Ep 1027 ｜ Rosaria Butterfield Rebukes Seminaries, Dennis Prager Defends Lust
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
153.3305
Summary
Rosaria Butterfield is calling out seminaries for giving approval to insidious LGBTQ ideas. Also, we are discussing some commentary from Dennis Prager about the sinfulness of lust and masturbation. And also, we will talk about a trend on TikTok called The Passenger Princess. We ve got all that on today s episode of Relatable.
Transcript
00:00:00.680
Rosaria Butterfield is calling out seminaries for giving approval to insidious LGBTQ ideas.
00:00:09.160
Also, we are discussing some commentary from Dennis Prager about the sinfulness or the
00:00:20.000
And also, we will talk about a trend on TikTok called The Passenger Princess.
00:00:26.320
We've got all of that on today's episode of Relatable.
00:00:44.820
Okay, yesterday's conversation with Dr. Keneally.
00:00:49.760
You guys have been asking me to have her on when I posted last week that she was coming
00:00:59.420
Listen to that episode or watch it if you haven't already.
00:01:03.440
If you or someone in your life has cancer, you've got to listen to it.
00:01:07.840
But really, it was just so good for general health.
00:01:12.460
We've got quite a few things to get to today before I get into it.
00:01:15.520
Just a reminder, our Share the Arrows event is going to be amazing.
00:01:22.420
If you are a Relatable, Relatable, Relatable, so a woman, a Christian conservative woman in
00:01:33.500
Elisa Childers, Abby Halberstadt, Francesca Battistelli, and Rosaria Butterfield will all
00:01:40.080
And of course, I will be there too, sharethearrows.com for more information.
00:01:46.360
Speaking of Rosaria Butterfield, who you will get to see in the flesh if you are going to
00:01:55.840
If you don't know who Rosaria Butterfield is, you are missing out.
00:02:00.300
She's been on this podcast now a couple of times.
00:02:04.900
She's written several books about her testimony, and she is such a strong voice for the Bible,
00:02:13.440
So she used to be a queer theory, critical theory professor at Syracuse University.
00:02:18.280
She was a lesbian feminist activist, and she worked hard to ensure that LGBTQ, so-called
00:02:25.840
people, they weren't really called that then, had quote-unquote equal rights.
00:02:30.840
So the redefinition of marriage is something that she had at the top of her agenda when
00:02:36.800
she was this feminist activist several decades ago.
00:02:40.320
And then through the hospitality of a Christian neighbor, she heard the gospel.
00:02:44.700
She realized the truth of God's word, the truth of who Jesus was.
00:02:50.480
She realized through the process of spirit-empowered sanctification that she could no longer
00:02:55.640
as a Christian be in this relationship with another woman that she had been in for years
00:03:11.080
As I said, now she is a Christian author, apologist, I think just an incredible defender of the faith,
00:03:17.780
especially when it comes to this cultural moment, the attempt to normalize and glorify sexual depravity.
00:03:24.560
She is such a bold voice against that in a variety of ways.
00:03:28.700
She also is a wife and a mother to four, and she's just incredible.
00:03:36.280
She offers so much clarity and courage in this age of chaos, cowardice, and confusion.
00:03:42.440
And now she is rebuking a seminary, the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
00:03:50.620
In fact, there's a lot of good people there, a ton of people that we've had on our show
00:03:55.720
that work there, and I think in general it is a great institution.
00:04:00.540
But Rosaria Butterfield is calling them out for something in particular, and that is for
00:04:08.560
So if you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me back up a little bit and give you some
00:04:14.880
So Rosaria Butterfield recently criticized evangelical institutions for their acceptance of LGBTQ
00:04:22.800
ideology, and more specifically, she actually criticized Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
00:04:30.160
for credentializing heresy and sin—that is her terminology—by approving the dissertation
00:04:39.360
Collins' dissertation became the book, All But Invisible, Exploring Identity Questions
00:04:45.120
at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality.
00:04:51.840
This is an organization that has embraced the view that Christians can live out a so-called
00:05:01.260
This is often referred to as Side B Christianity.
00:05:04.320
We will link the recent episode that we did where we explained Side B Christianity versus
00:05:10.160
Side A versus Side X versus Side Y, exactly what all of that means.
00:05:16.480
And so he is a part of Side B Christianity, which really says that you can, you know, remain
00:05:23.360
celibate, but it's fine to call yourself a so-called gay Christian or a trans Christian.
00:05:28.300
And this is not something that I subscribe to, but this is an increasingly popular position.
00:05:34.740
It's something that also Rosaria Butterfield has spoken out against.
00:05:38.240
So has Christopher Yuan, Beckett Cook, all of these people we've had on our podcast before.
00:05:43.720
In an episode of the American Reformer podcast that aired in February of this year, Rosaria
00:05:49.680
joined Timon Klein and Josh Abitoy to describe how critical theory and queer theory have made
00:05:59.080
And she talks about this particular instance of Nate Collins' dissertation being approved
00:06:06.920
I remember reading it and saying, this is one of the most God-forsaken things I've read as,
00:06:17.520
He mishandles both the Bible and critical theory and queer theory all at the same time,
00:06:24.820
which is really kind of, it's an amazing achievement.
00:06:28.780
Bad ideas don't run a culture amok until the church starts applauding them.
00:06:40.860
Maybe this was just the first time it came to my desk.
00:06:43.800
Okay, so the title of Nate Collins' dissertation was Virgin as Secondary Gender Identity in
00:06:54.620
1 Corinthians 7 and its Jewish and Greco-Roman background.
00:07:00.980
So Rosaria argues that by approving this dissertation, they kind of approved this idea.
00:07:07.700
I mean, approving a dissertation doesn't necessarily mean you agree with every part of the dissertation,
00:07:12.920
but she argues that this is God-forsaken, that he mishandles the Bible, and he actually
00:07:22.380
He actually misunderstands and misapplies those things too.
00:07:25.740
And she, of course, says tongue-in-cheek that that's an amazing achievement.
00:07:29.520
And I really found this profound when she said that bad ideas don't run a culture amok
00:07:40.440
And so I'd be interested to see what the response would be of those who did approve
00:07:46.420
this dissertation version as a secondary gender identity in 1 Corinthians 7.
00:07:54.740
So let me back up a little bit about who Nate Collins is and his relationship with SBTS.
00:08:01.180
So he did an interview with Preston Sprinkle in 2015.
00:08:07.520
I think Preston Sprinkle has a lot of good things to say, but we disagree on things like
00:08:13.780
He would also say that it is valid to identify as a gay Christian.
00:08:17.540
I think, oh my goodness, that is a paradoxical abomination or maybe an abominable paradox because
00:08:25.780
you are identifying as that which God calls sin and trying to wed it with being a new creation.
00:08:32.380
It's like saying I'm an old new creation that is not in accordance with scripture.
00:08:39.640
You are still holding on to that such were some of you part of your life.
00:08:46.040
You are still holding on to the old self by identifying as two things that really don't
00:08:52.260
So I really disagree with him on that, even though ultimately Preston will say that biblical
00:09:02.560
How we handle these issues is very different in a lot of ways.
00:09:09.380
So as I said, Nate Collins and Preston, they had a conversation together in 2015.
00:09:15.420
And Collins describes how he is same-sex attracted and how he kind of weds these two identities
00:09:22.700
of being same-sex attracted and a Christian together, which kind of laid the foundation
00:09:27.480
for everything we're talking about, the dissertation, revoice and all that.
00:09:30.620
So Collins also says that he is a same-sex attracted man in a mixed orientation marriage.
00:09:55.120
He uses that language while the other opposite sex spouse is attracted to the same sex.
00:10:00.440
So he has a wife, Sarah, that he is married to, but he is still attracted to men.
00:10:09.580
He says, he says, by the time we were married, I hadn't become straight because I still experienced
00:10:15.200
At the same time, a one-woman orientation had been developing within me during my relationship
00:10:21.340
So marrying her felt like the most natural thing to do.
00:10:23.800
And also, my heart had, in fact, grown to long for.
00:10:32.660
And so this is how he kind of describes his relationship there.
00:10:37.340
And then a little more about this thesis that Rosaria Butterfield has recently called out,
00:10:43.700
the virgin, a secondary gender identity in 1 Corinthians 7.
00:10:50.240
He says, this dissertation will argue the thesis that the Greek word for virgin functions as
00:10:56.060
a label that indexes the secondary gender identity in Paul's discussion of virgins in 1 Corinthians 7.
00:11:02.000
He says he will distinguish between primary gender identity and secondary gender identity.
00:11:07.260
He says primary gender identity is binary and reflects the original divine intent to create
00:11:15.100
And secondary gender identity, on the other hand, is non-binary and is the result of the
00:11:19.540
pluriform effects of the enculturation of gender within human society, which, of course,
00:11:24.440
is completely theologically and biologically untrue.
00:11:30.720
He says that his thesis will also illustrate the significance of the sex-gender distinction
00:11:37.200
within Christian theology in ways that are less than apparent to secular forms of gender theory.
00:11:44.920
He talks about the differences in gender identities throughout Scripture.
00:11:50.400
His conclusion is, we began with a survey of feminist and contemporary gender theory in order
00:11:56.240
to discern the kinds of answers theorists have provided to the question, what is gender identity?
00:12:00.860
We observed that responses to this question followed several discernible patterns.
00:12:05.560
Each of them might inform Christian doctrine of gender.
00:12:08.820
Also in 2017, Nate published much of the material in a book titled All But Invisible,
00:12:17.100
Exploring Identity Questions at the Intersection of Faith, Gender, and Sexuality.
00:12:21.820
Collins explores the cultural background of what he describes as the intersection
00:12:25.080
between a gay identity and a Christian identity.
00:12:29.640
Collins is speaking from his own experience, of course, in his so-called mixed orientation marriage.
00:12:37.720
And so while Collins might, at the end of the day, agree that marriage biblically should be
00:12:44.700
between one man and one woman, I think we have some very serious fundamental theological disagreements
00:12:51.100
on what identity is and, again, what it means to be a new creation.
00:12:57.940
Maybe there is some common ground there in how we understand pushing our feelings to the side
00:13:05.420
and obeying the design that God has created for his people.
00:13:10.920
But it sounds to me like there is a lot of secularism in how he is viewing God's commands and how he is
00:13:20.420
viewing a scripture's descriptions of what gender, of what sex actually are.
00:13:27.240
Rosari's opinion on Collins' writing and bringing queer theory into Christian circles,
00:13:32.260
she says she compares, for example, critical race theory to a broken leg while trying to run a marathon.
00:13:39.140
It won't kill you, but you should get to a hospital to treat it right away.
00:13:44.800
And of course, she's an expert on queer theory.
00:13:47.240
She then compares critical queer theory to a massive heart attack.
00:13:50.440
This is why the church needs to wake up and drive it out of the evangelical institution.
00:13:58.220
She says critical race theory being what it is, and we've talked about that many times on this podcast,
00:14:05.120
basically the belief that there is the black and brown oppressed and the white oppressor,
00:14:14.880
She says that that is injurious, that that is going to harm your faith, that is going to hurt your theology,
00:14:21.380
and you need to get that fixed right away, but it's not going to quickly destroy it.
00:14:28.660
She says that critical queer theory is a massive heart attack,
00:14:32.900
and it will absolutely bring the faith, bring your doctrines to ruin.
00:14:39.020
It has to be driven out of evangelical institutions.
00:14:42.420
I don't know if we were talking right now if she would agree with this.
00:14:45.900
I actually think critical race theory is just as dangerous as critical queer theory.
00:14:51.960
I really do, and I actually think in some ways it's even more dangerous
00:14:55.740
because I think a lot of Christians see it as more innocuous,
00:14:59.380
and there is some kind of guilt attached to it for the white evangelical,
00:15:04.340
and so they start redefining justice in terms of critical race theory much more quickly
00:15:10.720
than they will redefine marriage or redefine sexuality in terms of critical queer theory.
00:15:18.320
So I think that they are equally dangerous just in different ways
00:15:23.100
because both of them beg us to ask the question, did God really say?
00:15:35.140
The website says that it exists to support and encourage Christians who are sexual minorities
00:15:40.280
so they can flourish in historic Christian traditions.
00:15:46.880
Most of them were gay slash same-sex attracted to create events for supporting
00:16:02.100
because people who struggle with same-sex attraction recognize that it is a disordered desire
00:16:07.120
and that same-sex relationships, same-sex behavior, that that is a sin,
00:16:13.960
that that is something that should be repented of,
00:16:15.920
that that's something that should be resisted, and we should embrace God's design.
00:16:24.120
They should be able to walk the road of sanctification empowered by the Holy Spirit
00:16:30.460
alongside other Christians that struggle in a variety of ways.
00:16:34.680
The problem with revoice is that it really blurs the lines between affirmation and love,
00:16:45.060
I would say, like true, godly, truth-filled love,
00:16:48.700
where you don't rejoice in wrongdoing but just rejoice in the truth,
00:16:52.800
and affirmation of sin, of course, which we believe is cruelty.
00:16:56.220
I think that revoice really blurs the lines between those two things.
00:17:01.320
we believe that theological dialogue about the nature of sexual orientation is necessary
00:17:05.460
and that continued conversation regarding the discipleship and spiritual care
00:17:08.920
of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and other same-sex attracted Christians.
00:17:18.620
as if that can be an active part of your identity as a Christian,
00:17:24.020
While discussions about terminology can be fruitful,
00:17:26.020
we believe they can also cause unnecessary division within the family of God
00:17:29.900
and needless pain for many non-straight Christians.
00:17:32.860
Whether individuals choose gay or same-sex attracted or to describe their orientation,
00:17:38.700
I don't even think orientation is the right language for the Christian.
00:17:43.000
I just don't because God orients our hearts when we become Christians towards the things
00:17:49.900
And orientation, I think, sounds like something that is fixed,
00:17:53.540
something that is innate and permanent that cannot be removed or changed at all.
00:17:59.260
And while we don't know if someone who is same-sex attracted,
00:18:02.220
that their attractions will necessarily change in the direction of the opposite sex,
00:18:09.820
we do know that God can do that, that of course He can.
00:18:22.740
But the fact of the matter is, is that God can change that.
00:18:25.200
And saying orientation, again, sounds so stagnant and fixed,
00:18:30.120
They say orientation experience is a matter of wisdom and liberty.
00:18:38.540
who otherwise share a commitment to historic Christian teaching about marriage and sexuality.
00:18:53.160
And then a same-sex attracted male who shares his apartment with his quote-unquote chosen brother
00:19:01.340
I mean, would you ever recommend that a man and a woman who are not married and are committed to sexual purity,
00:19:14.680
And that's what also I find within these side B and even like side A Christian circles,
00:19:20.740
is that there doesn't seem to be the same kind of commitment to general sexual purity
00:19:25.160
as there is among like side X or side Y Christians.
00:19:30.280
Again, go listen to that episode to get an explanation of all of those things.
00:19:34.540
But those of us who consider ourselves, you know, conservative Christians,
00:19:38.820
I would never encourage a young woman to live with a man
00:19:43.340
if she is trying to follow God's design for purity.
00:19:47.260
And so why would I encourage someone who is same-sex attracted,
00:19:50.600
who is trying to remain celibate and who is truly struggling against that
00:19:55.060
in an effort to work out his salvation with fear and trembling?
00:19:58.400
I would say never put yourself in the position of living with a man
00:20:01.960
where you are just going to be placed into temptation.
00:20:07.860
Um, they have also raised money, Revoice has raised money during June,
00:20:13.680
what they call Pride Month, to support LGBTQ plus slash SSA communities.
00:20:20.020
More specifically, the money goes towards Reach,
00:20:22.060
a leadership development cohort that quote unquote equips LGBTQ plus slash SSA
00:20:30.900
So this is what I'm talking about when I'm talking about blurring the lines.
00:20:35.000
Um, when it comes to affirmation, which I think is sinful,
00:20:44.340
acknowledging and submitting to God's design for sexuality, uh, and marriage
00:20:56.460
It blurs those lines to where a lot of Christians are confused.
00:21:03.840
This seems to be a group that thinks that they are nicer than God,
00:21:07.320
that they are kinder than God, they're more merciful than God,
00:21:10.300
that they can kind of let God off the hook for those inconvenient passages
00:21:13.880
like Genesis 1 or 1 Corinthians 6 or, uh, Romans 1.
00:21:18.360
We need to kind of caveat and nuance that and make it more palatable for a gay world.
00:21:30.260
And so Rosaria Butterfield's point has proven true that I think his dissertation,
00:21:36.680
maybe that's not what caused the establishment of Revoice.
00:21:39.940
Maybe that didn't lay the sole foundation for his book and his ideas,
00:21:43.820
which really have taken root in a lot of evangelicalism,
00:21:47.240
but it probably played a role when it never should have been accepted in the first place
00:21:55.480
And so, like, I see Rosaria Butterfield as such a prophetic voice.
00:22:01.680
And I don't even mean that in, like, the charismatic sense.
00:22:09.620
forth-telling voice about the issues within Christianity,
00:22:15.860
And I see her rebukes, her calling out, her criticism as acts of courageous love.
00:22:23.620
I know that these days you hear any kind of negativity or criticism.
00:22:33.800
I see it as her caring so much about the body of Christ.
00:22:38.000
She just has such intense compassion and experience because of the life that she lived.
00:22:42.360
She knows very well what it looks like to be deceived, even so recently as repenting
00:22:47.020
of this so-called pronoun politeness that she once engaged in for the sake of evangelism.
00:22:55.640
that you are trying to be the aroma of Christ while affirming the stench of death.
00:23:03.100
And so I just, I always love when she speaks the truth.
00:23:09.000
And that's why you got to come hear her and share the arrows of it.
00:23:15.540
So that's one thing that's going on in the Christian world today.
00:23:18.520
There is never a dull moment within evangelicalism.
00:23:21.720
And even in like all different subsets of Christianity, there is just so much going on.
00:23:30.440
And all of us are just trying to navigate it with as much truth and grace as we possibly can.
00:23:39.060
So let us continue to spur one another on toward loving good works.
00:23:42.440
And actually, just to put a flying point on the last segment, let me just,
00:24:35.400
No one told me to pray the gay away because every sermon told me to drive a fresh nail
00:24:50.680
Because every sermon told me to drive a fresh nail into every sin every day.
00:25:00.980
And actually, it's a good transition into our next topic about morality and what Jesus says
00:25:09.200
about sexual morality and not just what we do, but also what we think and what we look at.
00:25:17.220
And this centers on a video of Dennis Prager that has been going around on X recently,
00:25:26.320
And he is with Charlie Kirk at Arizona State University for Turning Point USA's Health,
00:25:38.660
And he makes some comments about masturbation, about lust, about what Jesus actually has to say
00:25:48.780
And let me say first that I really respect Dennis Prager.
00:25:54.520
I'm so thankful for the work that he has done, how PragerU has educated millions and millions
00:26:02.940
And so I really, really disagree with him on this.
00:26:07.080
And I think that this argument is harmful in a lot of ways.
00:26:11.660
But I agree with Dennis Prager on the vast majority of things.
00:26:15.440
And of course, I am just so thankful for his influence and his courage over the years.
00:26:20.280
But I just wanted to respond to this because I could see how this thinking is convincing
00:26:28.020
So you might remember last year, April 2023, Prager was a part of a discussion panel hosted
00:26:33.100
by Jordan Peterson, in which he said that lust and pornography are not a big deal to him
00:26:39.240
as a Jew, he says, because Judaism is only concerned with action or behavior of adultery,
00:26:53.160
Even if you look at the Ten Commandments, not even looking at it from a Christian perspective,
00:26:57.020
just from a Jewish perspective, you look at the Ten Commandments, what is one of the
00:27:02.160
I mean, actually, a lot of the commandments really have to do with the heart and the mind
00:27:05.980
and your belief, not only what you do, but I think specifically of thou shalt not covet.
00:27:12.060
You shouldn't covet your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's ox or your neighbor's house.
00:27:17.280
You shouldn't even want something that is not yours.
00:27:20.460
It wasn't just thou shalt not steal that was already covered in the Ten Commandments.
00:27:25.480
It's like you shouldn't steal, but you also shouldn't even want something that is not
00:27:30.320
So, I don't think that you can look at God's law giving to Israel and deduce that God only
00:27:38.480
So, again, not even just looking at it from my Christian New Testament perspective, that's
00:27:45.600
But he also says that certain external actions are not sin.
00:27:51.780
And this was, again, in this conversation last year in 2023.
00:28:03.440
If masturbation is evil, then I think we have raped the term evil of its moral power.
00:28:12.720
Masturbation may be a sin, and even that is debatable because there's nothing, not a
00:28:25.920
There is not a hint of masturbation being a sin in the Old Testament or in the New Testament.
00:28:36.920
Okay, so this is in response to a question that asked Dennis, you outraged many Christians
00:28:41.700
when you said on a podcast a few months ago that you don't believe, and this is something
00:28:45.440
that Dennis Prager said, that you don't believe masturbating to animated pictures of child
00:28:50.200
pornography is wrong or you don't find it evil.
00:28:52.460
This is fundamentally at odds with Christian teachings about lust, extramarital sex, and
00:28:57.600
Christ even says in Matthew 5, 29, that these sins are enough to lead souls to hell.
00:29:02.980
How can you say Judeo-Christian values are universal to both faiths when something as essential as
00:29:13.960
He did say that at the time, and I'm pretty sure that we responded to it on the show.
00:29:19.600
And so, basically what he says is that not all sins are evil, not in any of our religions
00:29:28.440
He says in Catholicism, for example, it is a sin if you are healthy enough to go to Mass
00:29:33.980
But I don't know any Catholics that would say you're evil or it is evil if you don't attend
00:29:40.420
This seems to me kind of some kind of semantic debate.
00:29:44.520
He says all evil is sin, but not every sin is evil.
00:29:48.380
I guess it depends on how you are defining evil.
00:29:55.080
He says, if you want to call masturbation evil, fine.
00:29:59.720
I use the term evil for rape, torture, murder, and the like.
00:30:02.680
If masturbation is evil, he says, then we have raped the term evil of its moral power.
00:30:13.620
And then he goes on to specifically answer this part about AI, child sex abuse material.
00:30:19.120
He says, let me just say my thinking has changed on the issue of artificial intelligence and
00:30:26.760
By the way, if all pornography were eradicated, we would have a much better society.
00:30:32.800
That is my position, which is really good to hear.
00:30:35.600
I'm so glad to hear that because really what started this conversation was even before
00:30:41.580
what he said about artificial intelligence, child sex abuse material was when he said publicly
00:30:50.880
that he didn't think that pornography was necessarily wrong, that it's not necessarily a bad thing
00:30:57.600
So it seems like he has changed his position on that.
00:31:02.620
And then he goes on to talk more about masturbation.
00:31:07.820
He says, if God thinks that that is a sin, you have a different God than I do.
00:31:13.160
He says, my God has common sense, loves human beings, and understands that circumstances determine
00:31:21.940
Where the Germans are the Poles who hid a Jew and lied to Nazis about hiding a Jew.
00:31:27.460
And then he speaks to what I think a lot of our response would be, okay, but lust is always
00:31:36.640
Jesus said it would be better to pluck out your eye than to look lustfully after a woman.
00:31:43.940
He then argued that we are alienating people from God if we interpret Matthew 5.29 as Jesus
00:31:59.060
When you go around telling people masturbation is a sin and you're committing evil, believe
00:32:09.120
In the Christian belief, private thought, private belief, it's not necessarily as sinful, but
00:32:16.540
And it's hotly debated, but I think it's clear Christ said to lust after a woman.
00:32:21.040
Well, he didn't actually, and there's no reason you would know this.
00:32:29.260
I did research because I didn't believe Jesus said that because Jesus was a Jew.
00:32:35.640
It's not normative in Judaism that thinking something is equivalent to doing something.
00:32:42.200
And he was very normative in virtually all of his teachings.
00:32:48.160
So Charlie clearly disagrees with Dennis Prager there and is trying to speak up and push
00:32:55.400
And I, of course, agree with Charlie on this because it is very obvious that Jesus is speaking
00:33:02.440
And of course, if you see this in context, what Jesus is doing to all of the laws is saying,
00:33:07.240
look, all of these laws were always about the heart.
00:33:09.660
And so I think that Jesus would have the same message, Dennis Prager, as he did to his audience
00:33:16.820
then as he was speaking even to the Pharisees when he was like, no, it's not enough that you
00:33:23.760
This law was always supposed to go down to heartfelt obedience, to heart-driven obedience.
00:33:42.500
And so that is the point of this passage in Matthew 5, that real faith is not just about
00:33:51.440
It was always supposed to be at the heart level, the soul level, the motivation level.
00:33:57.720
And so he goes on to say that it's actually been mistranslated from the Greek.
00:34:02.520
He said, if you covet another woman, it is as if you committed adultery with your heart.
00:34:08.600
And he says, I happen to agree with that coveting is banned in the Ten Commandments.
00:34:11.920
I know the Ten Commandments by heart in Hebrew.
00:34:20.280
If you are wanting another man's wife, if you are wanting a woman that is not your own,
00:34:29.700
He says there's no prohibition of lust in the Old Testament.
00:34:41.440
Again, I think that this is probably comes down to semantics.
00:34:49.300
But to say that Jesus did not prohibit lust, that would not be in keeping with our understanding
00:34:56.280
of Scripture as a whole, and certainly not Jesus' message as a whole, not the New Testament
00:35:02.400
And our understanding about sin and human nature and how God is killing the old self and giving
00:35:09.500
Of course, Jesus is talking about the desires of our heart.
00:35:29.080
I just want to say I have brought more Americans to Christianity than any living Christian.
00:35:37.900
I brought more Jews to Judaism than any living Jew.
00:35:42.060
So I know how to make the case for God and Bible and religion really effectively.
00:35:48.120
And I'm telling you, when we come out with stuff that people just intuitively understand,
00:36:03.920
I praise God if there have been people who have been brought to Christianity through Dennis
00:36:09.860
And as we know, the Word of God does not return void.
00:36:11.960
So I think it's entirely possible that someone would have started reading the Bible because
00:36:15.740
of Dennis Prager talking about the Bible, and then they would have realized the truth
00:36:23.720
As I said, Dennis Prager has done absolutely a lot of good work.
00:36:26.160
I'm not really sure how you quantify that he has brought more people to Christianity than
00:36:32.680
In fact, I can probably say that that is absolutely not true, because Dennis Prager does good work
00:36:38.940
when he is talking about some really important issues, and maybe even when he is talking about
00:36:45.060
But he does not believe in the gospel, and so he has not shared the gospel.
00:36:48.860
And I promise you that there are Christians who have shared the gospel, maybe people we
00:36:54.460
don't even know, whose names we don't even know, who God has used to bring more people
00:36:59.480
to Christ, because his gospel is the good news that people are then latching on to.
00:37:05.900
And as I've said many times, we don't have to apologize for God.
00:37:10.720
We don't have to pretend like his word is too hard to do or too hard to understand, because
00:37:19.500
Again, when God makes us new, a new creation, he also empowers us to obey him.
00:37:24.820
And it's always going to be a struggle against the flesh, but struggling against lust is that
00:37:31.140
I think actually, intuitively, we understand that masturbation and that lusting after someone
00:37:39.460
I actually think people really intuitively understand that, because you take a secular couple, and
00:37:45.120
the woman is sitting there at dinner across from her boyfriend or for her husband, that
00:37:52.340
guy leans over and checks out the back of the waitress.
00:37:56.700
Do you think that secular woman thinks, that's awesome?
00:38:03.740
I guarantee you that at least 90% of women, if not more, no matter their background would
00:38:13.660
And then that would start a fight, because there is something innate in us that wants
00:38:17.640
faithfulness, that wants loyalty, that wants exclusivity, wants monogamy.
00:38:26.820
Most women or men, if they found out that their significant other was thinking about other people,
00:38:34.860
Because they would say, okay, you're dissatisfied with me.
00:38:37.000
You are wanting something that I am not giving you, and that would cause a lot of heartache
00:38:42.120
So I think he's wrong when he says that intuitively people understand that masturbation and lust
00:38:46.960
are not really evil, they're not really sins, and we don't need to worry about that.
00:38:51.020
We mostly just need to focus on, you know, externalities.
00:38:59.500
I honestly think that is a morally delusional way of thinking.
00:39:03.480
And it certainly is an anti-gospel, anti-Jesus way of thinking that he takes over the whole
00:39:11.960
self, the whole heart, that there is not a centimeter of the self that Christ does not
00:39:21.180
When he becomes king, when he becomes ruler, he takes over.
00:39:26.120
He gets rid of the old man bit by bit throughout our lives.
00:39:29.700
It is a painful process, that process of refining, that process of sanctification, that process
00:39:40.200
It's letting go of our desires and getting something better, more fulfilling, more satisfying.
00:39:49.040
And I think that that's kind of what ties the first two segments of this podcast together,
00:39:54.080
that understanding that the gospel really is better than the things we want in this life,
00:40:03.960
That's all we got for the serious aspects of this podcast.
00:40:08.360
Now we have to talk about one final thing to end our week.
00:40:16.480
And that has to do, have you heard this term before?
00:40:19.500
That has to do with passenger princesses, a passenger princess.
00:40:27.680
So there was this tweet that went viral on Axe or post that went viral on Axe that says,
00:40:34.320
this lady just picked her husband up from the airport, kissed him, and immediately went
00:40:42.200
And this post got like tens of thousands of likes.
00:40:47.800
And then I quote tweeted this, and I didn't think it would get as much traction as it did
00:40:57.260
Unless my husband is recovering from major surgery, I ain't driving.
00:41:03.480
I think my husband might actually say, no, even if I'm recovering from major surgery, you're
00:41:11.200
And some people who desperately need to go touch their hand on grass were very upset with my
00:41:23.960
Like some of the quote tweets on my tweet and some of the responses, the replies to both
00:41:28.800
my tweet and the original tweet were so just unabashedly misogynistic and weird that I feel
00:41:36.200
like I have to explain myself, although I'm sure a lot of you understand the dynamic at
00:41:40.920
play here and why we are in fact passenger princesses when our husbands are around.
00:42:00.780
This will give you a visual of what a passenger princess is.
00:42:04.020
And even I can't totally relate to this exact setup.
00:42:08.220
This is the general situation that we're talking about.
00:42:16.460
Okay, so a passenger princess is a woman who gets in the front seat.
00:42:49.340
And basically, you've got your just your miniature little oasis there.
00:42:54.800
You're just like a little, I don't know, cube of luxury.
00:43:03.580
You've got your drink receptacles at least two, probably three.
00:43:07.580
For me, it's usually coffee, water and like some kind of juicer protein shake.
00:43:17.220
And then your husband is the one who has to navigate and has to drive.
00:43:22.020
And your job when you get in the car is to think about absolutely nothing.
00:43:27.060
You cannot even be trusted to tell him when the next turn is because that is not your job.
00:43:32.100
When you are a passenger princess, you just get in and you let him drive.
00:43:36.480
Now, the only difference between this TikTok situation and then my situation with my husband,
00:43:44.440
I had never heard this term before I tweeted what I did, is that I probably wouldn't bring
00:43:52.180
I would definitely not turn the heat up like she did.
00:43:56.780
And my husband would not want me to put my feet up on the dash because that is dangerous.
00:44:02.880
But other and also if we have kids in the car, that whole thing about her like taking the
00:44:07.500
phone and turning it to the music that she wanted, that would never happen.
00:44:10.480
Because everyone knows when you have kids in the car, kids are in charge of what is being
00:44:16.100
And you do that so then you can actually have a conversation with your spouse in the front row.
00:44:34.980
He wants me to be able to get in the car and to not have to think about anything and for him to
00:44:41.000
It's not like I insist on being a passenger princess.
00:45:07.740
But this person responded, I'm legit starting to think there's something wrong with women.
00:45:15.880
It actually and legitimately might help y'all get over your neuroses.
00:45:41.840
Like I don't make him push me around everywhere.
00:45:53.120
It's just that when my husband is with me, he is going to be in the driver's seat.
00:46:00.500
And some people also like, oh my gosh, the gender dynamics among fundamentalists, among Americans.
00:46:10.560
No one said that you have to do that, Miss Mary Sue.
00:46:15.020
If you want to drive and you want your husband to be a passenger prince, and that is the dynamic that you'll have, then I love that for you, Mary Sue.
00:46:27.200
So now, Bree, we were talking about this and you were saying, oh, you don't know if you have anything to say, but okay, I know that you drive yourself, but do you enjoy driving?
00:46:42.400
I actually consider myself a really good driver.
00:46:45.280
But if I had the opportunity to be a passenger princess, yeah, absolutely.
00:46:55.980
Yes, an aspiring passenger princess, a potential passenger princess.
00:47:01.800
So you don't think it is, I don't know, speaking to the laziness or the uselessness of women, like some people were saying on X.
00:47:14.520
No, I think it's also just kind of like a cute trend.
00:47:21.800
Going into a holiday week and, you know, a travel week and a travel season, I just want to say cheers to all of you fellow passenger princesses out there.
00:47:33.360
We will be passenger princessing it up over the next few weeks.