Theology in the Raw - 751: #751 - Living at the Intersection of Church & Culture in the U.K.: A Conversation with Peter Lynas

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

On episode #751 of Theology in the Raw Preston has a conversation with Peter Lynas. Peter and Preston talk about the current state of the transgender conversation in the U.K., evangelicalism in Northern Ireland, and how to embody both truth and grace in a culture hostile to the Christian faith. Peter is a former barrister, who then completed his M Div at Regent College in Vancouver where he serves on the Board. He leads the team at Evangelical Alliance in Northern Ireland. Peter is passionate about faith in the public square and is a regular media commentator. He is married to Rose, has two daughters, loves running and hates fish. He is the author of Transformed - a resource on understanding transgender available at www.eauk.org/trans Follow Peter on Twitter www.reimaginingfaith.com and www.eauk.org 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, Theology Narah listeners. Welcome back to another episode of this podcast. I will be in several different cities in the fall. September 5th, I'll be in Indianapolis. September 16th and 17th in Fort Wayne, Indiana. September 23rd and 24th, Richmond, Virginia. First time ever going to Richmond, Virginia. And it's going to be the first time I will ever go to New York City the following week, September 27th to 28th. I will be in New York City for the first time. And I must say up until now, Chicago pizza rules. It's the best pizza on the planet. So prove me wrong, New York. I'm going to be sampling probably too much pizza While I'm there and I'm also going to be speaking At Church of the City Is that the name of the church? John Tyson's hood Over there in Manhattan

I'll be in Colorado Springs October 8th and 9th I'll be in Minneapolis For two weeks Not straight but on November 5th And also the following week at Northwest University. There's a few other events that are brewing that will be up on the website centerforfaith.com. Go to the events page, check it out. For most of these that I just mentioned, you have to register and pay. Okay. So you got to sign up. If you plan on going,

got to sign up. And that's, I mean, those events are practically right around the corner. So especially the Indianapolis one and the Fort Wayne events. So if you plan on going, then you got to sign up, like do so really soon. If not, you might not get a spot. If you don't want to go, that's cool too. Okay, so for today, my guest, Peter Linus, he's an awesome guy. You know, there's a few people you come across and you talk to them, you read some stuff they've written, and you're like, where have you been all of my life? Wow, that sounds interesting. Anyway. Uh, yeah. So I, I came across Peter Linus, uh, through the so-called or the not so-called, but the, the unbelievable podcast, not that it's such an amazing podcast that I think it's unbelievable. It's actually titled unbelievable, um, with Justin Briarley and Justin is an awesome dude. And he awesome. he often has debates, not dialogues, but full on debates on his podcast. And a few months ago, he had Peter Linus and another person whose name escapes me, Jenny, I want to say, who is a transgender Christian. And he wanted Peter and this person talk about transgender issues. And I was blown away at how informed

and gracious Peter was. He's a lawyer by trade. And if you listen to that podcast, I would encourage you to go listen to that episode. Maybe even before you hear him here, or maybe after, I don't know. But his um, I, his lawyer-ness comes out in that dialogue. He is incredibly sharp. Um, but there's a lot of really sharp lawyers in the world. Um, Peter also is incredibly pastoral, a very gracious guy. And I was so blown away at his, um, not just his articulation of what he believes, but I was more impressed with how graciously he went about that. Peter is the director of the Evangelical Alliance in Northern Ireland. So he's got this

kicking Northern Irish accent. He also has an MDiv for Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is one of my favorite theological institutions. He's a speaker. He's a writer, he's the author of a free resource called Transformed. Transformed is put out by the Evangelical Alliance, and it's a very short yet thorough and gracious overview of the transgender conversation. So we do talk a lot about trans stuff. I know that's been kind of every other interviewee that I have on this podcast. It seems that they have some involvement with the transgender conversation. That's somewhat intentional, but also not.

Yeah, I kind of sometimes I kind of look up and I'm like, wow, every other guest has been speaking into the trans conversation. So we do get into that. The first half of the podcast is all about transgender stuff. So we do get into that. The first half of the podcast is all about transgender stuff. The second half is just about church, about ministry, about culture, about Jordan Peterson, about N.T. Wright, about resurrection, about evangelism, about Northern Ireland, and lots of other great stuff. So please welcome to the show for the first time, Peter Linus. All right. I'm here with a guy who I've really wanted to have on this podcast for quite some time now. I first heard Peter on the Unbelievable podcast with Justin Briley in a conversation with a transgender person. And I was so impressed, Peter, with how you balanced a commitment to the truth and yet really did so graciously and compassionately and honoring the

humanity of somebody who, you know, you guys were dialoguing with, where you were dialoguing with, and there were some, you know, some significant disagreements, but I never saw you get kind of heated, you know, or really just, oh, I'm just going to win this argument, or you really honored the person. So I want to come back to that, but why don't you first give us a brief snapshot of who Peter is, what's your background, and how did you get into ministry? Hey, well, thanks for that. It's great to be on here. I've been looking forward to this too. I'm based in Northern Ireland in Belfast. That's the strange accent that you'll hear. And I worked as a lawyer for five years, so a court lawyer here. So we're the funny ones, a barrister who dresses up in the wig and the gown.

Really enjoyed that. So that told me to argue with people barrister who dresses up in the wig and the gown. I really enjoyed that. So that told me to argue with people. I used to get paid to argue with people. So now I just take that out of my wife and kids, you know, that was, that was, so there's one part of me trained that way. And then I went off to Regent College in Vancouver, had an amazing time there, studied theology for three years. I loved that. And my wife and I worked there or studied there. Came back to Cambridge briefly for a couple of years, did some public policy think tank work around family stuff. And I now work with the Evangelical Alliance,

which is the largest and oldest body representing evangelical Christians here in the UK. And so that work takes me really into the public square and onto media quite a bit on some of these kind of issues. Well, can you unpack more with what the Evangelical Alliance is? Because that's for, you know, most of my listeners are in the States. Is there a comparable United States kind of organization? Are you affiliated with anything more international? Or is it specifically a UK thing?

So yeah, the World Evangelical Alliance was kind of birthed out of the uk so we're the original guys we fell out with our u.s friends 170 years ago on the issue of slavery we didn't agree with slave ownership and the u.s guys wanted that so we said then you can't be members we've since there's not a simple parallel partly for that historical reason yeah but mainly we work with churches having them in terms of mission and evangelism, but also on public policy and advocacy. So we don't have the same maybe lobbying and think tank space as you guys would in the States. It's a lot smaller, that space. So we're probably the primary group that would represent evangelical churches, both to government and to media, as well as resourcing

them to do the kind of mission work. So we're a pretty small team of 40 people. We've been around over 170 years and it's a fun space because it's not, I love it because it's not just public policy or not just church. The mission is trying to bring these things together and say, even on a topic as difficult as transgender sexuality, these are critical missional church engaging culture moments. So that's, that's what floats my my boat and I guess us as an organization. So you're not, well, so you're not, it's not like you're doing pastoral training.

I mean, you're doing, you're really living at the intersection between church, culture, politics. And so is that correct? Helping the church understand kind of what's going on in the culture? Yeah. So some of our staff would be more on the missional end and maybe developing resources specifically around that. But quite a number of us are very much at that, the advocacy missional, the missional public theology. It's maybe not the catchiest, but that's where we are. We're wanting to wrestle with what does the Bible say in this cultural context and moment. And for the church, we are about serving and resourcing the church. So a lot of our members are individuals, but many are churches.

So it's really saying we want to help you church be the best church you can be at this moment in time. Okay, wow, that's exciting. Can you give us a lay of the land of what is happening in the UK specifically with the, we'll say the gender and sexuality conversation. Cause I know that this is, I know in the, anywhere in the West is a massive clash and between, you know, the public policy and the church, but not just between the church, but even other people who aren't even believers are, you know,

there's just a lot going on. Can you maybe give us a two minute snapshot on where are we at in the UK on this conversation on a public level? Yeah, absolutely. So they, in terms of the sexuality, same sex marriage came in, in most of the UK. So England, Scotland, Wales, a few years ago, Northern Ireland, where I'm based doesn't have it. In fact, it's live in our Westminster this very moment as we are recording. There's a push to try and change that. But largely speaking, that's been accepted in the mainland GB and England and Wales. That's gone through.

But the trans one is right on the cusp of the minute. There's a really interesting cultural conversation in the sense that there had been moves to push self-identification and really go ahead with that. But interestingly, it's just like we've reached this slight sort of breaking, people going, well, maybe we don't want to go there. And the longer this goes on, the more it seems we're getting a little bit of caution. So something like the Sunday Times, one of our main newspapers, has definitely begun to push a very questioning narrative. Now, most of the other papers are pretty pro, but we've definitely begun to see a little shift and a tip. But overall, the culture is, yes, pro-trans, this is all good. You should self-identify. All kids should be allowed to just crack on and make the changes. Now, overall, our medical establishment's a little

more conservative probably than most places in the States. blockers at 12 but you wouldn't be allowed any surgery below 18 and so we're relatively cautious in that sense but scotland in particular has been pushing self-identification maybe as young as 16 and england was all set for that but as i say they've almost just hit the brakes partly i suspect the chaos of everything else going on has distracted everybody. But also we've seen the feminists begin to rise up, as has happened globally, lesbians and others raising deep concerns. And actually, we make this strange coalition with free speech advocates, evangelical Christians, lesbians, radical feminists, all saying, hold on, is this really the way we want to go? And a big kind of red flag and caution. on is this really the way we want to go and a big kind of red flag and caution from my vantage point it seems like there's a a high number of uk-based um yeah radical feminists or lesbians that are

really non-religiously affiliated and very i guess liberal in their in their politics otherwise um that are speaking out and i've been you know it seems like every time I look for a secular, let's just say concern of a particular ideology that's wrapped up in this conversation, I feel like nine times out of ten, I'm reading somebody who's from the UK. It seems like there's a disproportionate number of UK voices rising up. Have you noticed that or am I just noticing that because maybe i'm not in the uk so i keep noticing that there seems to be a lot of uk voices that are yeah speaking into this conversation there definitely seem to be quite a number of female and feminist academics speaking

into this space i don't know if it's something to do with the security of tenure in the uk system gives them maybe a little bit more leeway and so definitely in the press there's a couple of voices coming through and so we're definitely seeing I agree with you there is a rise in the questioning voices in fact I wonder if we're nearly at a kind of peak level of this conversation just at the very very upper echelons in academia they're definitely the pushback is becoming it's almost a tipping point i think and we'll be interested to see if we see that trickle down it's like it's gone as far as it can go and then a small number but a significant number of academics are definitely challenging

the rhetoric and the narrative and saying this is going to eradicate women and i think women so what's for me anyway culturally then women's sport is the other kind of more grassroots level that this kicks in at so you've got academics at a high level then you've women's sport and martina nebratilova the tennis player and then a swimmer in britain called sharon davies they've both been very vocal about their concerns or questions and i think people have suddenly gone oh yeah okay so men are competing in women's sport. And I say that advisedly. It's not as simple as that.

But people are really going, that's not fair. That doesn't work. Women's sport would be over if that's allowed. And so I do think sport will become or could already be another of these cultural tipping points around this. That's interesting. Yeah. It's one that, like you said, it's one thing for a bunch of academics to kind of banter around and, you know, talk about this, but that's not going to grasp the populace.

But once you get into sport, I mean, obviously that's going to reach, you know, 95% of the population, which it does. You see it at school sports day. Sorry. And things like that. So I've been talking to friends who are maybe a little not sure about it kind of thinking well i'm inclined to just say live and let live you crack on right then there's this kid who used to be a boy who's now beating my girl in the running race yeah and that just doesn't seem fair and they're only 10 11 years old and three weeks ago they were turning up in a boy's uniform and they were called sam and now they're turning up and now they're sammy and they're turning up as a girl and they get to run the girls race they're like

that's that's not fair they can't compete against my kid in a football game or rugby you know so how does this somebody who was a boy weeks ago and so literally practically then parents are going oh so that's the implication I'm like yes that is the outworking of sport. I mean, every time I hear where this conversation hits sports, it's from people that are very critical of it. It seems, I mean, I don't want to downplay the complexity of the broader conversation, but it seems that when it comes to sports, like, look, you can believe that men and women are psychologically exactly the same. You can believe that they're equal in all other areas. So with sports, it just seems like how do you, how can people not see that?

Look, you can elevate gender identity over your your sexual identity all you want but when it comes to sports i mean it just seems like an orwellian twist of logic i mean what's the other argument or what do you have you faced people that are constructing a decent coherent argument for why male-bodied people should be among female-bodied persons in sports? I think not great. I guess the case of Kastor Semenye, the South African runner, is the more ambiguous one. So she's internationally a 100-meter runner. But in her case, she probably suffers from

or experiences an intersex condition. So there's a lot more ambiguity there. So again, that's sometimes used as a way to push this agenda and the court of arbitration and sport in switzerland has ruled on that case and said she does have to suppress hormones so she obviously has parts of her that were biologically male so but that is a classic in my view of using an intersex condition to push the trans agenda and those are two radically different things most trans people virtually all do not there was no ambiguity at birth for them and vice versa most intersex people don't claim to be trans but i've seen that ambiguity used and then people are taking

that case and kind of trying to build from it to say this is unfair where should this person compete and i have some sympathy for that it's a very difficult case but it is a different case of somebody with a dsd as they call her an intersex condition and and so but those are then used as the way you always pick pick on that and piggyback a trans case behind that um so i think some ambiguity there and that causes confusion when i talk to people they're like oh but what about that yeah per caster simenye and i'm like no i have great deal of sympathy i think she was mistreated and they asked her to take tests without telling her properly what they were and there was some some sort of engagement there that was it was really inappropriate at the time but fundamentally you're back to as you said the pretty obvious playing field that if

somebody who was born male and has trained all their life as a male converts even later in life and even if they do go on their hormones they still are bulked and built differently that's just a fundamental and most people in the street get that immediately go oh i see your point right and then the conversation often shifts about what this looks like yeah now let's let's i literally was going to say transition, but let's, I want to look at the other side of the coin here because I mean, so far we're focusing on, you know, kind of an ideology in the public narrative. Let's flip it around though, because there's a whole other side here where there are people

who are not lobbying for anything. They're simply trying to not commit suicide because they are suffering from a torturous, unwanted condition. They're confused or ostracized. From the time they were maybe three or four years old, they felt like they weren't at home in their body. And this is a, I know for both you and I, and I'm concerned about the destructive ideology.

I'm also deeply concerned about equipping the church to respond in the radical grace and compassion of Christ towards those who are suffering profoundly. And I've got friends, and I know you do too, that man, on a daily basis, just to not, just to battle suicide ideation on a daily basis, largely due to their gender dysphoria. It's like, I don't even have a category for what that must feel like. Can you speak into that a little bit? Because I know you've been around lots of trans or gender dysphoric people and help us understand that side of this conversation. Yeah, well, I think it's hugely important. And I think one of the mismatches is when we respond or engage ideologically or theologic sometimes with a

pastoral person in front of us and vice versa then when we're all pastoral to an ideology and when we get that equation wrong we get ourselves into a lot of trouble um and so they're you know in meeting first thing i did when we were preparing a resource was to meet those transgender groups locally that are engaged in the LGBT community more broadly. So I had some friends and connections from media work I'd done. So I invited groups around. They said Christian or not. That wasn't the issue. It was just to say, tell me about how you experienced this.

And one of the quotes we put in the resource was if you've met one transgender person you've met one transgender person and it was something somebody said and i just went ah that is so helpful for me there is no it's very obvious when you think about it but there's no one oh i've met a trans person i understand no because the next person's having a totally different experience some live reasonably comfortably with that discomfort or disconnect for some it's massive and daily battles with suicide as you were saying for others it manifests itself radically differently so i find that really helpful kind of first board of call if you know one person that's

their experience and somebody else's could be radically different and we've got to understand that meet each person at their point of need yeah and probably the other thing I guess for me was a bit around language. There's so much confusion. So there are people with gender dysphoria, and that's a pretty small number of people in the UK and globally with that recognized medical condition where the level of disconnect is strong enough to meet the medical threshold.

Then there's a whole group of people for whom it's not. There's some level of disconnect, but it's not that strong strong and some people call that gender and congruence to a degree some people have different phrases there aren't recognized medical criteria even for a lot of these and then there's the much wider ideological movement which lots of people are in and people might be non-binary or genderqueer or gender fluid and and actually that language does a disservice to everybody in many ways because it's really unclear what we're talking about so it's back to one person's experience is so different so the person with gender dysphoria who wrestles with that every

day and has done so for years needs significant help whereas somebody else might be just experimenting pushing around unsure captured by an ideology for a period and we we have to try and treat those people a little differently in our engagement, but it's really hard to read that initially. So my primary lens is to engage compassionately, meet people at their point of need. And then at some point I'm going to shift gear, but that might be 10 minutes, three hours, 10 months,

depending on my journey and my level of relationship before I'm going to be able to maybe push around and explore some of their backstory. I think it's Mark Yarhouse usefully has one line. I feel like I've met you in chapter seven. Can we go back a few chapters? Because normally we're going to meet somebody presenting as trans. They've, they're going to present in their new identity to us. And we might not know some of their backstory. We might not even know they're trans. It might take some time before it begins to open up and we might not know some of their backstory. We might not even know they're trans. It might take some time before it begins to open up and we might be able to explore that. So, I mean, a lens I've used is that compassion, integrity, redemption.

Jesus at the well, I think that's a kind of simple summary. You meet people at their point of need, as he did the woman in the well in the middle of the day. He moves to integrity pretty quickly. Hey, the man you wish not your husband. You've had five husbands. That may take us weeks to get to anything like that kind of conversation but there's an integrity moment he calls it out but he always wants to move to redemption so she goes back and tells everybody hey come and meet the guy who told me everything i'd ever done and he she brings

everybody from the town to meet this jesus guy at the well and that's where i want to move to with people is ultimately something that's redemptive, transformative. I'm not saying simple, Oh, they get fixed. Don't, don't hear that. But I want it to be redemptive and transformative, but that's a movement and a journey. And it's not going to be quick in most cases either. By transformative, you're not saying that, Oh, the gender dysphoria is just going to go away or their battle with feeling at home in their body or whatever is just going to, you know, that's just a natural byproduct of, you know, praying the sinner's prayers. Like many conditions that people suffer from or wrestle with, whatever language you want to use. I mean, we can experience these from birth to the grave. You know, there's people that with all kinds of different conditions or things,

or even especially if somebody has gender dysphoria, identifies as trans, and let's just say they've also have had some traumatic experiences. Not that every transgender person has had a real bad past, but quite a few have, I mean, statistically and just anecdotally in my life, some of the horrific traumatic things that they've been through like that. That affects your psyche in such ways that, yeah, you'll probably carry the effect, the ongoing effect of those traumatic experiences to the grave. And then you have the whole social stigma and sometimes spiritual abuse and misunderstanding i mean it's it's complicated um it totally is so definitely not saying a quick fix absolutely not uh and you know the analogies are always limited there's always limitations

there's something to depression or anorexia sometimes used as a as an analogy yeah you're saying it can be like that so we don't want to endorse the condition and say hey it's okay there's nothing we we want to see change and transformation but it won't be instant if an anorexic person meets jesus they don't overnight or addiction i mean i have a friend who's addicted to drugs and his when he came to faith it just disappeared like that but and his view almost was that that would happen for everybody and i had to work and say you are the the one in a hundred it can happen you're proof that it does happen but it's not the norm and and and the reality is your expectation of other addicts yeah they're just going to encounter jesus and all sense of addiction just

drops that's not realistic you know and likewise with this so for the odd person that might radically transform but for most it's a lifelong battle to continue to wrestle with that condition to be disabled to be in community where others come around you as all of us do with whatever we all have our things our crosses that we bear with the things that we carry through so for some people it's greed or porn or addiction or, you know, a whole range of things in that list. And we need to be in a community that gathers around us on the journey. And the discipleship journey on this one is hard. I mean, it's tough, tough, tough for those who have gender dysphoria, for sure. Yeah. And I think, yeah, seeing the discipleship journey,

just that language is so helpful. I mean, discipleship is a journey, obviously, but especially in this conversation, it seems that we do need to, I've got a good friend who experiences gender dysphoria her whole entire life. And yeah, it's just been so helpful to understand kind of what this experience is like. And she's so good at meeting people where they're at and giving them, you know, giving them space to, to, to not be expected to figure it all out overnight. You know, maybe, you know, maybe somebody has certain pronouns that they want you to, you know, and this is getting into a specific heated debate within this conversation, but I mean, maybe you need to meet them where they're at and use the

pronouns that they want you to use. And maybe I got another friend who two years into her discipleship journey, she came to grips with the fact that she was a female and she became somewhat okay with people calling her she, but that took two years of really being sold out for Jesus, committed to the gospel, preaching the gospel, and being a genuine, just radical follower of Christ. And even then it took a while for her to really come to grips with her sexed body, you know, and, and, and even now it's just, everything's so raw. You know, I think we need to give people space to wrestle with that. Like you said, sometimes it happens overnight in my, in my discipleship journey, I'm 25 years a Christian.

I'm still like, am I still wrestling with this thing that i battled with as a teenager you know and yeah and i think we've also got to recognize that our culture doesn't really know how to address the trans issue so the the health service here in the uk doesn't have a prescribed kind of outcome or proper measure for how to treat a trans person so generally we're moving to the affirming but there's not a set if this happens we consider this success there's not a designated outcome and i know in the states and here it's kind of shifting even what that looks

like um but but there's no uh easy resolution so we as christians sometimes think oh we're not sure we don't have all the answers actually our whole culture has no clarity on this question. So there aren't good outcomes almost for anybody, because even those who've gone through the operations, many would quite openly admit that they're not there yet, they're not sufficiently changed. When I engaged Jenny Ann in that debate, she would say, I haven't changed my sex, I can't change my sex, she said, quite openly. So born male and transitioned to female talking about pronouns i mean as i engaged her i was happy in a conversation with her i'm going to call her jenny ann and i'm going to call her she i'm i don't want to be compelled to do that so i have

real issues at the free speech end yeah the name to me is not the hill to die on i see lots of analogies as to why i'd happily do that pronouns is an interesting one I get why people are sensitive yeah but in conversation with her anyway I was happy to engage her on those terms but she was open also to admit she couldn't change her sex she hadn't even though she'd had multiple operations yeah and actually that's the reality so what point has she reached even even taking it out of a Christian journey anything you a stage of being content or where she is. Because these are fundamental identity questions that our culture is wrestling with. Trans happens to be one aspect of that.

But we're going through a global identity crisis. We can look at that in nationalism and politics. We can look at that in Brexit in the UK. We can look at that in gender and sexuality and a whole host of issues. This is one example, which is, again, where identity is the core question, which is why I think, although it's a challenge to us as Christians, it's also this incredible opportunity.

It's going right to the heart of what it is to be human and who we are and our identity in this moment, which is fundamental to our understanding of the biblical text. Yeah, no, I agree. It is. I mean, it's dealing with fundamental ontological categories of what it means to be human, which, gosh, if we can't understand that, that's kind of the... Yeah, these are foundational fundamental questions about what it means to be human, what it means to bear God's image, the role of the body in human identity, and so many other fundamental questions. in human identity and so many other fundamental questions. Can you, when it comes to gender dysphoria, have you done research on the psychological side of this in terms of, and

my question is ultimately a pastoral one. I want to know, like, if you're a pastor and you're meeting, if you're doing all the things we're talking about, you're meeting someone where they're at and you're beginning the discipleship journey with somebody. And let's just say, as you and I would agree, we don't think that for a Christian disciple, that transitioning is, I think you would agree that that's not a moral option for me. Okay. And then the pushback is, okay, so what's the other option? And in my, you know, I want to say, well, transitioning itself hasn't proven to be, you know, a for sure thing that's going to, you know, relieve it all. But if I say no to transition to somebody as a disciple or as a Christian, what are the other options? Have you seen any other ways of managing dysphoria that have been proven to be effective?

So I think one of the challenges we have is actually we have very limited resources or even examples on this, partly because it's relatively new. There have been a few cases that have gone on a lot longer, but obviously the vast number of people have presented within the last few years. I don't think we have the same Christian organizations, particularly in the UK. You guys have a few more in the US who have people who have gone through this journey over a longer period of time. We have very few.

So someone like Living Out, who I would turn to here on the sexuality question and we work very closely with and really helped kind of in the early days, helped form and shape that. That was a great resource to be able to go, okay, I don't understand all that you're going through. So I'd love you to connect with these guys who are living biblically and orthodoxly

in response to that there are very few people i can turn to in that in the trans uh sort of space one lady jeanette who actually does a lot of work with living out we did a video for and is on our website in ea and jeanette tells the story really of growing up and saying, I grew up female. I knew I didn't feel like a female. I knew I wasn't a boy like my brother, so I wasn't sure what I was. She ultimately moved into a lesbian lifestyle for a few years. Then encountered Jesus, knew before anybody told her that that wasn't going to work, that she needed to come away from that and did that.

But she's now 20 years, let's say, into her discipleship journey. I mean, she's loved Jesus throughout that time, talks about this, her sexuality as somebody who now lives orthodoxly in response to that, but also with the unease with her own body. And a number of years ago, and she talks about this in the video, she was diagnosed and needed to have a mastectomy. She went to the surgeon, the surgeon expected the usual response from a from a lady that she would be dismayed and she said here's the thing my natural my my inherent reaction was one of almost relief of the sense of i never felt comfortable that part of my body and she said this is this is her having declared over her body i'm faithfully and wonderfully made and

and recited that psalm day after day over herself, loving Jesus, involved in church, like fully committed, but still almost like deep within her was that sense of unease of parts of her body that only come out at that moment and saying that's her wrestling that through. So someone like Jeanette is somebody I turn to to ask maybe how do we engage in this? And for her it's the daily battle. It's the daily discipleship to speak that over her body. there's still moments where it kind of still bubbles out and so it's incredibly

hard to know over the long term she has uh come to terms with that she has been discipled in that um but but it's not like we're pointing and going there's these lovely easy wonderful case studies over here as with so many things difficult and it's messy and requires us all to rally around i hope over time we'll get a few more just so we can sample more people there are people there are a few there's a number who aren't on unwilling or just uneasy at telling their story yet because they know what that means it means a lot of attention and people coming to look at them yeah janet has been old enough to do that we've got on video we put it out there um but that that is a challenge in this space just to have those stories and she and another psychologist certainly helped

me wrestle through well okay if we're saying no to an operation it does mean a long journey of coming to terms with as best you can and who the body that you are born into your physical sex and and generally tending to reconcile how you feel with the physical body that you have and that body is is is key to understanding that but that's a long slow often requires counseling and an engagement around that and a community that wraps around you i think a huge i appreciate that and you know there, um, I don't know if you know the name, uh, Hashi Horvath is a former, um, uh, he identified as a female for ideology. And, you know, the language can be very, for lack of better terms, triggering if you are a transgender or experienced gender dysphoria. But Hashi is a professor at University of California, San Francisco,

very informed person. Anyway, Hashi has an online article that even, and I haven't verified this, but he said that research into alternative means of managing dysphoria has been more or less blocked because there's such a push in the broader culture, in the medical industry or whatever to transition. That transition is the only way. It's either transition or you're going to have a suicidal person on your hands and so forth. And because there's only been one narrative that's been popularized, that research into other ways of managing dysphoria is not given the attention it should. Which that to me is, this is where an ideology can really have harmful effects on people,

if that's true. Again, I haven't really verified that. But another area that I think plays a huge role is the gender stereotypes. And it does seem that on so many levels, gender stereotypes is so intertwined in this conversation. But one thing I think the pastors in the church can do is not to not reinforce those stereotypes. If you are a female body person, you don't have to fit into this box of cultural femininity, you know, and same thing for a male bodied person. Have you, have you done much? I mean, this is a basic question. I hope you can help me out here with all your

theological training. But like, what does it mean? I mean, this is such a basic question and I should know this, but what does it mean to live like a female biblically. So you got females driving tent pegs through people's heads. You have Proverbs 31 woman who's, you know, a business woman, but she's also waking up early providing food for her kids. And then you have the women in the gospels that are breaking down cultural expectations. So besides the role in reproduction, what does it mean to live out your femaleness or maleness biblically? And when have you violated that? So I think that's a great, that might be the $64,000 question on

this one. I think that, so I want to pause while I think about it and jump back for a second to say, so in the UK, we've got exactly the same as you in terms of that research piece so there's a guy looking to do his master's at bath university the ethics committee said no and he was interested in detransitioning as a counselor i mean no faith background just just interested and then we've had the figures here where we've had this move so i mean if you told me five years ago somebody turned up at our main clinic in the UK, statistically, they would have been five to six years old, a male, and they would not have ended up transitioning. They would have remained in their birth sex. So 80% of those who present before adolescence stay in their birth sex.

Whereas if you told me somebody turned up yesterday, so that was five years ago. If you told me they turned up yesterday, they would have been 14 15 they would have been female and there was an 80 chance they would move through to transition so that's a radical shift so it used to be mainly born male to now female it used to be mainly five six seven years old younger now teenagers and those who appear before adolescence don't go through to transition whereas most of those who appear after do and here's the thing nobody basically is doing any research on that in any other field you go wow what a change in five years we need to understand that that's massive and the only person who's really looked at that phenomenon of rapid onset gender dysphoria yeah litman in brown university got her paper pulled she's got it back eventually

but man did she go go through the ringer and that, as you know. So it is like it's food or research, and yet we're saying, hold on, this is a massive shift. We need to talk about that as a culture. So on the sex and gender, I think this does get to the heart. I absolutely agree with you on the stereotypes. Prince George, our royal baby uh got uh christened

a few years ago and he was in this big white frilly dressy thing and i was like it looks it does look like a dress but actually it's just what boys were dressed in 150 years ago because it's so old this this garment that the royal gets baptized and are christened and um and it was that kind of thing that uh you know boys used to wear pink 150 years ago now they wear blue and you put a girl in pink these kind of stereotypes and sometimes we as christians have definitely said uh well you boys go and play outside and do that you girls stay inside and do these things and we've embraced a cultural stereotype what is female and female and then somebody who doesn't fit that thinks as you're saying oh i'm in the wrong body

because this goes the heart of the trans but what does it mean to be in the wrong body what does it mean that i am born in a male body but feel like a female right so i want to ask culture the same question what are you saying what is it that makes you feel female is it that you're caring is it you're effeminate that you like pink like i don't mean to trivialize but what makes you think you're in the wrong body and we as christians need to be really careful we don't fall for those gender stereotypes and do certain things with our daughters or our sisters or girls and certain things with our boys but it's really hard to say well this is a thing that a boy or a male does and this is a thing that a female does i have two daughters and my wife and i are trying to make

sure we we think really well about what it is to be a good daughter and good parents to them as girls, and not just fall into some stereotypes that they should follow these prescribed paths. And biblically, I find it really hard to say, well, this thing's definitely something only a boy can do, and this thing's something a girl can do. thing something a girl can do as you say bar some of the the um reproductive roles and there's a like beyond that there seems to be a fair degree of scope and yet we don't want to undermine the physicality of the body and the sex and links to gender but but basically in hebrew in many cultures there's one thing we've differentiated sex from gender and said we can have sex as one thing and as in biological sex and your gender is something else. It's just a kind of unknown concept historically in lots of cultures and even in more recent cultures. So I want to push that norms thing,

but there's no easy answers. And I suppose the one other caveat I want to give is we've talked to some of our more conservative and charismatic and different friends who are, who have different views on egalitarian and complementarian and saying, let's make sure we don't fall out about those because we have different understandings of what might be those of different sex can do but we agree on the principles around this trans issue so let's just be careful not to end up falling out on a kind of secondary issue down the line about this um because i i was hoping that our document and it's that discussion we're

having because some of them are slightly more conservative, more charismatic, whatever, friends would all agree upon, even though our understanding of giftedness and of sex or gender roles might lead us to some different places within the church. So it raises a number of those questions that we do need to be careful about. And as a broader evangelical organization, we're a little cautious just to say exactly what a man or a woman can or can't do, because our churches and membership have slightly different views on that too yeah yeah and that's yeah i think it's healthy for in 2019 and going forward given how cataclysmic things are right now that

we don't divide over the egalitarian and complementarian position um because i can yeah i can i don't know where you're at on that but i grew up staunchly complementarian position. Um, cause I can, yeah, I can, I don't know where you're at on that, but I grew up staunchly complementarian, like hardcore, you know, and, and, uh, just, I don't know a lot of the arguments I just don't see anymore. Yeah. A lot of the arguments for the egalitarian position. I'm like, I don't know if that's, I don't know. I see holes in that too. So I'm, I'm kind of right in the middle of that now. I'm kind of like, you know, until I have more time to kind of really look into this, I need to plead the fifth, as we say in the States. But yeah, I just, I don't, I think we need to unify as a church around these secondary issues. But secondary, not to downplay the significance of it.

You know, I mean, especially if you're a woman, this is a, you know, whether or not you're allowed to serve in ministry leadership positions, I mean, I don't want to diminish that at all, but not every white, straight male who is a complementarian is a misogynist, bigoted, anti-woman. And, you know, can you give us a, let's, why don't we shift gears a little bit and just give us a broader understanding of the, where's the church at in Northern Ireland specifically? And I ask because I have spent a whopping two days in Northern Ireland in Belfast a few years ago. And they, the phrase that somebody used to describe the church in Northern Ireland is that it's the Bible belt of the UK. Does that? Yes. Is that true? And I was kind of shocked by that. But in my 48 hours there, I'm like, and, you know, I gave a few seminars on sexuality and the questions I was getting was very different than when I was in Scotland or England or Wales. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I would like to follow up with that. How would you describe the church in Northern Ireland?

Yeah, I think that is still true and historically has been the case. So certainly England, Scotland in recent years in particular have seen quite significant decline and Wales. Northern Ireland still has probably around 20 church attendance in our context that's about 10 to protestant churches 10 to the catholic church and i think whereas england's going to be down at less than five percent um in in many areas now there's pockets of growth in england that are really exciting around the hdb alpha network around the nigerian and black and minority churches. One of the concerns for us is there's a bit of a cultural overhaul. So we're probably a little bit closer to the States in some ways like this.

So there's still an attendance that's maybe beginning to drop a little bit older. And are we going over the next few years to see that really decline? The church's influence is really under pressure on some of those hot button issues, abortion, marriage, as I say, literally today. But there are also really positive signs. We're seeing a lot of people come to faith. We're seeing God on the move in the church. And so there's lots of things that excite me

and the work that I get to do going out, meeting churches and hearing the stories. But the cultural conversation is definitely a little different on some of those issues. That's why we don't have marriage, same-sex marriage. We basically are now the only Western country not to have abortion on demand. So it's a big issue for us, one that we're working really hard.

We've got a kind of Both Lives Matter campaign championing that to protect both lives. But that's really under pressure because the South of Ireland went and really that was a lot of American and other money coming in saying, if we can take the South, Catholic Ireland, if it goes, then any country can go. And it did go, and that is the sense, and it's the North next is the big push.

So on a number of those issues, we're really trying to fight to say, do you know what, this transcends religion. Abortion is just, you know, it's one of those issues we've got to just work really hard on. So yes, still the bible belt stuff changing some exciting stuff some stuff that'll yeah so culturally it's even more conservative you're saying even outside outside the church northern ireland would be more

politically conservative is that would that be accurate or yeah yes but the danger is a bit like ireland in the south that held and held and, and then there's suddenly a moment where it just can't hold and it just goes overnight. So in a sense, that's what happened to the Catholic Church in the South, other factors and a bit of the scandal, but it was so dominant, 90, 95% of the people. Now suddenly you've seen five years later, they're voting in favor of same-sex marriage,

voting in favor of abortion. So the danger is if you hold on like that against the culture moving the other way, suddenly it can sweep away so quickly and nothing's left. In Catholic Ireland, I mean, how did abortion on demand get passed? That's shocking. I mean – It's such an anti-Catholic sentiment. It had such dominance.

It had such a hold. And then suddenly it swept away with this sense of particularly around the abuse scandal. It was just this right. We're so against it now. And there's nothing in its place. So it's fascinating having a values or an ethics or a moral conversation. There is no framework. So in other countries, it's moved more slowly and people have adopted different ways of thinking. It's like in Ireland where we're not Catholic, stroke the church, so we're anything but that. And it doesn't matter what the other thing is, we're going for it. I mean, it's a kind of scary secularism, a little bit like Quebec and Canada.

Maybe there's a bit of a kickoff in the same way, but it's fascinating from a sociology perspective like whoa but emotionally like it's wiped the slate clean there's almost like a new generation coming through and in one sense we're going in clean and we're saying fair enough that's gone we want to tell you about jesus and you most of now young people don't know anything about him so there's a yeah there is one sense in which you can come in afresh in that. So Holy Spirit and kinders are really interesting, healing. People don't want anything traditional church, but they will come to something fresh and new.

It is interesting when there's disruption at a cultural level, how that opens up oftentimes fresh opportunities for the gospel to go forth, right? Totally. I mean, I think we're in this chaotic world. The identity crisis, whatever you want to call it it's the chaos it's genesis one writ large again of the chaotic nature of things so who do people turn to and i see them turn into two people jordan peterson on one hand and what he's giving a small scale micro order in response to the chaos of your bedroom or whatever you want to say and there's this little lady kondo who uh this japanese lady who cleans your house

and some people are saying well here's the thing when it's chaotic outside and there's this little lady, Marie Kondo, this Japanese lady who cleans your house. And some people are saying, well, here's the thing. When it's chaotic outside and there's Brexit and there's Trump and there's whatever's going on in Canada and the European Union collapsing. And people go, well, the one thing I can control is my space. So I'm going to tidy my house because I can control that. Both of these are interesting. Jordan Peterson or the tidier house lady are ways of us trying to bring a small piece of order because the chaos is so much and so overwhelming. We don't know what to do. But actually, it's a great opportunity for the church. My friends aren't saying 15 years ago, they said, look, Pete, I don't need your Jesus. Economically, I'm fine.

I've got a good job. I'm good. And I've got a career. And even five years ago, they're saying that politically life's good we've got clinton we've got blair we've got a peace process in northern ireland life's good nobody's saying that now nobody knows what's going to happen six months down the line let alone three years they have no idea where this world is going to and i think that's the same globally so actually i think it's a really interesting moment to be speaking into the chaos and trying to bring

life speaking into the kind of the Torah Bible if you want to call it they we've got more and more communication but less and less understanding these are wonderful moments to take the gospel in and I find so some people the trans the sexuality are actually really good entry points if we get it right what I love about trans and maybe again, is you can't proof text this. You can't just say, oh, here's our little text on the eunuch and that. So here's the cross-dressing text from Deuteronomy. That doesn't work. And that's a good thing because Christians are, it's just kind of cheap.

Oh, I've got my text here. That's it done. It's like, no, you can't do that. And I mean, I said to people before, if the arc of the story is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, we take those, even those big moves. And what we did is 150 years ago was people were moving away from churches. We needed to have mission events. You'd have an hour to get the gospel across.

Creation, too big an issue to talk about. Redemption, or sorry, restoration and the new heavens, new earth, too much. So we shrunk it down to a simple story. And I'll pick on you and say, hey, Preston, you're really bad. I barely know you, but I feel comfortable saying that, but it's all right because I'm an ex-lawyer. I've got a solution in my pocket. I've got the golden ticket to heaven. Jesus died for you. And I create that simple fall redemption narrative of you're bad. Here's a golden ticket to save your soul and go to heaven. And nowadays it's awkward for me to say you're

really bad. I find that easy, but hey, that's because we're now friends. But I don't say you're bad. I just say Jesus loves you. And that's such a cheap version of the gospel that doesn't work. And then we wonder on either of those two shrunk stories, when transgender comes along, we don't have an answer. Well, if all we were ever about was saving a soul, I mean, that's actually the same Gnostic heresy that the transgender movement are falling

for. It's actually the fundamentalist version of the same thing. And Tom writes on this point, whereas if we're saying, actually, you were made in the image of God and you were put in a body, not a shell that you inhabit temporarily, it's inherent, it's part of who you are. And so if you feel a disconnect, that's not surprising because God created you for wholeness. So we started at creation, not a fall, because what Christians, in particular fundamentalists, do is go straight to fall. And they think they're being more biblical. They're not.

That's not what the Bible starts. It always starts with creation, what is good. So we want to build a bridge with those who are wrestling with sexuality and say, hey, of course you want a relationship. You're wired for a relationship. Of course you want to feel comfortable in the body you're in. You were made for that body. Now, if you feel a sense of disconnect or loneliness or brokenness, oh gosh, I know what that is. It's the fall. I'll probably not use that language, but I think I know what's going on. I would love to lead you

into redemptive encounter with Jesus. And moving forward, I'm going to unpack something that's going to be about the restoration of all things, not just your soul, not a magic ticket to heaven. Your whole body is going to be resurrected, and you're going to be in a new heavens and a new earth and a whole new world that we can't fully comprehend. But that larger story, it feels to me, is a much better engagement with the trans community, with the LGB community, with all communities. with the LGB community, with all communities. But we narrowed it down, said we were being more biblical, and actually committed the very same heresy, I want to argue, the limits of saying you've only got a soul, and I'm about saving your soul and getting a magic ticket out of here.

So theologically, I think that's the richness. That's fascinating. In the last seven minutes, if I could summarize what you're saying, that one of the beauties of the, for lack of better terms, a trans conversation becoming front and center in the church is that it's exposing our own disembodied kind of theology that we've had. And our lack of emphasis on the creation in the gospel story. Yeah. Yes.

Amen. Yeah. And there's so many other ways in which it's kind of like with the sexuality conversation, and some people get nervous when I say this, but I, you know, I talk about the beauties of the LGBT, specifically the LGB conversation becoming such a big thing in the church. What it's done is it's exposed our own very anemic sexual ethic, you know? What is marriage for? What is sex for? Why are we sexual beings? And what are all the, you know, straight sexual sins that are plaguing the church? And let's,

as Peterson would say, clean our own closet before we start helping others clean theirs. And, and, and the gen, or even going back, I mean, I ask, you know, I've got a PhD in Bible and I, at this moment, I'm not quite sure biblically what it means to live out our masculine or feminine identities, you know, like goodness, that. Goodness, that's kind of a... Shouldn't I have gotten that in first year in seminary? What does it mean to be a man and a woman beyond our reproductive capacity? So, I mean, again, these cultural conversations that some Christians get annoyed at and why are we having this? And I'm like, man, it's helping us to see some blind spots in our own theological framework, you know.

I think it really does. It helps us to think a bit better. And it pushes us because I think if you don't have something around maybe the Gnosticism idea and find that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, you're going to struggle in the trans conversation to really get to some of the nub of what it is. But when Paul talks there about, you know, food for the stomach, the stomach for food, and the Corinthians saying, hey, it doesn't matter what I eat. It's only going into my physical body. And Paul says, are you nuts? Which is the Northern Ireland version

of that message or whatever, you know. Are you guys mental? Don't you know your bodies are temples to the Holy Spirit? Don't you know your bodies are going to be resurrected? Didn't you see what the first fruits were like? That Jesus was bodily resurrected? Like, oh, so why are we teaching the gospels as

you know we have an anchor that saves the soul we're about saving souls my soul is going to heaven i'm going to float around on a cloud playing a harp with like wings on none of that's in the bible but it's in people's minds it's really dangerous stuff it's kind of comical but really sad and then we wonder why we're on the back foot on the trans debate yeah we're not if we get this text right and dig into it because it has loads to say but if you have that kind of fairly cheap slightly fundamentalist kind of gospel floating around that is pretty much the same message flipped it's like you're just a soul this outer world doesn't matter it's going to be burned up and destroyed well it's a total misread of 2 peter it's a misunderstanding what's going on in revelation 21 but that's going to get you into some serious trouble and then you

won't care about creation so culture goes well i don't care about you guys then you don't care about bodies you don't care about sexuality you don't care about everything and so we're now wondering why on creation care on trans on sexuality we don't look like we have a lot to say when we should that's what's really frustrating. It's not that I love this because the Bible has loads to say on it. If I thought the Bible didn't, I'd be really edgy and going, yikes, I'm just scraping something together. Actually, I think it has a whole load to say.

And I want Christians to re-embrace it. This isn't a discipleship movement as much as an engaging culture. I'm like, guys, we need to get our house in order. Learn the text. Theod has a load to say that will change us as well as those we're talking to. I think we only think it doesn't have much to say when we look at it, you know, for like finding individual verses. And we're so prone to read the Bible that way rather than a grand story with principles and rhythms embedded throughout that that we're supposed to live in line with. I think we're so pre-programmed to find the verse, you know, the law, the rule,

the do this, don't do that. And again, those laws and verses play a role, but there are, as you've been saying, I mean, there are an overwhelming theme of embodiment throughout scripture. I mean, it's central in Genesis 1 and 2 and obviously 1 Corinthians 6 and others. Oh, shoot. I had a question. Incarnation, everything, you know, one of my colleagues said, but what about the Ascension? And at every point, he's like, this is just constant. There's a bodily nature to it.

That's really interesting and challenging and exciting. So yeah. Or even the, yeah. how, how pervasive resurrection, both the resurrection of Jesus and our resurrection is, plays a, I mean, dominant theme throughout the New Testament. I mean, I remember, um, you, I don't know if you read NT Wright's, uh, the resurrection of Jesus or whatever that, you know, I think he originally said this is supposed to be a chapter in one of his books and end up being a 700 page book on its own because he said, there's just, you can hardly turn the page, turn any page in the new Testament and not see resurrection playing some

ethical or eschatological or at least theological role in everything that's going on there. Which resurrection is intrinsically an embodied kind of category. Um, Oh, Jordan Peterson, you, you, you happened to drop the JP bomb in passing. And I haven't, I, I, um, I actually paid attention to Peterson before he was kind of that well known. It was with the whole bill C-16 thing. And somehow somebody turned me on to him when he had, you know, It was with the whole Bill C-16 thing. And somehow somebody turned me on to him when he had, you know, 70,000 followers on Twitter, not, you know, 1.5 million or whatever.

But in the last several months, I haven't really paid attention. Is his, well, two questions. Well, let me just say one question. I'm really fascinated with the missiological significance of Jordan Peterson. I find his teaching, his thoughts intriguing. And I like a lot of what he says. Some things I'm like, I'm not sure, whatever, but I'm more interested in the missiological significance of Jordan Peterson. How is it that this guy has been more significant in turning former atheists into now at least theists? How is it that a guy who would be not, whether he's a Christian or not, I'm not really that interested, but he can fill a room,

thousands of people and give a three hour lecture on Noah and the flood. When I don't know a single preacher in the world, well, who can fill a room of non-Christians who want to hear a guy talk about Noah and the float of the Bible for three hours, and they'll pay money to come hear that. And yet we can't keep people in our churches with Christians who are supposed to naturally want to hear that. So I'm just like, what is that? What is the missiological significance of him? And how can the church maybe learn from the wake that Jordan Peterson has created? Have you thought through that? Can you help us understand and learn from that?

I mean, I try to think a little bit about it. I find it really interesting. I was at one university context and I had a little Peterson anecdote. And then I said, so how many people have heard of him? And there were about 150 in the room and there were two people. And I was like, oh, right. Now, those two people were straight up to me afterwards because I said, obviously, I'm not going to use that story then. And they wanted to know because it was a bridge for them. But then I was talking to a couple of teenagers just on Sunday and they were like, just Jordan Peterson nuts. And so you have these interesting pockets where he pops up.

And for me, it's a bit of a bridge build. Whereas you say he can fill a room. He gives 12 lectures in Toronto on Genesisesis 1 to 12 some of the stuff is mental some of it's fascinating his insights are both genius and mad yeah he seems to get all but not grace yeah you know he gets it the world is chaotic and so he's i think it's the chaos piece for me that comes through in his book and then those lectures and he says you know from tidying your room to a bigger piece of getting your life in order it's chaos out there and people go yes it is and he says i'm going to tell you how to deal with that

and we as christians don't even identify the cultural problem it's chaos out there and there's an identity crisis and i would love to turn you to genesis one and two and we need to do better so i try and use him as a bit of a bridge builder because he opens some doors but there's no doubt he doesn't get it all he doesn't have a sense of what the holy spirit is doing but he gets the father heart of god he doesn't quite know what to do with jesus i would say and he definitely doesn't seem to know what to do with the holy spirit right but he's opened some fascinating doors that you can bridge build over now other people will just go as soon as you mention jp boom no no i'm out I'm out. I'm like, okay, so I need to come at a different way with you.

How can I build a bridge into your world that looks a little different? So for me, it's that cultural bridge build moment. And then I springboard off him and say, but I think he's left you somewhere short. He's never going to solve your problem because ultimately it's a self-help ideology at core. He's got his self-writing or whatever. And he's going to say, you have to sort your own problem. You have to pull yourself up with the bootstraps eventually you have to tidy your room i'm like that's not going to work for everybody and it's not going to work for anybody in the

long term at some point we need lifted up by somebody else we need jesus in that moment and so you're you're a glorified self-help guru but you're an interesting guy who's bridge built into this world that's i've often said he's got's got an Augustinian view of human nature and a very hyper Pelagian view of redemption. You know, he gets part of the story very right. And then when it comes to the redemption piece, it's, yeah, it's not, I mean, Christian at all, really. But the chaos, the fall, the human nature, and we have good and evil in us, and that stuff's really good. I'm fascinated just at the... I've often said, man, I think that the church, Christians, maybe at least in America, I didn't experience this as much in the UK. I made

a comment that I feel like every other person's doing a PhD in the UK and intellectualism is valued in the UK a lot more than I see in America. But one thing Peterson has shown is that I think people are interested in deeper, more profound, more intellectually honest and robust conversations. again the church in America would understand that the church growth stuff that may have worked in the 80s it's not going to work and even that term working is I think misunderstood I hope that people learn from the wake of

Jordan Peterson that people aren't as stupid as we think they are they're interested in deep thoughtful conversations. We send everybody. The aspiration 20 years ago, people like my parents, was to send my dad didn't go to uni, my mom went to teaching college, but they wanted us to go to university.

That's the aspiration, get to college, get to uni. And so for many people in the church, we want to send our kids to further education of some type but we don't want to prepare them for it so we basically teach some sunday school stuff i would say my faith plateaued at 12 i just got the same stuff over and over again and yet they wanted me to go off to uni where i was going to get wrecked and i did and i nearly lost my faith i was kind of schizophrenic for two years with this really simplistic 12 year old faith this new legal thought and i was going these two things are incompatible until like cs lewis and tom wright and people helped me navigate this by

reading their stuff but i was like at sea for a while so what are you guys doing teaching me this stuff so as you say it's a weird aspiration to, we want to get you trained to the best we can at uni, but we're going to leave your faith at this pretty basic rudimentary level, particularly in the kind of Baptist tradition that I was raised in. And I think we're finally realizing that people are up for this conversation. If more than half the people in the UK are going to university, they should be able to hold this kind of level of conversation and talk about it. In fact, they want to.

And if we Christians don't create create it they will go somewhere else they will listen to rubbish podcasts as a lot of my friends do traveling and then i wonder why in literally weeks it feels like they go off the deep end mark sayers is really into this i was talking to him recently like how quickly people can get radicalized to a particular message you spend hours and hours and hours just just commuting in and out to work and you can listen to some pretty trashy stuff that just takes you off so we've got to get some good context people are thinkers like we're fully engaged people like let's get our minds wrestling this text can take it the bible god's god's up for these conversations he's okay with this yeah so good p, we are out of time, man. I'm taking you over an hour. So thank you so much for being a part of this podcast. How can people

find you? And if you Google Peter Linus, you might get a children's book author that is not you. I don't think that I think there's another children's book author. That's for sure. So the resource, I mentioned the resource. So we wrote a kind of thing that's for sure. So the resource, I mentioned the resource. So we wrote a kind of thing that you can download. So it's at www.eauk.org forward slash trans. There you'll find the videos and a PDF of the booklet we produced. I go under at Peter Linus on Twitter, L-Y-N-A-S. And I think you guys are going to link to that

we have a website reimaginingfaith.com which is part of the Northern Ireland bit of EA where I try and put some stuff out yes so I'm sure people can find me there and there but I like to speak and engage on these kind of issues as you say where the cultural arrowhead

is and intersects with us as faith is what I'm around to try and bring people into relationship with Jesus ultimately. So your book, Transformed, the PDF online, it's free that you wrote. I just want to highly recommend that resource. And I say that because whenever I come across Christians addressing the trans conversation, I go in with a lot of skepticism, a lot of pessimism, like, I'm going to rip this thing to shreds. This is going to be either all compassion, no truth, or typically if it's from a Christian, it's going to be vice versa. You know, it's going to hammer away at the ideology and not really care about people. And

I was blown away at how well and informed, how well written and informed and pastoral and theological, this short little resource. I don't know. Is it like seven, 8,000 words at most? I mean, it's a, it's a real, real accessible resource and it just is, it's high. Yeah. It's free. So go drink. Everybody should go read it. Yeah. So thank you for producing that. Thanks for your commitment to the bible to christianity and for also loving people well peter thanks for being on the show hey listen thank you so much

been great to be here i've been following what you're doing thank you for what you're bringing to the church i think we both love the church that's why we do this stuff we really want to help the church navigate this space if we want to see people encounter jesus so thank you as well it's been a pleasure thanks for listening to theology in the raw if you want to see people encounter Jesus. So thank you as well. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for listening to Theology in the Raw. If you want to support the show, please go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. Become part of the Theology in the Raw community and get access to premium content. If you have been touched by this show, challenged, or if it just drives you crazy,

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