 I'm like the queer man who never married or dated anyone and just walked around to those 12 best friends is about family value and family. Anyways. Three gay pastors sit down to have a conversation about faith, religion, spirituality, sexuality. They get into it and I'm gonna respond today. As you guys know, this is my full-time gig. This is what I do and I can only do it because of those of you on Patreon that support what I'm doing and equipping people to follow Jesus daily. So if you enjoy the content, if you want to support what I'm doing here, click the link in my description and sign up and become a part of our Patreon family today. It would be a huge blessing. Now, on to the video. Okay, get your popcorn. It's time to watch. I also love when people get on like Jesus for like family values. I'm like the queer man who never married or dated anyone and just walked around to those 12 best friends is about family values and family. That's a spicy way to begin the conversation, but okay, I'll bite. You're talking about Jesus. He doesn't have family values. Jesus isn't somebody about family values. These Christian conservatives are trying to focus on Jesus as some sort of, you know, conservative guy, but Jesus wasn't that way. He was a queer guy who didn't have a home. He was a hippie. He hung out with a bunch of dudes and that's just the way it is and, you know, all sorts of Christians. They insert their own beliefs into this, but that's the truth of what's going on. Excuse me. I think you might be the one inserting your own belief into this whole situation. I see folks do this all the time. Progressive Christians and they'll insert this idea that maybe Jesus is a little sus. He's a little gay maybe because he didn't marry a woman and he just kind of walked around with a bunch of dudes and didn't have a home. Like maybe something was going on there. Wow. You were really inserting your own messed up perspective of what's going on. You have nothing to back that up, but the truth is is that you do that because you want to justify your own behavior. That you're disregarding what the whole Bible says. That's the truth of it. If you look at what the Bible says and how God is oriented sexuality, it's very clear that that is so counter to how God operates and yet it's pretty pithy and it's pretty maybe, you know, enticing to say something like that because you get everyone robbed up. You get everyone a little bit angry at you for saying something so counter-intuitive. Jesus is gay. Jesus is queer. What's your evidence? What's your evidence? The God that I believe is much bigger than a Bible. My God is liberative. My God, he is non-binary. Maybe you're watching this like me and you immediately see, okay, this guy is creating a God in his own image. He says, my God wouldn't be like that. My God is beyond the book. My God, it doesn't just, you know, isn't just about the Bible. He can be kind of what I want him to be basically because without the Bible, that's what he's creating in his mind. Maybe you're thinking, man, this guy, what is he doing? He's such an idolater, like he's just creating a God in his own image. And yet, hey, like in the midst of all this, guys, let's look at our own hearts and say, wow, God, where have I looked at you in the way that I have wanted to? Where have I characterized you and kind of pushed away what the Bible says and say, God's not like that. God's like this. My God is different. My God doesn't, you know, he doesn't care so much about this stuff. I can kind of keep this in my life. I can kind of keep this sin because my God doesn't care. And maybe you don't say it so blatantly, but that's what we can often do. So I want you to be careful when you're watching this video, watching through, you're not just like, man, these guys are totally off base and they're so lost and, you know, that's true. But also look at your own heart. That's what I'm doing here. It's like, look at my own heart and say, God, where have I been an idolater? Where have I chosen my sin above what is said in your word? Because it might sound really nice to say my God is beyond the book, but that's God's divine revelation that he's given to us. And if your belief about God is contradictory to that, my friend, like what foundation are you standing on? Just your personal opinion, your own personal revelation. That is just sinking sand. Jesus said so much about so many things that he cared about. And Jesus said absolutely nothing about same sex relationships. And are you telling me that this was such a hot button issue for Jesus that it just magically didn't appear in any of the, that they just forgot to mention that he talked about homosexuality? I don't buy it. Let's just say that 3000 years ago, that's the way God thought. Okay, but God can change God's mind. God can grow and evolve. God is everlasting and ever-changing. So if we say that God can only ever perceive something one particular way, aren't we then saying that we're, we have the capacity to put God in some little God box? Wow. Wow. Wow. I don't even know where to begin with that. That was interesting. That was interesting. He said that God is ever-changing and ever-evolving, and God can change his mind on something. And that is literally contradictory to what God has said. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That's what the scripture says. So you saying that God is ever-evolving and ever-changing, and he's going to change his mind about all this. I don't know where you're getting that from, but it ain't the Bible and it ain't God's word. And then you say, okay, well, hey, if this was such a big issue to Jesus, why didn't he mention it? Hey, maybe you're asking this question and it's genuine. I don't think it's particularly genuine from this guy because he seems very hostile to the whole idea of what the Bible actually says. But hey, maybe you're asking this question. That is a good question. Well, why didn't Jesus mention anything about this? But then you need to understand this. When you look at the Bible, it's not just about, okay, Jesus comes on the scene and finally he's saying good stuff, and he's basically bashing everything else that was said. That's not a lot of people portray what Jesus did. He came to this earth and he said, hey, all that stuff that you've been doing, it's dumb and stupid and all those things that you believed is awful and the Pharisees are stupid and dumb. And this is how you actually need to believe. A lot of people believe that. Maybe you even, you know, that hits you and you relate with that idea. But that's not what's going on whatsoever. Not at all. God in the Old Testament is the same God in the New Testament. Okay, a lot of people say God in the Old Testament, he's a big meanie. He sets up all these rules and Jesus came to free us from all those rules. And so we don't even, you know, they don't even apply to us today. Okay, I understand the fact that, you know, we have all sinned and we're guilty before God. That is true. And we can't do the law can't save us, right? The law, that's true. The law can't save us and only Jesus can save us. That's all true. But when we look at the moral code of the Old Testament, I'm not talking about the ceremonial code, or I'm not talking about just the different things that they did as part of that civic culture, right? I'm saying that the moral code of God does not change. So when God says, man shall not lie with man, as man lies with woman, we don't see that and say, oh, okay, I guess Jesus kind of disposed of all the rules and we just pay attention to what Jesus says. And if it didn't matter to Jesus, then it doesn't matter to me. No, Jesus said, you've heard it said of old so many times. And yes, he added to it. He said, you have heard it said of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, if you look at a woman with lust, you've already committed adultery with her in your heart. He didn't say, hey, you've heard it said of old, don't commit adultery. That's kind of patriarchal sexuality and you don't really need that. That's a sexual ethic that I no longer adhere to because I'm God and I changed my mind. He didn't say that. And so this idea that Jesus didn't mention something specifically, it's not relevant. No, well, Jesus reaffirmed the Old Testament so many times in the fact that we need to be understanding that what is in the Old Testament and reaffirmed in the New Testament as well with Paul, this is something that we take into our hearts. This is something that we understand and we believe. People say, oh, you know what, I just kind of listen to what Jesus says. I hate to break it to you, but Jesus quoted the Old Testament a lot. Well, I don't think purity culture is the answer in saying, don't have sex for marriage. I also don't think the other answer is do whatever you want whenever you want. And so a conversation that we have in our community regularly is how do you develop a healthy sexual ethic as a person in Los Angeles in 2023? If the divinity of God is in you and is in every other person which is something we believe, then how do you treat them? Wow, there is a lot there. I'm pretty passionate about this, the idea of purity culture and where people misunderstand, I think what harmful purity culture is. When I talk about purity culture on my channel, I am specifically targeting things that are extra biblical. And when we talk about purity culture, I think that is what has been the most harmful is when people put extra boundaries on sexuality, utilization of shame and guilt and not really coming at it from the restoring grace of Jesus and how he can be in our life when we have sexually sinned. And yet people will use this term purity culture all the time and use it really broadly saying that the idea that you shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, that is purity culture. That is harmful. No, that's not purity culture. That's just a biblical Christian ethic, sexual ethic, right? That's from the Bible. So that's not purity culture. I think there's so much harmful purity culture that has happened. We'll talk about that later in this video where we need to say, hey, God has forgiven that. God is forgiving us. He is bringing restoration. He's bringing new life and a newness and making us a new creation. That's beautiful. You don't need to live in that shame and that guilt. But we're not going to dispose of what the Bible actually says about sexuality. It says, hey, this is actually a sin. That's actually wrong. She says, hey, we can't say that, we're not going to say sex outside of marriage is wrong, but we're also not going to say that everything is right. Right? Okay. So she has some sort of moral ethic, but now she's posed the question, so how do we come up with what a healthy sexual ethic looks like? My friend, you have that in the Bible, but you just don't want to pay attention to it. God's orchestrated things so beautifully, man shall leave his father and his mother and become one flesh with his wife. Yes, there is sin. Yes, there is brokenness. Yes, there's healing that needs to take place if there's been sexual sin in the past, but that is a beautiful place to be that God is bringing about life literally through childbirth, but both pleasure and that we're sexual beings, so that's a good thing. You want a sexual ethic? Look at the Bible. God did not create us to be like utilitarian creatures that are just here to make more human beings, right? So there's a reason that sex is pleasurable, right? And God desires for us to have pleasure. What God also desires from us is to be respectful and kind and compassionate. That's facts. That's facts. I agree. And if people are consenting adults and it's life-giving to them, then why shouldn't that be celebrated? I want you guys to be really careful. Maybe you come across somebody that speaks this way. A lot of folks speak this way where they say, hey, you know, if it's two consenting adults and it's life-giving to them, they feel so deeply that this is who I am. Why would that be a bad thing, right? And you can apply that to a lot of other areas. Hey, you know, if I'm in a relationship and my girlfriend and I really want to sleep together and it's life-giving to us, it's actually really good for our relationship because we feel closer. Why is that a bad thing? Why would God be against that? Well, friend, you're trying to insert your own morality. You're trying to insert your own definition of what is good into this equation. You got to realize that that is what you're doing. So when we say, okay, why is that a bad thing? We need to get to the root of what is good and what is bad. Who sets up this moral world anyway? It's God or it's me. If it's me, then I say, well, you know, hey, it's Jill, it's good. But where do I draw the line? Well, it's just I'm kind of creating my own foundation as I go. I'm creating my own sense of morality. So many people do this. Life-giving, it's life-giving. You hear that language. It's very Christianized language. It's life-giving to us. The Bible defines what's life-giving. It's actually leading you on a path to destruction. It's actually waging war against your soul. That's what the Bible says. But we're undoing what you learn, specifically for the women in our community. Women and queer people in our community have just been under such shame around their sexuality. I literally remember because they would separate the girls and the boys very binary. There was like a male youth pastor who's probably 21 and he has a cup of water. He passes around. Every single girl spits in the cup of water. And then at the end, he holds it up and he says, now who would want to drink this? That's literally disgusting. That's just disgusting, right? And you, when I talk about harmful purity culture, that's it, that's it. You imagine a girl or boy in that youth group that has since actually, and they're seeing this take place. How are they experiencing this? Do they, are they brought with this sense of, hey, friend, I know, I know you've done this and you feel deep shame and guilt about it. And there's healing that needs to take place. You know, there's repentance that needs to take place, but there is forgiveness. All is not lost. That is the message that needs to be. All is not lost, but the message that is so often pushed at young people, especially through purity culture, is that all is lost, that you've made a mistake that can never be reversed. You can never experience godly or healthy sexuality because you've broken things so badly. Yeah, it's going to take some healing. Yeah, it's going to take some, some work, but God can bring about restoration in a powerful way. And that is the message that we should be sharing. There's a classic sermon by Matt Chandler, where he talks about taking this woman that they had kind of known in their college to this youth event or young adults college event, kind of thing. And the pastor talks about, you know, giving this rose to everyone and everyone passed around this rose and it gets tattered and torn up. And then he takes the rose back and he says, who would want this rose? And Matt Chandler, he says, Jesus wants the rose. Jesus wants the rose. And that is one of the most powerful sermons. And it makes sense because, look, that's what we all are. We're all those tattered roses. We're all broken and torn up and we've made mistakes and yet we need that forgiveness of God and God comes to us and he says, Hey, I see your brokenness. I see your mistakes and your regrets and I want to forgive you. I want to give you a new life in me. What advice do you have for young queer Christians? Number one question I get from folks exploring is, do I have to choose my sexuality or my spirituality? Can I have both? I feel like the big question I had was like, do I have to choose my vision for my life and my calling? I hate that word, but I can't think of another one. As a pastor or my spirituality or my sexuality. And so it's just nice to be like, yeah, there's no choices anywhere. There is a choice and it's not just a choice for LGBTQ people to make, but it's a choice for all of us to make. Will we pick up our cross, deny ourselves and follow Christ? Will we do that? Sin has a stronghold on us. That's the truth of it. Sin is so enticing and it is so attractive that many people will never want to let go of it. They might know, okay, I know God is, He's real and I know Jesus died on the cross. I know all of those things. I know the gospel. And yet I don't want to let go of my sin because it's so attractive. It's so comforting. It's so pleasurable. Yet God calls us by His grace to lay it down, that's the decision that you have to make. And it's not a decision absent of God. No, God is the one that gives us that faith and gives us that strength in order that we can truly be free of that sin. That doesn't mean that we're perfect. That doesn't mean that we never desire those things again or our heart isn't pulled to those because there is a battle between the indwelling spirit that is within us and the flesh there at war with one another. And so we still experience temptation. There's nothing wrong with having those temptations still be around, but it's about will you give into them? God says that He has given us everything that we need in order that we can run and deny those temptations. And so, friends, hey, regardless of what your temptation is, maybe it is towards homosexuality. Maybe it's just you want to sleep with somebody. You want to live in lust or you want to live in greed or covetousness, whatever it is. Yes, today God is calling you to a decision. He's saying, will you lay that down at my feet and follow me? Will you repent of those things and trust in me for forgiveness, for new life? Friends, I hope you enjoyed this video. If you got something from it, subscribe because I'm putting out new videos every single day this week. That's something new for me. I'm trying it out, so I hope you guys enjoy the content and be sure to subscribe on Patreon. Sign up today. That would be a huge, huge blessing. You guys don't know how much that helps me out. So thank you so much. And until next time, God bless.