Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - December 14, 2023

Ep 923 ｜ What Purity Culture Got Wrong ｜ Guest： Dr. Lina AbuJamra

Topics

purity culture crisis purity culture crisis purity culture shame sexual struggle in Christianity

Hosted by

Allie Beth Stuckey

Guests

Dr. Lina AbuJamra

Ep 922 ｜ The Very Scary Rise of Christofascism Ep 924 ｜ Is Busyness Ever Glorifying to God？｜ Guest： Dr. James Spencer

Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 3 minutes

Words per minute

210.12

Word count

13,349

Sentence count

893

Harmful content

Misogyny

16

sentences flagged

Toxicity

48

sentences flagged

Hate speech

52

sentences flagged

Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Did purity culture fail the church? What does it really mean to walk in purity as a Christian? Is it just to not look at porn, or is it to not be married? What is it? Today we have an expert on this topic, Christian author and ER doctor, Alina Abu-Jamra. She is here to talk about her latest book on this subject, and to discuss this from the perspective of someone who is 51 and single, and who has learned what it really means to Walk in Sexual Purity and Holiness before the Lord, whether you are single, dating, engaged or married.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).

Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .

Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .

Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .

Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.

Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.

Show only flagged segments

00:00:00.620 Did purity culture fail the church?

00:00:04.120 What does it really mean to walk in purity as a Christian?

00:00:07.280 Is it just to be straight? 0.72

00:00:08.680 Is it just to not look at porn?

00:00:10.360 Is it just to be married?

00:00:12.940 What is it?

00:00:13.860 Today, we have an expert on this topic.

00:00:16.000 We've got a Christian author and ER doctor, Alina Abu-Jamra.

00:00:20.560 She is here to talk about her latest book on this subject and to discuss this from the

00:00:25.700 perspective of someone who is 51 and single and who has learned what it really means to

00:00:32.080 walk in sexual purity and holiness before the Lord, whether you are single or dating or

00:00:39.000 engaged or married.

00:00:40.360 It's a really interesting conversation.

00:00:42.060 You'll find that she has a lot to say, and she's so smart that I had to really make sure

00:00:47.660 that I was keeping up with every point that she's making.

00:00:49.980 This is probably an episode that you're going to have to listen to a couple times just to

00:00:53.880 make sure that you're taking in all of the points that she makes.

00:00:57.140 Before we get started on it, I just wanted to remind you, too, that we've got amazing

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00:01:27.120 I also just want to remind you guys, this is our last time that we're filming before

00:01:34.820 the end of the year.

00:01:35.580 We do have new episodes that will be coming out over the next three weeks, but we're not

00:01:39.540 going to have our normal four episode a week cadence going on.

00:01:44.120 The Relatable team is going to take a break, but we've got some great interviews coming out

00:01:47.660 that you will definitely, that you'll definitely want to catch over this break.

00:01:52.640 And of course, I'll be on Instagram and all that good stuff.

00:01:55.660 All right.

00:01:56.260 This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.

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00:02:04.120 Lina, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.

00:02:15.880 I really appreciate it.

00:02:16.840 I'm really happy to be here.

00:02:18.280 It feels so Christmassy.

00:02:19.780 Yes, I know.

00:02:20.580 We've got all our decorations.

00:02:22.500 Okay.

00:02:22.840 For people who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?

00:02:25.960 Yeah.

00:02:26.380 The hardest obstacle is saying my last name.

00:02:28.500 It's Abu Jamra. 0.95

00:02:29.240 So right away, people want to know where I'm from.

00:02:31.640 And I grew up in Lebanon.

00:02:33.360 I'm Lebanese.

00:02:34.080 And then I now live in Chicago.

00:02:35.940 My family moved, though, when I was a senior in high school to Green Bay, Wisconsin.

00:02:39.780 So I'm a Midwest girl through and through.

00:02:41.700 I came to Christ.

00:02:42.920 I'm a Christian.

00:02:43.800 I came to Christ as a child, grew up in the church in Lebanon in an environment very much

00:02:49.160 similar to what an American kid would grow up in church.

00:02:51.540 We had an American pastor.

00:02:52.880 We were part of the Christian Missionary Alliance.

00:02:54.680 So I think my upbringing was very much influenced by, let's say, the American church culture.

00:03:00.200 However, I was a senior in high school when we moved.

00:03:03.840 And I ended up sort of jumping into, imagine going from Lebanon to Green Bay and sort of

00:03:11.640 all of that.

00:03:12.480 And within a year of going to high school, graduating, made a decision to go to a Christian 0.98

00:03:16.960 college, which was sort of, in some ways, a big deal in my family.

00:03:21.300 My dad was a doctor.

00:03:22.320 And so there was, as a Lebanese, and I think anybody who watches the show, who has friends

00:03:27.300 from other cultures, there's a big push to, you know, higher education.

00:03:30.640 And I think a lot of it is because when you grow up in war, Lebanon had a civil war during

00:03:34.060 my upbringing for pretty much my entire life.

00:03:37.160 There's a sense that the only escape you have is not going to come from government.

00:03:41.240 It's not going to come from, you know, the American dream.

00:03:44.200 Nobody else has that concept.

00:03:45.800 And so really, education is the path to getting out of a war-torn country.

00:03:50.040 And so we were very much pushed.

00:03:52.060 My mom was a pharmacist.

00:03:53.380 Interestingly, my mom is a Palestinian refugee from back in the 40s.

00:03:57.260 They moved to Lebanon.

00:03:58.760 And so I didn't really grow up under, my mom was very integrated in the Lebanese way.

00:04:02.720 So I never really understood growing up what she had gone through.

00:04:06.900 But, you know, but she also had been highly educated, even as a, you know, a person who

00:04:11.120 had escaped, you know, their place.

00:04:13.240 And she was the one who came to Christ in college.

00:04:16.320 And so again, very much deeply, my mother converted dramatically.

00:04:20.400 Yeah.

00:04:20.820 And she was immediately deep in the word of God.

00:04:24.720 Okay.

00:04:25.120 So I grew up with an example of a mom who was highly educated. 1.00

00:04:28.360 And back in, I mean, remember, I grew up in the, I was born in the 70s.

00:04:31.040 And so she was, you know, product of the 60s, but very focused on God's word, very educated,

00:04:35.900 very loving of God's word, very loving of God.

00:04:38.040 I mean, Jesus was, became the center of her life.

00:04:40.680 And so that was sort of the voice in my head growing up, the emphasis of our teaching.

00:04:44.160 So moving to the U.S. from a spiritual perspective was not hard, but culturally, obviously, a

00:04:50.100 completely different world.

00:04:51.600 So I ended up going to a pretty conservative Christian college.

00:04:55.080 Very conservative.

00:04:55.980 Very.

00:04:56.320 Yes.

00:04:56.620 And, you know, primarily because my pastor in Lebanon had gotten a degree there and my

00:05:02.040 mom had, had insisted that I apply to one Christian college.

00:05:05.820 And remember, I'm off the boat.

00:05:07.160 Like, I actually graduated from college early.

00:05:10.040 I was 16 when I graduated from college.

00:05:11.940 Wow.

00:05:12.460 You're 16 when you graduated from college?

00:05:14.820 Yes.

00:05:15.000 Oh my goodness.

00:05:15.560 It's not that I was so smart.

00:05:17.320 People always want to know how.

00:05:19.400 Lebanese start school a year earlier, but then they end up going to college.

00:05:22.900 Like, they skip a year.

00:05:24.260 They start as a, it's a, it's, it's the baccalaureate system.

00:05:27.280 It's all a mess.

00:05:28.100 So everyone is a little younger going to college and I skipped kindergarten.

00:05:31.880 So I can't draw, but it's, you know, but in all of that, I, I kind of, I, I,

00:05:36.700 I kind of accommodated my mom, but had no intention of going to a Christian college.

00:05:40.820 But really that summer at camp before college, the Lord really dealt very much.

00:05:45.460 I had a very deep encounter with him.

00:05:47.660 I would say I was definitely saved before from a knowledge.

00:05:50.740 I mean, you know, you grow up in the church.

00:05:52.000 It's sort of, there's a sense of, I know who Jesus is.

00:05:54.200 I've received him into my heart.

00:05:55.440 I remember asking him into my heart, but something happens when you become of age.

00:06:00.800 I think every person who grows up in a Christian home has to understand sort of beyond,

00:06:04.820 oh, this is my mother's faith or my dad's faith to, I really now understand who Jesus

00:06:09.960 is and want to follow him.

00:06:11.620 And I think that was sort of the beginning of what I now consider in my calling to what

00:06:15.280 I do now, which I ended up going to medical school.

00:06:17.720 And in my fellowship, I went to med school and became a doctor and specialized in pediatrics

00:06:23.540 and then decided to do a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine.

00:06:26.840 And it was that transition from pediatrics to pediatric ER where I felt God's call to teach

00:06:32.220 the Bible.

00:06:33.420 And that grew out of a sort of a crisis of faith related to actually dating and marriage

00:06:40.460 concepts.

00:06:41.280 I had been a very good girl growing up.

00:06:44.080 You know, again, I'm Lebanese.

00:06:45.220 We're born and, you know, I was grew up in a sort of fundamentalist circle.

00:06:48.960 And though I was not growing up aware of what the purity culture was, is, you know, we certainly

00:06:55.420 grew up with this understanding of the Christian way, which was up until recently, I think I

00:07:02.020 would say was very obviously sex before marriage was wrong.

00:07:06.240 Right.

00:07:06.440 You know, a man and a woman ought to marry and be together for life, you know, that this

00:07:10.880 was a covenant that God gave.

00:07:12.380 And even though I didn't expect people who don't follow Jesus to abide by those things,

00:07:17.040 up until very recently, I would say it was sort of assumed that if you grew up in the

00:07:22.220 church and you gave your life to Christ, whether you did it as a child or later on, that those

00:07:26.760 are basic assumptions that you could gather from reading the Bible, you see?

00:07:32.180 And so that was my background.

00:07:34.860 So I go sort of, I was this obedient child who wanted to do God's will.

00:07:38.480 I had given my life to Christ as a child, kind of dedicated my life at camp, went to a Christian

00:07:43.280 college and really embraced the teachings of Jesus.

00:07:48.380 And yet, you know, and we'll get to the content of the book in a second, obviously had some

00:07:52.120 you know, as a teenager with hormones and, and all of the things, but, but really believed

00:07:56.240 by conviction in certain ways of life.

00:07:58.380 And then when I went to residency, that was the first time I dated somebody seriously.

00:08:02.960 And it was a, how old are you by the time you graduated?

00:08:06.080 Good question.

00:08:06.760 I was 20 when I graduated medical school.

00:08:09.000 Okay.

00:08:09.640 But now, oh my goodness, I'm sorry, 24, 24, 20 college, 24 medical school.

00:08:15.720 Okay.

00:08:16.120 You graduated from college when you were at 20, I went straight through, you graduated high

00:08:20.600 school when you were 16, college 20.

00:08:23.220 Okay.

00:08:23.520 So, so now like, it's funny because I, you know, my, my nieces and nephews are in their

00:08:27.720 late teens now, early twenties.

00:08:29.100 And sometimes like family members would be like, oh, they're growing up.

00:08:32.020 They're going to be on their own.

00:08:33.140 Are they able to like do a cross country drive?

00:08:35.880 And I'm always like, man, I was seeing patients when I was 21, like, you know, like you were

00:08:40.840 pretty much, I mean, in the throes of things.

00:08:42.960 And so, but, but then fellowship gave me, so I did residency for three years and fellowship

00:08:47.300 for three years and in residency was my first, um, I'd say I didn't date much in high school.

00:08:53.520 Understandably, I was young.

00:08:54.540 We moved in college.

00:08:55.920 Same.

00:08:56.260 I went to a very strict college and that was, you know, touted to have pink and blue sidewalks,

00:09:02.020 although it's not true, but that's the rumor.

00:09:03.840 And, and then South Carolina, they did kind of segregate men and women. 0.91

00:09:08.900 That's what you were talking about.

00:09:10.000 Yes, they did.

00:09:10.980 And, and yes, they, it's a well-known college for that.

00:09:14.120 And it doesn't, it won't take long to figure out where I went, but I'm not ashamed of it.

00:09:18.320 Actually, I find it kind of funny with the way that my life has transpired.

00:09:22.320 But in residency, my dad, who, again, I grew up in a Lebanese home with a Lebanese father

00:09:29.040 who came to Christ midway through his life.

00:09:32.540 So he was in his early fifties, I think when he gave his life to Jesus and he, um, but whether

00:09:37.180 you were a Christian or not in our home, you couldn't date till you became a doctor.

00:09:42.060 It was unspoken, it was spoken, it was sort of like, you know, I don't know what would

00:09:45.480 have happened if we did, but none of us tried to, you know, fight that.

00:09:48.740 And so again, that sense of patriarchal, you know, um, culture was there, you know, and

00:09:56.360 by the way, a lot of Americans had a similar way back in the sixties and seventies.

00:10:00.900 I think that definitely the Western world is ahead of the Middle Eastern world in some of 0.99

00:10:05.120 those, you know, more the way that we think about things now.

00:10:07.880 But, but nonetheless, I, I, I, I hit the ground running when I started dating.

00:10:13.580 So I literally met a guy, started dating seriously and got engaged within like a nine month period.

00:10:20.640 That's fast for someone who hasn't dated a lot before, uh, which, I mean, you hear stories

00:10:25.420 about people who meet and get married like two months later.

00:10:27.720 It's not that unheard of, but I hadn't dated a lot.

00:10:30.500 And, and, and so two weeks before the wedding, we ended the relationship mutually.

00:10:35.580 Um, and, but the backdrop of that was that there was this person in my life who was my

00:10:40.660 best friend for 10 years, all the way from Christian college that I sort of always assumed

00:10:44.860 I would end up with.

00:10:46.280 And I felt like he always waited for years and whether it was in my mind or not, by the

00:10:52.640 time I got engaged and did the engagement realized sort of what I was going on in my own life

00:10:58.420 and heart, he had already moved on, which you can't blame a person.

00:11:01.900 I mean, the person gets engaged, but it was like one of those, you know, you, we all grew

00:11:05.820 up watching romantic comedies and movies and, and you, you, you know, all those high school

00:11:09.960 movies where the guy eventually, you know, comes around and I kept waiting, thinking this

00:11:14.040 was God's will for me.

00:11:15.220 What is that?

00:11:15.660 My best friend's wedding?

00:11:16.560 All of them.

00:11:17.040 You can come up with probably 10 of them.

00:11:18.900 That's right.

00:11:19.520 There's so many of them, but, but the worst part, and I think this is why this is relevant

00:11:24.140 to our conversation today is that I think there is this undertone of what I think at

00:11:29.060 the time, you know, now we look at and go, Oh, you were so caught up in a purity culture,

00:11:32.620 but sort of the sense, even as I ended the engagement and waited on God, I had this sense

00:11:39.620 because I felt like God had spoken to me about certain things.

00:11:44.060 And that was one of them that God would bring that friendship to marriage.

00:11:48.540 And that ended up messing me up.

00:11:50.360 That was probably my first crisis of faith because he ended up, um, moving on and I

00:11:56.420 didn't see God fix that, bring him back around, cause us to get married.

00:12:01.400 And I had, and this is the important thing.

00:12:03.280 I had been quote unquote pure.

00:12:06.180 Now you could argue what is purity.

00:12:08.460 I hadn't been with a guy, even engaged.

00:12:10.400 We hadn't had crossed any lines of that.

00:12:13.120 I mean, we were physical to the extent that, that one can be respectably, respectably, but

00:12:17.420 I felt like I had honored the Lord to the best of my ability.

00:12:19.700 And so it felt like God had, you know, sort of that lie of the purity culture, which is

00:12:24.540 this concept that if you do your part, God is going to do his and his part being the American

00:12:29.340 dream of Hollywood marriage, you know, love, all that.

00:12:32.900 And so I had a crisis of faith in my fellowship in that season where I felt like I couldn't

00:12:38.760 trust God fully.

00:12:40.620 The output of that was that the Lord healed that area and I felt out of it.

00:12:46.220 I started teaching a Bible study and felt called to ministry.

00:12:49.860 And so I started this, this was early 2000, so 23 years ago.

00:12:53.440 And I started this path of doctoring, but also of writing about God and faith.

00:12:59.480 And in that, you know, and I thought, and as many of us who are Christian might think,

00:13:05.060 you know, we are told all things work together for good and, you know, God redeems the past.

00:13:08.580 And for years I thought like, oh, God was redeeming even this broken, you know, relationship that

00:13:14.380 I thought would amount to something.

00:13:15.940 I thought, well, okay, this broken, God is using it.

00:13:18.420 We always, we humans always want a cause effect, right?

00:13:22.740 And in the Christian world, we are really trained for that.

00:13:25.740 And so we want explanations for everything.

00:13:28.060 And we want to decipher God and decipher him now.

00:13:30.680 And so I sort of started this ministry with this undercurrent of, well, God took away that

00:13:35.720 relationship, but he's now using it in ministry instead, you see?

00:13:40.940 So it sort of justifies the pain in your life.

00:13:43.680 And so for years, I sort of understood what this is.

00:13:46.300 Now I had the better good, which was I'm given my life to teach the Bible.

00:13:49.840 So they would ask me to do conferences.

00:13:51.700 I would write, started a blog about God.

00:13:53.380 Eventually by 2012 or 13, I wrote a book and the Moody publishers asked me to write it.

00:13:58.500 They asked me to write on singleness.

00:13:59.920 I would have never written on that.

00:14:01.320 Who wants to spend their life being like a poster child for singles books?

00:14:05.220 And by then I still wasn't dating.

00:14:06.680 I had been engaged a second time and ended the engagement.

00:14:09.360 And so all of this background eventually led to a couple of years after my first book.

00:14:14.560 No, actually the summer my first book came out, I ended up having a big debacle in my own

00:14:21.100 church where by now I was well into my practice in pediatric emergency medicine and I was leading

00:14:25.820 the woman's ministry at my church.

00:14:27.300 And that church ended up blowing up, imploding.

00:14:30.780 And it was because of abuse of power and leadership.

00:14:33.960 And it was very well known.

00:14:35.520 In Chicago, there's been two big church implosions of recent times.

00:14:38.760 I was at the first and then I ended up going to the second and both ended up imploding.

00:14:44.320 So I always joke like if a pastor saw me walking into their church, like be careful.

00:14:48.140 I don't know what could happen here.

00:14:48.900 But really that church breakup was probably the, it's funny because out of all of the

00:14:55.760 hurt that I felt I had had in my life, two broken engagements, you know, the lost relationship,

00:15:00.180 all of this stuff, that church breakup was probably the most painful event in my life.

00:15:05.380 That was in 2013.

00:15:06.520 And then I ended up writing about it by then, by 2016, 17, maybe 18.

00:15:11.360 My book, Fractured Faith came out where I would look back and say I deconstructed.

00:15:16.120 Yeah, tell us about that.

00:15:17.300 Well, I think, you know, how did I deconstruct?

00:15:21.320 I think you can see even what I've told you my story so far.

00:15:23.860 There was a lot of premises that I had embraced in the Christian faith that were not biblical.

00:15:28.420 There were a lot of ideas that I had formed about God that were based on the American

00:15:32.640 dream.

00:15:33.560 Right.

00:15:33.920 And would you say it had been influenced by the prosperity gospel?

00:15:37.220 A hundred percent.

00:15:37.740 If I do this, I'm going to reap.

00:15:39.780 A hundred percent.

00:15:40.600 Right.

00:15:40.920 I think I grew up in churches that were 180 degrees opposite of the prosperity gospel in

00:15:47.240 word and indeed financially to a certain extent.

00:15:52.060 But even that, I would say that's not, even that is not true.

00:15:54.800 So that big church that imploded, I think, had heavily bought into the prosperity gospel

00:15:59.540 while teaching against the prosperity message.

00:16:03.160 And I think the purity culture, so when you talk about purity and issues related to sexuality

00:16:09.500 and holiness in the Christian world, I think the greatest lie that the conservative, non-charismatic,

00:16:17.900 evangelical, like when you really sum up what was the fault of the purity gospel, purity

00:16:22.260 culture, and you can call it the purity gospel, whatever you want to call it.

00:16:24.800 Is that it's a heavily prosperity driven message.

00:16:28.720 It is a prosperity gospel.

00:16:30.900 It is.

00:16:31.340 It's basically saying, if I don't have sex before I get married, I'm going to have an

00:16:35.680 amazing husband or, you know, if you're a guy, a wife, and we're going to have an amazing

00:16:40.420 sex life.

00:16:41.340 No one says it, but everybody assumes it.

00:16:43.580 And so, so many people who have waited end up getting married and I think have horrible

00:16:49.380 sex lives at the early onset because they've never done it. 0.56

00:16:52.460 Everything takes practice.

00:16:54.980 Or even if they have good sex lives after a while, it fizzles as all relationships grow

00:16:59.540 in different ways.

00:17:00.420 And then you sort of wake up and go, you know, what did I, did I really marry this person?

00:17:04.420 And so then you have this crisis of, A, I mean, we've seen it as of in the last 20,

00:17:08.960 30 years, I'd say, in the church where divorce has become acceptable.

00:17:12.380 I remember growing up, it was a big deal when people divorced.

00:17:15.220 And now it's like, it's nothing.

00:17:17.600 I mean, and I'm not, this isn't an indictment against divorce.

00:17:20.220 Jesus makes space for divorce and, you know, certain times like adultery and, and anybody,

00:17:25.260 even then, I think there's, should be some valid attempt at, but you're given an out of

00:17:29.780 marriage in that biblically.

00:17:30.980 But it's become where no one even thinks about it anymore.

00:17:46.280 I grew up in what I would call the conservative purity culture too.

00:17:51.260 And I think that there are some good aspects of it, of course, teaching that you shouldn't

00:17:56.240 have sex before marriage. 0.74

00:17:57.520 That was, I just knew in my head, that was stuck in my head, do not have sex before marriage.

00:18:01.680 But there is more to purity than that.

00:18:04.380 And we stay pure to glorify God, not to just reap a husband when you're 22 years old.

00:18:10.660 A hundred percent.

00:18:11.480 You haven't even, I mean, we haven't even started talking about this most recently.

00:18:14.480 A hundred percent.

00:18:16.540 The problem with what's happened now in 2023 with purity culture is you can almost,

00:18:22.580 you can almost not talk about purity anymore in the context of,

00:18:27.520 when I say Christianity, I mean, evangelicalism and the local church, because if you say the

00:18:32.000 word purity, there's this pressure of, especially under millennials and under to shut you up because

00:18:38.980 it's like, don't talk about purity because they automatically associate that with purity

00:18:42.920 culture.

00:18:43.720 So the word, people want to avoid the word, I find.

00:18:46.460 And so words like virgin is a stigma now.

00:18:49.160 It's a shame.

00:18:49.760 There's more shame in the evangelical world with being a virgin than there is with being 0.51

00:18:55.040 sexually active before marriage.

00:18:56.860 In fact, the statistics support that.

00:18:58.600 So my most recent book.

00:18:59.480 You think in the evangelical world?

00:19:01.380 Yes, I do think so.

00:19:02.540 And I think, well, one person who's written extensively about this is David Ayers.

00:19:07.280 He's one example of many, but he's a, he's a professor from Grove City.

00:19:11.220 And, and I, in fact, I am intrigued by his data and he's put it out there.

00:19:16.420 He has a book out there, but also you can find his work and articles.

00:19:19.800 And let me just pull it up.

00:19:21.920 So I don't, so I don't lie about it.

00:19:24.100 But as an example, this study he did between, he surveyed about 5,000 evangelical Protestant

00:19:30.180 people who consider themselves, you can even say in the fundamentalist background from

00:19:34.240 2014 to 2018, which I think is relevant because I think sexual promiscuity has expanded from

00:19:40.740 2015 onward for a number of different reasons.

00:19:42.760 And the type of sexual sin that we talk about in the church has changed in the last five years.

00:19:47.780 But again, for a number of reasons, but, but he says he found that 89% of men and 92% of

00:19:54.780 women in that context had at least one opposite sex partner in the past five years. 0.92

00:20:00.340 Wow.

00:20:00.840 Okay.

00:20:01.060 The 89% of men, 92% of women, that is crazy. 1.00

00:20:04.480 Shocking.

00:20:05.020 Think about that.

00:20:05.560 That is shocking.

00:20:06.160 And then he, he says as young as 18 to 19 and you'll go over, he looked at, he teaches

00:20:10.140 at the college, a lot of, you know, students from a Christian college.

00:20:13.300 And he goes on to say, the Gospel Coalition has interviewed him.

00:20:16.280 You can also find his, his interview there recently.

00:20:19.220 And he, and he also talks about not just that they're sexually active.

00:20:22.520 And once they're sexually active with one partner, then the statistics of them being sexually

00:20:26.500 active with more than three over time is huge.

00:20:28.700 But also the type, what you define as sexual intercourse, they might say, well, I've never had 0.95

00:20:32.440 sexual intercourse, but then the openness to oral and anal and other, other forms. 0.98

00:20:37.040 He, he, he himself says how it's parents would be horrified if they understood what that teenage 0.98

00:20:43.880 generation and the younger generation would consider acceptable again, while you're still

00:20:49.680 not having sex, so to speak.

00:20:51.080 How does that relate to, to, to me?

00:20:53.220 And, and, you know, cause I initially started to write a book that I called, um, originally

00:20:59.120 it was supposed to be funny, but I initially called it Eggplants and Peaches.

00:21:02.280 It was meant to be tongue in cheek.

00:21:04.020 And, and then the subtitle was A Sexual Memoir of a 50-Year-Old Virgin.

00:21:08.180 And it was evident after floating it a little that people couldn't handle, not just people,

00:21:13.800 Christians couldn't, didn't want this, the, the, the association with someone being a 50-year-old

00:21:19.460 virgin, it was a stigma, it was a shame.

00:21:21.580 To this day, I had a lot of moms tell me their 20-year-old daughters don't want to be thought 0.99

00:21:25.440 of as virgin at 20.

00:21:26.980 It's like you're, we're living now in a world where it's, it's a bad thing to be a virgin.

00:21:31.220 And yet that, again, growing up, reading the Bible and understanding the Bible, even without

00:21:36.780 big commentaries, I never had trouble in my own life and mind understanding that there

00:21:42.140 was a certain conduct sexually that if you believe the Bible, you ought to abide by it, 1.00

00:21:48.280 right?

00:21:48.440 I mean, this notions now that when I go speak at colleges now, and I have, I have people

00:21:52.800 who, who will come up to me and say, man, you know, I, you know, I had one kid tell me

00:21:56.280 recently at a college that he had come to Christ and, and he had made a decision to, to save

00:22:00.900 himself till marriage.

00:22:01.700 And his father, who claims to be a Christian, challenged him and was very horrified by the 0.81

00:22:06.500 fact that he wanted to save himself for marriage and said, the Bible doesn't teach that.

00:22:09.720 Show me the Bible where it says you can't have sex before marriage.

00:22:11.660 So this concept now of you can't have sex before marriage is thought to be purity culture.

00:22:18.260 So now you're right.

00:22:20.140 There is a mix up of thought between what purity is biblically, what holiness is, and why it

00:22:27.240 is asked, you know, why Christ has asked us to pursue that path.

00:22:30.980 And I would say God, but I would even say Christ, because I think a lot of people think,

00:22:34.760 well, you know, purity culture is so old Testament.

00:22:36.460 And so they want to unhitch all the new Testament, but in fact, it is, it's very much a Christian. 0.87

00:22:42.200 I mean, read the red letter words of Jesus in, you know, you don't even need to get past

00:22:48.300 like chapter 10, you know, you get to Sermon on the Mount, which is one of the first things

00:22:51.880 that you read about Jesus.

00:22:53.300 And you can see that he holds to a very, um, um, strict, let's say, uh, value.

00:23:01.240 You know, you could, you can, you can, we can dig through, through that, but what he

00:23:04.520 holds Christians to what he holds humans to is, is undoable.

00:23:08.040 And the whole point was that his sacrifice was needed, right?

00:23:11.700 Because the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that it's not just the law.

00:23:15.980 It's not just, okay, you can't kill someone.

00:23:17.800 You can't have sex before marriage. 0.65

00:23:18.880 You can't hate, you know, on and on the 10 commandments.

00:23:21.860 But now he moved it to, if you think it in your mind, so are you.

00:23:27.340 So that none of us can read Jesus and go, yeah, you know, I don't think Jesus cared

00:23:31.220 about your sexuality.

00:23:32.620 He had a stricter code than the Old Testament.

00:23:35.500 Right.

00:23:35.820 But the point was that none of us could achieve it.

00:23:50.180 It wasn't just that, hey, if you, uh, commit adultery, you're an adulterer.

00:23:55.540 It's if you look at a woman, lustfully, you are the same as an adulterer.

00:24:00.460 If you hate someone, think about how many people have we quote unquote murdered.

00:24:03.960 I mean, it's easy to point fingers at people who are sexual sinners in a bad way or who

00:24:08.620 are murderers and be like, well, I've never done that.

00:24:10.340 That's such a good point because you do hear a lot, especially from deconstructionists and

00:24:14.820 like people who are consider themselves more progressive that the Old Testament God cared

00:24:19.640 about the law.

00:24:20.520 And in the New Testament, Jesus didn't care about the law as much in that people sometimes

00:24:26.100 make the mistake of saying the reason why Jesus chastised the Pharisees is because they

00:24:30.500 cared about the law.

00:24:31.700 But what you're saying is that no, is that they didn't care about the law enough.

00:24:35.340 They didn't fully understand that the law was supposed to seep all the way down to our

00:24:38.960 hearts.

00:24:39.800 So Jesus actually reemphasized and emphasized further the importance of obedience to God all

00:24:46.400 the way down to the heart level.

00:24:48.080 Yes.

00:24:48.360 And proved that none of us can do that.

00:24:50.620 Right.

00:24:51.100 And because of that, we need him.

00:24:52.980 So he was a fulfillment of the law and that because then he went to the cross, now the upside 0.86

00:24:57.040 of it is you could say, well, great.

00:24:58.500 Then if Jesus did the work, then I don't have to do anything.

00:25:00.860 And that's a misunderstanding of grace.

00:25:02.740 That's Paul's premise in Romans 6, where he says, shall I continue in sin that grace may

00:25:06.400 abound?

00:25:06.660 God forbid, right?

00:25:07.580 That's a whole cheap grace.

00:25:08.780 If you don't read the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I mean, you can, that doesn't make sense logically.

00:25:13.820 Grace is to compel us to obedience.

00:25:15.420 And purity out of a belief and a faith that has changed you, not purity as a means to

00:25:24.200 use God to give you the things that you want.

00:25:27.320 You see, there's a difference.

00:25:28.640 It's not that purity is wrong.

00:25:30.200 So fine, you can play around words as we like to do in our culture now.

00:25:34.000 So you don't want to call it purity culture.

00:25:35.600 You can call it holiness.

00:25:36.440 You don't want to call it holiness.

00:25:37.480 You can play around words, but the reality is that, you know, what is the will of God in

00:25:41.740 1 Thessalonians?

00:25:42.440 Well, it's your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality.

00:25:45.960 So now we have, you know, modern, whether you want to call them progressives or not, because

00:25:49.880 it used to just be the progressives.

00:25:51.260 But now even in the conservative evangelical world, we have people splitting hairs and

00:25:54.460 going, well, the word pornea means this and not that.

00:25:57.780 And why?

00:25:58.520 You know, you don't need a PhD to understand the Bible.

00:26:00.780 Yeah.

00:26:00.920 Like I've talked to people who are Muslims in Lebanon who have given their life to Jesus,

00:26:06.120 who some are illiterate and hear it, and they can still read the Bible and understand in

00:26:11.180 the New Testament that there is a desire for holiness, let's say, that includes, and that

00:26:18.060 fornication means premarital sex as an example, which again, we've parsed things out so much

00:26:23.960 now over words.

00:26:25.720 We can't even understand each other anymore.

00:26:28.700 Now, how does that, like, okay, these are all, how do we go from deconstruction to my

00:26:33.680 story and being hurt by God and crisis, you know, understanding God's goodness to, well,

00:26:38.640 I think, um, I wrote the book about sex, which is the reason I'm here.

00:26:43.800 And, and by the way, I think this conversation about sex is at the forefront of every Christian's

00:26:48.820 mind, but we don't think we're like, you can look at my book and, and, and not under, here's,

00:26:56.460 here's how we want to think about sex in the evangelical world. 0.99

00:26:58.720 Now, gay sex is wrong. 1.00

00:27:00.320 Look, transgenderism is wrong. 1.00

00:27:03.080 And, and it's so easy to make sexual sin about that, that we miss the log in our own 0.88

00:27:10.440 eye, eye, right?

00:27:11.600 And so, and so I told you the statistics of, you know, the kids who are growing up in the

00:27:15.480 church who are sexually active, you could argue, they may not know the Lord yet.

00:27:18.420 Honestly, there's this assumption, I mean, the whole concept of deconstruction, I mean,

00:27:21.960 there's this assumption that every kid that grows up, grows up in church knows Jesus.

00:27:25.180 Well, we don't know that for a fact.

00:27:26.360 If you grew up in church and you've received Christ and you have a sensitivity of the spirit

00:27:30.560 in you, reread the Bible, you're, you move to want to live like Jesus would move, wanted

00:27:35.140 you to, to, to, and, and, and you're coming to the word of God with the humility.

00:27:38.700 I think that there's a natural desire to live a certain type of life that is at immense odds

00:27:45.940 with the American culture.

00:27:48.720 And so, and so you look at like, and so it's easy that, but it's easy, been easy in the last

00:27:53.460 few years to make the bad things. 0.97

00:27:56.360 The people in the church, let's say, or the bad sinners in the church, the gay community. 1.00

00:28:01.980 Because, and so you can even look, if you're a parent, you can even look at your own kids 1.00

00:28:04.620 and be like, well, yeah, they may be having sex with their boyfriend. 0.99

00:28:06.680 But at least they're not gay. 1.00

00:28:07.720 And they're going to get married next week.

00:28:09.100 So it's okay.

00:28:09.820 Yeah.

00:28:10.340 Yeah.

00:28:10.680 And, and, but, but further, further, I don't want to, you know, throw stones because you

00:28:14.540 could say, well, what about you?

00:28:16.620 Again, why am I writing a book about sex? 0.64

00:28:18.900 I'm a 51 now year old virgin.

00:28:21.980 Because again, you go back to what Jesus says.

00:28:25.240 Sex isn't just about an act between a man or a woman or two men, whatever you want to

00:28:31.880 define it.

00:28:33.300 Sex is, is a desire for an emotional connection.

00:28:36.240 And sex starts here in the mind.

00:28:38.180 If it starts in the body, then we're just animals. 0.92

00:28:41.420 Animals don't have a soul, so to speak.

00:28:43.900 If you have a dog or a cat, you probably disagree with that.

00:28:46.180 But, but in general, pets don't, you know, some are smarter than others, but they get through

00:28:51.360 March.

00:28:51.860 And if you go to Turkey in March, the cats are in heat.

00:28:54.700 You cannot ask the hotel to shut the cats up.

00:28:57.160 They are all over the town.

00:28:58.440 They idolize, they think of them as gods.

00:29:00.080 And you will hear cats mating in the middle of the night.

00:29:03.900 It's horrifying.

00:29:05.160 It is.

00:29:06.120 It's horrifying.

00:29:06.580 And, and, but they love it because they are like, like this animal that they've elevated

00:29:11.400 to a point of a God, but, but, but they're animals.

00:29:14.760 They just go at it.

00:29:16.580 You know, we're not animals.

00:29:18.180 Sex is a, is a, is a, is a connection between, again, what God has ordained between a man and 0.58

00:29:23.500 a woman in Genesis.

00:29:24.460 And so, and so to talk about sex without understanding the why, why, why, why does a virgin struggle

00:29:30.640 with sexuality, with shame, with, you know, you're a virgin.

00:29:35.480 You shouldn't have any guilt.

00:29:36.320 You haven't broken the law, but again, remember what Jesus says.

00:29:40.460 And Jesus doesn't put these, these, he, when he talks about your mind and your heart and

00:29:44.720 what you think.

00:29:45.380 So what a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

00:29:47.800 Well, he's not saying, oh, now you got to be perfect.

00:29:49.980 He's saying, like, I think even Jesus is trying to, to, to make the point of it's, it's a whole,

00:29:54.980 it's, it's, what is it that we worship?

00:29:57.260 And I have observed that in the United States of America, at least, I think probably you

00:30:02.240 could argue other countries, but in the U.S., let's stick to that, where I've grown up most

00:30:05.840 of my life since I was 15.

00:30:07.020 Um, we have made of sex an idol. 0.89

00:30:11.780 Without it, we cannot be happy.

00:30:15.620 Without great marital sex, it can't be a good marriage. 0.93

00:30:19.800 If you're, you know, again, you go back to your virgin, that's the worst thing that could 0.96

00:30:22.960 happen to you.

00:30:23.340 What about Jesus?

00:30:24.320 He didn't have sex.

00:30:25.220 He was 33.

00:30:25.840 He died.

00:30:26.200 He was a virgin.

00:30:27.180 Do you see what I'm saying?

00:30:28.060 So we've sort of confused ourselves.

00:30:30.940 And it used to be that, that the world, you know, when I say the world, people who don't

00:30:34.900 follow Jesus, let's just do the Christian world, Christian term would be the world versus 1.00

00:30:38.360 the church.

00:30:38.780 Right.

00:30:39.260 And so we used to sort of think, well, you know, people who don't believe Jesus, I understand.

00:30:42.480 You know, if I was, I was used to say growing up, if I wasn't a Christian, I would probably 0.84

00:30:45.400 live with a guy.

00:30:46.300 It's pragmatically easier for me.

00:30:48.100 You know what I mean?

00:30:48.600 Like I'm independent.

00:30:49.600 I'm a doctor.

00:30:50.320 I'm ER, you know, come and go as I please all that.

00:30:52.320 But I'm not.

00:30:53.260 I've given my life to Jesus.

00:30:54.960 And in that context, there is a daily decision to be made as to where is the source of my

00:31:02.560 greatest joy. 0.96

00:31:04.180 And I think everything, whether it's gay sex or straight sex or marriage or singleness, 0.98

00:31:11.160 porn viewers or non-porn viewers will have to decide that day by day by day. 0.97

00:31:24.960 You're right with the kind of level of depravity that we see today, or just, it seems like

00:31:34.480 the modern forms of depravity that we see, which of course are just, they're kind of

00:31:40.700 repackaged immorality and sin that we've seen all throughout history.

00:31:44.180 I'm talking about gender bending, homosexuality, these things in one way or another have always 1.00

00:31:48.720 existed, but they do seem new to our American culture.

00:31:51.620 And so you're right, there is a temptation, I think, for Christians to say, well, that's 0.64

00:31:56.560 real sexual sin. 0.69

00:31:58.240 That's real depravity.

00:31:59.940 That's real iniquity.

00:32:01.580 That's real perversion.

00:32:03.640 But lust, a man lusting after a woman, is that really a big deal?

00:32:09.400 You know, an engaged couple sleeping together, is that really a big deal?

00:32:13.900 At least it's not these other things.

00:32:17.120 But you're right, going back to the word of Jesus, he is saying that it goes all the way

00:32:23.320 down to the heart.

00:32:24.580 And I don't think people could see, most people, Christians included, would look at someone

00:32:29.980 who is a 51-year-old virgin Christian and say that it's even possible for you to be in

00:32:36.800 sexual sin.

00:32:37.860 But you're saying that it goes all the way down to the heart and mind.

00:32:41.260 Well, I mean, you can read my book and see that it is very possible to be in sexual sin.

00:32:45.220 And I describe it to the nth degree.

00:32:48.920 You could argue why.

00:32:51.060 And I did it intentionally.

00:32:53.340 First of all, by conviction of God, nobody wants to write things that are personal and

00:32:58.040 painful unless you have a calling.

00:33:01.340 I'll call it, whether you believe in God or not, there's a sense of calling when you

00:33:05.380 write.

00:33:06.120 And for the Christian, I think, to write about things that might be shameful, you have to, 1.00

00:33:11.540 you know, of course, the path to freedom is by dealing with your shame.

00:33:15.340 And I think there's a completely different way of dealing with shame if you follow Jesus

00:33:18.800 or you don't.

00:33:19.800 Everybody has shame.

00:33:21.000 The question isn't whether we have shame.

00:33:23.100 The question is, what do we do with our shame?

00:33:24.820 Shame came into the world through Adam and Eve.

00:33:26.420 We know that from the word of God.

00:33:27.920 And so I felt like there's been a lot of books that talk about sex from a, here are the right 1.00

00:33:34.860 things and here are the right, from a sexual ethic perspective, you know, but we know that.

00:33:39.300 Now, granted, in the last few years, I think we act like we don't know it, right?

00:33:44.700 So we have people now saying, well, does the Bible really teach this or that?

00:33:47.780 Or, you know, and I think we've lost the ears of people who aren't in the faith because

00:33:53.500 we pick and choose what we want the Bible to say, whether, wherever you fall in the

00:33:57.480 spectrum of Christianity, you don't have to be a fundamentalist, you can be a progressive,

00:34:00.280 like we have these discussions amongst ourselves, which begs the question, I mean, this whole

00:34:04.360 thing, you know, me being here today came out of you had posted something that Andy Stanley

00:34:08.420 has done, but Andy Stanley is a great example.

00:34:10.440 I mean, we, you know, he's been a public example of someone who has sort of done that

00:34:14.680 where you try, which, which, I mean, I've read enough about him to understand that he comes

00:34:18.480 from a very similar background to mine in some ways and, and believes in some ways

00:34:23.220 from, again, from what I understand from recent articles that he wrote in a biblical, like

00:34:27.320 a straightforward biblical, he said, he believes this is what homosexuality falls under and

00:34:32.140 this is what, you know, marriage is and this is what, you know, he's made these statements

00:34:35.560 that I agree with, but yet the way that he presents himself is by sort of questioning the

00:34:40.340 word of God, at least publicly, which is extremely confusing.

00:34:43.780 And so I think somebody put on Twitter recently and that I took a picture of, and I've felt like

00:34:49.660 was such an easy way to sort of follow a pattern that I think has become very common in the

00:34:55.380 evangelical world today, which is the first step in, in many discussions when it pertains to how

00:35:01.400 we've changed in our sexual views, is we start to question the inerrancy of scripture.

00:35:06.220 And then we go to questioning the authority of scripture to when we, then we go to sort of,

00:35:10.800 you know, redefining what's, what's right and what's wrong sexually, you know, then you got

00:35:15.400 the, or, or, or first you deconstruct, then you go to redefining sexuality and then you leave

00:35:19.960 the faith.

00:35:21.000 And you almost can see that pattern in many public figures now that have deconstructed or

00:35:25.300 have changed their view of, of, of what it means to, you know, to be sexually right with

00:35:32.440 God.

00:35:32.760 Let's just say that.

00:35:33.740 And so we've gone from someone who, you know, like Andy Stanley's kind of played it out to

00:35:37.500 the T and he hasn't gone all the way yet, but, but, you know, there was his, his series

00:35:41.460 of unhitching the old and the new Testament.

00:35:43.360 And there was, you know, the word of God, like doesn't, you know, that's just the word

00:35:47.260 of God, but that's not who God is.

00:35:48.960 Just this morning, I saw a solid voice in Christianity that I respect that is still not 0.96

00:35:54.980 celebrity, but, but, but, but well followed.

00:35:58.280 He's got like 50,000 followers, let's say, and he made the same comment.

00:36:01.780 And I think sometimes we, what his comment was, was remember the word of God isn't God.

00:36:07.700 And, and, and, and so I called him out on it.

00:36:09.800 And I think it's important to sort of follow these discussions.

00:36:12.500 I don't even understand what that means.

00:36:14.020 Well, they're saying what Andy Stanley, I think did a whole message on, which is basically,

00:36:18.760 um, like God is bigger than his word, so to speak, which you're right.

00:36:22.580 It's hard to understand it because you are your word, right?

00:36:26.080 I mean, I show up on a show, I say certain things.

00:36:28.540 You can say, well, I think Lena, and you make a list of what you think I am based on

00:36:32.180 the things that I say.

00:36:33.700 So if you, so now you go back to, do you believe the word of God is God breathed or not?

00:36:38.580 And also Jesus is the Logos.

00:36:40.580 Jesus is the word of God.

00:36:43.500 And so, I mean, the word is God.

00:36:45.820 Isn't that what John 1 says?

00:36:47.080 Yes.

00:36:47.280 But this is then where some of the more progressive Christians would say, well, that's what

00:36:50.360 red letter Christianity is.

00:36:52.680 The only, which doesn't make sense again, because thousands, you know, hundreds of years,

00:36:55.840 let's say of, of, you know, how the Bible canon came together and all, you know, stuff

00:36:59.500 that you've studied in college and I've read and it makes sense, but I'm not, you know,

00:37:03.580 leave that to the, to the MacArthur's and the Pipers in the world and whoever, you know, 0.99

00:37:07.360 I'm not, but you don't even need to be at that level to understand, like, like you, the

00:37:12.400 minute you start to question whether the word of God is true.

00:37:16.980 I mean, that's ultimately the question.

00:37:19.180 Do you really believe the word of God is inspired and, and do you live under its authority?

00:37:22.500 And, and if you do, then you have to embrace what it teaches on all things.

00:37:29.000 And Andy Stanley has also called passages about sexual immorality, clobber passages, which

00:37:33.740 I think also speaks to the same point that it's trying to separate God's word from God

00:37:38.960 himself, almost trying to take God off the hook for some of the uncomfortable passages

00:37:42.860 that are in there.

00:37:43.520 Yeah.

00:37:43.800 And also to sort of excuse, sort of, again, you go back to this parsing, well, what does

00:37:48.440 pornea really include?

00:37:50.080 Yeah.

00:37:50.340 And so you've got a generation of Christians going, well, go to Bible doesn't really teach 1.00

00:37:53.640 premarital sex is wrong. 0.94

00:37:54.660 Like I wrote this book where I kind of, so, so, so back a few months ago, I was about,

00:37:59.140 but a year ago, actually, I had heard of yet another.

00:38:01.520 So, so we watch Christian leadership.

00:38:02.880 Like this has been the bane of the church's existence is Christian leaders have always 1.00

00:38:07.520 failed.

00:38:07.900 It's not new, but it has happened at a more dramatic pace in the last few years, in my opinion.

00:38:14.100 And it's happened with more surprising faces.

00:38:19.100 It used to be the prosperity leaders would, right?

00:38:22.660 I mean, you would like the TV guys, we grew up, Jim Baker and all those guys, you know,

00:38:26.840 I can't remember all of them, but, but they were like almost a joke.

00:38:29.800 You could have, have SNL skits on them.

00:38:32.360 But now we're hearing about people that we think like, I mean, Ravi Zacharias is dead

00:38:36.000 now, but I mean, there's a lot, I mean, whether you believe it or not, I believe the stories

00:38:40.740 and from what I can understand.

00:38:42.260 And, and, but, but like, that was a shock to the evangelical world because this was a

00:38:45.920 person that most people held to high regard and respected.

00:38:48.540 And there's been many others who would be in that tier of very sound biblical teachers

00:38:53.640 that would teach what we're talking about.

00:38:56.640 Like not make any bones about the fact that the Bible teaches certain things about marriage

00:39:00.800 and sexuality and purity.

00:39:02.580 And, and I don't even think even the Ravi Zacharias of the world were teaching the purity 0.52

00:39:05.760 culture necessarily.

00:39:06.860 I mean, they were just trying to, you know, what we believed when we were alive, they were

00:39:09.460 trying to teach the truth.

00:39:10.280 And yet again, there was a secret life.

00:39:13.040 And so a year ago I heard about a worship leader who imploded.

00:39:16.980 Let's just use that word.

00:39:17.920 What is imploding?

00:39:18.500 It's when your life falls apart due to hidden sexual sin.

00:39:21.580 He had had an affair.

00:39:22.340 And the difference between that story was that this is a person I knew from my old church

00:39:27.560 and I knew well enough to know that he, while like this was a person who, and I think again,

00:39:34.760 the mind boggling thing, even with the Ravi Zacharias is that the sexual sin was happening

00:39:39.380 while they were leading in a way that was impacting a lot of lives.

00:39:43.960 You could argue Carl Lentz was that for a while.

00:39:45.940 I mean, whether you liked him or not, I mean, his church was booming.

00:39:49.260 I remember watching him and thinking, man, he has such a great way of expressing the

00:39:53.320 gospel, communicating, and it made you want to go to church.

00:39:56.320 And what Christian would say that was a bad thing?

00:39:58.580 I wanted to receive Jesus when I heard him preach, right?

00:40:00.820 It didn't harm that he was very good looking, but you know, but there was this life.

00:40:07.300 And so this person, the worship leader, was writing songs that moved us.

00:40:11.020 And yet there was this hidden secret.

00:40:13.900 And this is what prompted me to write to the degree is I felt like we can all talk as much

00:40:19.800 as we want to about the rules.

00:40:23.240 You can look at the Bible and say, well, these are the rules.

00:40:25.060 Okay.

00:40:25.220 It's not the rules.

00:40:26.040 It's a life.

00:40:26.620 But let's just say, you could write a book and say, well, these verses say this and these

00:40:30.560 verses say that, and you can get online and you could make it all up here.

00:40:34.720 But the problem we have isn't up here in our head.

00:40:36.760 It's here in our hearts.

00:40:39.040 And I felt at that point, that was when I sort of, my agent went to church where this

00:40:45.280 person was most recently.

00:40:47.480 So he had left the imploding church, went to the other church so that this person was

00:40:51.220 there.

00:40:51.620 And so he, I had confirmed that this was indeed true.

00:40:54.140 And that was because, you know, not everything you read on social media is true, but I had

00:40:57.840 heard about it through social media and then I heard about it in fact, and I was grieved

00:41:01.180 and I was grieved, but then I was convicted because I realized that I myself had dealt with

00:41:05.840 some sexual sin ongoing in my life.

00:41:08.240 And which I, again, write about in excruciating, painful detail, but intentionally, because

00:41:14.600 I felt like that's the problem that I was seeing and why I think the millennials and 1.00

00:41:19.660 under are correct to be disillusioned with the way that we talk about sex.

00:41:25.220 First, we, back my generation, I'm, what do you call me?

00:41:27.940 I'm a Gen X.

00:41:28.880 We were the ones who felt pride to the, to the purity culture.

00:41:32.400 And so now we were all disillusioned because we're like, oh, our marriages are bad and

00:41:35.740 our sex lives are bad and, and our, you know, in our, and we're not married and we thought

00:41:39.640 that we would be married.

00:41:40.500 And, and so, you know, and then you sort of like, you're hurting when that happens.

00:41:44.360 I mean, you could talk about it intellectually, but really this is a human, there's a human

00:41:47.020 in their house who at Christmas don't have anywhere to go who, you know what I mean?

00:41:50.760 Like they're lonely.

00:41:51.460 They're watching all the Hallmark movies.

00:41:53.660 Everybody's marrying and having their great love story.

00:41:56.040 And you're assuming that you're the only one who's not.

00:41:57.640 And then you've got the marriage who are going like, oh, I'm stuck with this man the rest

00:42:00.660 of my life.

00:42:01.060 And he doesn't even know how to approach me.

00:42:02.380 And I'm not an animal. 0.96

00:42:03.340 And he like rolls over, I've had patients tell me their spouses have sex with them while 0.97

00:42:06.460 they're sleeping. 0.78

00:42:07.000 And you can be like, well, they're married. 0.89

00:42:08.220 No, that's rape. 1.00

00:42:09.200 And, and, and what, you know, like, you're like, what is happening to our world?

00:42:11.960 You know?

00:42:12.440 And, and so you, you sort of have this big question in your mind is like, like the Gen

00:42:16.880 X are sort of, I think we were, we were sort of the beginning of the problem in a way. 1.00

00:42:21.420 And then because of, we were disillusioned.

00:42:23.560 And of course we see it because most of the deconstructioning people are sort of in that Gen 0.91

00:42:27.760 X slash millennial, maybe more millennial generation.

00:42:30.060 But the millennials remember were taught by who they were brought up by who, by the

00:42:34.120 Gen Xers. 0.94

00:42:35.260 And so all this false teaching in a sense that we had embraced of the rules, the fundamentalism

00:42:39.840 has, has, has hurt the millennials who now kind of go like, man, I don't even respect 0.85

00:42:44.560 the leaders because look, there's Ravi who had the secret life and there's this person,

00:42:48.660 that person.

00:42:49.000 And, and no one ever, I mean, very few people, I don't think it's non-existent, but very few

00:42:55.100 people have talked openly about their struggles in this area of sexual sin to the degree that

00:43:02.680 I think can help others.

00:43:04.100 And when the ones who do talk, it's always, again, I'm going to stereotype, but it's always

00:43:08.460 that 18 to 30 year old man who struggles with porn, who, you know, ends up getting help,

00:43:14.060 however you want, whether they get, you know, go to celebrate recovery or, and they all sort

00:43:18.960 of hush, you know, they all talk about it in their men's small group.

00:43:21.660 Everybody knows what do men do in our small groups to talk about, about their sexual sin

00:43:24.540 and then, and, and, and it's hush hush.

00:43:26.340 But then once they get delivered, they go, oh yeah, you see my problem.

00:43:29.440 Now I'm married and everything is great.

00:43:31.080 And yet you look at the statistics in marriage of how many people watch porn in marriage and 0.74

00:43:34.900 how many marriages are ending up in divorce and even masturbation in marriage. 0.98

00:43:38.660 And, and you go, man, it's not healthy in marriages.

00:43:41.060 And then, so, so you have a problem that doesn't really go away that when it's talked about,

00:43:45.740 it's always in a, I've been there, done that.

00:43:47.760 And I'm no longer that even the stories of like, I used to be gay and I'm no longer gay.

00:43:51.820 Now I'm married.

00:43:52.460 You know, like we love these stories.

00:43:54.780 There are not that many of them, but the ones that are there were like, oh, look at her,

00:43:57.940 look at him.

00:43:58.680 Amazing.

00:43:59.280 God saved them.

00:44:00.180 They changed them.

00:44:01.000 And yet, you know, like few, some, I mean, I've heard, you know, some who still say they struggle.

00:44:05.360 And then when they admit that they get crucified by the conservatives.

00:44:08.720 And so very few people are talking about sexual struggle, A, outside of the gay issues, because 0.60

00:44:15.740 it's like, almost, again, you go back to that's bad.

00:44:17.640 This is good.

00:44:18.200 You know, sort of, you've made the line, like, it's okay if you have, you know, heterosexual

00:44:22.020 sin is okay compared to homosexual sin. 0.98

00:44:24.440 So you can lust against them.

00:44:25.880 You know, if you're a woman against a man, a man against woman, but don't lust against 1.00

00:44:28.060 someone who's same sex.

00:44:28.760 And yet we've landed Christians in 2023 in a world that is highly sexualized in every 0.98

00:44:36.720 way, all the time, everywhere you look.

00:44:40.560 We are in that right now.

00:44:42.240 You can't, I mean, the average age that a child sees porn is 11, according to Barna.

00:44:47.560 95% of kids have seen porn by age 14.

00:44:52.140 Okay.

00:44:52.520 That's shocking when you really think about those statistics.

00:44:55.500 You go, oh, how did they see it casually?

00:44:57.200 I don't know, but I know it hooks people on.

00:44:59.680 And so it's easy to then make sexual sin about, oh, you watch porn, you don't.

00:45:02.880 But it's not that simple, is it?

00:45:04.900 Because we're not even talking about just porn.

00:45:06.600 We're not talking, what is porn? 0.90

00:45:08.420 Is Game of Thrones porn?

00:45:10.340 Or is there a story that makes it less porn than something where you're just watching 0.66

00:45:13.620 people who are just XXX, you know, you know what I mean?

00:45:17.280 Is it porn if you read it?

00:45:18.800 Or is it only porn if you watch it?

00:45:20.680 Right.

00:45:21.240 And so you can get into this dark world of, and so then how does a person wake up one day,

00:45:25.880 a leader teaching the Bible, worship songs, how can we watch that person wake up one day

00:45:31.660 and implode?

00:45:32.320 Well, it didn't happen overnight.

00:45:33.840 It happened over years of patterns of sexual sin.

00:45:36.660 I do think that we look at sexual sin as just looking at the XXX, you know, porn online.

00:45:55.800 But something that I thought about a lot, and that has, in the past, I didn't think about,

00:46:01.360 but I think about high school and college and even after reading certain books, even

00:46:05.500 some Christian romance books like Redeeming Love and things like that, that may not have

00:46:11.400 been classified as technical porn.

00:46:14.500 Maybe it wasn't graphic, but it was making my heart lust after something that I did not

00:46:20.800 have.

00:46:21.200 And at the time, you know, in high school and college before marriage, I could not have

00:46:24.500 and made me fixate on, okay, well, as soon as I'm able to have sex in marriage, then I'll

00:46:30.040 be happy.

00:46:30.760 Then I won't have to struggle with this anymore.

00:46:32.160 Then I'll be sin-free, at least in this category and this part of my life, and I won't have to

00:46:37.380 worry about sexual sin or anything ever again.

00:46:41.620 That is kind of how it feels.

00:46:44.440 And going back to kind of what you said about how we were raised, well, if you pray for your

00:46:48.100 husband, if you don't have sex, if you wear this purity ring, if you say true love

00:46:52.480 weights, then you will not only get married when you're 22 years old, but your sex life

00:47:00.000 will be perfect.

00:47:01.000 And there's nothing to sex we hear in marriage except for just being married and being married,

00:47:07.300 that everything will come together perfectly.

00:47:09.780 And that's just not necessarily true.

00:47:13.200 And yes, and I 100% agree with you.

00:47:15.340 And I'd even push and say the second layer of the problem is that when people who have 0.96

00:47:23.360 tried to resolve it, like let's pick on like Sheila Gregoire for a minute, they want to

00:47:27.480 resolve it by saying, I think the focus is often still on the act, not on the heart.

00:47:33.480 And so, you know, then the problem is, well, the guy, you know, does the, you're in a patriarchal

00:47:38.000 system.

00:47:38.440 You don't, you know, you're supposed, you know, you've believed the lie that you're just

00:47:40.960 supposed to like roll over and, you know, do because that's what the conservatives teach.

00:47:44.360 But it's still, the focus is still on, well, you're not happy in your, you know, you're

00:47:49.180 not serving the guy.

00:47:50.320 So like the progressives will critique the conservatives as you're, you're believing

00:47:53.800 something wrong.

00:47:54.520 It's, it's about a mutualness, but I think it's deeper than that.

00:47:58.040 And, and I think, and I do agree with you.

00:48:00.060 I think every single person, meaning single, not married, thinks that their problem will go

00:48:04.700 away when they're married.

00:48:05.720 And yet most leaders who have imploded are not single.

00:48:09.560 They're married.

00:48:09.980 Do you ever think about that?

00:48:12.120 And so, and so even the book, like, you know, the book is not meant for singles or marrieds.

00:48:15.680 It's for both.

00:48:16.180 The book isn't meant for porn watchers.

00:48:17.720 It's really, it's about the, every chapter addresses a why.

00:48:22.060 I am really more, I mean, when I see patients, so I'm an ER doctor and that's my, like I did

00:48:27.420 pediatric ER, but my mind is ER a hundred percent through and through.

00:48:30.820 And when I see a problem, you can treat the symptoms until you're blue in the face.

00:48:35.180 And you can, you know, again, tell people eat this, don't eat that, but it's the why

00:48:40.020 that motivates people.

00:48:41.240 It's the why that helps them understand why they're doing what they're doing.

00:48:45.800 Everyone knows if I stop smoking, I won't get cancer, but tell that to a smoker.

00:48:49.920 I had a patient yesterday who wanted me to call in an inhaler and she, she couldn't get,

00:48:55.140 we have so many limit on refills in our company, which is legitimate for an online company.

00:48:59.300 And, and I said, you know, you passed that.

00:49:01.040 She said, she goes, I need an inhaler every time I smoke.

00:49:05.340 I said, I'm sure you've told this before.

00:49:08.200 Have you considered?

00:49:09.260 And she filled in the blacks. 0.98

00:49:10.520 Yes. 0.92

00:49:10.840 I'm not going to stop smoking.

00:49:12.480 Okay.

00:49:12.820 And like, you could tell them like, so she knows it's not a matter of not knowing.

00:49:18.160 I think there's plentiful couples in the church who are not married right now, who are living

00:49:21.780 together.

00:49:22.960 Some will even tell you we don't share a bed.

00:49:24.580 That's BS.

00:49:25.260 And by the way, I think there's a lot of married couples who are not sharing beds, which I,

00:49:29.740 again, call me naive and you wouldn't, I'm not naive. 0.61

00:49:33.100 I'm a stinking ER doctor.

00:49:35.140 Like I've heard it all. 0.99

00:49:36.780 I'm Lebanese.

00:49:37.860 I have spent my life in war torn areas.

00:49:40.680 I've ministered with Syrian refugees.

00:49:42.020 I've heard every story.

00:49:43.120 I'm not naive.

00:49:43.980 And yet I was, I've been surprised at how many Christian couples don't sleep in the same 0.99

00:49:48.440 bed and they blame it on snoring on, on, I guess, sleep as well.

00:49:52.460 And I don't know.

00:49:53.120 I mean, I, again, that's another conversation, but.

00:49:55.540 The point of it is how then, I mean, the whole point of marriage is to build intimacy,

00:50:00.640 connectivity.

00:50:01.420 The whole point of why do singles struggle?

00:50:04.180 Why did I struggle?

00:50:05.100 Why have I, why do I struggle with, with my sex life?

00:50:08.600 Because I think the lie is to say, well, you're not, you don't have a sex life.

00:50:11.340 That was an aha moment for me in therapy.

00:50:13.220 I've, in the last five, four years I've, I've been going to a therapist started with, uh,

00:50:17.260 when I left the church and felt such a emptiness in terms of understanding what had happened.

00:50:21.980 And, and I think, and I think therapy is becoming more popular for a lot of reasons.

00:50:24.960 And it's a good thing, by the way, I don't think it's bad.

00:50:27.040 Just be careful who you choose for a therapist.

00:50:28.620 I was about to say, depending on the kind of therapy you're getting.

00:50:30.000 It's going to impact the way that you think.

00:50:31.400 But I think part of the reason why therapy has become important is that we have lost,

00:50:36.420 we used to have communities, right?

00:50:39.320 But the church, I mean, look at the nuns, N-O-N-E. 1.00

00:50:41.980 Like, no one's going to church.

00:50:42.980 People are deconstructing.

00:50:44.020 Like, I mean, I know some statistics that people are coming back to church.

00:50:46.540 I don't think that's true.

00:50:47.180 Cause I know all my, I have tons of friends who still believe the Bible, still do Bible

00:50:50.980 studies, still listens to podcasts.

00:50:52.300 They're listening to your show, but they just like, if they go to church, it's just a mirror.

00:50:56.120 Like we can't not go cause our kids, but you're like, so you don't have a place at church anymore

00:51:01.200 where we can sit with an older woman, let's say, or, and say, here's what I'm struggling

00:51:04.840 with.

00:51:05.200 They're very hard to find those relationships.

00:51:07.280 And I can't just blame the church for that.

00:51:08.940 I mean, this is a cultural thing.

00:51:10.060 We're rushed.

00:51:10.780 We have no margin.

00:51:11.960 We can barely fit everything in.

00:51:13.120 We barely have time for God, let alone other people.

00:51:17.260 And so who do you talk to when you're hurting?

00:51:19.340 I mean, how do you get through life if you don't have, if you're single, which 52% of

00:51:22.600 the church is single.

00:51:23.840 Think about that.

00:51:24.800 52% of our culture, the same statistics are in the church, outside of church.

00:51:28.340 So everything is interrelated.

00:51:29.700 So when you write a book about sex, you can't just be like, well, this is just a book about

00:51:32.180 sex.

00:51:32.640 It's a book about everything.

00:51:34.160 It's about what drives us to fill a void in our life.

00:51:37.480 Whether we do it by starting an affair with someone, whether we do it by indulging in same

00:51:42.480 sex thing.

00:51:43.580 I mean, we'll start a whole nother can of worms.

00:51:45.520 I talk about same sex attraction in the book.

00:51:47.220 And I talk about it in that I think there's a generation, and by the way, and I have to

00:51:51.380 be cautious in this, only in the reality of the world we're living in, and also my understanding

00:51:56.900 of my, I have a lot of friends that are same sex.

00:52:01.260 They call themselves gay and lesbian in the world that I, they're not Christians. 1.00

00:52:04.460 They're in the world that I live in, in the ER world.

00:52:06.920 And, you know, if you're in the world now, you have a lot of people who are, I mean, this

00:52:10.940 is the statistics in our world.

00:52:12.480 So I want to be careful, but I believe with all my heart that there's a generation of

00:52:17.940 Christians growing up now claiming to be gay who simply don't understand this battle with 0.96

00:52:24.880 lust. 0.98

00:52:26.260 I don't think that there's enough thought on that, in that.

00:52:30.600 Think about it.

00:52:31.300 You've got nine, whatever, the average age that kids are watching porn is 11.

00:52:35.500 95% of 14-year-olds are watching porn.

00:52:38.740 You can, and in women in particular, studies show that you will be same sex attracted if

00:52:44.020 you watch porn.

00:52:45.340 It's hormonal. 0.98

00:52:47.040 Women are driven by story. 1.00

00:52:49.080 I have not heard that.

00:52:50.100 It's not, you can't, you're not gay. 0.92

00:52:51.300 I don't believe you're gay simply because you have a sexual thought towards another person

00:52:57.760 of the same sex.

00:52:59.000 This is what our culture has taught us.

00:53:00.760 If you have a feeling of sin, what we call sin, it is your reality.

00:53:05.820 Rosaria Butterfield was on your show recently. 0.50

00:53:07.180 She's a good friend of mine.

00:53:07.920 She talks a lot about that in her new book and explains it immensely well.

00:53:11.780 But I think this idea that what-

00:53:13.660 Which is a freeing reality.

00:53:14.700 I just want to like stop right there that your feelings, and Christopher Yuan talks about

00:53:18.560 this too, your feelings, one way or the other, they're not your identity.

00:53:23.900 They don't have to determine your reality.

00:53:25.900 They don't have to determine your future.

00:53:27.300 If you're in Christ, that means your feelings do not own you.

00:53:31.340 You're not a slave to them.

00:53:32.680 Correct.

00:53:33.200 And when you're in Christ and you're constantly struggling with whatever sin, but now we're

00:53:38.200 talking in the context of sexual sin, and let's say specifically with same sex, which 0.98

00:53:42.680 we count as the worst, like Christians count as the worst. 1.00

00:53:45.460 Although I don't know. 0.90

00:53:46.040 Now it's a toss up between transgenderism, you know, like whatever flavor of the, it used

00:53:49.760 to be back in the seventies, it was divorce, right?

00:53:51.400 I mean, it just goes up and down, but now it's this.

00:53:54.040 But, but when you're living in sin and you can't overcome it because you haven't dug

00:53:59.320 deep to understand why you keep going back to a pattern, it's easy to start to wonder,

00:54:06.560 am I even a Christian?

00:54:08.420 Why isn't God changing me?

00:54:10.220 You don't even have, you know, we talk about, you know, all of the, the, the era of when

00:54:14.020 people were going, uh, when you, when people who had same sex attraction in the church were

00:54:18.180 sent, what do you do?

00:54:18.940 Conversion?

00:54:19.480 What do you call it?

00:54:20.080 The, uh.

00:54:20.900 Conversion therapy.

00:54:21.600 Yeah.

00:54:22.040 And the critique of it.

00:54:23.080 And then all of this discussion, that's what they call it.

00:54:25.180 But forget about the gay community. 1.00

00:54:26.500 Let's talk about like, if you're straight and like I am, and you decide, Lord, I want

00:54:31.060 to be holy. 0.97

00:54:31.680 I don't want to, you know, masturbate, or I don't want to watch this or do this or sleep 0.95

00:54:36.460 with my boyfriend or girl, you know, whatever, you know, you have these decisions and you 0.98

00:54:39.660 pray and you ask God and you go to small group and maybe you're even years ahead of me.

00:54:44.380 I, I didn't never felt comfortable talking about these things in small groups.

00:54:47.220 I'm more of an introvert.

00:54:48.400 It just felt too much.

00:54:49.260 But let's say you're not that person and you, you're the guy who constantly comes and

00:54:52.640 says, okay, pray for me. 0.98

00:54:53.840 I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm having sex with my, you know, with my fiance and I want to stop because 0.96

00:54:57.580 it's not honoring to God, but you keep falling. 0.99

00:54:59.120 You keep falling.

00:54:59.660 He, you know, it's like, it's so easy then to say, well, is what can God do if he can't

00:55:05.740 help me in this?

00:55:06.580 Do you see where it can become a crisis of faith?

00:55:08.680 So it does not, never surprised me that I wrote about sexuality after I wrote about

00:55:13.240 deconstruction because I think, and by the way, many who have deconstructed have very

00:55:17.880 shortly after their deconstruction had some, let's call it sexual skeleton in the closet.

00:55:24.480 Now they no longer call it a sexual skeleton because they deconstructed and they're no longer

00:55:28.980 holding to a biblical refuge, which takes me back to that thing, inerrancy, authority,

00:55:32.700 sexual, you know, it's like it follows suit then.

00:55:36.680 And, and even like, I mean, I've, I've watched, you know, I mean, it's, you know, I grew up

00:55:40.720 in the era, you know, I kissed dating goodbye, Joshua Harris, but you even watch him and his

00:55:44.160 family and, and without, you know, reading between the lines too much, but you can even

00:55:48.200 read between the lines.

00:55:49.240 I read his wife's biography and, and it's clear that they have some, what Christians would

00:55:54.100 consider skeletons in their closet.

00:55:56.160 You, you, you can see that across the board.

00:55:58.360 God, and, and, and I, I think, I think it's dangerous when we change our view of who God

00:56:04.380 is and what his word says to accommodate our struggle with understanding how to deal with

00:56:09.980 difficult, especially sexual relationships in our lives.

00:56:13.540 And that's what I think the church has done.

00:56:15.820 And what I've tried to do is A, use myself as an example, because that's all I can account

00:56:20.140 for is I know who I am and I know what I've struggled with and I've tried and I want to

00:56:24.020 be God honoring, but if I can't, and it took me a long time in therapy before I was able

00:56:30.380 to sit with my therapist and say, I'm really struggling with this.

00:56:33.020 And even by the time she read the book, there were things I wrote about that I hadn't verbally

00:56:36.440 said.

00:56:37.080 It's easier to write about things.

00:56:38.420 That's why people like to journal.

00:56:40.280 But I, but, and I sometimes tell people, I know not everybody can afford to therapist.

00:56:43.900 Just learn from me.

00:56:44.840 Then I paid the money, learn because it's not rocket science, but you can't, I watched,

00:56:50.820 by the way, I watched Glennon Doyle do that, which was the leading voice, which by the

00:56:55.480 way, I would be, I would love to know the percentage of Bible believing, Protestant,

00:57:00.860 conservative, fundamentalist, whatever you want to call them, people who follow her and

00:57:04.280 love her.

00:57:04.600 It's high.

00:57:05.240 Oh, it is.

00:57:06.420 It's very high.

00:57:07.000 We talk about Glennon a good bit.

00:57:08.060 I wrote about her a lot in my book too, because, because of that.

00:57:10.700 I've read it.

00:57:11.300 And, and, and, but, but her most recent book, it's fascinating because she does what, I don't

00:57:16.580 know if you can read her book as a Christian and I don't know that I picked up on it

00:57:20.360 the first read.

00:57:21.080 I read it again because I was writing on this topic and I, by the way, I think she's

00:57:24.320 a brilliant writer.

00:57:25.500 Yeah, she's definitely compelling. 0.88

00:57:27.200 And the more brilliant you are in communicating, sometimes the easier it is to try to, to kind

00:57:32.060 of convey confidence, which is also like, like, like blind, like you have to be so discerning

00:57:37.820 and, but she, she talks about Eve and shame and she lauds Eve for taking the fruit. 1.00

00:57:45.280 She says, that's a sign of power.

00:57:47.140 Her, that's her inner cheetah, whatever you want. 1.00

00:57:49.120 The point of it is, and, and I'd say it, I mean, you see, but, but you could point fingers

00:57:53.780 at her and say, how did she come to that conclusion?

00:57:55.560 That's the whole premise of the fall.

00:57:57.440 That's what sets the story of scripture.

00:57:59.060 I mean, you don't have to believe in Christ.

00:58:00.720 Like it's not mandatory.

00:58:01.640 In fact, Jesus didn't just, he said, he told people often, do not go home and think about

00:58:07.400 it.

00:58:07.680 Like, like, this is a big call.

00:58:09.980 You cannot count the cost, count the cost.

00:58:13.580 Are you going to be able to die daily?

00:58:15.480 If not, like you're not going to do it alone, but there has to be a weighing of what it means

00:58:20.160 to follow Jesus.

00:58:21.100 It will affect every part of your life.

00:58:24.520 He's not a means to an end.

00:58:26.560 He's not your secret to making, becoming a celebrity.

00:58:29.900 He's not a person who helps you become an influencer.

00:58:32.920 This has been the Achilles heel of every pastor.

00:58:35.980 It's this lie that we've believed that we somehow are more valuable if we have more followers

00:58:39.960 and, and, and it builds on that.

00:58:42.000 And, and so, and so it's easy to point fingers at Glennon and say, well, how does she believe

00:58:45.580 that?

00:58:45.800 And yet we all have become guilty in some form or fashion and to some of us to more minor

00:58:51.380 degrees and more major degrees of, of sort of doing the same thing where we just reinterpret

00:58:55.480 scripture.

00:58:55.960 And I do agree with you that we are doing it at a much more alarmingly fast rate in the

00:59:01.080 last few years.

00:59:01.640 And I think obviously social media, some of it, because you have this, this vortex where

00:59:07.400 people voice opinions.

00:59:08.900 And then if you're popular and you're saying, well, then it just takes a life of its own.

00:59:13.520 And, and because I believe it's true that, uh, I think I forget who the guy, um, who, uh,

00:59:19.920 there's a guy who wrote a book called Beholding.

00:59:21.780 What's his name?

00:59:22.700 Strahan Coleman.

00:59:23.340 I think he said it in one of his devotionals.

00:59:25.380 I think he's right that apathy is no longer our greatest evil in this culture.

00:59:29.160 It's distraction.

00:59:30.700 And what are we distracted?

00:59:31.880 Why are Christians so weak anymore? 1.00

00:59:33.620 Well, because you're not reading God's word.

00:59:35.260 And again, you go back to, well, God's word is not God.

00:59:37.480 I experienced him in nature.

00:59:38.480 Well, no, you don't.

00:59:39.100 You, the word is what you just said.

00:59:40.580 It's logos.

00:59:41.280 So how do you, can you discern truth from lies if you're not in the word of God?

00:59:45.760 And so it's easy to think, well, he has a hundred thousand followers.

00:59:48.520 He must know what he's talking about.

00:59:49.900 Yeah.

00:59:51.000 Right.

00:59:51.320 And then you kind of go, and then meanwhile, you're living with all these skeletons in your closet

00:59:55.580 kind of going, I hope this doesn't come back to get me someday.

00:59:59.260 But you, you never quite develop the intimate relationship that Jesus wants to have with

01:00:04.980 you to give you this fullness, this joy, this, this perspective of what matters in life.

01:00:10.760 Yeah.

01:00:11.040 Marriage is not our highest good.

01:00:12.740 Marriage is good, but it's not the highest good.

01:00:14.920 A good marital sex life is great, but that's not mandatory to be happy in life.

01:00:20.500 There are many people who've never married, many who have had bad marriages who are utterly

01:00:23.900 joyful and happy in life.

01:00:25.740 That's the other thing.

01:00:26.240 We split the happiness is different than joy.

01:00:28.420 Well, who wants to just be joyful?

01:00:29.680 I want to be happy and joyful.

01:00:30.780 Right.

01:00:31.080 I mean, we, we, we're so good at teasing that out, but ultimately either Jesus is worth

01:00:36.000 giving everything for, he's not.

01:00:38.240 But we have in the United States, a man-made religion called Christianity that puts me at 1.00

01:00:42.640 the center and Jesus as my genie in the bottle.

01:00:44.960 And we can say that that's all the prosperity people, but really we do it in every level of

01:00:49.200 Christianity.

01:00:49.620 It's the American way.

01:00:50.640 If I work hard enough, eventually I'll reap the fruit and it might work, you know, when

01:00:56.100 you see the immigrants who come from my place of birth and others, and why do people are 1.00

01:01:00.560 trying to cross the border in the South?

01:01:01.840 Because there is this such, they're not trying to cross the border to Canada.

01:01:04.500 Of course they have to get through the U S but they could, I mean, they could find other

01:01:06.920 countries.

01:01:07.280 They're not going to Argentina.

01:01:08.400 Why do they want to come here?

01:01:09.840 Yeah.

01:01:10.080 Because here we know that if you work hard and you, you know, try the best you can, you

01:01:17.460 will reap a fruit eventually.

01:01:20.040 It's true.

01:01:20.560 You do.

01:01:21.520 And that's not necessarily true in Christianity.

01:01:24.500 Many have died young and unexplainable deaths and have suffered tremendously for the gospel.

01:01:30.460 And I don't know why we think it wouldn't, maybe our, our suffering for the gospel, it may

01:01:33.780 not be that we get put in jail or, or beat up, but maybe us it's to be canceled.

01:01:39.000 Why is that such a big deal?

01:01:40.480 Yeah.

01:01:41.420 Or to wait for something and to hope for something that you don't receive in this life.

01:01:47.540 Yeah.

01:01:47.880 And by the way, that's the thing.

01:01:49.100 You may not get canceled.

01:01:50.480 At least if you're getting canceled, you go, well, it's worth it.

01:01:52.300 Right.

01:01:52.560 Cause you go, well, I'm suffering for Jesus.

01:01:54.340 It almost feels like the means are justifying the ends, you know, but what if nothing happens?

01:01:58.180 What if you don't get married and you never have sex and you do die virgin?

01:02:01.860 Oh my gosh. 0.98

01:02:02.780 Ha, what?

01:02:03.580 You know, think about it.

01:02:04.440 Like, it's like, but why?

01:02:05.780 So now you go back to, well, why, why do we constantly hunger?

01:02:09.580 Why?

01:02:10.080 Why are pastors falling?

01:02:11.420 Why?

01:02:12.140 Look at the cherry fall while debacle.

01:02:13.760 I remember when I started during COVID, I was listening to, there were so many podcasts

01:02:17.940 about him.

01:02:18.660 It's like, oh my gosh.

01:02:19.640 Like, and now they say, well, now he says, oh, I'm not really a Christian.

01:02:22.120 Maybe.

01:02:22.380 I don't know.

01:02:22.760 Is he, I don't know.

01:02:23.560 The junior guy.

01:02:25.120 I hope he is.

01:02:26.460 I hope that the Lord's at work in his life.

01:02:28.180 I pray that he is.

01:02:29.560 But that was so like, how did we become that?

01:02:33.040 Yeah.

01:02:33.420 We get hung up on that one thing.

01:02:37.220 Yeah.

01:02:37.420 Yeah.

01:02:38.340 Gosh, there's so much more I could ask you and so much more we could talk about, but

01:02:41.460 we hit an hour.

01:02:42.780 So we're in an hour.

01:02:43.760 Yes.

01:02:44.240 Yes.

01:02:44.560 Yes.

01:02:45.140 Gosh, you had so much to say.

01:02:46.600 And that was so great. 0.72

01:02:47.760 Your book is Don't Tell Anyone You're Reading This, A Christian Doctor's Thoughts on Sex, 0.94

01:02:52.740 Shame, and Other Troublesome Issues.

01:02:54.880 And we're going to link it in the description of this episode.

01:02:57.620 And we'll have your social media handles and things like that so people can follow you.

01:03:01.620 This is one that you're going to have to listen to twice, I think, to go back and to

01:03:05.800 make sure that you hear all the points that she made.

01:03:08.520 So interesting.

01:03:09.280 And I appreciate your perspective so much.

01:03:11.860 Is there any last word that you want to give us?

01:03:15.100 You know, I've been lately signing all my books.

01:03:17.320 Jesus is worth it all.

01:03:18.440 Honestly, if I had one last thing to say is that Jesus is indeed worth it all.

01:03:22.120 If you want freedom, you chase him.

01:03:24.580 And you'll find that he's been waiting for you.

01:03:26.340 He's the one chasing us.

01:03:27.800 Yes.

01:03:28.180 Amen.

01:03:28.520 Well, thank you so much.

01:03:29.360 I really appreciate it.

01:03:30.520 Thank you for having me on.

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