“Our culture has a very different understanding and definition of what love is. That’s often why we talk past one another with non-believers or members of the LGBTQ community.”
“I don’t think most people who are wrestling, say, with gender dysphoria, are pushing this ‘transgender ideology.’ That’s where we just need to show love, show compassion, listen to people, and just humble ourselves and be present in their lives.”
“There’s always a way around Scripture if you want to [find one]. But there’s a reason why, from the left to the right within the church, other than Judaism, there was unanimous agreement about what marriage is supposed to be.”
“We see this pattern through Scripture that we are to look back at God’s original design for sex and marriage as having continued relevance in our lives in terms of our choices.”
“Jesus held the view of marriage that God created it at the beginning as a sexed institution meant to be between one man and one woman, and that is the context for sexual activity. That’s God’s design for marriage.”
“I think Scripture is very clear from Genesis all the way through the end about God’s intended design for sex and marriage.”
“We can’t confuse what the Bible describes with what the Bible prescribes.”
“The Hittites were not condemned for not keeping the Passover, but they were condemned for their sexual immorality. And I think I think this passage in Leviticus 18 falls in the context of the kind of condemnations that were given on other nations that they should have known. Why? Because God has revealed himself in nature and in the human body, as Paul describes in Romans chapter 1.”
“In Mark 7 [Jesus] condemns sexuality immorality, which is “porneia,” and the vast majority of scholars would say “porneia” was the range of sexually immoral behavior outside of the married context. So that would involve adultery, that would involve incest, and that would involve same-sex sexual behavior.”
“I would lead [a conversation on LGBTQ topics] with asking a ton of questions and listening and not rushing to, ‘Well, look at Romans 1 and Matthew 19.’”
“The ‘culture war’ is not the framework through which I look at this. I look at cultural instances that happen, and I always ask myself, ‘How do I use this as an opportunity to show God’s love, number one, to the outside world, and second, to talk to young people about the faith and train them?’”
“I think we’d be much better today to try to lead with compassion, lead with understanding, lead with listening, calm down some of the rhetoric and I think we’d have a much better opportunity to speak into people’s lives about the gospel, which is frankly what matters most when it’s all said and done.”
