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Garry Ingraham- LGBTQ questions
35 Plays1 year ago
My guest is Garry Ingraham- Executive Director of the Love & Truth Network
In an attempt to better understand what is going on in this world I hardly recognize, I stumbled into an event my church hosts a couple of times a year. It was an ‘open to the greater community’ LGBTQ forum. My idea was to sit in the back & see what the conversation was about.
I was drawn in by Garry’s compelling story as well as his take on the current state of the LGBTQ movement. I’m sure you will be as well. And I know he’s legit since my awesome pastor & neighbor fully endorses Garry & his work.
Some takeaways for me from our conversation:
· Ideas on ‘what to do’ regarding your child’s sexual identity.
· How ‘nice & kind’ Christians are not prepared to deal with ‘not normal’ behaviors with love and truth.
· Sometimes the best gift a parent can give is not what a child wants.
· Being intentional about finding a Band of Brothers & a Band of Sisters.
· And so much more…
Garry is an ordained pastor & author of a new book ‘Am I Gay?’.
In 2013, he and his wife Melissa founded Love & Truth Network, a national, non-profit ministry focused on equipping Christian leaders to develop safe and transformational environments with the purpose of restoring sexual wholeness and Biblical identity. Garry and Melissa have two wonderful boys and are humbly grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord together.
You can connect with Garry at www.LoveAndTruthnNetwork.com
And find his book ‘Am I Gay?’ on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Am-Gay-Cultural-Christianity-Authentic
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:37
Speaker
Welcome to Russell Jones Speaks, where we explore big issues that matter to parents, grandparents, and kids. We tackle intergenerational issues. Everything that affects parents, grands, and children is on the table. That includes health and fitness, relationships, attitude, family unity, vision, adversity, God, and anything else that might arise. The goal is for you to take away something that you can use in your life immediately.
00:01:03
Speaker
So today's guest is Gary Ingram, executive director of the Love and Truth Network. Gary's an ordained pastor. In 2013, he and his wife Melissa founded Love and Truth Network, a national nonprofit ministry focused on equipping Christian leaders to develop safe and transformational environments with the purpose of restoring sexual wholeness and biblical identity. Gary and Melissa have two wonderful boys and are humbly grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord together.
Gary Ingram's Background and Family Dynamics
00:01:34
Speaker
And from my point of view, in an attempt to better understand what is going on in this world, I hardly recognized, I stumbled onto an event my church hosts a couple of times a year. It was an open to the greater community LGBTQ forum. My idea was to sit in the back and see what the conversation was about. I was drawn in by Gary's compelling story, as well as his take on the current state of the LGBTQ movement.
00:02:01
Speaker
I'm sure you'll be as well. And I know he's legit since my awesome pastor and neighbor fully endorses Gary in his work. So welcome, Gary. Thanks so much. So glad to be here, Russell.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah. So, um, I guess before I get into the stereotypes and all kinds of crazy things that my experience, you know, after almost 71 years on the planet brings to the table, um, uh, you know, let's hear, let's just kick it off with your story. Um, from the beginning, I know, you know, we could probably talk for hours just about your story, but, um, you know, give us that, uh,
00:02:40
Speaker
Give us the thumbnail. Yeah. And just like you did at the church, I mean, just the whole thing about being the last one, the runt of the litter, all that stuff was, I related to all that. So anyway.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, happy to share with you with your audience. So yeah, I am the youngest of five kids. I'm now 58. So my mom and dad were thought that they were done having children with my last brother who is five years older than me. So when my mom found out at 42, when my dad was 44, that they were having another baby, they were not at all happy about that. My dad especially was was pretty frustrated about it. I'm
00:03:24
Speaker
grateful that they obviously that they carried me to term and and my mother had me and the you know, I mean back then that would have been it isn't that abortion didn't happen, but it certainly was would be much more unusual than it is today. And
00:03:40
Speaker
But when I was born, my mom really came around to love me well, but my dad stayed pretty aloof. And I don't know if that was really because of just his frustration about having another mouth to feed. We were a pretty poor family.
00:03:55
Speaker
My, neither of my parents had finished high school. My dad was a heavy equipment operator, a dozer mostly in heavy construction and road construction and things like that. And, and so it didn't have a lot of money was always on unemployment in the wintertime because there was no work to be had in upstate New York.
00:04:13
Speaker
uh, in that field. So it was, I don't know if it was because of those reasons or what, but, and also my dad, um, you know, had migraines all the time. So he was just kind of miserable, frankly, in some ways really understandable, but he also had a really rough childhood, uh, growing up and my mom did too.
00:04:31
Speaker
And so they brought kind of all of that experience into their child rearing, not having had much warmth or tenderness themselves in a lot of ways and didn't know how to give it that well, my dad in particular. Now, my dad and I became very, very close after I became an adult and, you know, certainly later on in life in my probably mid 30s up until the point that my dad passed away in 2015 at 88 years of age.
00:04:56
Speaker
I got to take care of him on hospice. My mom and dad lived with me for many years. Actually, when Melissa and I were married back in 2007, she moved in with us. I mean, God bless my wife. I often joke that she brought her two cats, so that kind of equalized everything. But anyway, it was truly bless her. And then my mom passed away five years later, both of them really solid believers.
Challenges with Gender Identity and Early Influences
00:05:20
Speaker
And we had such a deep close relationship in those later years.
00:05:23
Speaker
that didn't make up for all the brokenness through my developmental years in childhood, particularly with my dad. And then the experience that I would have shared at the church too that you would have heard is just the reality that for me, gym class, just kind of growing up in the world, I had three older brothers, they have three older brothers, and it just, I just didn't fit in. It felt like I didn't fit in the world of boys or men. It felt like I was always kind of shoved out. I was always pointed at me. The bullies, I was always the target of
00:05:53
Speaker
bullying and being teased constantly, but also physically bullied. School felt like every day I was just poised to be tripped and knocked down in the hallway, books to be knocked out of my hands, to be called queer, sissy, fag, to be bullied at my locker, and gym class in the locker room was just horrendous. You grew into that.
00:06:21
Speaker
you're almost being programmed then for that, right? I mean, and the- Programmed for what? For being, you know, the sissy, queer, fag, whatever the term is. And really it was undersized, you know, everybody matures in a different rate kid, right? It was really an environmental thing that really drove you. Yeah.
00:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, I think it had a lot to do with environment, a lot to do with nurture or the lack thereof. And I don't think any of the things that happened to me, the name calling, any of that stuff, none of those things are determinative, but they do wind up creating the soil in which shut off from our own gender. God made us to have a season of really bonding with our own gender and getting to know who we are in relationship.
00:07:12
Speaker
So in many ways, you're right. Environment, nurture, that played a huge role, I think, in the development of same-sex attraction for me. But an important thing to point out is that none of those things that happened, the bullying, the name calling, the disconnection from my father, none of those things were determinative in terms of
00:07:30
Speaker
Oh, I'm going to wind up being gay. Uh, and, but I think that there's far more evidence for the idea that people, the environment has massive influence over us in the way that we are formed in shape, not just with regard to sexual identity, but with lots of different things. And whether we're prone toward drug addiction or alcohol or whatever.
00:07:49
Speaker
There's lots of ways in which the environment we grow up in influences us toward those things. It doesn't force us into those things. And so one of the other key components for me was not just the name calling and the bullying, but also the over-identification that I experienced with my mom and then my one older sister. I tended to really be bonded and close to them, feel safe with them, feel safe with girls at school, girls at church, and really felt like the boys were just
00:08:17
Speaker
Well, totally unsafe. And while God created us clearly for that bonding and getting to know kind of who we are in relationship to our own gender at a phase of our life, developmental period of our life, I missed all of that. And so the fact that we miss it doesn't mean that somehow we made it through and we're whole. In many ways, there's some real brokenness there. And it wasn't until much later in life, in my 30s actually,
00:08:46
Speaker
that God kind of brought me back around again to almost experience this bonding and healthy connecting with some strong brothers in Christ that really helped fill in the gaps for what I didn't get in my childhood. Yeah. Okay, so you had alluded to the exposure to pornography at an early stage. Yeah. Or you didn't allude to. You spoke to that when you were at the church.
00:09:13
Speaker
Right. So these older neighborhood boys on the bus ride home from.
00:09:18
Speaker
the public school back to our kind of country setting. One of the boys said, Hey, why don't you come over and play with us after school? Well, I would, I never got that invitation from boys ever. And so I thought, well, I'm excited. I went home and I changed my clothes and did chores or whatever I needed to do. And, and then just kind of wandered off down the road, uh, a few houses down to their house and went in and they were like maybe five boys there. Um, all of them considerably older than me and they were all gathered around a table kind of in the kitchen.
00:09:47
Speaker
talking, laughing, whatever. And I walked over and everyone kind of cleared the way and put the magazine, their dad's hardcore porn magazine in front of me. And some of the kids began to just flip page after page, just having a grand old time thinking this was so funny to expose me to this stuff and kind of watch my shocked expressions and confusion. And then after that, they engaged in some sexual behavior with each other.
00:10:14
Speaker
And I don't, then my memories, the pornography even to this day is very clear in my mind, but the, uh, my mind goes totally black at that point. So I don't know what wound up happening. All I know as I was there in present for, um, some of their
Struggles with Church and Faith
00:10:29
Speaker
sexual behavior. I don't know how long, but I was a very, I was already a struggling kid at five or six coming to their house and leaving their house. I had this new set of baggage now, uh, strapped on my, on my back that, um, wound up
00:10:45
Speaker
utterly changing the trajectory of my life, or at least pushing me even further in a trajectory that wasn't healthy. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. That's a crazy thing too, about the culture today. I had a neighbor and his dad had a magazine, I forget where the magazine was stashed, but him and his brother had found a magazine. But we were older though. I'm thinking we were like eight or nine maybe.
00:11:15
Speaker
And it was a nudist colony one. And it was a black and white distant shots. And, you know.
00:11:25
Speaker
I look back on that and I don't know that it influenced, I mean, it was a curiosity thing that had, you know, come about obviously, you know, serious catalog could kind of incite curiosity in my raging hormones when I hit like 10 or so. But nowadays you have your device and if you hit the wrong button, I mean, we're not talking about a long distance, you know, black and white fuzzy shot of, you know, some naked people, right? Oh my goodness.
00:11:55
Speaker
The world is just, it's just crazy. But, uh, okay. So it really is. You're going through, okay. So elementary, middle school didn't change much. High school didn't change much. It was, it was pretty consistent all the way through. Were these like, no, it wasn't school or was this a Christian school? So I was in public school until fourth grade and then my parents pulled me out thinking that the public school was ruining me.
00:12:24
Speaker
which the public school back then would have been like a Sunday school class today compared to what it is today. But they put me in a Christian school for a period of time. I hated that as well. And it was different and there was a way in which it was a bit safer, but there was still a lot of junk and still I felt very much pushed out of the world of boys and men and isolated and different and just really condemned in a lot of ways. So I was there, I don't know, maybe two years or so
00:12:54
Speaker
and convinced my parents, really ragged my parents until I went back to the public school. And then from public school, I was, I don't know, there for another year or two. And then I was, uh, I finally wound up doing homeschooling and leaving, uh, graduating homeschooling early. I was 16 and I almost 17 when I started, uh, Bible college at a local, a local Bible college in the area. And so, yeah, it was, there was a lot of bouncing around a lot of, Hey, if this, if, if things get too painful or don't work, then we just quit and move on to something else. So.
00:13:24
Speaker
that developed another pattern of unhealth in my life too. So going to Christian college, that was your choice. Was this whatever, the same sex attraction, that was occurring already, but you weren't acting on it at that point? Or were you?
00:13:44
Speaker
No, I, I had, uh, but through pornography and masturbation, it was, uh, definitely that was, you know, something that was getting reinforced in my life. And I realized around puberty or so that I was more attracted attracted to the images of men than women. And I was horrified by that. I mean, I grew up in church, so I knew what the Bible taught about these things, but I also felt like, you know, God, where were you when back at five or six, when these boys introduced me to this stuff and.
00:14:11
Speaker
you know, where are you in my life? And it felt like there was just silence. And so, yeah, I mean, it was certainly around puberty, I realized this. But then I also got involved, a neighborhood boy, a new family moved into our neighborhood. And this boy and I were just friends for a couple of years. And then that shifted to sexual acting out with each other and kind of off and on. And I felt very guilty about that. I think he did too.
00:14:38
Speaker
And so again, it was kind of an off and on thing, but it lasted probably a couple of years. And from there, yeah, I went to Bible college still wrestling with all of these issues and feeling like there was no place to talk about any of them. I talked to a couple of pastors over the course of some time, my own pastor and then another pastor in my area. My pastor was a really good man, but literally as he realized what I was trying to tell him after a Sunday message and no one else was around,
00:15:08
Speaker
It was just him and I in the sanctuary, and we sat, and I asked if I could talk to him, scared to death. And when he finally realized I was talking about sexual struggles, and I don't know if I talked about homosexuality, I can't remember now, but he literally got up, flipped his chair back around, and walked past me, and gave me a little pat on the shoulder, and said, you're not doing so bad, and he left.
00:15:29
Speaker
I mean, right in the middle of me trying to tell what was going on with me. And again, it's not because he was a horrible man. He just had no idea what to do and just left me. And then this other pastor listened to my whole story, was very kind. But in the end, he said, Gary, here's what you need to do. You need to pray more.
00:15:48
Speaker
You need to read your Bible more. You need to memorize scripture, and that's all going to really help you. And I thought, you've got to be kidding me. I had stacks of scripture that I had memorized trying to battle this stuff. I was praying. I was reading my Bible. And so I felt like, OK, this is the best. This is the only advice you have for me. I'm already doing it and failing every day.
00:16:10
Speaker
How is this helpful or nearly every day? So it was very discouraging on so many levels. I mean, the church had no answers. The churches I was going to had no answers for how to walk with a young person who actually wanted help and support, but couldn't find it in the church. Yeah, just looking back, I found that in getting ready for this conversation, looking back at different adults in my life,
00:16:40
Speaker
We were mentors in certain ways, scout leaders, teachers, coaches. But there was certain things that we just never got talked about. And I was the oldest.
00:16:54
Speaker
So I didn't have any older siblings to learn right, left, whatever it was. And it was just kind of like you're out there. And there was a certain level of real modesty, I think, my parents had, that those conversations just would be just crazy to even think about having. So yeah, you're just trying to fend for yourself, trying to figure it out. And where do you go? Who do you trust? That sort of thing.
Exploration and Disillusionment with LGBTQ Lifestyle
00:17:24
Speaker
Okay, so, okay, you're in Bible college and then at some point you did like a lot of us did. I mean, I did it in a different way. I just kind of turned my back on whatever was going on or I should be doing and just went off in the experimental world of, you know, what I thought I could make a life out of.
00:17:46
Speaker
So that happened, right? Yeah. Yeah. I actually quit Bible college twice after I made it through three semesters, quit in my fourth semester, went back, quit again, went back. Um, and they gave me the boot, uh, because they felt like I, and I was dealing with a lot of depression, a lot of anxiety. Those were the reasons that I quit the two times that I did and didn't have the fortitude to just deal with hard things and, and, and push through them. And my dad was pretty accommodating. He hated, you know, higher education.
00:18:15
Speaker
was really skeptical about it. And so he was fine for me to quit. My mom wasn't, but in the end, that's the way it worked. But when I was 19 years old, the school called my brother, who had graduated co-valedictorian the year before. And really, he was and is a great guy. Never gave my parents really much of a problem out of the five of us. He was the only one that didn't. But he came to pick me up, and I was going to go and live with him.
00:18:44
Speaker
He was already a pastor and married, and I think he had a baby or two at this point, and was really pretty frustrated with me, understandably so, because of the way I was just screwing up, and he had no idea what was going on inside of me. And so he took me back to his house. On the way there, I just remember feeling like looking out his window, and my back turned toward him as much as possible, just angry, so full of hatred. And I just thought, God,
00:19:13
Speaker
I hate you and I hate your church and I want nothing to do with any of this anymore. And that was the condition in which I left Bible college. And then about, I don't know, maybe four or five, six months later, found out about a gay bar somewhere in the town near where I lived and was drawn like a moth of the flame to that place. And I had never been in a bar in my life where I had a drink in my life. But when I found out that there was something like that around,
00:19:38
Speaker
I went there. I was still 19 when I discovered the place and worked up the nerve to walk in. And I felt like, wow, I have finally found my people. Like, I finally fit in somewhere. And it was the euphoria was just kind of off the charts and feeling like I finally belonged somewhere. So, I mean, what a tragic indictment to, frankly, grow up in a Christian family and grow up in the church and feel like
00:20:02
Speaker
finally, you know, I can be known and finally I'm wanted, you know, for all the wrong reasons or a lot of them, but it was, it's understandable how people can get so quickly drawn up into something that winds up in the end to be so destructive. Right. There's always that, you know, that, I guess promise of a better life or, uh, you know, that you can create something and you just get away from, I think,
00:20:30
Speaker
For me personally, and you probably had more Bible than I did, but I did grow up in going all to religious schools, Catholic school, elementary, middle, well, in high school till I got unceremoniously asked to leave after junior year of high school. But yeah, but that event, and again, I think it was just my guilt, but I turned, that was my turning away from the church altogether because of how,
00:20:59
Speaker
the leadership in the church responded to me in my situation. And so, you know, it was 10 years, you know, other than weddings and funerals, I wouldn't even think about going to a church. But I didn't have, in Catholicism, not bash in Catholicism, but I didn't have the biblical foundation, the scriptural foundation for, you know, what is,
00:21:24
Speaker
Not what's right or wrong but the promise for my life and different things like that a lot of stuff was just repetitive so i was an old boy learn stuff in latin but i didn't it wasn't something that you know was.
00:21:38
Speaker
was deep in a philosophical conversation about. So later, when I did get saved, that was like, whoa, look at all this stuff in this Bible here. And then it's like, wait a minute, do I believe it? Or do I just pick the good parts that I like? Or do I believe the whole thing?
00:21:58
Speaker
So, like, how did you deal with that? You know, like, as you're going into this, did you have to turn your whole back on God completely, or did you try to rationalize through? Yeah, I mean, I really did turn my back on God. You know, I really did just reject, you know, everything that
00:22:20
Speaker
everything that I kind of knew growing up. Now, I turned my back on God. I still knew what was right and wrong. I mean, I had no confusion about that, but I definitely wrestled in that arena and just, again, disconnecting, rebelling, and trying to find
00:22:37
Speaker
you know, just, I felt like he hated me and that I was the cosmic screw up that I felt like I was kind of this third gendered thing. I wasn't sure what was going on with me. And, um, but I, I was, I knew he was aware of me and I thought, you know, he pretty much hated me. And so I was just going to return the favor. And, uh, and then finally, you know, in the end over the several years of
00:23:00
Speaker
of living in this space of the gay world lgbtq world looking thinking i was gonna find mr right and kind of settle down for the rest of my life and finding out that all that was a joke.
00:23:11
Speaker
Uh, that the revolving door of, you know, sexual encounters and very short-term relationships, uh, is, is so common there. I mean, it's true in the heterosexual world too, but I mean, on steroids and certainly for gay men. And, and so this constant getting dumped and then feeling worse than I did before. And, and then jumping back into, you know, on the rebound into another situation, it was just over, it didn't take that long, maybe a year or two.
00:23:37
Speaker
Begin to begin to feel like my just kind of like my insides were rotting just and and here I am in the prime of my life and I would stare at myself in the mirror and think who the hell are you like how did you get here what what what are you doing and and yet I was compelled to to go right back to it over and over again trying to find someone.
00:23:57
Speaker
to tell me that I was okay, trying to find someone who was going to love me, basically. And so it was a pretty miserable time. But then I began to experience two things. One is I was experiencing this decay that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 6, 18.
00:24:16
Speaker
that there's a kind of damage that sexual sin does that is unique from other sins, is what he's talking about there, the one who sins sexually, he sins against their own body. I was experiencing that.
00:24:29
Speaker
in my soul, I believe. But then at the same time, I was also wondering, every time I drive home from the bar, I think, tonight's the night God's going to kill me. Tonight's the night God's going to kill me. Tonight's the night God's going to kill me. And of course, that didn't happen. And I began to wonder, why, where's your two by four? You know, where's your bat? Where the, your, this is the God that you are in my mind who is, you know, just waiting for us to step out of line so we could crack us up beside the head or me. And, and when that didn't happen, it began to put a little chink in my armor to think, well, wait a minute, maybe
00:24:59
Speaker
maybe God's different than what I think he is. And of course that began to grow and expand that question. And really the two of those things that what I thought I was signing up for by jumping into, you know, with both feet into the LGBT world and my anger and rage toward God and my hatred of him for a period of time, those both began to
Substance Use and LGBTQ Community Dynamics
00:25:19
Speaker
really crumble. And that's what led to my genuine surrender to Christ on the side of a freeway in New Jersey or Pennsylvania when I was 23 years old.
00:25:30
Speaker
Yeah. During those years, when you went into the bar and stuff, did alcohol and drugs play a big role? Because you see images of people, and it's not just in gay community, but you just see always these snapshots of people laughing and happy and embracing and smiling.
00:25:55
Speaker
There's truly humans. We can have a joy, right? There's the joy of the Lord.
00:26:01
Speaker
companionship and friendship and everything else. But I just remember in my life, you know, I mean, I got saved. We owned a bar. So, you know, I just remember these exuberant moments that were fueled by, you know, alcohol and cocaine, you know, and and you had the feeling that everything was so wonderful and beautiful. But then, you know, like you said, you're driving home or you wake up the next morning, you're like, I mean, was that part of that that season of life for you?
00:26:33
Speaker
Yeah, alcohol certainly was. And you know, it took me, I remember the very first time I walked into the bar and I, the first time I went in, I bought a pack of cigarettes at closing and ran back out again. That was my breaking the ice. But then the next day I was there.
00:26:47
Speaker
And the day after that, the day after that, the day after that. And when I first went in, I didn't know what to order. I'd never had a drink in my life. So I ordered a beer, you know, and I went and sat at a high top table in the corner and, and literally like I took a sip wondering if something was going to happen when I took that sip. Uh, so I mean, I was such a novice, but in, and so, you know, not exposed to that world.
00:27:09
Speaker
But yeah, alcohol very quickly within, you know, a matter of weeks or months became a dependency. I don't mean like I wasn't addicted to alcohol at that point. But in terms of elevating my mood and fitting in and, you know, kind of helping me relax and all that, that was a big, big part of it. And then, yeah, later I became a bartender at a gay club in a different town. And so, yeah, I was around drugs a lot, but drugs were never I tried a couple of things, but it was they were
00:27:39
Speaker
I mean, I tried something once or twice, and that was kind of it. But alcohol was a big part of my kind of everyday life. Yeah. In my experience, it just seemed like, you know, and people poo-poo the whole idea of like even like marijuana being like an entry-level drug. But drugs and alcohol, I mean, it started very early for me. And yet,
00:28:05
Speaker
You were always looking for the next high so that you could, like you said, socially fit in, will I ever be loved? How do I communicate with anybody, never mind the opposite sex? All these imagined issues and things like that.
00:28:27
Speaker
It just that altered that reality and you just kept going to, you know, either you drank more or you smoked more or then you switched to higher level things, acid trips to see like, you know, okay, maybe God wants us to do this.
Spiritual Practices and Societal Distractions
00:28:42
Speaker
I don't know. Is there a God? So, in today's world, I find this interesting. Like, and you, maybe you can just address this and not just from like the text of this conversation, but
00:28:57
Speaker
Like, there's this creation. I mean, I go out in the morning, you know, I'm really blessed, you know, where I live in South Carolina. I do, yeah. And it's, man, there's just this chorus of birds singing and breeze, whatever's going through. Your rooster crowing, yes. Yes. That's not mine, that's the neighbors. I have chickens. But, but it just,
00:29:22
Speaker
I see people and we have headsets on and I just, everybody's so plugged in. I go into the local public schools.
00:29:30
Speaker
everybody's plugged into it. There's noise all the time. Noise, noise, noise. There's just, you know, whatever you're doing, there has to be no, people walking down the street and they're plugged in, they're listening to a book or they're listening to music. You know, you go to the gym, people go to the gym and if the music's not loud enough, cranking through the speak, there's just this noise all the time. And I just, you know, I just wonder like how much,
00:29:59
Speaker
You know, we can block out, you know, and like really get to know the Lord and get connected with all this noise going on. You ever have to address that or think about that? Well, absolutely. I mean, you're totally right. And of course, I've heard a number of things about even the issue of
00:30:20
Speaker
of people needing to have white noise just to be able to sleep and that kind of thing that that's actually something that is ultimately not even very healthy for you. I don't know all the ramifications or details behind that. But you're right, I see it all the time. I'm a part of that world too, like I'm on my phone more than I should be. And, and, you know, but I'm also aware of it and making decisions to
00:30:41
Speaker
set it aside like our family does do a Sabbath. And if we just found it to be such a, our main thing with Sabbath from one of the books I was reading about it, our main goal in Sabbath is to set aside striving. So whether that's my boys doing schoolwork, whether that's me, you know, it isn't about not doing anything. It's about setting aside striving and also embracing rest and embracing quiet and
00:31:07
Speaker
So also, you know, in addition to to Sabbath, one of the things that I was exposed to 20 years ago that was so healing for me back when in my I was thinking was 39, the first conference I went to, which I ultimately is where I met my wife at a leadership training that we were at for five or six days. But it was with a program called Living Waters put out by Desert Stream Ministries. And and one of the really the engine of their program is listening prayer.
00:31:36
Speaker
It's about getting quiet and really delving into, Lord, what do you have for me? Like what's broken in my life? What is off? What needs healing from you needs to be healed in my life that may have happened 30, 40, 50 years ago. And yet still emotionally, spiritually, there's kind of an infection there. There's a way in which I'm living with a handicap that I don't need to.
00:32:00
Speaker
Well, all of that, and I've experienced some pretty amazing things in that process that I never even knew I.
00:32:08
Speaker
needed or could find freedom from until this Living Waters program. But again, I'm just simply saying this in response to what you were saying, Russell, is this need to get quiet and listen. It's such an unusual thing for us to do. But we know from even the encounter with Elijah and the Lord that God wasn't in the earthquake. He wasn't in the fire. He wasn't in the raging storm. He was in that gentle, quiet blowing.
00:32:36
Speaker
And I think it's really telling. Jesus, we get up when it was still dark and go off into a lonely place and pray. It's really telling the Scriptures, I think, over and over again about our need for silence and solitude. And we live in a world that is offering us every imaginable thing under the sun to prevent us from doing that. Yes, sir. I totally agree. Yeah. So I got to tell you one story real quick.
00:33:03
Speaker
of the stereotypes growing up. I mean, we, you know, as a kid, you know, the endearing terms I grew up with, queer fag, homo, light and loafers, bon vivant, lesbo, but to be fair,
00:33:18
Speaker
Where I grew up, it was a melting pot area, a suburb in New York City. And that was just for people that were, you know, alternative, we might say, whatever. But everyone received an endearing moniker based on their ethnicity. I mean, it was, you know, Irish, you know, Italian, Polish, German.
00:33:40
Speaker
whatever and you know but then there was the physical things like oh my goodness I mean it was just cruel I mean between jug ears and weezer and all these different names that's just stuck and
00:33:55
Speaker
Then there was, you know, personal hygiene things that people would pick out and everything. So there was always, and it was always hard, I think, to grow up. I think it was, you know, it's just always hard. And so anyway, and you had mentioned before too about the, you know, the human form.
00:34:17
Speaker
I don't know, it sounded like, I mean, I was drawn to images of men, but from a, my interpretation was like physical culture was like strength and, you know, what maybe I could grow into or just amazed at, you know, what the human form could look like, you know. And so anyway, this one story though, stereotypes might,
00:34:46
Speaker
I'd finished college, certified. I'd been working full-time, going to school full-time. A friend of mine from high school, both of us were teachers. We're going to be teachers, want to be teachers. He says, listen, we should get an apartment, share an apartment together.
00:35:04
Speaker
back in the day, you didn't go online or anything like that. You get a local newspaper, there's a little ad, you had to walk around and whatever and look at these. We're in a city and everything was just kind of seedy and everything. So finally, we're almost giving up and we're walking down this brick face, two-story buildings, and there's a
00:35:27
Speaker
window, what do you call it? Giant window, picture window in the front. And it was high enough that we had to reach up and grab on. And my friend reached up and grabbed on and he jumped up and he looked. He goes, this place is for rent. I bet it's coming up. It's going to come up for rent. Hardwood floors. He jumped up mirrors and a dining, all this kind of stuff. And so he says, listen, we haven't had any luck. He says, let me do the talking. So he rings the bell, goes upstairs to the little Italian lady that's upstairs.
00:35:55
Speaker
And he says, he said, don't you say anything? Because I'm like biker dude at this point, right? I got the hair, the fume and shoe, all this stuff and everything. And so he's on the landing. I'm one step down. And my friend Ray, he goes, he starts talking to the lady and he starts listening.
00:36:13
Speaker
And I'm like, what? I turn in my head and he's going on and on. And he negotiated a deal that we got the rental. And I asked him what it was about. He says, listen, man, he said, there's a stereotype. If you're gay, you're neat, you're clean, you're orderly. And I know this old lady would love to, you'll love to hear that. So anyway, we got our, we got the apartment and
00:36:41
Speaker
moved in. I waited a week before I brought my Harley and put it in her garage. Oh my gosh. She was traumatized. But that was a little, and yeah, I just had to tell that story because Ray's gonna listen to this and be embarrassed. But when we talk about coming out of the closet, the stick figures of, you know, what I would, in my mind, is just people
00:37:08
Speaker
their preferences for what should be really private. Something happened, I pinpointed around 1976 when I was doing my student teaching and then subbing. When we were in the 60s, we didn't talk to anybody about anything. We were afraid of the cops, the narcs, the parents, the teachers, everything was like, whoa, you know,
00:37:35
Speaker
everything's a secret, right? Everything's private. And then all of a sudden in the 70s, it was like, kids, you're telling me stuff that I don't want to hear. I mean, it was, you know, I'm not a counselor in those areas. And it just seemed like everything opened up and it's like, what, you know, were you around during that time?
Cultural Shifts and Church Responses
00:37:56
Speaker
I just felt it was like a really uncomfortable time, like the out of the closet era, I guess you'd call it.
00:38:05
Speaker
Well, I think, sure. I mean, I think in so many ways, obviously we have the sexual revolution of the sixties and that fed into then, you know, the pill preventing, you know, so you can have all the sex you want. And there's, you know, in most cases, at least pregnancy would be avoided. At least that would, that was the idea.
00:38:25
Speaker
And that was in the late 60s, early 70s. And then, of course, there's the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973. So there's just more and more kind of tearing down of traditional norms around sex and identity. I mean, we weren't even talking about identity back then. It was understood and assumed
00:38:49
Speaker
that a man is a man, a woman is a woman, et cetera, and that generally they're attracted to the opposite sex. Of course, there's always been some folks around that were, but I mean, really tiny numbers, 1%, 2%, maybe of men or women that are dealing with the same sex attraction or what have you. But yeah, and then, of course, you have then on top of everything else you've got Hugh Hefner and others that are really glamorizing and popularizing
00:39:16
Speaker
pornography and Alfred Kinsey who is just a disgusting pedophile who's doing all this sex research within his institute or whatever and putting out this garbage on the sexual man and later the sexual woman. So all of that is kind of proliferating within a couple of decades.
00:39:38
Speaker
and has really led, and the church had no idea what to do with any of this. The church was just totally ignoring it. Their response was to form the moral majority, you know, which I always think is such a joke because, and I like Jerry Falwell. I mean, you know, he kind of drove me nuts, but I liked some of the stuff in his later years that he talked about. I appreciate the guy in general when he was still alive. But the whole idea of the moral majority, I mean, the moral majority was made up of all kinds of people.
00:40:06
Speaker
who were having sex and private with people other than their spouse or dealing with pornography issues themselves and yet putting the public face on and saying that i you know we're all good and so just see you've got these kind of crazy responses in the in the moral majority did nothing to actually.
00:40:23
Speaker
Walk with hurting and broken broken people it basically said we're good and the rest of the in the world is totally crap When it comes to these issues and and we're not gonna help you We're just gonna we're gonna call out all this awful stuff that frankly we ourselves are also, you know, I'm again There are many that were probably fine But certainly idea that you're gonna you have hundreds and thousands of people in this movement and they're all pristine is ridiculous so anyway, so those those
00:40:51
Speaker
those responses by the church to what was going on in culture were not in any way helpful. And that's really why our ministry exists. That's why Love and Truth Networks exists. That's why I wrote my book that came out in December. That's why we do podcasts every week, is to really equip pastors in the church on how do we develop environments in our churches, not just bringing good programs,
00:41:14
Speaker
but develop environments in our churches that are both safe and transformational. We've gotten away from being what I think of as really teaching hospital churches. We need we need churches to stop just being places where people come. That worship is awesome. We need to do that. We need to celebrate together. But we also need to learn how to be doctors and nurses for others in our lives and for the culture around us, for our own families, for people at work,
00:41:43
Speaker
We need to know how to be really engaged and ready to step into the difficult things of our current culture in a way that really shows love, compassion, gentleness, but also strength and truth that is uncompromising. And we tend to see churches that go in one direction or the other. They're pounding on truth, driving everybody away.
00:42:05
Speaker
living very many ways hypocritically or they're becoming the progressive and the quote-unquote nice churches that aren't very nice ultimately because they're preaching things that are untrue and Accommodating sin rather than calling people into this narrow way that Jesus called us into Right. Yeah, I totally agree. It's uh it's it's interesting just to
00:42:29
Speaker
step back and look at the whole scene. And I totally appreciate what you and your wife are doing. Let's hit on a couple of these things that are bullet point type things.
Modern Gender Ideology and Church's Role
00:42:41
Speaker
You mentioned about the trans scene during the conversations at North Hills. When you mentioned the thing about pronouns, I was
00:42:55
Speaker
You know, I was sitting there and I'm like, okay, you know, I know I'm on LinkedIn and they want to know if you have pronouns. And I, you know, I just kind of chose to ignore that whole thing. I kind of joked about what my pronouns are, but I'm not going to say this on a family broadcast. But, um, so, but what, tell, tell me again, you know, just tell everybody your, you know, your take and understanding of this whole transitional, uh, scene that's going on here with, uh,
00:43:23
Speaker
LGBTQ community specifically, right? Well, let me just speak more broadly for a moment and then come down to more discussion specifically about transgenderism. So we live in a culture now that where many out of a
00:43:40
Speaker
Having been convinced that all of the things that are being pushed in the trans space and the LGBTQ space is all about safety and kindness. Love is love. It's all about protecting people when in fact it's ultimately about
00:43:55
Speaker
Um, taking away people's choice to find the help and support that they desire. Maybe they don't desire it today, but they might desire it in 10 years down the road. Well, guess what we have, um, we have bills that are being proposed that would make it illegal for, uh, you know, for people to counselors, to counsel a minor, but there's lots of States that are doing that now, even if the minor is experienced sexual abuse or what have you and knows that believes that there's some connection between that.
00:44:22
Speaker
and let's say same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, and they want to go to a licensed competent therapist to kind of work out these details, there are states that actually now that's completely illegal. The counselor could lose their license. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many other intrusive ways in which there's a desire to kind of take over and remove people's right of self-determination in these areas.
00:44:48
Speaker
So the, but the broader, the broader issue when it comes to like, you know, these groups or organizations that are encouraging people, guys, women that are straight, ever straight, whatever, that heterosexual, to encourage everybody to start listing their pronouns as if that's a good and healthy and normal thing. We can tell 99 point whatever percent of the time,
00:45:11
Speaker
whether a dude's a dude or a woman's a woman, just by the way that they carry themselves. I mean, God made us male and female in his image, according to Genesis 1, 26, and 27. We are spiritual, emotional, and physical beings, and those things work intrinsically with one another. But the idea here is that
00:45:34
Speaker
we would buy into, the culture would buy into this idea that, that we are, we are sexed beings, but we're also gendered beings. And those two things are very different. Those things are not different. They are completely the same, but we're being told something that's not true about that. So you can be a sex being that's male or female, but, but your gender identity can be something entirely different. It can even be an animal or a different species altogether. And that's even lauded as being a great thing these days.
00:46:03
Speaker
So, and courageous and brave to come out and let everyone know that and explore that. So when dudes and women who don't deal with any of these particular issues are being, you need to just put she, her, after woman, after your name, and he, him, guy, after your name. What we're winding up doing is we're going along with this broader pressure
00:46:26
Speaker
to for the for the entire culture to become socialized in this idea that gender and sex are different things. I mean, I want to put after my name sometimes just the word duh. I mean, you know, it's hello. I mean, I it's obvious what I am. Right. And I'm not doing that. But so so it's so you have in what I'm talking about right now.
00:46:48
Speaker
really fits into the category of ideology and indoctrination. And I think that Christians need to know how to stand up against those things with both clarity, but also with compassion. But particularly also, we need to learn to separate ideology
00:47:05
Speaker
and indoctrination from individuals from the people who would support these ideas people who are confused people who are lost people who have been blinded by the enemy to do his will i certainly was you know i was that in space for a long time we need to learn how to love people and be compassionate toward them and not see them as.
00:47:26
Speaker
a thing or as part of this group and dehumanize them in the process. And I think we don't do that. We don't do that very well as Christians. I think we need to really work at doing that far better. But coming back to the pronoun piece, so again, I wanted to say broadly speaking, I think that there's a real attempt to destroy the family, God's nuclear family. There's a real attempt to destroy our understanding of sex and identity in every way, shape and form. Ultimately,
00:47:54
Speaker
just, again, driving God basically out of everything, our Creator and Lord, out of everything, and to really cripple human identity. And the biggest distinctive of our human identity, I said earlier, is that we're made in the image of God, male and female. And so if we can obliterate that, if the enemy can really shroud and cover that and veil that, I mean, we start taking on more characteristics of just kind of animalistic cravings, just live out so-called freedom.
00:48:23
Speaker
you know, do whatever it is that makes you feel good. And ultimately, at the end, we wind up becoming animalistic rather than thriving in our humanity when we pursue those things. Now, coming back to the question about transgenderism, there are three primary stages of so-called transition. Let me just say clearly, a man can never become a woman, a woman can never become a man,
00:48:45
Speaker
A boy can never become a girl, and a girl cannot become a boy. That's simple biology. But we live in an era when these brilliant experts, by the way, the word, sometimes people refer to me as an expert, and I almost want to say, please don't say that about me, because the experts in many fields are doing a pretty lousy job. But the expert class is not something to necessarily just listen to and take in what they have to say at face value without any real
00:49:13
Speaker
consideration or thinking critically about what they're saying, we need to do that. But we have, within transgenderism, three primary categories of, again, so-called transition. The first is social transition, where a kid, a child, a man or woman may want to change their name. They want people to know that they're transgender, that they actually are a boy or a girl, even though they're born in the opposite body.
00:49:38
Speaker
or something else entirely. And that's part of this. And so changing their name, changing pronouns, and then people going along with that pronoun change is the first stage of transition, which now many of my friends and colleagues are referring to as
00:49:57
Speaker
um, actually a medical intervention. And the reason that we're referring to that as a medical intervention now is because it so often, the vast majority of cases, when, when a young person begins to socially transition or does successfully socially transition and everybody around them is, is agreeing using their pronouns, using the new name, agreeing that they are this other person or whatever, uh, their dead self is gone. And now, you know, this new person is, is here.
00:50:25
Speaker
that almost always leads to puberty blockers as well as cross sex hormone, so-called therapy. By the way, these things are all off label. They're not, they've not been approved for this use by the FDA, even if they were, it'd still be garbage, but they're not. And then in addition to that,
00:50:43
Speaker
Those who go down that road, socially transition, and then in some fashion, chemically transition, more often than not, they will wind up doing some kind of surgical procedure, whether that's top surgery, bottom surgery, other things. I have a friend that I've interviewed from my podcast, Ted Haley.
00:51:03
Speaker
who did top and bottom surgery, but he also had facial feminization. And so his skin was basically peeled off and bones ground down to try to look more feminized. And so there's a lot of different procedures people can undergo. They don't always undergo all of them, but this is why
00:51:21
Speaker
If the church and Christians, out of a good motivation to be kind and gracious and not put a roadblock in someone's way, just gives them what they want in terms of, we're not just going to call you by the new name, but we're also going to say things that aren't true about your pronouns.
00:51:39
Speaker
about gender and sex, we're going to be complicit in that out of our so-called kindness. We're actually setting them up for other forms of transition that will lead to ultimately lifelong medicalization. So we have to think more holistically as the church on how do we love well. One of the things I often say about my parents, they never threw me out of the house. They never treated me badly. If I call them at two or three in the morning,
00:52:08
Speaker
they would pick up the phone and they would lovingly talk to me. I mean, they were, for their generation, they were amazing. The other thing they did for me, though, is as much as I tried to get them to accommodate, even kind of forcing them into making dinner for two of my boyfriends at two different times and trying to just kind of get them to become okay with the way I was living.
00:52:28
Speaker
I knew after two of those attempts that was never going to happen. And it just kind of killed them. They were kind to my boyfriends, but it just kind of killed them to do that. I could see that obviously they were my parents, but I oftentimes say today, my parents gave me the best gift they ever could have given me by not giving me what I wanted. And at the same time being loving and gracious about the process too. So I think we need to be stronger as the church in that respect.
00:52:55
Speaker
Yeah.
Family Strategies for Addressing LGBTQ Issues
00:52:56
Speaker
Yeah. So that goes right into something that came up at Life Group the other night. Parent, grandparent, understanding, dad's shepherd heart. And is there a best way for a family member to react to the announcement of someone transitioning, as well as ongoing interaction? And I know merciful and kind is always there.
00:53:25
Speaker
Is that just what you're talking about with how your folks were with you? But this is a family where this young man, wait, young, I don't even know if we...
00:53:38
Speaker
Yeah, it was a young man is transitioning into trying to transition to a female. And the family is just beside himself. How do we react? How do we, you know, and not just close family, but, you know, distant family, you see this this young man that you've known since he was little and now he's right.
00:53:57
Speaker
18 years old and trying to go through this whole process. Is there a sensitive way to do that? I'm sure there is, like you said, without being part of it.
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's a great question. And I just want to respond by saying two things to that. One is one of the things we're working on is a parent curriculum for moms and dads. But we're working on it from two perspectives. One is prevention. So the best way of addressing what you're talking about is never getting there in the first place, which is where moms and dads really get equipped. Dads in particular get really because moms do this more naturally. Dads, that's why I say dads in particular. Dads have a particular, I think, role in terms of
00:54:39
Speaker
that shepherding of a child's heart and winning a child's heart, both sons and daughters. And they have a particular role in really securing their sons and daughters in the good of their identity, which their identity as image bearers, but their identity also as being a boy or a girl made in God's image. And so when you begin early on, when they're first born and you begin early on to love them and feed into them and bless them,
00:55:05
Speaker
and guide them and when mom is one side of the bumper of the bowling alley and the dad is the other bumper, rather than having gutters there, sometimes kids need the bumpers so that they can at least get the ball down. There's a period of time where that's really needed and dads need to be shepherding their kids and really working on that prevention side. We're working on that, but we're also, of course, working on the recovery
00:55:28
Speaker
But rather than always doing recovery, we've got to get to a place in the church where we're really equipping parents, young parents, new parents, to know how to really form and shape in the culture we're living in a really solid sense of identity and also bringing up their kids to realize this is the culture that I'm living in. They're not in some kind of a fishbowl that's excluded from culture because they're homeschooled or whatever. We have to let them know what's going on.
00:55:55
Speaker
and raise them in that way. But for those that are in this place where an announcement is made, you said it. I mean, responding with both, with kindness, but also with clarity and not, frankly, not giving, not
00:56:12
Speaker
falling into the habit or the use of saying things that simply are untrue. I think that needs to be simply a watchword and a barometer for us as Christians that there's a lot of things I can do to accommodate. For example, I'm not as concerned about the name, the quote unquote new name that somebody
00:56:31
Speaker
what's for themselves now some of that is going to be dependent on the proximity of my relationship with that person there there may be people in my life that i'm not gonna use a new name with the day you know they want to be called what whatever the feminized version of a masculine name masculine name or something else the opposite of that i may not do that depending on the nature of our relationship.
00:56:52
Speaker
And, but I might not even know this person and they introduce themselves. It's obvious that they're biologically the other gender and they give me their name. What am I going to do with that? Well, I'm going to call them by the name, the only name I know for them, but I'm also not going to use pronouns that
00:57:09
Speaker
that aren't accurate. By the way, pronouns are interesting because you're not even using a pronoun when you're talking to the person. In talking with you, Russell, I would never say to you, he, in reference to you or anything. I'm going to say your name or something along those lines. So pronoun usage is actually something that is primarily
00:57:30
Speaker
being imposed on people to engage in when the person isn't even present. Now, I understand that if you're in a group setting that there may be times in that group setting that you're talking to somebody else about some of the other person in the room and you're using a pronoun in that case. But I think that we as Christians can actually either use the name or use another way of referring to them
00:57:50
Speaker
that is not making use of the pronoun, but in most cases, even that is looked down upon in our society because, oh, you're not fully, you're not embracing and celebrating this person's so-called true identity. You're avoiding, you know, embracing their true identity and that's actually, you know, doing violence to them or something. So anyway, there's, I think that, that being gentle,
00:58:14
Speaker
and loving, affirming our love for them, but at the same time explaining that before God, this is what I know to be true from the scriptures. And so I'm going to love you. I'm going to walk with you to whatever degree you allow me to. And I want you in my life, you may choose to cut me out of your life because you're angry or upset that I can't go along with something that's not true.
Building Community and Responding to LGBTQ Invitations
00:58:40
Speaker
Right. Yeah. And that's a tough thing, I mean, for family members because I can speak from looking back about seasons, you know, seasons of life and seasons of, you know, times in a relationship. So I don't really panic anymore like I did when I was a young, you know, my kids were younger. And, you know, I was like, because, you know, that whole, it's always going to be like this type of thing. I mean, there are seasons.
00:59:09
Speaker
Like you said, when things are treated with love and kindness and mercy and, you know, things work out in the long run. But, you know, that's a that's a faith thing for for moms and dads, you know, so. Well, also the other thing I want to just mention here is that there every situation is different. You know, I mean, so I think there are principles. That's what we try to teach principles that are biblical and principles, frankly, that are that are based on basic biology.
00:59:40
Speaker
But we try to teach principles that are biblical and well-researched. And we do a lot of Q&A with groups of people to try to answer specific questions as best we can. But even in those situations, we don't know the person you're talking about. We don't have the history with them. And so while we can certainly land on certain core key principles, every situation is different how you approach it.
01:00:07
Speaker
the different words you might use to to kind of walk with them or to to speak with them and there all of it every every one of those situations is somewhat different so the best we can really do is really land on the word of god love people well do not compromise and and and understand that you're gonna make mistakes we're all gonna make mistakes we're all gonna blow it on some level
01:00:29
Speaker
But having a humble heart, coming back often, really keeping that person saturated in prayer ourselves, saturated in prayer. Another thing here too that I think is so important, one of our main themes in ministry is to say one of the most glaring and missing strata of the church is that many churches have men's groups, lots of churches have women's groups because women tend to gravitate to one another
01:00:56
Speaker
and toward spiritual things, seemingly more than men. So you have a lot of women's groups, small groups, sometimes men's groups, but almost none of those actually go deep, almost none. And they might go deep theologically. And so there's this stimulation of our intellect in our mind and where we think that we're doing something good because we're taking in more information, but we're actually doing almost nothing with it. And the issue is I believe that we all need biblically
01:01:23
Speaker
Every one of us needs a band of brothers and a band of sisters. When James 5 16 says, confess your sins to one another and pray for each other that you might be healed. Most Christians disregard that entirely. There's lots of other passages that would agree with that. In Hebrews, 1 John 1 7, walk in the light as he is in the light, God, and you'll have fellowship with one another. The blood of his son cleanses you from all sin.
01:01:46
Speaker
God designed us for deep and authentic connected relationships where we are fully known and in that being fully known we can actually experience them being fully loved. None of us experience being fully loved.
01:02:01
Speaker
when most of us aren't even close to being fully known by anyone, sometimes even our spouses. And so our spouses kind of know us by virtue of the stuff that's unhealed and us leaks out on them and our children. But oftentimes, we're not even being that vulnerable with our spouses. So I bring this up here simply to say that the best way that we can walk this out with people that we're journeying with is recognize
01:02:25
Speaker
We never outgrow the need for those deep and intimate connections. We need three or four other men in our lives that know us fully, that we're doing life with regularly. We need three or four other women in our lives that everything is on the table with, and almost no Christians have that. It is extremely rare that they have it, and yet it is such a great need, and we think it's one of the most glaring issues in the church right now that makes it so anemic in the culture that we're living in.
01:02:49
Speaker
So, and I have about 10 more minutes before I have to scoot to another session. That's great.
01:03:00
Speaker
You know, it's definitely an area I fall short in. And part of it is, at this stage in life, a lot of people have gone home already. So it's like, I gotta find some new, a new band, you know, but replace some band members. But even with being a spiritual father, Russell, with you being a spiritual father or older brother, I mean, there's guys
01:03:21
Speaker
in that that would so greatly in their thirties and forties and fifties benefit from your wisdom benefit from your life benefit from relationship with you and and you know in when guys are in their thirties and forties and fifties the you know that that gap of four.
01:03:36
Speaker
20 years or something of whatever you are now to what they are, or 30 or 40, whatever. I mean, that's not as big of a deal anymore. And you just walking with them and being real and vulnerable with them. It's a blessing for you to have these guys in your life, but it isn't just your immediate peer group by age that you can connect with.
01:03:57
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, so before we go, just real quick, because I mentioned to somebody, just jump back on the gay topic. You had mentioned about friends of yours and you getting invited to their weddings.
01:04:17
Speaker
like how to approach that. My wife, one of my wife's, well, both of our good friends, her son just, you know, in the last year or so got married and, you know, sent out invitations, married another guy. And so I know you had talked about how you dealt with that. And that just sounded just so right the way you did that. Can you just touch on that real quick?
01:04:43
Speaker
Sure. So again, a lot of Christians have adopted a message that Christianity and the gospel is just about being nice and kind. And certainly while kindness is an important characteristic that the Christian should live into,
01:05:01
Speaker
The idea of walking in truth and the idea of loving well is and loving biblically is so important and yet is oftentimes brushed off and misunderstood. So for example, 1 Corinthians 13, we know that if you've been in Christian circles for very long, you know that it's the love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13.
01:05:20
Speaker
And so Paul says a couple of things that love is. He says a whole bunch of things that love is not. And it's important. We need to read that and spend time in that. But in verse six, he says, love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. So right there, we know that anytime that we think that we're being loving,
01:05:38
Speaker
by going along to get along or being loving in a way that compromises the truth of scripture, we actually are not showing biblical love in any way, shape, or form. So I think we have to be very careful as Christians, as moms and dads or with loved ones, that we are demonstrating and living out what the gospel teaches. Also, marriage is not something that the state authored. It is authored by God from the very beginning, Genesis,
01:06:06
Speaker
we see marriage honored between one man and one woman, honored throughout the Scriptures. And in the end, in Revelation, it's going to be the marriage feast of the Lamb. So marriage is a very high and important calling that God established. And in Ephesians, we know, Ephesians 5,
01:06:24
Speaker
We know that Paul's talking about marriage between a man and a wife and then, and then immediately shifts into this mysterious kind of way and talks about this, this marital metaphor, how a man and a wife are together in marriage. There's a merit, there's a metaphor to Christ and the church. And so to, to, to take marriage and just, you know, the Supreme court back in 2015, uh, redefined, you know, marriage to be, to broaden that now to be between people of the same gender, et cetera.
01:06:50
Speaker
it's going to be broader than that. Now we're going to wind up seeing down the road. Since this has been changed, we're going to wind up seeing polyamory, multiple partners being something that is legalized and that's going to be coming to the church. So where does it end is one question. But in addition to that, I think that we need to work at really loving people well. And loving people well means loving them in truth. So I think that Christians who
01:07:17
Speaker
go to the gay wedding and I hear all the time, I just don't want to put a stumbling block between me and my loved one, between me and my child or who at my friends. But here's what's being left out of that is
01:07:29
Speaker
There is no regard on the other side whatsoever in any way, shape, or form. And I get it. I understand why this is the case, but there's no regard for you and your conscience or your relationship with God.
Balancing Love and Biblical Truth
01:07:40
Speaker
You are expected to set all of that aside, reject all of that, and simply do what this person wants you to do so they can feel like you're celebrating with them because that's why we go to weddings in the first place. So I think what we're called to as Christians is to sit down when we've been invited to go to a
01:07:58
Speaker
a gay wedding or whatever, that we are to sit down and, or a gay ceremony, we're to sit down and really have a conversation. And maybe that's going to be a real tearjerker kind of conversation, and that's okay. You know, if you're expressing, look, I love you so much, I even love your partner, and I love you guys individually, but I know from the scriptures that where you're heading is not going to produce the greatest thriving,
01:08:24
Speaker
that God has for you. It's actually taking you further away from Him, not drawing you closer to Him. And so I can't come and celebrate that with you because I understand what the Scriptures teach and because I'm asking God to really get a hold of your life and that you would surrender your life to Him. Honey, I'm always going to be here for you. I love you. I'm not going to walk away from you, but I can't participate in this. And it's not
01:08:48
Speaker
It's not, I love you, but I can't participate in this. It is I love you too much to participate in this and bring confusion into your life that it's somehow a good thing. So I think there's a lot of, there's other things we could talk about there, but I think there's lots of good reasons.
01:09:05
Speaker
Kevin DeYoung wrote a book quite a few years ago now called, what does the Bible really teach about homosexuality? And I think he has one of the best chapters on should Christians go to a gay wedding. I think he has one of the best chapters in that book on that topic.
01:09:21
Speaker
All right, we got it. All right, so we'll wrap it up here then. I'm going to, there's about 5,000 other notes I have, but that's- We can do a part two sometime, Russell. There's another, that's for another day. Once I get more clarity about everything you just laid out today. So yeah, I hope everyone enjoyed today's episode and you got some takeaways you can use. I know I did. And you can connect with Gary at www.loveandtruthin.
01:09:51
Speaker
Network.com. Yeah, Gary, is your book on Amazon? It is on Amazon. So the book title is Am I Gay? And there's a lot of, I didn't think about this in advance, but there's a lot of crap that's out there that goes by a similar title. So if you type in Am I Gay and my first name, G-A-R-R-Y, it'll be one of the first things that pop up.
01:10:16
Speaker
Gotcha. And so, and please share this with your friends and don't forget all my stuff at russelljonespeaks.com. If you're a parent or grandparent or mentor to a 10 to 12 year old, check out our 60 day transformational interactive video series, top secret success for kids and parents. It's amazing. It will equip and encourage parents and kids just like Gary said. And in the words of the inimitable Hulk Hogan, say your prayers, take your vitamins, you'll never go wrong.
01:10:44
Speaker
then you can go and I'll make it a great day. Bye for now.