This is The Faith Debate, a theological round-table gab fest with the Mix Master as the Master of Ceremonies and the notorious Triple B, the Big Bridge Builder. Can we build it? Yes, we can. The Faith Debate is a free-for-all forum where faith community leaders wrestle over the truth. In less than 30 minutes, learn more about what really matters than others learn in a month. Are you ready for a clash of ideas? Are you ready for the sound of freedom? Let's get ready to rumble! Let's get ready to rumble. Ha! Yeah! In this corner, weighing in with a master divinity from Reformed Theological Seminary, the Faith Debate Master of Ceremonies, Troy Skinner. Got a moron here, is that it? And in this corner, weighing in as a pastor, teacher, and founder of Bridges, connecting needs and resources in the local community. Ooh, mama. The notorious big bridge builder, John Sweiser. Now I'm just getting warmed up. What does the Bible say about homosexuality? What does Christian tradition say about it? Can two people of the same sex be married? Why or why not? When, if ever, is sexual intercourse a sin? What makes us say so? Whatever our answer. On the panel today we have Sharon Watts, Rector at Grace Episcopal Church in Newmarket, Maryland, and Jonathan Schweitzer, founder of Cross Bridges in Frederick, Maryland. And this week I want to pick up with some of the specific verses in the Bible that are almost always bandied about and cited in this sort of debate, because last week we ended up talking about kind of the context for the argument that's made by the Episcopal Church. you know, rooted in reason and tradition and a high view of what science and scientists have to say. We even talked about the importance that evolution plays in thinking. And Jonathan has been saying, but hasn't had a chance to fully give full throat to it, that, well, his argument, yeah, he doesn't disagree with the importance of those things, but his argument rests on the Bible. So do you have any, I have some I can cede to you, but do you have any that you would want to point to and say, yeah, you know, my argument for thinking what to do is the Bible and these are the passages I can think about. Okay, so I just want to recognize Miss Watts. I always call my daughter Miss whatever when I'm feeling affectionate. So we're having a good conversation here, you know, as we're talking together. You never call me Miss. Right. It's important that you appreciate what I just said and the implications. Thank you, God, for helping him to see. So the point is that I was just going to say, as I'm answering that, that I get it that going to specific passages and just kind of having the discussion about what do passages in Scripture prove is not where you tend to be on the issue. So I just want to recognize that that's the case, even as we're going to go there for a second. Yes, I didn't prepare a group of scripture references for you. If you would have told me that, I would have looked at that. In fairness, to be honest, I did not expect that you would because of your tradition. Yeah, right, right. So Genesis, you know, where Genesis 1 where he says God made them male and female, you know, and that, you know, they came together and they were one flesh. I'd look to Leviticus where it says a man doesn't, should not lay with a man as he does with a woman. I would look to Genesis referring to Sodom and Gomorrah, and what happened in Sodom and Gomorrah. I would also refer to, again there in, I believe it's Matthew, where Jesus refers back to Genesis 1, Romans chapter 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy, like all of these include in lists of sins, a term that we translate as homosexuality. And most of the ones you mentioned are what are usually referred to as the clobber passages in these debates. People bash each other over the head with them kind of thing. And you're not meaning to do that. You're just citing them. I'm just citing these are the ones that I think I would refer to. And there is some reason for some legitimate, scholarly, respectful debate over how certain words should be understood, and what might they have meant in a particular cultural context, in the textual context, all of those sorts of things. I'm going to do what you always do, though. The story of the Bible from beginning to end, right? This is where you always go. Have I finally worn off on you? No, I just, it's accidental. It's in this one situation. You're going to start calling me this soon, aren't you? I just enjoy watching this. By the end of today's episode, he'll be calling me this. The two of them, there they go. I'm feeling it coming. Get this, it's a Troy-dian slip. Oh no. That was good. Oh. Okay, so. Ba-dum-bum. Ba-dum-bum. But the big story is that we were all created in the image of God, perfect and good, but that when we fell into sin, right, that our hearts were changed, and that now that we've been redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and by His forgiveness, that all of us have parts of our identity that are defined by how we were created, good, and parts of our identity that are defined by the fact that we fell. And so there's all kinds of things in me that I desire every day. Sorry, you don't want to know this right now, but that are sinful, right? That are self-centered, lustful, greedy, envious, you know, all these things. And those parts of who I am, uh, It's not right for me to identify myself, my many sinful selves, all those parts of who I am, to identify myself by those things, but it's right for me to identify myself by how I was originally created and by what God is restoring me to, all of which is a journey. and something that requires me to say to God, God, I'm not sure that I really know who I am, but I'm asking you, because of what you did in Christ, to show me who I am. And I feel like I want to lay that foundation that all of those passages of scripture, like I don't come to anybody to define them by their sin, or to define them by a part of who they are. I'm looking to define them by creation and redemption, and so that being the case, My appeal to everybody is, hey, we all come to the cross, and let's not start with me trying to tell God or others who I am, but us saying, God, you show us who we are. You're the Lord. You're the Redeemer. You're the Creator. You do that for us. So I would answer some of those passages. Where I am is none of those passages are the Ten Commandments, and everything that we do is under the Great Commandment, that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself. And everything falls under those two passages. And so we define ourselves as people of love, and we are there to receive whoever comes in our doors, to love them, and to give them the same pastoral care and the same concerns as anybody else who comes through our front door. And that's where we stand with it. So that last part, I would say that we just actually at our church spent four weeks on this topic, and it took the pastors like three weeks to get to saying where they stood on the issue, just because they were laying the foundation. And the foundation that they laid was what you just described. that we would argue that it's right for us to accept, embrace, and love everybody that comes into our midst. There's additional parts of that, but we would agree with that. Some of the passages that are described in some of the ones that you quoted, we would also probably state that a lot of the behaviors like Sodom and Gomorrah are really what we would consider felonies now, predatory behavior, gang rape, those types of issues. So we see more than homosexuality in a lot of the passages. Also, in the first century, there were cults in which people would go to and have different types of sexual experiences as part of worshiping foreign gods. And we would see that as not worshiping the one true God. So, some of the scholarship on that, we would probably have differing ideas about what these passages were telling us. But that said, I'm going to go back to personal experiences a little bit. During the AIDS crisis, I happened to be one of the nurses who was standing there when we had young people coming in. with AIDS, so we had no idea what was going on. And they were dying because we couldn't, we had no treatments. And we slowly worked up to be able to manage people for short periods of time. And I felt called to go into the community and do AIDS work. So I worked during the height of the AIDS crisis in Baltimore with a... What years was that, by the way? Okay, you're gonna catch me. I can't give you exact years. Okay, okay. So don't quote me on that. Sure. But while we were... Late 80s, 90s time frame. By the time we got to the triple retroviral therapy, that's when I left because everybody's immune system repaired about 15 years and I felt like I could leave my patients safely. and move on, because we had experienced so much death that it was just very difficult to continue for any long period of time. But I'd been in it for over 10 years. And what I found in this community was a group of, and especially in the early years, 20 to 30-year-old young men who were homosexual, At that time, that was the word you would use. And some of them ended up being people that I carry around with me to this day. They were just amazing people. And they suffered greatly. And because a lot of the symptoms that they had, we were just developing treatments to be able to manage them as we went. And what I found out is that the majority of these people had been expelled from their sacred communities. And it broke my heart to have people that age facing death, alone, without God. And what ended up happening is I spent a tremendous amount of time trying to find people from their primary denominations who could come back and heal them before they died, because it just was wrong. And so I had to step back. That's when I really began my personal journey of stepping back and looking and challenging different positions that I'd heard before. because it just did not seem correct. And then on top of it, after you took care of someone, and a lot of these young men were in monogamous relationships that had been going on for a long period of time. I remember coming home to my husband and saying, I don't care what you call it, it's a marriage. They're in there, they're fighting over money and who's taking care of the house more than the other, just like every other marriage. The only problem is, is when they went in the hospital, they had no rights. And so when they went in the hospital, they could be barred from the room. They had no say in what was going on with their partner. And it was heart-wrenching to watch this entire experience. And it became a very formative experience for me. I couldn't look myself in the mirror without trying to do something to bring harmony within this community and God, the community of people that I was dealing with. My husband at the same time, my husband died last year, but he had a very difficult time dealing with the LGBTQ plus community. And he ended up being called into a sacred group, which I think was a blessing from God. And one of the young men that he was in a small group work with had been gay bashed terribly. He had almost lost his life. And it was so bad that he could hardly come out of his house. But he got himself together to come to work with this group of religious people. and himself being religious also, and shook for three days. My husband said somewhere between day two and day three, he had to totally think about what his feelings were, and he changed completely. So I believe that we were brought to these different experiences because it was important that we need to sit down and think about the effects of our community, what we were doing as people of faith. I believe strongly that we are not called to judge people. I don't get totally upset about every sin everybody did. If I did, I could hardly go into the pulpit every week. Because all my people, including me, have great brokenness. And so for me to sit there and tell some people that they had more brokenness than the other just doesn't make sense to me. My job, my job is to bring people closer to God and to allow the transforming power of God to infuse them, infuse their heart. And all of us, no matter who we are, at some point are going to have to go and stand before a loving God who has done so much for us in Christ, has done so much for us by encircling us with the Holy Spirit. that in this space we will have to stand and open our hearts with all that we've done that's been good and that's been bad, and just trust that we are people of God. So that is very powerful, and I'm super grateful for the compassion that you describe in that context, and even the transition for your husband. There's a little passage there at the beginning of John that says, Jesus came from the Father full of grace and truth. We've seen his glory, right? I might have even said it at the kickoff that Everywhere that we go, everybody I talk to lives with these two scales. The one scale is the health or the death scale. The other scale is the acceptance scale, right? And the more likely that it is that something causes death, right? You're describing the AIDS crisis that people are experiencing death or opioids where people are experiencing death or whatever it is where death is involved. The ability to at the same time embrace and accept those people is very difficult, right? And so part of the problem that we are in the middle of as a culture, and we've already talked about this, is that are we allowed to recognize that certain things cause death? So in the early 90s, I was working at the National AIDS Clearinghouse as a temp when I graduated from college. I had some free time before I went to grad school, and so I was there at the National AIDS Clearinghouse. And every single study that was coming through at the heart of the AIDS crisis was homosexual communities. Now, we all know that it's not just homosexual sex that can cause the disease to spread. However, it is the case that the genesis of it in every situation was a homosexual community, right? So I say that to say, we weren't allowed to say that in those years. Right? It was against political correctness to admit the truth about the fact that it was creating, that there was death that was coming out of those situations, and so it was true that it could be passed through heterosexual activity as well. Absolutely. It was a very short time until it started becoming a heterosexual thing. Right, but the point is that it was the case and we weren't allowed to admit it. And so for that matter, as an individual that really appreciates not know, let me say that differently. that would work really hard to keep Scripture as the definer of what's right and wrong. It felt to me like the reality was lining up with what Scripture had said. One, that homosexual activity carried with it great dangers, but two, that heterosexual immorality was also a very unsafe environment. So to the extent that we're not allowed to talk about the truth when the truth needs to be discussed, I'm saying it makes it that much harder to show compassion. If we can tell the truth, People are willing to accept the truth. Well, this is even what scripture says that God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble if we're willing to accept the truth It's a lot easier than to show compassion. But if but if there's a whole community and even a nation that is denying The ability to speak the truth and the same things happening with the opioid crisis about the stigma what they're what they're saying is that is that It's a brain disease, not a moral failure. Well, everybody that goes to a conservative biblical church would say that just about everything that we do has a moral component to it and a moral obligation, and that oftentimes moral failure is a big part of what we do. And so we're not able to say it's not a moral failure, but we would say, yes, there's a brain disease part of that that causes it to feel like you're stuck in chains and that the individual no longer has the ability to make a moral decision because he's locked up in the chains of the brain disease and he needs help to break free. Well, that fits with what we say that Scripture describes, that I need to be saved, that when I repent, I cry out for salvation, God comes and saves me, people come around me, and they help me to be free of what it is that has bound me, right? But that I've got to come to terms with the truth first. So my point in saying all this is that man, we gotta have compassion, but if we're not able to acknowledge the truth publicly, it makes it a lot harder for people to hear compassion because we're fighting about the truth, right? And so this issue of truth, like what is true and what is not true, And even this gets into the question of identity like like, you know, why is it that a person has? Homosexual feelings, you know, were they born that way were they not is their genetic, you know calls for it You know, is it is it something that that comes because they were introduced to sexuality and before they really should have been introduced to it, you know, like what are the implications of of nurture versus nature, right? We don't know all that. Like you had described earlier, we're still trying to figure out the science of all that. But in the middle of that, what it means is that when we go to show compassion, Those of us that believe the Scripture to be the Word of God are rebuked for even trying to deal with the truth. And so we feel like we lose the glory, right? Full of grace and truth at the same time. But if the truth is denied, we're still trying to show compassion, but we're told that we're being hateful and mean-spirited when what we're trying to do is, look, if my son is coming home and he's sick with something, the first thing I want to do is I want to be clear about what it is that's causing that so that I can help him to get the help that he needs, right? And so is it mean-spirited for me to help him to identify the truth? No, that's not mean-spirited. That is the best thing that I can do. And so anyways, that conflict I'm really surprised that you're saying that you weren't able to talk about it because during that period of time I heard horrific sermons that were very accusatory and so I'm shocked that you're saying you weren't able to do it. And so what I'm saying is that I did too and so perception is a big part of that. Which was very difficult for me to hear. In that context, right, if, see this is the thing. Someone saying the same thing with softer language was getting lumped in with those that were being crass and rude and mean-spirited about it. Well, but this is the thing. I've got a close friend that's working at the point of the spear with opioids and he calls them addicts. And the guys that he works with, they love him and they are grateful for the help that he's bringing. And when he preaches about it, I had people that I brought to hear him speak that wanted to get up and leave because they felt like he was being too harsh. Is he being too harsh or is he just hitting the truth right on and then his life is displaying that there's real genuine compassion and so that that Discussion of what's too harsh or not harsh enough versus what's too compassion not not compassionate enough my impression is that all of us as humans tend towards truth or tend towards compassion and and that it's hard for us to do the balance. We do one really well or we do the other really well, but doing both really well is something that really takes work. And so all I'm saying is that, has the church been guilty of being overly harsh? I think so, but the church has been under fire about any issue of right and wrong, going back to divorce, going back to sex outside of marriage, going back to drinking. I mean, whatever. You name the issue that we've been mocked for having standards, told that we shouldn't talk about the truth. And so as a result, Have we overreacted? Probably. But the environment is very significant. Cross bridges. I'm Troy Skinner. We're joined this week from Grace Episcopal Church director there is Sharon Watts. We're online at WFMD.com, keyword faith. Thanks so much for listening. Until next week, God bless.