Ep 923 ｜ What Purity Culture Got Wrong ｜ Guest： Dr. Lina AbuJamra
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 3 minutes
Words per Minute
210.11679
Summary
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
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What does it really mean to walk in purity as a Christian?
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We've got a Christian author and ER doctor, Alina Abu-Jamra.
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She is here to talk about her latest book on this subject and to discuss this from the
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perspective of someone who is 51 and single and who has learned what it really means to
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walk in sexual purity and holiness before the Lord, whether you are single or dating or
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You'll find that she has a lot to say, and she's so smart that I had to really make sure
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that I was keeping up with every point that she's making.
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This is probably an episode that you're going to have to listen to a couple times just to
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make sure that you're taking in all of the points that she makes.
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Before we get started on it, I just wanted to remind you, too, that we've got amazing
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I also just want to remind you guys, this is our last time that we're filming before
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We do have new episodes that will be coming out over the next three weeks, but we're not
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going to have our normal four episode a week cadence going on.
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The Relatable team is going to take a break, but we've got some great interviews coming out
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that you will definitely, that you'll definitely want to catch over this break.
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And of course, I'll be on Instagram and all that good stuff.
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This episode is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers.
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Lina, thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
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For people who may not know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?
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So right away, people want to know where I'm from.
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My family moved, though, when I was a senior in high school to Green Bay, Wisconsin.
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I came to Christ as a child, grew up in the church in Lebanon in an environment very much
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similar to what an American kid would grow up in church.
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We were part of the Christian Missionary Alliance.
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So I think my upbringing was very much influenced by, let's say, the American church culture.
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However, I was a senior in high school when we moved.
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And I ended up sort of jumping into, imagine going from Lebanon to Green Bay and sort of
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And within a year of going to high school, graduating, made a decision to go to a Christian
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college, which was sort of, in some ways, a big deal in my family.
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And so there was, as a Lebanese, and I think anybody who watches the show, who has friends
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from other cultures, there's a big push to, you know, higher education.
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And I think a lot of it is because when you grow up in war, Lebanon had a civil war during
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There's a sense that the only escape you have is not going to come from government.
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It's not going to come from, you know, the American dream.
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And so really, education is the path to getting out of a war-torn country.
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Interestingly, my mom is a Palestinian refugee from back in the 40s.
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And so I didn't really grow up under, my mom was very integrated in the Lebanese way.
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So I never really understood growing up what she had gone through.
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But, you know, but she also had been highly educated, even as a, you know, a person who
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And she was the one who came to Christ in college.
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And so again, very much deeply, my mother converted dramatically.
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And she was immediately deep in the word of God.
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So I grew up with an example of a mom who was highly educated.
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And back in, I mean, remember, I grew up in the, I was born in the 70s.
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And so she was, you know, product of the 60s, but very focused on God's word, very educated,
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I mean, Jesus was, became the center of her life.
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And so that was sort of the voice in my head growing up, the emphasis of our teaching.
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So moving to the U.S. from a spiritual perspective was not hard, but culturally, obviously, a
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So I ended up going to a pretty conservative Christian college.
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And, you know, primarily because my pastor in Lebanon had gotten a degree there and my
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mom had, had insisted that I apply to one Christian college.
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Lebanese start school a year earlier, but then they end up going to college.
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They start as a, it's a, it's, it's the baccalaureate system.
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So everyone is a little younger going to college and I skipped kindergarten.
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So I can't draw, but it's, you know, but in all of that, I, I kind of, I, I,
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I kind of accommodated my mom, but had no intention of going to a Christian college.
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But really that summer at camp before college, the Lord really dealt very much.
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I would say I was definitely saved before from a knowledge.
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It's sort of, there's a sense of, I know who Jesus is.
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I remember asking him into my heart, but something happens when you become of age.
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I think every person who grows up in a Christian home has to understand sort of beyond,
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oh, this is my mother's faith or my dad's faith to, I really now understand who Jesus
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And I think that was sort of the beginning of what I now consider in my calling to what
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I do now, which I ended up going to medical school.
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And in my fellowship, I went to med school and became a doctor and specialized in pediatrics
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and then decided to do a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine.
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And it was that transition from pediatrics to pediatric ER where I felt God's call to teach
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And that grew out of a sort of a crisis of faith related to actually dating and marriage
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We're born and, you know, I was grew up in a sort of fundamentalist circle.
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And though I was not growing up aware of what the purity culture was, is, you know, we certainly
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grew up with this understanding of the Christian way, which was up until recently, I think I
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would say was very obviously sex before marriage was wrong.
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You know, a man and a woman ought to marry and be together for life, you know, that this
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And even though I didn't expect people who don't follow Jesus to abide by those things,
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up until very recently, I would say it was sort of assumed that if you grew up in the
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church and you gave your life to Christ, whether you did it as a child or later on, that those
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are basic assumptions that you could gather from reading the Bible, you see?
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So I go sort of, I was this obedient child who wanted to do God's will.
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I had given my life to Christ as a child, kind of dedicated my life at camp, went to a Christian
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college and really embraced the teachings of Jesus.
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And yet, you know, and we'll get to the content of the book in a second, obviously had some
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you know, as a teenager with hormones and, and all of the things, but, but really believed
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And then when I went to residency, that was the first time I dated somebody seriously.
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And it was a, how old are you by the time you graduated?
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But now, oh my goodness, I'm sorry, 24, 24, 20 college, 24 medical school.
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You graduated from college when you were at 20, I went straight through, you graduated high
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So, so now like, it's funny because I, you know, my, my nieces and nephews are in their
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And sometimes like family members would be like, oh, they're growing up.
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Are they able to like do a cross country drive?
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And I'm always like, man, I was seeing patients when I was 21, like, you know, like you were
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And so, but, but then fellowship gave me, so I did residency for three years and fellowship
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for three years and in residency was my first, um, I'd say I didn't date much in high school.
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I went to a very strict college and that was, you know, touted to have pink and blue sidewalks,
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And, and then South Carolina, they did kind of segregate men and women.
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And, and yes, they, it's a well-known college for that.
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And it doesn't, it won't take long to figure out where I went, but I'm not ashamed of it.
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Actually, I find it kind of funny with the way that my life has transpired.
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But in residency, my dad, who, again, I grew up in a Lebanese home with a Lebanese father
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So he was in his early fifties, I think when he gave his life to Jesus and he, um, but whether
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you were a Christian or not in our home, you couldn't date till you became a doctor.
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It was unspoken, it was spoken, it was sort of like, you know, I don't know what would
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have happened if we did, but none of us tried to, you know, fight that.
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And so again, that sense of patriarchal, you know, um, culture was there, you know, and
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by the way, a lot of Americans had a similar way back in the sixties and seventies.
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I think that definitely the Western world is ahead of the Middle Eastern world in some of
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those, you know, more the way that we think about things now.
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But, but nonetheless, I, I, I, I hit the ground running when I started dating.
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So I literally met a guy, started dating seriously and got engaged within like a nine month period.
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That's fast for someone who hasn't dated a lot before, uh, which, I mean, you hear stories
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about people who meet and get married like two months later.
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It's not that unheard of, but I hadn't dated a lot.
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And, and, and so two weeks before the wedding, we ended the relationship mutually.
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Um, and, but the backdrop of that was that there was this person in my life who was my
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best friend for 10 years, all the way from Christian college that I sort of always assumed
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And I felt like he always waited for years and whether it was in my mind or not, by the
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time I got engaged and did the engagement realized sort of what I was going on in my own life
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and heart, he had already moved on, which you can't blame a person.
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I mean, the person gets engaged, but it was like one of those, you know, you, we all grew
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up watching romantic comedies and movies and, and you, you, you know, all those high school
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movies where the guy eventually, you know, comes around and I kept waiting, thinking this
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There's so many of them, but, but the worst part, and I think this is why this is relevant
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to our conversation today is that I think there is this undertone of what I think at
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the time, you know, now we look at and go, Oh, you were so caught up in a purity culture,
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but sort of the sense, even as I ended the engagement and waited on God, I had this sense
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because I felt like God had spoken to me about certain things.
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And that was one of them that God would bring that friendship to marriage.
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That was probably my first crisis of faith because he ended up, um, moving on and I
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didn't see God fix that, bring him back around, cause us to get married.
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I mean, we were physical to the extent that, that one can be respectably, respectably, but
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I felt like I had honored the Lord to the best of my ability.
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And so it felt like God had, you know, sort of that lie of the purity culture, which is
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this concept that if you do your part, God is going to do his and his part being the American
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dream of Hollywood marriage, you know, love, all that.
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And so I had a crisis of faith in my fellowship in that season where I felt like I couldn't
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The output of that was that the Lord healed that area and I felt out of it.
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I started teaching a Bible study and felt called to ministry.
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And so I started this, this was early 2000, so 23 years ago.
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And I started this path of doctoring, but also of writing about God and faith.
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And in that, you know, and I thought, and as many of us who are Christian might think,
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you know, we are told all things work together for good and, you know, God redeems the past.
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And for years I thought like, oh, God was redeeming even this broken, you know, relationship that
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I thought, well, okay, this broken, God is using it.
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We always, we humans always want a cause effect, right?
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And in the Christian world, we are really trained for that.
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And we want to decipher God and decipher him now.
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And so I sort of started this ministry with this undercurrent of, well, God took away that
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relationship, but he's now using it in ministry instead, you see?
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And so for years, I sort of understood what this is.
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Now I had the better good, which was I'm given my life to teach the Bible.
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Eventually by 2012 or 13, I wrote a book and the Moody publishers asked me to write it.
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Who wants to spend their life being like a poster child for singles books?
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I had been engaged a second time and ended the engagement.
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And so all of this background eventually led to a couple of years after my first book.
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No, actually the summer my first book came out, I ended up having a big debacle in my own
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church where by now I was well into my practice in pediatric emergency medicine and I was leading
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And that church ended up blowing up, imploding.
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And it was because of abuse of power and leadership.
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In Chicago, there's been two big church implosions of recent times.
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I was at the first and then I ended up going to the second and both ended up imploding.
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So I always joke like if a pastor saw me walking into their church, like be careful.
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But really that church breakup was probably the, it's funny because out of all of the
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hurt that I felt I had had in my life, two broken engagements, you know, the lost relationship,
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all of this stuff, that church breakup was probably the most painful event in my life.
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And then I ended up writing about it by then, by 2016, 17, maybe 18.
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My book, Fractured Faith came out where I would look back and say I deconstructed.
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Well, I think, you know, how did I deconstruct?
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I think you can see even what I've told you my story so far.
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There was a lot of premises that I had embraced in the Christian faith that were not biblical.
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There were a lot of ideas that I had formed about God that were based on the American
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And would you say it had been influenced by the prosperity gospel?
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I think I grew up in churches that were 180 degrees opposite of the prosperity gospel in
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word and indeed financially to a certain extent.
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But even that, I would say that's not, even that is not true.
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So that big church that imploded, I think, had heavily bought into the prosperity gospel
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And I think the purity culture, so when you talk about purity and issues related to sexuality
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and holiness in the Christian world, I think the greatest lie that the conservative, non-charismatic,
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evangelical, like when you really sum up what was the fault of the purity gospel, purity
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culture, and you can call it the purity gospel, whatever you want to call it.
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Is that it's a heavily prosperity driven message.
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It's basically saying, if I don't have sex before I get married, I'm going to have an
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amazing husband or, you know, if you're a guy, a wife, and we're going to have an amazing
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And so, so many people who have waited end up getting married and I think have horrible
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sex lives at the early onset because they've never done it.
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Or even if they have good sex lives after a while, it fizzles as all relationships grow
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And then you sort of wake up and go, you know, what did I, did I really marry this person?
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And so then you have this crisis of, A, I mean, we've seen it as of in the last 20,
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30 years, I'd say, in the church where divorce has become acceptable.
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I remember growing up, it was a big deal when people divorced.
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I mean, and I'm not, this isn't an indictment against divorce.
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Jesus makes space for divorce and, you know, certain times like adultery and, and anybody,
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even then, I think there's, should be some valid attempt at, but you're given an out of
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But it's become where no one even thinks about it anymore.
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I grew up in what I would call the conservative purity culture too.
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And I think that there are some good aspects of it, of course, teaching that you shouldn't
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That was, I just knew in my head, that was stuck in my head, do not have sex before marriage.
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And we stay pure to glorify God, not to just reap a husband when you're 22 years old.
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You haven't even, I mean, we haven't even started talking about this most recently.
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The problem with what's happened now in 2023 with purity culture is you can almost,
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you can almost not talk about purity anymore in the context of,
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when I say Christianity, I mean, evangelicalism and the local church, because if you say the
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word purity, there's this pressure of, especially under millennials and under to shut you up because
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it's like, don't talk about purity because they automatically associate that with purity
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So the word, people want to avoid the word, I find.
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There's more shame in the evangelical world with being a virgin than there is with being
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And I think, well, one person who's written extensively about this is David Ayers.
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He's one example of many, but he's a, he's a professor from Grove City.
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And, and I, in fact, I am intrigued by his data and he's put it out there.
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He has a book out there, but also you can find his work and articles.
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But as an example, this study he did between, he surveyed about 5,000 evangelical Protestant
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people who consider themselves, you can even say in the fundamentalist background from
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2014 to 2018, which I think is relevant because I think sexual promiscuity has expanded from
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And the type of sexual sin that we talk about in the church has changed in the last five years.
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But again, for a number of reasons, but, but he says he found that 89% of men and 92% of
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women in that context had at least one opposite sex partner in the past five years.
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And then he, he says as young as 18 to 19 and you'll go over, he looked at, he teaches
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at the college, a lot of, you know, students from a Christian college.
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And he goes on to say, the Gospel Coalition has interviewed him.
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You can also find his, his interview there recently.
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And he, and he also talks about not just that they're sexually active.
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And once they're sexually active with one partner, then the statistics of them being sexually
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But also the type, what you define as sexual intercourse, they might say, well, I've never had
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sexual intercourse, but then the openness to oral and anal and other, other forms.
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He, he, he himself says how it's parents would be horrified if they understood what that teenage
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generation and the younger generation would consider acceptable again, while you're still
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And, and, you know, cause I initially started to write a book that I called, um, originally
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it was supposed to be funny, but I initially called it Eggplants and Peaches.
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And, and then the subtitle was A Sexual Memoir of a 50-Year-Old Virgin.
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And it was evident after floating it a little that people couldn't handle, not just people,
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Christians couldn't, didn't want this, the, the, the association with someone being a 50-year-old
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To this day, I had a lot of moms tell me their 20-year-old daughters don't want to be thought
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It's like you're, we're living now in a world where it's, it's a bad thing to be a virgin.
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And yet that, again, growing up, reading the Bible and understanding the Bible, even without
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big commentaries, I never had trouble in my own life and mind understanding that there
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was a certain conduct sexually that if you believe the Bible, you ought to abide by it,
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I mean, this notions now that when I go speak at colleges now, and I have, I have people
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who, who will come up to me and say, man, you know, I, you know, I had one kid tell me
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recently at a college that he had come to Christ and, and he had made a decision to, to save
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And his father, who claims to be a Christian, challenged him and was very horrified by the
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fact that he wanted to save himself for marriage and said, the Bible doesn't teach that.
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Show me the Bible where it says you can't have sex before marriage.
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So this concept now of you can't have sex before marriage is thought to be purity culture.
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There is a mix up of thought between what purity is biblically, what holiness is, and why it
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is asked, you know, why Christ has asked us to pursue that path.
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And I would say God, but I would even say Christ, because I think a lot of people think,
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well, you know, purity culture is so old Testament.
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And so they want to unhitch all the new Testament, but in fact, it is, it's very much a Christian.
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I mean, read the red letter words of Jesus in, you know, you don't even need to get past
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like chapter 10, you know, you get to Sermon on the Mount, which is one of the first things
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And you can see that he holds to a very, um, um, strict, let's say, uh, value.
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You know, you could, you can, you can, we can dig through, through that, but what he
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holds Christians to what he holds humans to is, is undoable.
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And the whole point was that his sacrifice was needed, right?
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Because the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount is that it's not just the law.
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You can't hate, you know, on and on the 10 commandments.
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But now he moved it to, if you think it in your mind, so are you.
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So that none of us can read Jesus and go, yeah, you know, I don't think Jesus cared
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But the point was that none of us could achieve it.
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It wasn't just that, hey, if you, uh, commit adultery, you're an adulterer.
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It's if you look at a woman, lustfully, you are the same as an adulterer.
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If you hate someone, think about how many people have we quote unquote murdered.
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I mean, it's easy to point fingers at people who are sexual sinners in a bad way or who
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are murderers and be like, well, I've never done that.
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That's such a good point because you do hear a lot, especially from deconstructionists and
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like people who are consider themselves more progressive that the Old Testament God cared
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And in the New Testament, Jesus didn't care about the law as much in that people sometimes
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make the mistake of saying the reason why Jesus chastised the Pharisees is because they
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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
00:24:39.800
So Jesus actually reemphasized and emphasized further the importance of obedience to God all
00:24:52.980
So he was a fulfillment of the law and that because then he went to the cross, now the upside
00:24:58.500
Then if Jesus did the work, then I don't have to do anything.
00:25:02.740
That's Paul's premise in Romans 6, where he says, shall I continue in sin that grace may
00:25:08.780
If you don't read the Bible, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I mean, you can, that doesn't make sense logically.
00:25:15.420
And purity out of a belief and a faith that has changed you, not purity as a means to
00:25:30.200
So fine, you can play around words as we like to do in our culture now.
00:25:37.480
You can play around words, but the reality is that, you know, what is the will of God in
00:25:42.440
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
00:25:51.260
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.
00:25:58.520
You know, you don't need a PhD to understand the Bible.
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
00:26:28.700
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.
00:27:03.080
And, and it's so easy to make sexual sin about that, that we miss the log in our own
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.
00:27:26.360
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
00:27:48.720
And so, and so you look at like, and so it's easy that, but it's easy, been easy in the last
00:27:56.360
The people in the church, let's say, or the bad sinners in the church, the gay community.
00:28:01.980
Because, and so you can even look, if you're a parent, you can even look at your own kids
00:28:04.620
and be like, well, yeah, they may be having sex with their boyfriend.
00:28:10.680
And, and, but, but further, further, I don't want to, you know, throw stones because you
00:28:25.240
Sex isn't just about an act between a man or a woman or two men, whatever you want to
00:28:33.300
Sex is, is a desire for an emotional connection.
00:28:38.180
If it starts in the body, then we're just animals.
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
00:28:51.860
And if you go to Turkey in March, the cats are in heat.
00:29:00.080
And you will hear cats mating in the middle of the night.
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.
00:29:18.180
Sex is a, is a, is a, is a connection between, again, what God has ordained between a man and
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.
00:29:36.320
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
00:29:47.800
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,
00:29:57.260
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
00:30:15.620
Without great marital sex, it can't be a good marriage.
00:30:19.800
If you're, you know, again, you go back to your virgin, that's the worst thing that could
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
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
00:30:50.320
I'm ER, you know, come and go as I please all that.
00:30:54.960
And in that context, there is a daily decision to be made as to where is the source of my
00:31:04.180
And I think everything, whether it's gay sex or straight sex or marriage or singleness,
00:31:11.160
porn viewers or non-porn viewers will have to decide that day by day by day.
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
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
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?
00:32:17.120
But you're right, going back to the word of Jesus, he is saying that it goes all the way
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
00:32:37.860
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.
00:32:53.340
First of all, by conviction of God, nobody wants to write things that are personal and
00:33:01.340
I'll call it, whether you believe in God or not, there's a sense of calling when you
00:33:06.120
And for the Christian, I think, to write about things that might be shameful, you have to,
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
00:33:24.820
Shame came into the world through Adam and Eve.
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
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
00:34:10.440
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
00:35:21.000
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
00:35:33.740
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
00:35:43.360
And there was, you know, the word of God, like doesn't, you know, that's just the word
00:35:48.960
Just this morning, I saw a solid voice in Christianity that I respect that is still not
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.
00:36:09.800
And I think it's important to sort of follow these discussions.
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
00:36:33.700
So if you, so now you go back to, do you believe the word of God is God breathed or not?
00:36:47.280
But this is then where some of the more progressive Christians would say, well, that's what
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,
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.
00:37:19.180
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
00:37:43.800
And also to sort of excuse, sort of, again, you go back to this parsing, well, what does
00:37:50.340
And so you've got a generation of Christians going, well, go to Bible doesn't really teach
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.
00:38:02.880
Like this has been the bane of the church's existence is Christian leaders have always
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.
00:38:19.100
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.
00:38:32.360
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
00:38:42.260
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
00:38:56.640
Like not make any bones about the fact that the Bible teaches certain things about marriage
00:39:02.580
And, and I don't even think even the Ravi Zacharias of the world were teaching the purity
00:39:06.860
I mean, they were just trying to, you know, what we believed when we were alive, they were
00:39:13.040
And so a year ago I heard about a worship leader who imploded.
00:39:18.500
It's when your life falls apart due to hidden sexual sin.
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.
00:40:13.900
And this is what prompted me to write to the degree is I felt like we can all talk as much
00:40:23.240
You can look at the Bible and say, well, these are the rules.
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.
00:40:39.040
And I felt at that point, that was when I sort of, my agent went to church where this
00:40:47.480
So he had left the imploding church, went to the other church so that this person was
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
00:41:08.240
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
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?
00:41:28.880
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
00:41:40.500
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?
00:41:53.660
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
00:42:03.340
And he like rolls over, I've had patients tell me their spouses have sex with them while
00:42:09.200
And, and, and what, you know, like, you're like, what is happening to our world?
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.
00:42:23.560
And of course we see it because most of the deconstructioning people are sort of in that Gen
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
00:42:35.260
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
00:42:44.560
the leaders because look, there's Ravi who had the secret life and there's this 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
00:43:04.100
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
00:43:26.340
But then once they get delivered, they go, oh yeah, you see my problem.
00:43:31.080
And yet you look at the statistics in marriage of how many people watch porn in marriage and
00:43:34.900
how many marriages are ending up in divorce and even masturbation in marriage.
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,
00:43:47.760
And I'm no longer that even the stories of like, I used to be gay and I'm no longer gay.
00:43:54.780
There are not that many of them, but the ones that are there were like, oh, look at her,
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
00:44:15.740
it's like, almost, again, you go back to that's bad.
00:44:18.200
You know, sort of, you've made the line, like, it's okay if you have, you know, heterosexual
00:44:25.880
You know, if you're a woman against a man, a man against woman, but don't lust against
00:44:28.760
And yet we've landed Christians in 2023 in a world that is highly sexualized in every
00:44:42.240
You can't, I mean, the average age that a child sees porn is 11, according to Barna.
00:44:52.520
That's shocking when you really think about those statistics.
00:44:59.680
And so it's easy to then make sexual sin about, oh, you watch porn, you don't.
00:45:04.900
Because we're not even talking about just porn.
00:45:10.340
Or is there a story that makes it less porn than something where you're just watching
00:45:13.620
people who are just XXX, you know, you know what I mean?
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
00:45:33.840
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
00:46:14.500
Maybe it wasn't graphic, but it was making my heart lust after something that I did not
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
00:46:30.760
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
00:46:44.440
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
00:47:01.000
And there's nothing to sex we hear in marriage except for just being married and being married,
00:47:15.340
And I'd even push and say the second layer of the problem is that when people who have
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
00:47:38.440
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
00:47:50.320
So like the progressives will critique the conservatives as you're, you're believing
00:47:54.520
It's, it's about a mutualness, but I think it's deeper than that.
00:48:00.060
I think every single person, meaning single, not married, thinks that their problem will go
00:48:05.720
And yet most leaders who have imploded are not single.
00:48:12.120
And so, and so even the book, like, you know, the book is not meant for singles or marrieds.
00:48:17.720
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
00:48:41.240
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.
00:49:01.040
She said, she goes, I need an inhaler every time I smoke.
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
00:49:25.260
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.
00:49:43.980
And yet I was, I've been surprised at how many Christian couples don't sleep in the same
00:49:48.440
bed and they blame it on snoring on, on, I guess, sleep as well.
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,
00:50:05.100
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.
00:50:13.220
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.
00:50:31.400
But I think part of the reason why therapy has become important is that we have lost,
00:50:39.320
But the church, I mean, look at the nuns, N-O-N-E.
00:50:44.020
Like, I mean, I know some statistics that people are coming back to church.
00:50:47.180
Cause I know all my, I have tons of friends who still believe the Bible, still do Bible
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
00:51:13.120
We barely have time for God, let alone other people.
00:51:19.340
I mean, how do you get through life if you don't have, if you're single, which 52% of
00:51:24.800
52% of our culture, the same statistics are in the church, outside of church.
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
00:51:34.160
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
00:51:43.580
I mean, we'll start a whole nother can of worms.
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.
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
00:52:12.480
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
00:52:26.260
I don't think that there's enough thought on that, in that.
00:52:31.300
You've got nine, whatever, the average age that kids are watching porn is 11.
00:52:38.740
You can, and in women in particular, studies show that you will be same sex attracted if
00:52:51.300
I don't believe you're gay simply because you have a sexual thought towards another person
00:53:00.760
If you have a feeling of sin, what we call sin, it is your reality.
00:53:07.920
She talks a lot about that in her new book and explains it immensely well.
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.
00:53:27.300
If you're in Christ, that means your feelings do not own you.
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
00:53:42.680
we count as the worst, like Christians count as the worst.
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,
00:54:10.220
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
00:54:23.080
And then all of this discussion, that's what they call it.
00:54:26.500
Let's talk about like, if you're straight and like I am, and you decide, Lord, I want
00:54:31.680
I don't want to, you know, masturbate, or I don't want to watch this or do this or sleep
00:54:36.460
with my boyfriend or girl, you know, whatever, you know, you have these decisions and you
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.
00:54:49.260
But let's say you're not that person and you, you're the guy who constantly comes and
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
00:54:57.580
it's not honoring to God, but 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
00:55:06.580
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
00:55:49.240
I read his wife's biography and, and it's clear that they have some, what Christians would
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.
00:56:15.820
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
00:56:40.280
But I, but, and I sometimes tell people, I know not everybody can afford to therapist.
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
00:57:08.060
I wrote about her a lot in my book too, because, because of that.
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
00:57:21.080
I read it again because I was writing on this topic and I, by the way, I think she's
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.
00:57:47.140
Her, that's her inner cheetah, whatever you want.
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?
00:58:01.640
In fact, Jesus didn't just, he said, he told people often, do not go home and think about
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
00:58:26.560
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
00:58:42.000
And, and so, and so it's easy to point fingers at Glennon and say, well, how does she believe
00:58:45.800
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
00:58:55.960
And I do agree with you that we are doing it at a much more alarmingly fast rate in the
00:59:01.640
And I think obviously social media, some of it, because you have this, this vortex where
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.
00:59:25.380
I think he's right that apathy is no longer our greatest evil in this culture.
00:59:35.260
And again, you go back to, well, God's word is not God.
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.
00:59:51.320
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.
01:00:12.740
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
01:00:31.080
I mean, we, we, we're so good at teasing that out, but ultimately either Jesus is worth
01:00:38.240
But we have in the United States, a man-made religion called Christianity that puts me at
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
01:00:50.640
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
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
01:01:10.080
Because here we know that if you work hard and you, you know, try the best you can, you
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.
01:01:41.420
Or to wait for something and to hope for something that you don't receive in this life.
01:01:50.480
At least if you're getting canceled, you go, well, it's worth it.
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?
01:02:05.780
So now you go back to, well, why, why do we constantly hunger?
01:02:13.760
I remember when I started during COVID, I was listening to, there were so many podcasts
01:02:19.640
Like, and now they say, well, now he says, oh, I'm not really a Christian.
01:02:38.340
Gosh, there's so much more I could ask you and so much more we could talk about, but
01:02:47.760
Your book is Don't Tell Anyone You're Reading This, A Christian Doctor's Thoughts on Sex,
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.
01:03:11.860
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.
01:03:18.440
Honestly, if I had one last thing to say is that Jesus is indeed worth it all.
01:03:24.580
And you'll find that he's been waiting for you.