Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep920: Why the Church Needs LGBTQ People

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

This podcast is a recording of a talk I gave at this year’s Revoice conference in Plano, TX. In it, I talk about why LGBTQ people are not just needy but needed in the church. Specifically, there are four major things I’ve learned about Jesus and the Christian way of life from my LGBTQ friends: 1) friendship, 2) marriage, 3) faithfulness, and 4) masculinity. Interested in designing the conference T-shirt for the Theology in the Raw “Exiles in Babylon Conference?” Submit your design to [e-mail] The top 3 designs will get free access to the conference (in person or virtual) and the #1 selected design will get free access to the conference and the afterparty and dinner at my house.  Designs must be submitted to Chris by November 26th. Feel free to use various slogans like “Exiles in Babylon,” “Exiled,” “Theology in the Raw,” “Raw Theology,” or other one-liners like “Allegiance to a kingdom not a political party,” “Jesus is political not partisan” or whatever. Or use no wording at all. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. A few weeks ago, or a couple weeks ago, maybe a week ago, I forget, I released a conversation, a talk that Misty Irons gave at the Revoice Conference. The Revoice Conference happened a couple months ago. Misty Irons gave an incredible talk about the so-called, you know, the topic of gay identity. And I prefaced that conversation with my own kind of wrestling with and thinking through the whole idea of being a gay Christian, that concept. And yeah, I released it on the podcast and I decided to release a couple more talks that happened at the Revoice Conference. This talk that you're going to listen to is from yours truly.

I gave a talk on why the church needs LGBTQ people. I don't need to say too much more to set it up because the talk, I kind of, in the intro of the talk, I kind of talk about what I mean by that and where I'm going with it and why I have come to understand that LGBT people aren't just needy, but knee-dead in the church. And so I give basically kind of a personal narrative on several things, four things in particular, that I've learned about Jesus and the Christian way from hanging out with LGBTQ people. So without further ado, please welcome back to the show. Me. That is super weird. Anyway, yeah. So here's my talk that I gave at Revoice a couple months ago. Oh man, good to see you all again.

This is my second re-voice. Very excited to be back. And I just, I've so appreciated the talk so far and and listening to ray low uh that last talk as a straight person listening to that i was just so deeply encouraged by that and it's it's funny there's a lot of things that he said that i'm gonna end up saying kind of i guess from the other the other side about how straight Christians absolutely need LGBT people in their lives. And people often ask me how I got into this conversation, and I'll save you the long story, but in short, I sort of fell into it as an academic doing a lot of research on the issue of homosexuality.

I was interested in what the Bible has to say about this hot topic, this debated topic that people were starting to talk more about in my circles, and students were coming to me asking me questions about it, and I didn't really have a good answer, so I just kind of started to do the research and I dove into the books and began to read on both sides of the conversation and and as as an academic like I love to just read like everything I can get my hands on and so I just had stacks of books I didn't realize there were so many especially academic books written on the topic of what the bible says about same-sex sexuality. And so I buried myself in the books to try to figure out this issue. And early on in my journey, I got my

head out of the books and started to listen to the stories and the journeys of actual LGBTQ people. and the journeys of actual LGBTQ people. And my life will never be the same. I remember hearing story after story after story, which were all very diverse in many ways, and yet there was one common thread that was woven throughout every story, and it went something like this. Well, you know, Preston, I was raised in the church,

and I was an Iwana champion and I, you know, I was an Awana champion. I still have the goofy, you know, sweater thing with the patches, you know, and I loved the church, and I loved Jesus, and, but I, you know, it just wasn't a really good experience. I felt unseen, unknown, unloved, uncared for. I was scared to tell anybody about my experience. In fact, I don't know if I've ever met a Christian once they heard about my story. I don't know if I've met a Christian that was actually kind to me, was one common thread that was woven in various ways throughout all of these very diverse stories. And that just blew me away. And it broke my heart.

Because, I mean, Paul says in Romans 2.4 that it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance. And the church, throughout the New Testament, the church is the embodiment of the presence of God on earth. And so if it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance, then the church should be the embodiment of that kindness if we care about repentance. And yet, I would ask my gay friends, hey, when you think of the church, when you think of the church, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Kindness? Was not on the top of the list. But I began to realize that until kindness is the knee-jerk reaction like, oh yeah, you know what? I grew up in the church, but I had to leave the church or I got kicked out of the church, you know?

So I don't go to church anymore. Okay, well, when you think of the church, what comes to mind? Until the knee-jerk response is kindness, then the church is failing to embody the presence of God as we ought. This was kind of early on, what was going on in my heart. And there was a text that has been dear to me in this conversation, and I know it's dear to many of you, Mark 10, 29-30, where Jesus says, No one has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me in the gospel who will fail to receive back a hundred times as much in this present age, along with persecutions,

who will receive back in this present age homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, childrens, and fields, along with persecutions, and in the age to come, eternal life. So it's not just the reward for sacrifice and we'll get eternal life. We actually get a reward in the here and now. It is the family of God who are our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers.

And so this has been my passion, my hope is that I can try to create in some way that kind of climate, that kind of culture where the church can become a family for those who have left families, who have been kicked out of families, who have been rejected by families, who have given up the hope of having a family of their own. Throughout this journey, something unexpected happened in my life, though. In my quest to help the church become more like Jesus

toward LGBTQ people, I came to like Jesus toward LGBTQ people. I came to realize how much LGBTQ people have showed me the way of Christ. I've come to see that LGBTQ people are not just needy, but needed in the church. In the church. In this. When I say church. Straight Christians are trying to be more loving. And accepting of LGBT people.

That's a good start. It's a good start. It's a little neocolonial in some ways. But it's a good start. But it's a start. We can't finish there. That's not the end point. we're more loving towards LGBT people. We need to come to realize that the church is incomplete

without LGBTQ people as part of the family. And the church will look more like Jesus as more and more LGBTQ people are seen and known as leaders, pastors, and mentors. Models of what marriage looks like. Models of what singleness looks like. There's four specific areas that I want to share with you. And this is just a personal narrative.

And how LGBTQ people have showed me the way of Christ. Four specific areas. LGBTQ people have showed me the way of Christ, four specific areas. Number one, you've showed me what true friendship looks like. I grew up drinking the Christian punch that's been spiked by a secular dose of romance and sex that said, you're really incomplete until you get married. And once you get married, you really don't need any friends. All of your needs of intimacy and love and being known and knowing someone else and, of course, sexual fulfillment, all these things you'll get when you get married.

And as a young, spry, 20-something-year-old getting married, I translated all of that to my wife's going to provide me with endless sex and food and take care of everything. The message I absorbed from my evangelical culture. That's exactly what happened. I was wrong. I had such a warped view of what marriage is. This is why so many married straight people are some of the most lonely people I know. Seneca says that nothing delights the mind more as having a loving and loyal friendship.

Cicero says a friend is, as it were, a second self. And Francis Bacon says without friends, the world is but a wilderness. I don't sit around reading Cicero or Bacon. I just Googled cool friendship quotes, and this is what came up. And specifically, my celibate gay Christian friends have showed me that you can live without sex, but you can't live without love and intimacy. And nowhere in my Christian upbringing

did anybody show me the difference between that. Sex is a kind of intimacy, but you can't reduce intimacy to sex. And sometimes sex is very non-intimate in many ways. And so many straight friends I meet, especially straight married friends, they're just, they're not really good at friendship. It's like they're, I'll say our, it's like our emotional energies have been so invested in finding a spouse and then marrying that spouse and now loving that spouse and everything's so

spousal oriented that it can become very unhealthy, dare I say, idolatrous. And then it's like our friendship muscles have become so weak and flabby through lack of use. And then we wonder why we're so lonely. Churches filled with nothing but straight married couples are incomplete and they will always have a really hard time with cultivating true deep authentic intimacy as the community of god so we need you to show us the way to teach us what true friendship looks like. To teach us what authentic, honest, vulnerable intimacy actually looks like. The church is incomplete.

Incomplete and will look less like Jesus if we continue to marginalize or exclude or silence the voice of specifically celibate gay Christians. Speaking of marriage, number two, the second thing I've learned from my LGBTQ friends, I've learned a lot about marriage. The church has idolized marriage. I don't know where it started. Maybe it's been forever, but certainly in my generation,

there has been an idolatry of marriage that hovers so thick in the air of evangelical churches. And I don't want to be misunderstood. Sometimes when I say idolatry of marriage, people say, no, marriage, why are you demeaning marriage? I'm not demeaning marriage. Marriage is good and beautiful

and necessary for humanity. It needs to be taken seriously. It's good and beautiful, but it's not like all idols. Good and beautiful things can become an idol. So it's not diminishing marriage. My point is just that marriage is not essential for human flourishing. Marriage is a vocation. It's a calling. It's an institution God created to be one means to spread his glory throughout creation. But marriage has a meaning and a purpose, a telos to it. And every culture has its own kind of cultural, you know, things that kind of attach itself to marriage.

So, you know, in some cultures, marriage is more transactional or it's a way to, you know, cultivate family ties or tribal ties or a way to produce offspring to carry on the family's name or whatever. In the modern West, we have these new emphases on things like sexual attraction and romance and falling in love. And then we created this thing called dating and so on and so forth. And none of these things are intrinsically right or wrong, but that's the point. They're not intrinsically right or wrong. And so several same-sex attracted gay friends of mine in what's called mixed orientation marriages have shown me a deep meaning of what marriage is actually for. And they've shown me that this modern Western kind of view of marriage is just that. It's modern and Western and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with romantic feelings it seems to be

the way God has wired a lot of us but sexual attraction and romance cannot be the glue that holds a marriage together and it's not the essential thing that makes a marriage flourish romantic feelings are fluid and unpredictable they They come and go, and just chemically, our bodies can only sustain the falling in love feeling for a few years, according to scientists, I think. So whenever I meet two Christians, two straight Christians, and they want to get married, So whenever I meet two Christians, two straight Christians, and they want to get married, I've started to do something different. Hey, we're going to get married.

I'm like, oh, awesome, great. Why? My kids hate it when I say that. The answer is usually so theologically anemic. But when I ask my gay friends who are married in opposite sex marriages, why are you still married? I usually get a very, very rich theological explanation of why God created marriage and what is the vocation of marriage and what is marriage for. Because they've had to ask the deeper questions. They've

had to look past and through the idolatry of marriage to the one who created marriage and ask some hard questions. God, why have you created this institution? What is it for? Why are we in this? How can we use this marriage to further your kingdom? So I want to thank you. I want to thank all of my gay friends who are in mixed orientation marriages because you have modeled to me and some others, and I hope it becomes many others, what a true, deep, difficult, honest, vulnerable marriage looks like. We need you to show us the way. We need you to be our marriage counselors and mentors.

The third thing I've really learned from my LGBTQ friends about Jesus is just sheer faithfulness. about Jesus is this sheer faithfulness. It's remarkable that in 2021, a day and age when, I mean, against all odds, like those of you here who are still committed to a historically Christian sexual ethic, when so many voices are telling you that that is not good, that is not beautiful,

that is not right, and now there's many churches who would say the same thing, for you to still sit down and study the scriptures with all these other voices, with all books and blogs and everything, trying to help you to read the text in a different way, and you still are saying, no, Jesus, I see that this is what you have revealed through your text. That is mind-blowing. And I know, you've told me that sometimes you don't feel gay enough for the gay community and yet not Christian enough

for the evangelical Christian or whatever community. And that's just, that just doesn't make any sense to me. The second part. That you can come to the text honestly and faithfully follow the traditional ethic of marriage and sexuality, I am, this should be, this should be, I'm so incredibly sorry. I'm truly so sorry for some of the nitpicky things that you still have to go through in the church.

It, well, it breaks my heart, but it also makes me really mad. And I'm so sorry that in an already very difficult journey where you are holding fast to the word of truth, that you still are having your language policed. Don't say you're gay. You have to say you struggle with same-sex attraction. Don't say you're gay. You have to say you struggle with same-sex attraction. Don't say you're gay. Don't adopt a homosexual or transgender self-conception. This is inconsistent with God's holy purpose in creation and redemption. Your gayness, don't, gay Christian,

your gayness is not your ultimate identity. This, this, identity. In what planet can you even say something like that? You're sitting here enduring. I mean, the stories I've heard, right? From the time you're a young teenager, you realize you're attracted to the same sex and not the opposite sex. And you try to put on a fake hat. And, oh, yeah, you know, I like this person.

It's cute, whatever. And you feel inauthentic. And then shame is piling up. And then messages from the church just magnifies that shame. And then you pour over the text of Scripture. You pray. You pray that your heart's out. And you search the Scriptures.

And you walk this incredibly faithful life. And you say, you know what, Lord, I would want nothing more than to find a romantic partner that I'm attracted to. But because of what I see in scripture, I am going to commit my life to celibacy for some of you. Your gayness is not your ultimate identity. Gayness is not your ultimate, the throne in your life. You tell me who's on the throne of my life. I mean, here, so I asked him if I could have permission.

Greg Johnson, right? What's going on in the PCA, and I'm sorry, I asked him if I could have permission. Greg Johnson, right? What's going on in the PCA, and I'm sorry, I'm not of the PCA, so I'm an outsider looking on. It just doesn't make sense. But here's a guy who has, who is more sexually pure than the cumulative sexual purity

of all of our youth groups combined. This dude has so many blockers on his computer that I think John Calvin would get an alert if he looked out of sight. And he's brought up on the charges of heresy. If he's not fit to be a pastor

then nobody is fit to be a pastor. Greg, you can... You show me any straight Christian who has been so vigilant in his pursuit of holiness. This is just so backwards. And I'm so sorry for the nitpicky things that still exist, for the misunderstandings, or just not even taking time to understand. And you're still walking.

And I don't want to overly glorify it. You're like, yeah, look, I'm not perfect. I'm not saying you're perfect, but you are walking a faithful life in pursuit of what you see as holiness. And to still get like some little dog nipping at your ankles, still get people who are supposed to be on your team.

I'm so sorry. My friend, some of you know John Mark Lohner. He went through ex-gay stuff and was given the impression that he's not really living a faithful life until he becomes straight. Because once you become straight, then your sexuality is basically nailed. No sin, no struggles.

Straight people will be cornered in the market on holiness. So just become straight, and then everything will be fine. And so John Mark, he says, I don't know, he probably didn't have a job or something, but he said he prayed six to eight hours a day for a year that God would take these desires away. He fasted. He said, if you add up the cumulative days that I fasted that year, it was about a quarter of the year that I didn't eat.

And he was still made to feel that he wasn't doing enough, wasn't faithful enough, because these attractions were still there. Naturally, he left the faith. And long story short, he came back when he was told that, no, you can follow Jesus faithfully and still be gay. That's absolutely possible. faithfully and still be gay. That's absolutely possible. In fact, sometimes being gay shows you new sides of Jesus you wouldn't have known if you were straight.

So I'm sorry that instead of being examples of faithfulness, some of you have been objects of suspicion and scorn. You've shown me the way of faithfulness, so I thank you for that. The fourth area that my LGBTQ friends have showed me about Jesus, about the way of Christ, is you've shown me what biblical masculinity and femininity actually is. I'm going to stick to masculinity because this is something that I've learned so much from you. And again, I think the evangelical church might have a lot of things backwards here. What is biblical manhood and womanhood?

That's where everybody gets really nervous. I'm sorry. Just saying that I know has triggered some of you. I'm so sorry. I thought so sorry. I thought I knew. I thought I knew that, you know, being a real man is to be a masculine man, to not cry, to not love my enemies, don't turn the other cheek, to play sports and watch sports and talk about sports and idolize sports

and defend my country, get married, have lots of kids, sit on the couch and watch sports and talk about sports and idolize sports and defend my country, get married, have lots of kids, sit on the couch and watch games. Protect my wife from, you know, door-to-door salesmen because she's intrinsically more deceitful, subject to deceit. Don't let my drive drive the car when I'm in it. I mean, that would be not masculine. Don't let my drive drive the car when I'm in it. That would be not masculine. It's astounding the cultural forms of masculinity that had just been baptized by the church. I grew up with standard evangelical upbringing.

I don't even remember a sermon on it necessarily. It was just in the air. Men don't cry. You know, I'm 45 years old and that message that men don't cry was so pounded into me that to this day, I still have this like psychological trigger that when I'm about to cry, there's something in me that suppresses it. You know, you know how freaking unhealthy that is? You know how freaking unhealthy that is? I loved animals growing up. Still do.

And yet, somewhere in the air of evangelicalism, I was told that real men love to watch animals die. Real men kill animals, and your enemy if need be so I would literally try to desensitize myself because I hated to watch animals die I would desensitize myself by going out and arbitrarily just shooting like birds and squirrels with a pellet gun and it sickened my stomach, but I tried to overcome that because I thought that that was an immoral feeling in me. King David was always the epitome of masculinity. He killed Goliath with a slingshot

and had all these women that were after him. King David also played a harp and wrote poetry and cried more than anybody in the Bible. This dude bled emotion. He danced, he cried, he sang, and he mourned the death of Jonathan by saying, your love to me is better than the love of women. I was told that that's not masculine, to go to my best friend and grab him by the face and say, dude, your love to me is better than the love of women. He would squirm. He would be fine with that. He would probably give me a kiss, actually. But that's a very, biblically, that's a very masculine thing to say Jesus

Jesus challenged the masculine stereotypes of his day in both in in Roman culture and in Jewish culture and Jewish culture to be masculine was to was to get married and to have lots of kids and kind of have a more low view of women. In Roman culture, it was to destroy your enemy, to go fight on the battlefield, to have sexual relations with kind of whoever you wanted. Like that was a very masculine thing to do. Jesus came, and I don't think it's just arbitrary or just happened to be that he was a single man of marital age who did not destroy his enemies. Turned the other cheek.

That served those of a lower social class, the humanized women. All of these things were a direct violation of the cultural forms of masculinity in his day. And so some of my gay male friends in particular have showed me what true biblical biblical like what biblical masculinity that actually quotes the bible you've shown me that real men are kind and sensitive aren't afraid have the courage to cry you're resilient and forgiving you're empathetic to those who are also on the margins

that's biblical masculinity real men may like sports, they might not like sports they may maybe they would rather go to a, watch ballet than the Super Bowl and that's totally okay

got one fan here Go to a, watch ballet, then the Super Bowl, and that's totally okay. Got one fan here. It's okay to like music and art and poetry. It's okay to dance. Real men cry. And real men aren't afraid to look fabulous. I say this as somebody who, yeah, my natural default, I would resonate with most cultural forms of masculinity. So I'm not saying this as somebody who, I'm saying this as somebody who shouldn't have said this. It'd be easy for me just to kind of fall back into kind of how I naturally act.

My gay friends tell me I dress and walk and sit like a straight guy. I don't even know what that means, but still trying to figure that out. What does it mean to sit like a straight? I don't know. I try to pass sometimes. They're like, no, you can't pass.

Are my masculine tendencies biological, or is it a cultural construct that I was nurtured in, or is it a subconscious way of covering up how insecure and weak I actually am? I don't know. What I do know is that stereotypical masculinity is not morally mandated in Scripture. And anybody who implicitly or explicitly says it is, is directly going against not only Scriptures, but against the way of Jesus. Because sometimes cultural forms of masculinity are neutral. Other times, cultural forms of masculinity go directly against the rhythm of the life of Jesus and so thank you

truly thank you for showing me what biblical masculinity and femininity what that actually looks like I earlier read Mark 10 through the lens of straight Christians being the family of God to LGBT people but there's another lens that I would like to read this through through the lens of straight Christians being the family of God to LGBT people. But there's another lens that I would like to read this through, one where LGBTQ Christians are the ones who are welcoming straight Christians into their lives,

your homes, your communities, your journeys, where we are sitting at your feet and learning more about hidden ways of following Jesus. Where you are the brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers who have embodied the radical welcome of Christ. Toward fellow Christians who may not share, maybe misunderstand your experiences. So thank you. Thank you for showing me the way, for imitating Christ. For giving me a more authentic and accurate picture of what it is to be a Christian. I need you.

And they might not all know it, but the church, the church needs you. Hey friends, if you've been blessed, challenged, encouraged, or angered by this podcast, would you consider supporting it through patreon.com? That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw, all the infos in the show notes. You can support the show for as little as five bucks a month and get access to Q&A podcasts, monthly Patreon-only blogs, and basically just get access to the community and help support

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