says,

Oh, I'm a Baptist. And, and then the, you can kind of see the crowd kind of smiling. And the guy said, well, where is church history on that question? And he's like,

Oh, it's pretty much unanimous, like infant baptism. And he's like, and then the question, then he kind of started laughing. He, it's almost like he didn't realize like,

and then people, and then he said, well, why are you a Baptist? He's like, Oh, cause I think it's taught in scripture didn't realize like and then people and then he said well why are you a baptist he's like oh because i think it's taught in scripture regardless of what tradition says i literally i was sitting next to i was like i just smiled i was like i don't have no comment i have no comment here i just thank you for your honesty you know yeah i've had i've actually had those conversations with other fellow baptists um of we push we push uh tradition and history here but then we don't, you know.

Now, Everett Ferguson has tried his best to make an argument that, you know, credo baptism had its place in the early church and stuff. But it is funny. That is hilarious because I've had those conversations before where I'm like, okay, can we say this and also say that? Because, you know, we're kind of contradicting ourselves here, which I guess we all do that at some level. Sure, sure.

Okay, let's go to one more topic, um, topic of, of gay Christians, homosexuality, you know, you're leading this, uh, center now that you mentioned earlier, this is sort of what you're kind of devoting your day to day to, um, you've done a great job. I, you know, you and I have had plenty of conversations offline about this topic and about the debates that have happened and, and, you know, without, without trying to get back into the debates about the national statement, that kind of stuff, because those things are well-worn in public. People can decide what they believe on either side. But I think you've done a good job of just trying to be helpful and say, okay, on the one hand, I affirm the traditional view of marriage and of, you know, um, marriage between a man, between a man and a woman, et cetera, et

cetera. And you've also done a good job of saying that. But on the other hand of going, hey, I have a lot of friends who are gay and who are same-sex attracted. And I know other people who are good, faithful Christians who are saying, I'm going to die to myself for the rest of my life rather than give in to these sexual temptations I have. And I think you've done as good of a job as anybody of having the right tone about that publicly of just saying, hey, hey, like of a job as anybody of having the right tone about that

publicly of just saying, Hey, like we can all agree on what the Bible teaches about it, but we need to figure out how do we love our gay neighbor? You know, your book is people to be loved. How do we love them better? And we, these debates, like everything else in evangelicalism, when it comes to theology, politics, whatever, it turns into not what we agree on, but what we disagree on. And it starts being, let's like, here's our nuance. into not what we agree on, but what we disagree on. And it starts being, here's our nuance. Here's what we're going to fight about the nuances rather than what we can all agree on. So upfront, obviously, you hold a traditional view of this. And I remember you and I talking about this when you were saying, yeah, I think I'm there. I'm thinking about it, blah,

blah, blah. And you said, no, no, no, I believe that the weight of evidence of biblical data is just too strong. This is not an agree to disagree issue. And you kind of landed on the spot that I would say is the right spot, the Orthodox spot, whatever. But how has your journey kind of come from, okay, I do believe that, but how are you trying to engage people in the church on, okay, we all agree back here on this. Now, what are we going to do about it? Because practice is what matters. You know, how we talk about it, how we interact with people in our churches. I'm a pastor. How do I interact with people in my church? We have people in our church who struggle with same-sex attraction and things like that. You've done a good job of just trying to help

churches do that, not just to have theological debates. So what are some ways that you're doing that and ways that we can think about that? That's really good. A long question. Huge question. And so yeah, the center that I run is the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. We've got a website, centerforfaith.com. And has a ton of, I mean, blogs, resources, free resources, or other resources you can buy like, you know, DVDs and small group material and so on. So if somebody wants to check out kind of my greater overarching approach to this really complex conversation, you can check it out centerforfaith.com little promo. So how much are you for that, Brandon? Is that, you know,

I mean just your presence and your, and your, all right, all right. Payment enough for me, brother. Okay. Um, the more I study the theological aspect of this conversation, the more I'm convinced that the traditional view of marriage is not only, you know, traditional. It's not only correct, but it's like, I would say, it's very clearly revealed in Scripture. This is not some secondary issue that, like the timing of the rapture or whatever that, you know, it's like we can agree to disagree, like you said. So I'm very passionate about the theology. You know, it's like we can agree to disagree, like you said.

So I'm very passionate about the theology. Now, I'm equally passionate about our, not just our posture and how we hold that theology, not just a tone, but how we are radically loving people who are attracted to the same sex, whether they identify as gay or just simply same-sex attracted or whatever. And part of that is because our reputation as a church over the last half a century in this conversation has distracted people from the gospel. It has diminished the gospel because we have been very pharisaical in how we have been lenient on some sins and then yet built this reputation for ourselves that we are sort of anti-gay. There are a lot of people, I would say millions of people in America right now, who believe, who think that if you're gay, if you simply experience same-sex attraction, that the Christian God not only has no place for you, but that doesn't even want you. And you may say, oh, no, I don't believe that.

That's just a few Westboro Baptist people. No, no, no. That is probably the majority view among people who either are gay or lesbian or have a friend who is, or maybe were raised in a church and now believe in a church. Look, 83% of LGBT people were raised in a Christian church. 51% have left the church by the time they turn 18. So this is not like an us versus them conversation.

This is very much why have our people who have wrestled with their sexuality in this way not been, you know, found the church to be a place of love and community. Now, it's easy to point the finger at them instead of look at ourselves and say, what are we doing to cause the problem? Right. But then now people listen to her and say, well, that's because they chose the gay lifestyle, right? Or that's because they want to have lots and lots of gay sex.

And if they want to live a sexually immoral life, then the church isn't the place for them. Well, think about this. So 83% raised in a church, 51% have left the church after 18. Guess how many, guess what percentage have left the church because of theological disagreement on marriage and same-sex relations? 3%. 3% have left because they just couldn't take primarily because they couldn't agree with the church's traditional view of marriage, that same-sex relations are sin, agree with the church's traditional view of marriage, that same-sex relations are sin,

meaning 97% left for relational reasons. Nobody cared to listen to their story. Nobody walked with them. Nobody gave them time and attention. Or they were simply kicked out. Or they were mocked and dehumanized and made fun of and were sick and tired of overhearing gay jokes while they were wrestling as a 15-year-old in the closet. And so they had to leave the church to find love and community, not just sheer affirmation of everything they want to do with their body, whatever, but just simply, I need a family, I need a community to help so I can wrestle out loud with my sexuality. And so to me, it's not, I mean, that, you know, people say, I'm just going to stand up for the truth. Well, part of the truth is loving people well, especially people who have been marginalized and shunned by the religious elite. And so we are actually not upholding the truth when we fail to love those who are wrestling with their sexuality or gender identity in a way that's different than the majority. Now, here's the other thing, too.

majority. Now, here's the other thing too. Most people, I would say an overwhelming percentage of people who change their view from traditional to affirming, where they used to affirm, sorry, they used to believe in a traditional view of marriage, and now they affirm same-sex marriage in the church as a moral good, as an option. An overwhelming percentage of people shift their view not because they neutrally explored the theological debate and they found the affirming arguments far more compelling. That is not why people are changing their view predominantly. An overwhelming percentage change their view. If they're straight, it's because they're sick and tired of seeing their gay friends be shunned and mocked and dehumanized at church. They're sick and tired of hearing how their gay sibling is suicidal

because of how they're treated at youth group. And they're so sick and tired of that, that the only way they know how to love their gay friend or neighbor is to change their theology. Or if they are gay and they end up changing from a traditional to an affirming theology, the number one response I hear from dozens and dozens and dozens of people is, look, I can live without sex, but I cannot live without love, intimacy, and community. And I just can't find that in the church. I can't just have a vocation of no to gay sex and then be left,

you know, in the back of the pew somewhere where nobody knows what to do with me. I can't just have a vocation of no to gay sex and then be left, you know, in the back of the pew somewhere where nobody knows what to do with me. I need community. And so a lot of people have gay people who are Christians who used to have a traditional theology who now have an affirming theology. The number one response I get from them is, look, I don't find the theology particularly compelling, the affirming theology, but I just can't. This just isn't a viable life for me, a life of, you know, celibacy or just, you know, being misunderstood by the church. I can't do this by myself. So the response from the church, we often make it all about theological things. So people are changing their view from a traditional

affirming, and now we've got to wage some theological debate without actually loving people well. And I tell people, until you love people well, nobody is going to want to listen to your theology. There's a huge theological problem in the church right now with this conversation. But until we radically love and care for people well and create context where people can find love and intimacy and authentic community, until we do that, we will continue to lose the theological debate because it actually isn't primarily about a theological debate. Sorry, that's a long answer to a really good question. You know, the people I have, a few people in my life, including a family member who

are not only gay and acting on it, but married and have shunned the church because of it. You know, they were in the church and shunned the church because of it. You know, they had, they were in the church and shunned the church because of it. And, you know, I, there's almost nothing I can do to try to talk to them and say anything without them saying, nope, you're a Christian and you just can't understand. And you don't love me. You can say you love me when you say this stuff, but that's not real love. Real love is affirming what I believe that, you know, that stuff happens too. But a lot of times it seems like, you know, a good friend of mine who went through this, he, like you said, theologically started out going, okay, I get it. The Bible teaches I shouldn't act on this attraction, these temptations. I get it. I believe the Bible. I'm

good. Still felt ostracized, still felt not loved. Primarily, like you said, it wasn't like somebody was up at the pulpit, kind of the pulpit saying all gay people are burning in hell regardless of what they say about Jesus. It was the gay jokes. It was the, uh, the over the, the so emphasis on marriage, which marriage is beautiful. And it's a, it's a cornerstone of, of the Bible in some ways and of societies in some ways, but sort of making it this sort of, if you're not married, then you're not really living your best life now, basically. And so he's just like, okay, I don't know what to do with that.

So he goes to a liberal church who is fully affirming. He still biblically and theologically is saying, I disagree with this church, but at least I can walk in the doors and feel welcome and feel loved. And of course, you know, on one hand, my argument would say, no, try to stay in the right tradition and go to the right, find a church that's going to love you well. But I totally understand what he did. Eventually he's there. He gets, you know, essentially indoctrinated by that church. And now he is a Christian who fully a thousand percent

believes that God thinks it's okay for him to be married to a man and et cetera, et cetera. And so he, he started the other way. It was like you said, the relational aspect. And then the theology actually came later because his theology was so informed by relationships and by community, which in different ways, all of us do that in different topics. Absolutely. Yeah, so it's not theology or

relationships. It is exactly what you said. It's relationships inform and shape our theology, whether we know it or not. One of the best books, isn't even a Christian book on this, is The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, 2013. And he pretty much proves from a psychological perspective that 90% of why people believe what they do has little to do with just raw rationality. Intuition precedes rationality, meaning people kind of believe what they want to believe. And then they rationalize it later, whether they're

even aware of that process or not. Um, and he even digs into why people just from a psychological perspective, lean conservative or, you know, liberal or whatever. So yeah, that's when we just, you know, he compares it to like a, to like a person, a human riding an elephant. The elephant is our emotions, our intuition, all this stuff kind of beneath our rationality. And then the rider is our rationality. So we try to steer the elephant by talking to the little guy at the top. And the guy at the top is like, you know, he's like, he's not going to say it. But if you're standing back, you're looking at this, you're like, dude, that elephant is going to go where it wants to go.

You need to somehow woo the elephant. You need to speak to the it, but if you're standing back and looking at this, you're like, dude, that elephant's going to go where it wants to go. You need to somehow woo the elephant. You need to speak to the elephant, not the rider. I mean the rider may be able to kind of shift a little bit, but if you just combat bad rationality with good rationality without going to the heart of the matter, going to the reason why people are believing what they believe, going to the emotions, the intuition and all that, then you're not going to win the rational argument. Yeah, and it's – at the end of the day, what people hear is, okay, so now you want me to water it down. You don't want me to preach about it. I'm not allowed to talk about it. I'm not allowed to counsel people and tell them that they shouldn't act on this stuff. And of course, you're not saying that. I'm not saying that. You've been more than clear in the things that you've written and said publicly that you are not changing your view theologically. We don't have to

leave our theology at the door to love people well. And that's, you know, that's the thing that we always run into. And it's a tension that I think we all have. I mean, even at our church as pastors, we're still struggling with, okay, you know, we want to preach on marriage and elevate marriage and talk about how beautiful marriage is. But we also have single college students who every time we preach a sermon on marriage feel like they're not, you know, God doesn't love them. God's holding out on them. And so it's the type of things that we all wrestle with. But what you shouldn't be saying is it's either I pound this from the pulpit or I am accepting of people. You can do both. You can pound it from the pulpit and preach it rightly with the right tone and with the right, you know,

the right ethic while also saying, you're welcome here. You're loved here. Even if you, even if you come in our church and you don't agree with us theologically, you're welcome to be here because you're going to hear the Bible taught rightly every week. Go somewhere where you're welcome and let them teach you the Bible. Right. That's right. That's it. Yeah. You get it. You pass. Okay. I passed the Preston test. But yeah, I think even where we disagree on this, I mean, there are ways that you can nuance and disagree with this and still all agree that A, the Bible teaches that it's between a man and woman

and B, the Bible teaches that we should love the oppressed and the outsider and the sinner. And we shouldn't have to take between those two. Okay, last thing before we go here. You also wrote a book recently on discipleship, which was sort of a little bit outside. You get kind of characterized as a guy who just tried to start fights, and you're not that guy. You're nonviolent, so of course you're not trying to start fights. But you have written

on a lot of things that are sort of controversial, and I think what you've tried to do is help evangelicals just think about the other side more than anything else. Just, hey, let's deconstruct some of this and talk about it. Your book on discipleship, I mean, obviously, in some sense, if you're writing that book, you're trying to make a certain case that discipleship needs to be renewed or refound or recalibrated or something like that. But just talk a little bit about that book and about what your feelings are on discipleship in the church and where you want things to go. So yeah, the book was, it was one that, it was the only book I've written that kind of came to me

rather than me coming up with the idea. It was a publisher who's also a friend of mine who said, hey, we have this big Barna study that was done on the state of discipleship in the church. We need somebody to write kind of a poppy level book that kind of unpacks the content of the study because the study is, you know, it's super, you know, it's not the easiest read, you know. So I was like, you know what? I'm actually interested in that quite a bit. I kind of

pricked my interest, piqued my interest. And so I ended up doing that. You know, the study was called The State of Discipleship. And my book was therefore branded as sort of a discipleship book, which it is, but it's also maybe even largely a book on what I think the church can and should be. And I just, I wonder, because I mean, I think it's, you know, I think probably 11 people have read it, so you might be one of the 11, but it's one that I think, I wonder if it would have been more widely spread if it was maybe branded as, you know, kind of a, how do we, how do we do church kind of thing? But, you know, I get a lot of questions. I've been on a long journey and what church is, what church should be,

what are the problems with church? How can we fix it? What are some, you know, fresh and imaginative ways in which we can do church that would be helpful in 2018? So yeah, it explored that question. And long story short, the study showed, the Barnett study showed that discipleship largely isn't happening in the church. We have a decrease in, well, not so much a decrease in church attendance, although that's there too, but a massive decrease in things like biblical literacy, holy living, involvement, not just in, you know, churchy things, but just living out your faith. I mean, everything is on decline,

especially when it comes to younger people. I mean, there's several different statistics for this, but roughly 80% of people who were involved in a youth group are gone from church and the faith by the time they turn 28 or whatever. That's, that's, you know, there's variations of that statistic. And it's like, okay, so whatever we're doing in terms of youth, it's not, it's not working. And that's kind of the conclusion from the study that the Barnett study is, yeah, whatever we're doing, it's not working. So, and here's what, here's why. So then I explored what can we be doing that could actually integrate a more New Testament shaped vision for discipleship in our churches.

And so some of it, some of the book was non-controversial. I don't think, well, anything can be. And yet some of it, I mean, I can't write a book without having some controversy on it. So even my last two chapters, one was on ethnic diversity and reconciliation in the church. I don't know if there's a book that's focused on discipleship that actually brings in the priority of ethnic reconciliation, multi-ethnicity in the church as discipleship. Like you're not being a disciple as holistically as you ought until you are involved with or pursuing to the best of your ability, you know, ethnic reconciliation. And then also the last chapter talked about simplicity in the church.

And that would probably be the most hard hitting chapter where I just raise the elephant in the room question, you know, statistically, the American evangelical church is the wealthiest social organization that history has ever seen. We're a multi-trillion dollar organization. And just statistically, I'm not advocating this in practice, but statistically, if every born-again evangelical actually gave 10% of their income to church, we could, with all that money, end world poverty tomorrow. Like there'd be not a single poor... And again, that poverty would continue because you don't just give a bunch of people handouts and expect that to be long lasting.

So I'm just saying, just in perspective, we have so much money. So I raise the question, are we as a church spending that money on things that directly and effectively help and further the kingdom of God? And most people, if they're honest, are going to kind of say, well, yeah, probably not. We do spend a lot of money on stuff that isn't directly related to or helping discipleship. And then I just try to make a case that we, look, I'm not saying anybody's like, throw away all their church buildings and start house churches and do all that. I mean, I did lean in that direction, but it was like, man, what can we do to create a much, much more simple brand of church?

Let's just get rid of maybe not all the bells and whistles, but most of them, especially the expensive ones, and start asking a question. If Jesus was in charge of our church budget, how would he spend our money? So anyway, yeah, I'm super excited. Every now and then, every few months, I do the thing that every author hates to do. You go back to a book you wrote, and you just kind of flip through. You spend five minutes kind of flipping through it. And whenever I do that with that book, every few months, I do the thing that every author hates to do. You go back to a book you wrote and you just kind of flip through. You spend five minutes kind of flipping through it. And whenever I do that with that book, I'm like, this is really good. I think this is – You're proud of that one, yeah.

No, but I don't say that. Most of the other books, I kind of cringe like, ah, I'd say that differently now. Or, oh, man, I can't believe I believe that. But this one, I'm like, I think this could be really helpful for the church. So, yeah, I think I've got some good for the church. So yeah, I think I've got some good ideas in there. Well, the book is called Go. It came out in 2016. So people can go find it. Well, Preston, man, I really enjoyed this. Thanks so much. If you are a church grammar listener, go to subscribe to Theology in the Raw. Preston is in some ways similar to this podcast,

and you're talking to a lot of different people from a lot of different backgrounds and talking about a lot of different topics. And I think you're always really helpful in your perspectives. Even where we disagree, you're asking the right questions with the right tone. And to me, that's like half the battle. So if you're listening to this, go listen to Preston's podcast as well. And if you're listening to Theology in the Raw, I encourage you to go to Grammar Girl. Or what's it called? Yeah, Church Grammar Girl.

You will not find me. Church Grammar, yeah. I'm sorry. I actually love the day. I love the word grammar applied to theological reflection. So I love the brand of the podcast. It's awesome. Well, I'm not, yeah, maybe I should just start calling it Grammar Boy.

Maybe people would remember it better if I went that way. All right. Thanks, man. I enjoyed it. All right. Take care. You too, man. it all right take care you too man