This is The Faith Debate, a theological round-table gabfest with the Mixed Master as the Master of Certain. Notorious Triple B 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 Swicer. Now I'm just getting warmed up. Stumbling block to many regarding the Christian faith has to do with the discourse about homosexuality. In fact, it's a stumbling block for entire denominations these days. Just look at Raquel over the past couple of years within the United Methodist Church. Well, Craig Lancourt is a new Christian, relatively new Christian, who happens to be attending a United Methodist Church, and he has some questions. He's on the panel today to get those gosh darn questions answered. We're going to examine the same sex marriage issue, quote unquote, from the 30,000 foot level so that we can try to see the forest before we then swoop down to take a look at the impact upon individual trees. So Craig Lancour, Jonathan Schweitzer on the show with me today. I'm Troy Skinner. And I can't remember if the big voice guys said it or not, but you can find us online at wfmd.com. Keyword Faith gets you there. And if you miss part of this show or other shows and you want to hear them, the podcasts are always there and ready to listen to them. By the way, I learned something this past week. It's really easy to download the shows. I had no idea your device, whatever your device is. Yeah, you can store them on your computer if you have an external hard drive. I'm not the most technically skilled, although in today's world you can't help but pick up a few things over the years, so I'm not a neophyte either. I know more than my mother, but that's not saying much. But it's really, if I can do it, you can do it. So if you find some shows that are particularly interesting and you want to listen to them over and over again, you can download them and save them. Who knew? You know, with Cross Bridges, we just put out the prayer video. And the guy that's doing that for us, he went and checked out some of our shows and downloaded them. And he found it pretty easy to get connected to some of what that what those topics were all about and really, you know, was drawn into it. So we'll see how well I do, whether I want to download it. Download yourself. Downloading shows is probably easier to do than tackling the issue that we're going to be trying to tackle. Right. And I think it'll be it'll make sense to try to talk big picture and work down. And I'm wondering if the easiest way to enter into a big picture conversation is to ask Craig to ask the question he most wants answered, because I'm willing to bet that'll give us the kind of context to provide a foundational kind of answer. Do you agree? I do agree. Could I just share how Craig and I met? Oh, sure. I figured that would come up through the course, but if you want to lead with that, go ahead. Yeah, so Craig and I met when we were doing New York County Goes Purple last summer. He was looking to take drum lessons, I think through his church somehow, and my brother was introduced to him, and my brother introduced him to me, and so Craig and his wife came out to help us with the Frederick County Goes Purple, and his wife and my wife had this major connection. Craig and I really hit it off well. They just was into helping us just with that. He was just telling me the other day, he said, John, whatever you want to do, I'll do it for you. If you want me to stand on a rooftop and wave a purple flag, I'll do it, whatever you want. That was kind of a cool space. It all started with the devil rhythms, right? The drum. The devil rhythms got you guys. Hey, the Lord works in mysterious ways. Dude, we're back in the 80s, you know? Yeah, I remember those discussions. So obviously, I kind of knew from Jonathan that this was an issue, Craig, that you wanted to hear some discussion about. What were the kinds of things you were saying to Jonathan? What was the question you were asking? Well, I had gone over to Jonathan's for dinner and we I had really, I started attending this wonderful church in Damascus, Bethesda Baptist, and I fell in love with the people there. And before I really understood the Bible and the context, the bigger issues of the church. And when this concern over homosexuality and And their role in the church is when I said, well, I don't understand how, if it's sin makes homosexuals not allowed to be pastors, then don't we have to start talking about obese pastors or pastors who smoke or pastors, you know, all these other issues that would come up? And if it's, you know, the issue was, are they continuing on in it? And that's where that whole idea was. But if it was just the fact that they were a sinner to begin with, I said, well, you know, I have all of these issues in my past with addiction, with everything else. And if God can use me to fulfill part of his plan, how come God can't use a homosexual to fulfill part of his plan? And that's where I started seeking and looking in the Bible and reading different passages, and I pray earnestly about it, and God would show me one passage where, you know, Jesus throws the money changers out of the temple and the rage he has there, and then he'd show me another passage where compassion he had for Mary Magdalene and then I'd say, you know, well God that really doesn't help and I'd pray more and pray more and finally I got the answer back WWJD and it was what would Jesus do and I said well I don't know what Jesus would do so that just made me read more and I was reading the other day about you know the body of Christ and needing unity in the body of Christ and I said aha There's my answer, and I walk into Bethesda United Methodist, confident that I have finally found my answer, and a friend of mine says, you know, he talks about the passage where you're better off to pluck out one eye and arrive in heaven with one eye than And I'm like, well, wait a minute, that contradicts everything I was just about to prove here. So it's amazing to me how I continue to pray to God, seeking an answer, and he continues to show me different passages that I could interpret however my heart tells me. And so I sought people out who knew more. That's where I ended up at Jonathan's dinner table. Now, before I ask Jonathan to share what his answers then were or what his answers now might be to that sort of a query, how long ago was it you started attending this church? It was this time last year. Okay, so yeah, so it's, you walked in right when it was at a fever pitch. Right. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, that context is helpful for me. So, Yeah, totally. So what did you say, or what do you want to say now? Well, can I ask you this question, though, Craig? The rabbinical approach. Yeah, the rabbinical approach. What's going on at your church? in lieu of what's happening with the United Methodist denomination as a whole? Like, how is your church responding to it? Our church pastors believe that we need to stand on the Word of God as is written, and our church is part of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and we're excited about the opportunity to start a new denomination. Now so you guys are separating from The rest of the Methodist denomination over this issue my church is your church is right? That's why I mean I grew up in a very rural household a very liberal community I grew up in Montgomery County and I was Voted Democrat most of my life if well, I get a radio if they listen that I voted for Clinton I think that might get me blessed at church a whole lot. All the more reason to pray for you myself. But it is amazing how if I had walked into that church on my own, I would have never stayed. But the Holy Spirit really drew me to that church through a number of interactions and I fell in love with it before I realized that we didn't agree on politics and on other things, but we agreed on Jesus Christ. Right, and so that's the next question. What was it about Bethesda United Methodist that you fell in love with. You're talking about falling in love with the people, and you're saying Jesus Christ. You talked about what the Word of God teaches. These are the different things. When I asked you, why did your church separate, your first point was that, well, we want to do what the Word of God says. Right. And so this is kind of driving your question, it sounds like. And what I want to say first off is, I don't know enough to know enough. And that's where I'm, you know, I walked into the situation and I fell in love with the people and I fell in love with the church. And then, you know, I started to hear more about this issue and how it was driving the weds between, you know, in the church, and it really started to concern me. And I take my faith very seriously today, and I'm very committed to trying to serve God the way He wants me to instead of the way I want to. And so this is a really big deal, right? Because it drives at the heart of what's going on in the nation as a whole right now, that people that disagree about political issues view the people on the other side as the enemy as less than and as you know demonic caricatures of the worst thing imaginable right right and in racially that seems to go on a lot you know whatever whatever wherever you stand on a lot of the hot topics immigration abortion homosexuality you know all these all these issues that that end up being a part of the discussion and so my point is is that is that you somehow slipped past all that into a place where now you're being challenged about, well, what does the Word of God actually say? What does it teach? And how is it that we end up trusting and following the Word of God? And so again, You and I were talking about this, I think earlier today, that feels to me like on every single one of these issues, there's two scales that we're working off, right? And the one scale is the truth scale. And the truth scale, I also call it the health scale or the safety scale, right? The truth has to do with how bad something can hurt you or how much something can help you if it's in your life. So, for example, with opioids, the whole truth scale right now is that people are dying, and we're dying at a rate of one a week in Frederick for three and a half years, though that has just come out that it's gone down in Frederick County. Thank God. by 20%. We needed to go down way more than that. But the truth scale of that is that people are dying, right? And so that's the one scale. The other scale is the grace scale, right? Or you called it the love scale earlier. And it has to do with whether or not we should be embracing and reaching out to care for one another in the midst of these situations. It seems like those two scales are inversely related. The more dangerous something is, the less likely people are to be reaching out to care for you. The more people are reaching out to care for you, sometimes the less they're willing to speak the truth. And so we're told in John 1 that Jesus came from the Father full of grace and truth. We've seen his glory, the glory of the one and only, right? And so what glory is all about is the ability to do both those things at the same time. And that's where I realized the harder... the more you love someone, the harder it is to tell them the truth, especially when it's a truth that cuts to the core of the individual. And that's where I love my relationship with Christ today so much. I want to make sure that I'm standing on the truth, that I'm doing everything I can to seek out what is the truth. So in the context of your recovery, Right, you're defining truth as those things that potentially you could fall back into that are not good for you and that lead to kind of a downward spiral. I'm defining truth as... Yeah, that's good. How do you define truth? Right, my truth for me as Christ in my life and how Christ will manifest and what what he truly has for message for me in my heart. And that's where, it was funny, our pastor on Sunday was talking about a preacher who stood firm on the word until his daughter came out as a lesbian. And he said, you know, that didn't make sense to him that, oh, now that his daughter came out as gay, that he changes his opinion on homosexuality. Yeah, and what did you think of that? In some senses, it seemed very hypocritical, because it was very easy for him to judge others and say this truth when it wasn't part of his house. But when it was part of his household, that changed his truth. And was it the love that changed the truth, or was it the truth that changed the love for him? And I don't know, and I don't know whether he's right or wrong. Was it the love for his daughter that changed his understanding of the Word, and that love was more important than what it said in the Old Testament, as this is, you know, written as this is what's going to happen, and Jesus says we'll love. And so he loved his daughter so much that it changed his opinion on homosexuality. Now is that still the truth? It is for him, but is that God's truth? That's what I want to know, is what God's truth is. Could I observe something that you put together here just about two minutes ago as you were talking? You said that his truth changed and he was less judgmental, and so I want to ask this question. We said that there's these two scales, right? Is it judgmental for us to acknowledge the truth that certain things are unhealthy for a person. And so if somebody's in an addiction, for example, and they keep struggling with certain things, helping them to work that through and to come to a place of the truth I could do that two different ways. I could do it in a very judgmental, demeaning, harsh kind of way, or I could do that in a way that's just forthright, that talks about the truth, but is full of grace, right? And so the truth doesn't necessarily have to be harsh and judgmental, but the truth, if we're not living by it, it's going to impact things, right? And it feels to me like people get the most they sound the most judgmental when they're worried that somebody's going to get hurt. What I think a lot of... Did you feel like people judged you when you were in your addiction? Oh, absolutely. And everyone who tried to help me was the biggest jerk in the world. Right. Absolutely. But my question becomes... Would you say some of those people were more judgmental than others? Sure, absolutely, but the question becomes, how do you cure an addict if you don't allow him to walk in the front door of the rehab center? Right, so it's that truth and grace thing. How do you do both of them? Right, bingo. And it's so, for that one individual I was talking about, did his truth change because of love? Did love change his truth or did his, you know, was it his new truth correct, where he believes in the love of his daughter over the Word of God? And so the answer to that question is, does the Word of God, right? The Word of God, my read is that the Word of God is working on the grace scale from chapter 1 of Genesis all the way through chapter 22 of Revelation, and it's working on the truth scale every step of the way. So it's never one or the other, it's always a both and. Right. And so the question about any issue, whether it's homosexuality or sex outside of marriage or lying, cheating, you know, lust, you know, pornography, whatever it is, the question is, what does the Bible say in terms of the truth side of things? And what does it say in terms of the grace side of things? Right. And so so I'm always thinking. And I think if we're going to think biblically, we're always thinking according to both of those scales, grace and truth. Some other similar dynamic tensions that we find in Scripture are justice and mercy. or righteousness and peace. John Stott, I think, listed like four additional ones that I'm probably not going to remember right now that are these places where the truth part, the righteousness, the holiness part is kept to a very high standard. while at the same time we see this breathtakingly high standard of love and mercy and community and forgiveness all at the same time. So the question is, what does the Bible say about homosexuality on the truth side of it, and then what does it say about, you know, on the grace side of things. And my impression is that the Bible's very clear on the truth side of things, that homosexuality is not God's plan for mankind. And that kind of activity is what the Bible describes as missing the mark, which is the Greek definition of the word for sin, is that you miss the mark. What is the mark that God created us for, and that that is a missing of the mark. And so like you described, Gluttony is missing the mark, right? Or addiction to any substance, for that matter, smoking, drinking, all those kinds of things, they miss the mark. And why do they miss the mark? Because they end up leaving us unhealthy, both in our soul and our spirit and in our physical body, right? And so those things are things that are considered less than what God has for us. And so Romans 1, 18 and following, you know, describes in the New Testament the kind of a descent into sin and brokenness and includes in that list, you know, at one point two people, two men desiring to be with one another. I hope you aren't hoping I was going to help you on the Scripture quotes there, because No, no, no, that's okay. I am not very good at my Bible. And same thing in the Old Testament that it's described as an abomination, along with many things that are called an abomination in the Old Testament, including eating shellfish and other things. And so my point is just that on the truth scale, Scripture seems to be really clear. However, that's greatly debated by those who believe that you can't trust the Bible, and that what used to be considered sinful, that we shouldn't still consider those things to be sinful. Do you have some examples that come to your mind when you think of it in those terms? We're going to probably have to hold the examples for next week's show because we're about to wrap up on a time. One thing, it's one of the most profound things about the cross of Christ, this idea of the judgment and the grace, and they're both true throughout. And for the uninitiated, when John was talking about Genesis and Revelation, those are the first and last books of the Christian Bible. So he's saying the entire canon of Scripture, all the Scriptures of Christianity are talking about this, that the judgment is true, but the grace is true too. And sometimes it's like, how is that possible? And then we see Christ at the cross. So where the judgment is executed, so the judgment is seen through, but it's seen through on God's own Son. God Himself takes on human flesh in an totally amazing expression of grace. So the two can coexist. In fact, they coexist in a pretty dramatic way at the crosshairs. So many other things I was going to throw in there, but this show will pick up next week. Jonathan Schweitzer, thank you so much. Craig Lancourt, thank you. Appreciate your transparency. It's refreshing. Thank you for that. I am Troy Skinner. This is the Faith Debate. You can find us online at WFMD.com. Keyword Faith gets you there. You can also find us on Facebook at WFMD's Facebook page. Actually, if you can follow me on Facebook, I pretty much do everything on Facebook publicly, so it's no big secret. I'm kind of an open book on social media, for what it's worth. Until next week, 167 and a half hours from right now. God bless.