 Can you be gay and a Christian? Does the punishment of hell even make sense? And how do you know Christianity is the one true religion? Today we react to a video where ex-Christians are put in a room with current Christians and they have a discussion dialogue debate about these topics and more. I'm gonna react to it so you don't wanna miss this. As you guys know, this content is supported by you guys on Patreon, by the Patreon family. If you wanna get access to bonus videos or Discord and more and support what I'm doing and equipping people to follow Jesus daily, I'd encourage you to hit the link in my description and sign up today. It would be a huge blessing. Now on to the video. Christianity is the only true religion. For me, I think all religions teach you to do well, but Christianity is the only religion that teaches you can't do it without God. You can't do it without Jesus. So for me, I couldn't get out of my depression. I couldn't get out of my loneliness. I could only maintain. I needed something to save me, to pull me out of that. And so, you know, I grew up Buddhist, but with Christianity, I was able to really step out of that frame of thinking of I'm my own God, I have to take care of my own issues, and God was the one that helped me in everything. My wife and I were recently on a little road trip and we had this conversation about, you know, what do you, what if all that you believe is not true? Like what if you end up and all these things that you believed your whole life, they're just not true. And maybe you just believe them because your parents believe them or this was just where you grew up and that was the religion that most people believed. And we talked about this more and I came up with this, just this understanding in my own head. This is why I believe what I believe. All the other religions, okay? The truth is all the other religions tell you about how you can be God for yourself or you can please God or do enough where you can honor God. And it's all about works. It's all about being enough in and of yourself in one way or another. And I think the truth, I know that the truth that Christianity hits upon is that we are not good and we know that intrinsically. We know that we're not enough in and of ourselves. We know that we can't do enough to good to please God. And that is where Jesus comes in. That's what makes the gospel so beautiful. I've fallen so hard and I'm guilty before God and yet Jesus has come to forgive me of my sins that I could have new life in a relationship with God. That is an amazing truth. If we reflect on the aspect of the only true religion or the only true religion for me, it's a slippery slope. This kind of gets on the idea of subjective truth, right? You know, you can believe something. It can be true for you and yet something else that is contradictory can be completely true for me. When you abandon God, when you abandon God and his truth and his foundation for understanding the world basically, then yeah, you can be left with, this is true for you, this is true for me because truth means nothing. Nothing is really true. We're just evolved protoplasm. We are evolved stardust. There is no meaning. There is no worth. There is no right and wrong. There's no morality. There's no truth. And so then in that world, it would make sense that something could be completely true for you and something else could be completely true for me. But friend, that world is a world of absurdity. You know that logically speaking, two things that are contradictory cannot both be true. If I believe in God and I believe in Jesus and the gospel and that is true, then that is implications on you, even if you don't believe it. And so at the end of the day, you're still gonna be guilty before God because of your sin against him, even if you don't believe it. My epiphany was like walking down Route 101 in Pennsylvania and thinking, oh my God, this idea behind Christianity is that everyone that doesn't just ascent believe in this one thing, they're gonna burn forever. And that was like my epiphany, like, oh man, it is fun, not fun. It is fulfilling to have a very black and white way of looking at the world, right? I mean, remember how great that felt. But also like my epiphany is, oh, there has to be more in the world in the universe than that. That can't be the end of it. Like that, I mean, that might be like an all-knowing God, but that's not an all-loving God. You know, can't be all. So what are we to make of the reality of hell? How can that even make sense? And I wrestled with this for quite some time. The idea that you could tell a lie, a little white lie even, right? And God could still look upon that and say you are deserving of hell. How does that even make sense? I heard this analogy one time that really helped me. Think about when you were younger, maybe you had a sibling. If you lied to that sibling, you told the lie to them. What would be the consequences of that? Nothing, really. They might be a little bit angry at you, but they can't do anything to you. All of a sudden, you lie to your parent. Man, you could be grounded. The consequences could be more significant. You lie to a police officer. Man, you could be in big trouble. You lie to a judge. All of a sudden, you're guilty of perjury and you could go to jail. You see, the lie didn't necessarily change, but it was about who the lie was directed towards. It was their standing. And you think about it, God is so high and so holy that even something that's small, like a lie to us, is a significant offense to him because he is so perfect and because he is so holy. Some people might say, well, God can't be truly good if he sends people to hell. That seems like a wrong thing, a mean thing to do. But then you think about it, would a good judge, God is a judge, would a good judge let a criminal go? Like if you had some crime that was committed against you or some of you that you loved and the judge was looking at the person, the perpetrator and said, you know what, I love you all so much that I'm just gonna let the criminal go. I'm gonna let him go off scot-free. Would that be a loving thing to do? No, not at all. A loving good judge would make sure that justice is executed. But that's the beauty of the gospel is that in God's justice, he sent Jesus, that he took the punishment that we deserve for our sin. You really need to focus on whether you are going to theologically accept the Bible as the absolute document of truth. What are you gonna cherry pick from it? What are you gonna accept as, oh, this was just a historical thing. And the kind of sandwich you're saying. When Jesus said, you know, you can't change an iota here. It's hard because like I feel like I'm hyper-liberal too and stuff because I'm like, oomph, oomph, oomph. You know what I mean? Market. But then I know right. But then it's like, it's kind of true to a degree. Like sometimes I honestly feel like I cherry pick from the Bible. Like I'm like, they still eat shellfish so I could be with a man. You know what I mean? It's so tough because it's like I only know how to love a man as much as I would love to be what normal is. This is just who I am. He knows that, okay, there's some disconnect here. And yet I still want to call myself a Christian but I don't want to let go of this side of me. And I think in some ways we all kind of do this, right? We all kind of, you know, cherry pick things in the Bible and we say, hey, I like this but I'm gonna push this to the side because I still want to call myself a Christian but I don't want to submit this aspect of my life to Jesus. And part of what it looks like to be sanctified is to let those things go to have God infiltrate your life, right? Permiate your heart and take those things away from you. So now it's not, man, I'm trying to hide this thing from God so he doesn't take it from me because I love it so much. It's God take these things from me so I can be free to love you holy and find my whole satisfaction in you. It doesn't sound like this guy's even taking the first step of understanding his sin before God because he's clinging so tightly onto these things that he thinks will fulfill him, his identity. I can only love a man. That's his presupposition. I can only be the way that I am. And yet he's discounting how God can transform his heart and also he's disregarding what God has said in his word in substitute for his own desires. If you look at the God that's portrayed in the Old Testament and the New Testament, it looks a lot more like us than it looks like an all-knowing, all-good kind of situation. You're like, oh yeah, this totally came to get people to cooperate with the power. You know, focus on power. It's all about vengeance. These are human qualities. Interesting, interesting. So they paint God as, you know, no better than us really from a moral standpoint. Folks will look at the Old Testament. I hear this all the time. They look at the Old Testament and how God called the Israelites to wipe out certain people groups and he said, you know, don't leave anything left. Basically wipe them all out and they say, how could a good God do this? How could a righteous God do this? This seems like a human behavior, human vengeance. This is their perspective as well. So what, how do we make sense of this? Well, firstly, we need to understand where morality comes from. The idea that we can throw moral accusations against God is just totally counter to our foundation. It's like saying that the bridge doesn't exist that we're standing upon. We are using moral language. Well, disposing of the moral foundation for how we understand right and wrong in general, right? Cause otherwise it is just your opinion. If you're gonna throw moral accusations against God, God, this is messed up. How could you do this? I don't agree with this. Where are you getting your standard from? Okay, because if you're gonna disregard God and his standard and how in the image of God that has been placed within you, then the truth is we're all just animals. We're just all animals. There's no ought. There's no right. There's no wrong. So why would that be a bad thing? Why would be a bad thing to kill anybody? Why would it be? And you're saying, oh, well, I just know in my heart, right? That's where I get my morality from. Friend, that's not a foundation. That's your opinion. Well, maybe you say, well, this seems counter to even what the Bible teaches. The truth is, is that God can execute justice in the way that he sees fit. And according to the Bible, we've all sinned. We've all fallen short of the glory of God. And we are the wages of sin is death. So truthfully, right here and right now without Jesus, you are deserving of death. So if God were to kill you right now, that would be a just thing that wouldn't be out of the realm of what you deserve. So the fact that God chose to pour out his wrath on a particular people that he didn't withhold it for that time, that was completely his right to do. And it's tough to even realistically do that every day. Like every day I sin because I kiss this man that I love. And then I jump on a box and go to OnlyFans.com. You know what I mean? It's tough feeling like everything that you do that's just an everyday thing. And it has zero to do with how you treat people. At the end of the day, the rainbow that it gets to and stuff and part of gold is that Jesus Christ is all loving. He loves everybody. He hung out with someone who was like, he's like a whore. Hey, don't sweat it. Found. And was still was like, hey, you're still can be this good person. Don't let the world tell you this. And but I believe that in some way, the Bible is telling you that. Let's take a closer look at what he's saying here. He's saying that, you know, push away all the stuff that the Bible says, basically and focus on Jesus' message. Jesus' message was he loves everyone. He loves everyone and that the world will tell you that you can't be a good person by doing these different things, but you can be a good person. Friend, that is just a completely misreading of Jesus and what he was saying. You think about the woman caught in adultery, okay? She was partaking in this sin, obviously, but everyone was casting shame and judgment upon her, ready to stone her. And Jesus comes in and he says, stop. If you haven't sinned, then cast the first stone. All of them walked away, right? But then what did he say to the woman? He says, hey, you know, I know the world will see what you're doing here is something bad, but I just wanna let you know that what you're doing here is good and it's noble and you can still be a good person by doing it. That's not what Jesus said. He said, neither I condemn you, but go and sin no more. Go and sin no more. That was Jesus' message. It was bringing love and compassion and grace. Absolutely, but it was truth. And it was saying, hey, you, without me, you will perish. Without me, you will perish in your sins. So it wasn't, hey, you can be a good person and don't listen to the world and saying that you can't do these things and still be a good person because I think you can. It was Jesus saying, you're not a good person. You're not a good person. You don't have what it takes, but I am enough for you. I am the way, the truth and the life. If you believe in me, you'll have eternal life. Praying to organize all of the Bible and make it make sense, that's gonna fail. Not very clear whether it's telling us to do good things or do bad things. It has kind of a combination of both in there. Once again, this is the misunderstanding of prescriptive versus descriptive. He says, you can't really make sense of what the Bible is telling you to do, whether it's telling you to do bad things or good things. Friend, it's pretty self-explanatory in terms of what is a bad thing that's just describing a story of something that somebody did versus the prescript of what you should do and the commandments of, okay, this is how you love one another. This is how you honor one another. This is how you deal with different situations that you'll encounter. Those things are pretty clear, but if you're looking into the Bible to take everything as, I guess this is what I should do. I guess this is what the Bible is telling me to do because this person did this in this story or this person did this in this story and they're supposedly a person of God, then you're gonna be misled because you're under the assumption that these people, though they might follow God, they're gonna do everything perfectly. That's not true. And we know that even to this day, that somebody that claims to be a Christian, you look at their life, it's not prescriptive. It doesn't mean that you should do everything that they're doing because they probably sin a lot. You can be gay and Christian. Well, this horror, obviously, and stuff, I'm a big fruitcake. I bartend in nightlife. I go-go dance. I do adult content. I love it. I love having sex with men, which almost sounds bad now that I'm saying it out loud. It's amazing. But I still love the Bible. I treat people with respect. I go to confession. I do all these things. I love my LGBTQIA community. All these things that you're doing, they're not gonna make up for your sin. It's like, you know, approaching the judge saying, hey, judge, I walked all these old ladies across the street. I know I come into these crimes that these things that were counter to the law of the land but I walked all these old ladies across the street and I gave to the food bank and I'm really a nice guy. The judge is gonna say, hey, I'm glad that you're trying to fix your life up but you still committed these crimes and you're still deserving of this punishment. And so I'm still gonna have to execute justice. And I want this fellow to realize that. I want you to realize that if you haven't already come to Jesus and understood that Jesus took that punishment for your sins, that though that weight and that guilt hangs over you, it doesn't need to anymore because you have a substitute in God. I fear death. I wish I didn't fear death, but I do. Like, and I used to be, since I grew up in like a private school my whole life, fire and brimstone baby. Like you are gonna burn, burn, burn. And I've done my research and I don't think that hell is a literal place but sometimes I'm like, hmm. But what if like the pastors in the back of my mind that I've gone through in youth group, I'm like, but what if it is? But I refuse to live like fear based and just believe in God because I'm scared. Like that's not living to me and I can't like force myself to believe in it. Here's the truth. The Bible says that it is appointed for a man once to die and then to face the judgment without God. Yes, that is a fearful place to be. So the fear of death without God is a natural thing because it means that we are going to have to face him face to face and give an account for our life. All those things that we've ever thought, all those things we've ever done, it makes sense that we would experience fear. Listen, I don't want her to come to God just out of fear or to acquire a get out of hell free card. I want her to come to know God and to see him in all of his beauty and his grace and the fact that he has laid his life down for her and that she'd receive that, that that would break her heart and that she'd repent of her sin. That is my heart for her and my heart for all those folks they call themselves ex-Christians. I hope you enjoyed this video and got something from it. If you did, please subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day this week and I give this video a like if you enjoyed it as well. Until next time, God bless.