^{August 22, 2024}

Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships?

Inside This Episode

Jesus never talked about same-sex relationships. The Apostle Paul only condemned abusive same-sex sexual relationships, not consensual ones. These are two of the most popular arguments that some Christians make in favor of same-sex relationships. They are compelling claims — but are they true? In her latest book, scholar Rebecca McLaughlin analyzes the top 10 claims about scripture and sexuality and sheds light on what the Bible really says. Rebecca also speaks candidly with Maybe God host Eric Huffman about her lifelong experience with same-sex attraction.

Read Rebecca’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Relationships-Examining-Scripture-Sexuality-homosexuality/dp/1784989711

Head to YouTube to watch Maybe God’s full-length interviews! 

Transcript

Eric Huffman: Jesus never talked about same-sex marriage. The Apostle Paul only condemned abusive sexual relationships, not consensual ones. These are the kinds of arguments that some Christians make in favor of same-sex relationships.

In her latest book, scholar Rebecca McLaughlin analyzes the top ten claims about Scripture and sexuality and sheds light on what the Bible really says.

Rebecca McLaughlin: I actually think the Bible gives us a rich and glorious and beautiful vision of love between believers of the same sex.

Eric Huffman: Rebecca also speaks candidly about her lifelong experience with same-sex attraction.

Rebecca McLaughlin: I told myself, you know, "When I go to college everything's going to change. I'm definitely going to start falling for guys, and it's all going to be fine." By the time I got into grad school, I could no longer really buy my own story on that.

Eric Huffman: That's today on Maybe God.

[00:00:51] <music>

Eric Huffman: You're listening to Maybe God. I'm Eric Huffman.

By now, most people have made up their minds about same-sex marriage. The latest data show that around 70% of Americans support it, while 20% oppose it. The remaining 10% of Americans claim to be neutral about it, but one has to wonder if they're just too afraid of getting canceled for sharing their opinion. That's how noisy and divisive this topic has become.

What's lost in all the noise are the personal stories of everyday Christians who experience same-sex attraction from a young age, and who go through life wrestling with deep-seated desires that they've been taught to suppress. Many feel as though they're damned if they do and damned if they don't, because while coming out could mean being ostracized by their Christian friends and family, not coming out could lead to a life of perpetual singleness and loneliness.

Even if you've made up your mind on this issue, that doesn't mean you have to close off your heart. That's why listening to the stories of people who are same-sex attracted is so important. People like today's guest, Rebecca McLaughlin, author of the recent book, Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I grew up, as listeners may discern from my voice, on the other side of the pond, mostly in London. And for as long as I can remember, I've been a follower of Jesus, and I've also been surrounded by people who were skeptical of Christianity for one reason or another, even from an early age.

I was in very academic schooling environments, where most people thought that Christianity was foolish or possibly dangerous in certain ways. Actually, this question around sexuality, and in particular, same-sex sexual relationships, was one that I was discussing with friends from early on, from a Christian perspective. I also, from a personal perspective, as I mentioned, as long as I can remember, I've been a Christian, as long as I've been old enough to have romantic feelings, those were always directed toward other women.

So it was a personal question for me as I was growing up, going through my teenage years, into college, etc. On the one hand, looking at the scriptures and seeing what seemed to me to be a pretty clear no to same-sex relationships, even ordained in legal marriage. And on the other hand, looking at my own heart and thinking, Oh, if I were not a Christian, this is probably the direction that I would go."

So I think I bring a lot of years of thought and exploration to these questions in particular, because I'm really not someone who opened the Bible hoping to find that it would say no to same-sex marriage. There was a time in my life when I would have been more than happy to find a way of looking at the Bible that said yes. I haven't found that.

But what I have found in years of really marinating in the scriptures and looking at the various different questions and challenges that people bring, I've actually become more convinced that Christianity is good news for everyone, including for people who, like me, experience same-sex attraction and might choose to enter a same-sex romantic relationship if they were not Christians.

Eric Huffman: Right. Fascinating. I mean, your personal story obviously adds so much sincerity, authenticity to the work that you're doing on this topic. So grateful for your courage in sharing that.

If you're willing to talk about it, how early on in life do you remember being attracted to other females?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I think pretty early. I mean, as is relatively typical of female experience, actually, I probably had sort of more romantic feelings than sort of explicitly sexual ones.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Rebecca McLaughlin: And it was very much something which, honestly, I thought and hoped that I would grow out of. You know, I was sort of telling myself, "Oh, this is just a phase I'm going through." I was actually at a single-sex school from the ages of 8 to 18. So, you know, I didn't know many, many guys. And I told myself, "When I go to college, everything's going to change. I'm definitely going to start falling for guys and it's all going to be fine."

By the time I got into grad school, I could no longer really buy my own story on that. You know, once you're in grad school, you sort of have to realize you're probably a grown up and certain things, you know, you can't really put them down to whatever adolescent phase you're going through. So, yeah, it's been a pretty kind of long-term experience for me.

I've been very happily married for the last 16... no, sorry, 17 years to a wonderful man from Oklahoma. Like most married people, I think there are occasions when I might be attracted to somebody other than my husband and need to turn away from that and faithfulness to Christ. And for me, that's always to another woman rather than to a man. I could happily hang out with the most attractive men in town all the long day and it'd be absolutely fine. No kind of threat to my marriage.

Eric Huffman: Same. Same. I mean, this is fascinating. Did you ever come out as a teenager or a young adult? Did you ever come out in that way to your friends and family?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I, at various points, talked to a handful of individuals. I definitely talked to my husband before we ever got engaged. I feel like it's very foolish to marry somebody without you knowing all their stuff and them knowing all your stuff.

But it wasn't until I was in my mid-30s that I started talking to even my closest Christian friends in a more kind of open way. And I think as I reflect on that, it wasn't that I was going to church, which was, you know, preaching in a really kind of aggressive way on these questions, or that I was afraid that my friends were kind of going to run away screaming if I shared this part of my experience with them. I think I was more afraid that they would just take a half step away from me.

What I realized subsequently is that actually I was taking a half step away from them because I was happy to listen to all the things that they struggled with in their lives and I wasn't sharing something that had been significant for me. So yeah, I think one of the things that I hope to encourage fellow Christians on in this whole area is not to believe the lie, which I frankly think comes to us from Satan, that whatever it is that we are struggling with is the thing that we can't talk to our friends about, that we can't get help with.

Because actually, as Christians, we're meant to need one another. I profoundly believe it's not just that, you know, in an ideal world we'd all be completely independent and able to sort of live our best Christian lives by ourselves, getting on with it. We're actually designed to need one another and to help one another and to support one another and to correct and rebuke and encourage and all the things with one another.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Rebecca McLaughlin: And so there shouldn't be an area of our lives that is off limits for that with our Christian friends.

Eric Huffman: So when you did sort of come out, even in a one-on-one way, you know, maybe not as publicly as other coming out situations for other people, what was the reception? In particular, I'm interested to know how your husband or the man who would become your husband, I guess, responded.

Rebecca McLaughlin: Oh, yeah. Well, my husband's a wonderful, wonderful guy. As I mentioned, I talked to him way before we ever got married. And he took the view that the reality is married people will very likely at times be attracted to people other than their spouse. And that, honestly, it doesn't really matter a whole lot if you're going to be attracted to people of the opposite sex versus people of the same sex.

It's kind of, to some extent, all in the noise, because in both those situations, you're going to need to repent appropriately to think of ways to have others hold you accountable to make sure that you are following Jesus and living in faithfulness. And that probably, you know, he and I would be likely in the same boat. In fact, we'd probably be in the exact same boat versus many couples would be in the slightly different boat of, you know, one party needing to guard their heart at times from relationships with men and the other with women. For us, it would just be that we would both need to be alert at times to our relationships with other women.

Eric Huffman: Sure. Were you surprised that he responded that way?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I don't know if I was surprised. My husband's an engineer, and so he's quite practical, which is in many ways an asset. He is also someone who loves the Lord and has a very realistic view of human nature. He takes very seriously the fact that the Bible describes us as sinners, and so we shouldn't be surprised by our own sin or by other people's.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Rebecca McLaughlin: You know, he wasn't thinking, Oh, I'm going to marry someone who is perfect in every way. He was thinking, I'm going to marry somebody who's a fellow sinner, and will need to show each other grace and love and support and kind of compassion as we move forward in the Christian life together. So, yeah, I didn't know that I was... it wasn't like it was inconsistent with his character. I was expecting something different, but I was definitely grateful. And I remain very, very grateful for him.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Amen. That's pretty extraordinary. Did anyone that you shared this part of your heart with, this struggle, did anyone actually take that half step away from you? Did you ever experience that sort of heartache with Christians that you shared this with?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I think over the years, there was certainly been people who were sort of, honestly, I have no idea what to do with that information. Which I think is understandable in some ways, especially in context. I think historically, as Christians, we haven't really had much in terms of a model, an example of how to love one another well in this area in particular.

I think one of the most positive reactions I had was talking with a dear friend of mine who is a sort of person who as a teenager fell asleep with her Bible kind of clutched to her chest because she loved the word of the Lord so much. And at the time when I was first talking with her, she's raising four daughters from the outside and from the inside, just a wonderfully sort of godly woman who always thought the best of people.

And I think there's a version of my friend who could have been really off-put by this information. But instead, her reaction was exactly the reaction which I think followers of Jesus should have when a friend shares their struggles and temptations, frankly, in any area, but including in the area of same-sex attraction.

And that was to, on the one hand, reassure me that she loved me and to show a kind of appropriate degree of interest in what I was talking to her about. That made me feel, to use a common word, sort of safe to talk to her. And at the same time, reassured me that she would be there for me if I ever needed help in resisting temptation.

Eric Huffman: Wow.

Rebecca McLaughlin: I think sometimes, especially Christians for whom this may not be a personal struggle themselves, think that the way they can be most loving to a friend if a friend says to them, You know what, I've always really struggled with attraction toward people of the same sex, they might think the most loving thing to say is, "Oh, you know, maybe God's word isn't clear on this question. I love my friends so much, I struggle to believe that what seems to kind of come naturally to their hearts is a bad thing.

And sometimes people can think that they're being loving when they're actually questioning whether God's word is clear on this issue. I actually don't think that's loving because the last thing that I need is somebody sort of undermining my confidence in God's word. But what I do need is somebody like my friend who's willing to say, Hey, anytime you need support on this, anytime you need to talk to somebody or you feel like you're in a situation where you're like, Ah, I feel at risk of plunging myself into sin here, like call me.

I think we all as Christians, again, regardless of what our patterns of sin or temptation might be, we all need those people in our lives who love us enough to listen to us and to tell us when we're wrong and to sort of hold our hand to drag us out of the pit if that's what we need.

Eric Huffman: Amen. Speaking of friends, you also share in the beginning of the book the story of your friend Rachel. What was it about Rachel's story that made you want to include it in this book in such a sort of important way? Talk to us about Rachel.

Rebecca McLaughlin: Rachel and I grew up in very different parts of the world. She grew up in California, I grew up in England. And whereas I grew up in a churchgoing family, I was a very serious Christian from a very early age, Rachel grew up in a completely non-churchgoing family and was not at all a Christian. In fact, she quite enjoyed making the Christians in her high school cry by asking them too many hard questions.

When Rachel was about 15, she found herself very attracted to one particular friend of hers who she was studying with at the time. And having no particular moral compass to say she shouldn't pursue that, she very much decided to pursue that and sort of started a romantic and sexual relationship with this other girl.

By the time she was ready to go off to college, she went to Yale University and was convinced that not only this was going to be a wonderful place for her academically, intellectually, but that also she'd grown up in a relatively conservative town in rural California, and this was going to be a great new space for her to be very open about her sexuality and to continue her relationship with her girlfriend.

And it was in that context that the Lord pretty much bulldozed her life. So her girlfriend broke up with her, which she found very devastating. And then she ended up stealing a copy of Mere Christianity from a lapsed Catholic friend's bookshelf, reading it in the Yale library, and becoming a Christian without anybody trying to share the message of Jesus with her.

But one of the things that was particularly sort of relevant along her path here, and one of the reasons why I mentioned her at the beginning of my book, was that when she was first sort of just curious about Christianity and exploring Jesus to the extent of sort of googling religious terms and finding herself reading stories from the Gospels that presented Jesus in a very different way than what she'd assumed Jesus was like from what she just sort of picked up from the ether. She was starting to become curious about Christianity, and she went to see the only two self-identifying Christians she knew at Yale, who were two women dating one another. And they said to her, "Oh, don't worry, there's been a big mistake. The Bible's kind of been misread on these questions, and it actually does leave room for monogamous sort of faithful same-sex romantic relationships."

And they gave her a sort of short little book or packet that made the case for that, a little bit like the little book that I've written on similar questions. Rachel remembers vividly sort of reading that packet of information, feeling very compelled by it, but then looking up the Bible passages that it was claiming that it was explaining... She didn't have a Bible herself, so she was just sort of googling the passages. And her first reaction was, "Oh, gosh, I think that this pamphlet, this booklet doesn't actually match up with what I'm reading in the Bible."

So her first response to that was great disappointment and sort of frustration and like, you know what, forget it, I'm not interested in Christianity anymore. So it was only sort of subsequent to that, realizing that actually there was a God who made the universe and her to whom she would owe an account for her life and realizing that she was a sinner in all sorts of ways. And that the message like Jesus had come to rescue people who like her were stuck facing the righteous judgment of a holy God. You know, she sort of realized at that point, actually, even though this is very inconvenient for my life, because I know that the Bible isn't going to leave room for the kind of relationship that I would like to pursue, it's a really good deal. She put it like, I can't miss out on this deal.

And so I started with her story and with mine, partly as a kind of two different examples. You know, one person raised in a Christian home for whom same-sex attraction was always, you know, part of my experience and something that I've never pursued because of my faith in Jesus versus somebody who actually came to Christ out of a context where she was very much living into her attractions. And then I needed to sort of figure out from then on, okay, what does it mean? What does it look like to follow Jesus? Is it worth following Jesus as someone who would have more than happily continued in and look for a same-sex sort of marriage partner, for example?

Eric Huffman: Sure. Yeah. It's fascinating. Your story and Rachel's really both fascinating for some similar and some different reasons. And the conclusion you reach in this book, I think, would be surprising to people who aren't already familiar with you and your work prior to this book, because you come to the conclusion, having searched the Scriptures and examined the questions that people are asking and some of the claims that progressive Christians and the like have made, you come to the conclusion that not only does the Bible not condone same-sex relationships, but explicitly warns against them and does so even with more fervor in the New Testament than in the Old to some degree in some ways, which is a surprising take, given your story. I mean, I think that you've put yourself in an interesting crosshairs, a cross-section of evangelical Christianity and progressive Christianity. You and others like you who share a similar story, Jackie Hill Perry comes to mind, David Bennett comes to mind, and several others, I wonder if it's sometimes a lonely place in Christendom these days for someone trying to build the bridge that you're building here.

Rebecca McLaughlin: I mean, honestly, I don't feel lonely in it. And there are a few reasons for that. One is having a handful of friends like Rachel and like Sam Albrey would be another example, who also like me are saying, do you know what, Jesus is really worth it. Like, actually not pursuing your own romantic or sexual attractions, because you think that Jesus is worth trusting, even in the areas of your life that are most kind of tender, it's worth it. Like 100%.

I think also, for whatever reason, God in His providence has sort of stacked the little Southern Baptist church that Rachel and I happen to go to in Cambridge, Massachusetts with people who, like me, have grown up in Christian circles and have always experienced the same-sex attraction, or like her have grown up not in Christian families at all, and have come to Christ after a period of having same-sex sexual and romantic relationships. And so it's sort of part of our just basic community experience here. People from a whole range of different backgrounds and life stories, but including a bunch of people who, you know, for whom this has been part of their story. And I think seeing the ways in which my story has been able to be helpful to others in a local context, as well as just sort of more generally has been a really redemptive experience for me, I think.

Eric Huffman: Sure. And an energizing one, I would imagine, to see the difference being made by God's grace through the story you're telling. You, in the book, address 10 claims that are commonly used basically to suggest or to posit the idea that the Bible doesn't explicitly condemn or forbid same-sex relationships. We won't go through all 10, we'll run out of time, but there's a few that really stand out to me that we can talk about now.

The first one is just that Christians should stay focused on the gospel of God's love and we shouldn't get distracted with these non-essential issues like sexuality. And when it comes to these non-essentials, we should just sort of choose love and choose to live and let live so that we keep the main thing, the main thing. How do you address that in the book? And what do people need to know about that claim?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I mean, I think to start with, as with many of the claims in the book, it's a very understandable question to be asking. And especially if you live in a place like I do in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Christian sexual ethics is wildly controversial, and where there'll be many people in my neighborhood and in my circles here who, knowing that I believe the Bible doesn't affirm same-sex sexual relationships in any form, that would be a reason for them to not even consider Christianity.

So I can understand somebody saying, do you know what, I'm passionate about people coming to know Jesus. This feels like a real roadblock. Why can't we just sort of set it aside and say, look, maybe this is like baptism where Christians can agree to disagree? And we don't need to break fellowship over this or make it a bigger issue.

I think there are two substantial problems with that. One is that Jesus Himself and the New Testament authors seem to take sexual sin exceedingly seriously. You know, people sometimes think that Jesus kind of loosened up the Old Testament law when it came to all sorts of things, including sexual sin. Actually, Jesus tightens it up.

Famously in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, "You've heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. I say to you, anyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery in His heart." And then He goes on to say, "If your eye causes you to sin, tear it out, because it's better to enter the kingdom of God without an eye than it is to keep your eyes and to be thrown into hell." I mean, it couldn't be more serious Jesus' understanding of sin in general and sexual sin in this context in particular as well. So I think it's really important for us to then answer the question, well, what is and is not sexual sin?

Now, the other reason why I don't think we can set these questions aside and just kind of focus on the gospel is that actually, if you look at the big picture from the Old Testament to the New Testament of what Christian marriage as the context for sexual intimacy is about, it's actually about the gospel. So we see it in the Old Testament as time and again, the prophets compare God to a loving, faithful husband and Israel to His all too often unfaithful wife. You know, God's people are always cheating on Him with these other idols, these sort of so-called gods.

And it seems like this marriage between God and his people is in crisis, you know, time and again. It's just sort of God forgives and draws his people back and then they cheat on Him again. Like it's just this sort of cycle that we see throughout the Old Testament. Then we see Jesus step onto the stage of human history, and one of the strange claims that He makes about himself is that He is the bridegroom, which is a very odd thing for a man to say who never got married in His life on earth. So you're thinking, you know, what is this about?

Well, actually, it's one of the ways in which Jesus is stepping into the shoes of the creator God of the Old Testament. He's saying, "I'm the groom. I'm the husband. I've come to claim God's people for myself." And we see that further explained in Paul's letter to the Ephesians where he describes Christian marriage as like a little sort of scale model of Jesus's love for His people.

We see at the very end of the Bible in the book of Revelation when this sort of recurrent metaphor comes back of Jesus as the lamb, actually, in this context, getting married to His people to the church, and how Jesus' sort of wedding, His marriage to his church brings heaven and earth back together. So this is the big picture from the Old to the New Testament of what marriage is about.

Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, says that even from the very beginning, so in the very beginning of the Bible, in the book of Genesis in chapter 2, when God brings the first man and the first woman together, and we read this sort of curious verse at the end of Genesis 2, "Therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh."  Paul says, this is a profound mystery, and I'm saying it refers to Christ and the church.

So actually, from the very beginning, God's design for marriage as a one flesh union between one man and one woman was all about Jesus and His people. So rather than being a roadblock to the gospel, Christian sexual ethics is actually meant to be a signpost to the gospel. And the love across difference of one man and one woman in marriage, the one-flesh union between them, is meant to be a sort of picture of the love across difference of Jesus and His people, the one-flesh union between Christ and His church.

And I think so often when we have conversations, even in sort of Christian circles about sexual ethics, we miss that central vision. We actually sort of take the gospel out of the conversation and we end up having a conversation, which honestly, I don't think is ultimately about Christian sexual ethics. It might be about sort of conservative ethics or something, but it's not Christian sexual ethics if it doesn't have Jesus right at the center.

So actually, I think the gospel is pointed to by the claims that the Bible makes about sex. And what I sometimes say to friends who are not Christians is, listen, Christian sexual ethics is much weirder than you think. You know, it's not just that I think that sex only belongs to marriage between one man and one woman. But I think this is all about a metaphor. And the whole purpose, the whole point of this is giving us a tiny glimpse of the kind of powerful, sacrificial, flesh-uniting, life-creating, never-ending, exclusive love that Jesus has for us.

Eric Huffman: Wow. Wow. Well, that's well said. And you said metaphor, and then you said it's also sort of a glimpse. And I think both of those words apply. It's a symbol marriage for something that is yet to come, but that we believe will come to be, which is Christ's union to His people, to His church as a groom would be united to his bride.

But there's something more going on here that you alluded to. I just think it's worth asking because I can hear the questions people might ask who aren't on board with what you're saying. Why does it have to be a man and a woman? Why can't it just be two different people? I just exited the United Methodist Church in the last couple of years. And that's the point they're making now as a church, as a denomination, is it doesn't need to be two different genders. It just needs to be two different people that are both consenting adults. And you can have the same marital dynamic and sacrificial love within that union. Why does it need to be a man and a woman?

Rebecca McLaughlin: Yeah, interestingly, and this is obviously kind of contested ground in our cultural world today. But the reality is that the deepest human difference is the difference of male and female. You know, biologically, you and I are profoundly different in a way that actually... you know, we are both White, for example. But if you compare you to a man who has a different racial heritage or me to a woman with different racial heritage, in terms of our actual genetic makeup, it's all kind of in the noise.

But the difference of male and female is actually a really deep biological difference. It's the original diversity, we could say. And as we look back to the very first chapter of the Bible, which Jesus quotes in His definition of marriage, interestingly... in Matthew 19, Jesus is asked a question about divorce. And His reaction is, "Do you not know that he who from the first created the male and female..." So He sort of brings out the male-female nature of marriage first. He then quotes from Genesis 2, in that verse, "Therefore, a man will leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." And then He says, "You know what, that which God has joined together, let not human beings sort of tear apart."

To make his point about the one-flesh nature of marriage, and therefore the great sort of seriousness of divorce, Jesus could have just quoted from Genesis 2. But He adds in that quote from Genesis 1 about male and female, as almost like an underlining of the male-female nature of marriage. I think there are particular reasons why God has sort of ordained marriage that way, and why He gives husbands and wives different roles, and how even from the first, he sort of built this picture into our biology.

And I think also, ultimately, we need to trust the Lord's Word, even if it doesn't sort of line up with our own intuitions. This is a place where my friend Rachel Gilson is, I think, really helpful. If you look back to the very first sin that we see in the Bible in Genesis 3, you know, where famously, Eve is being kind of confronted by this fruit, it looks really good. Satan's telling her, like, "You should totally go ahead and eat this fruit." And as far as Eve can tell from the evidence of her eyes, and from... you know, she thinks it's going to make her wise, like, there are lots of really good reasons in her mind to go ahead and eat this fruit. And all she has on the other side is God's Word, saying, "If you eat this, you're going to die."

Actually, in any kind of sin scenario, you and I are faced with the same question, actually: are we going to trust God's Word, when it conflicts with the evidence of our eyes and what we think would be best for us? And if we are only going to trust God or only going to kind of follow God's commandments when they make complete intuitive sense to us, we're not actually following God's commandments. We're sort of doing what we think is best.

Eric Huffman: We're following ourselves.

Rebecca McLaughlin: We're not recognizing God as God. So there's an extent to which... there are ways in which I think we can see the wisdom and the goodness of God's design for marriage as male, female. There's also an extent to which I think we need to say, do you know what, God's Word is good enough for me.

And the final thing that I would want to add to that, and I spend a chunk of time in this, the very end of the book, is that I don't think it is true that the Bible gives us no vision for love between believers of the same sex. To where we need to sort of superimpose that love onto marriage, because there's sort of nothing else on offer there, as it were.

I actually think the Bible gives us a rich and glorious and beautiful vision of love between believers of the same sex. And it's one that we often in Christian circles have massively ignored as maybe a slightly harsh word, but for sure under-realized. Because if you sat down in your New Testament and you took out a highlighter and you went through and you highlighted every time you are commanded to love your brothers or your sisters in Christ, by the end of that exercise, you'd be out of ink in your highlighter.

If you went through and underlined every verse that's about marriage, you'd have plenty left. Actually, the New Testament says some really powerful and important things about marriage. It says far more about love, like brotherly/sisterly love. And I think what we miss is that marriage is one particular picture, sort of fleshed-out, lived-out experience to help us recognize one dimension of the Lord's love for us. But actually, friendship is another, and it's a different kind.

So when Jesus, the night he was betrayed, said, "This is my command that you love one another as I've loved you," He goes on to say, "Greater love has no one than this, that He laid down his life for His friends. Now, this is not an exclusive love. This has not a sexually romantic love. This is not a kind of mandate to say, "Oh, well, I'm going to find my one other special same-sex friend and kind of have a marriage-like relationship with them that's just the two of us, and sort of mimic marriage, just sort of minus the sexual dimension."

This is actually a call to a rich and varied brotherly and sisterly love. And if you read through the New Testament, you will see that's often contrasted with sexual immorality in all its forms. So, you know, often the top of the list of vice and virtue lists in the New Testament are like, Here are things Christians should be doing. Here are things they really shouldn't be doing. Often you'll find sexual immorality is sort of leading the charge in terms of things Christians should not be doing. And love is leading the charge in terms of the things that Christians should be doing.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Oh, that's interesting because the voices you hear in the world would want to pair those two together. And you address that in your... I think it's the last claim in the book, which I find to be one of the hardest claims to rebut as you hear in the world, which is that a God of love would not be or could not be against loving relationships. And, you know, this God is love. He's pro-love and wants me to have loving relationships. So those lines are blurred.

If we're talking about sexual relationships in that sense, romantic ones, those lines are blurred in the world where love and loving relationships can be one of the same with sex and sexual relationships. And you're saying in the New Testament, at least, we see a clear division between those two terms and spheres of thinking about relationships. You can have totally loving, sacrificial, everything relationships and then you have these sexual relationships over here that, you know, those two lines... those two things are not... the line between them isn't blurred or it shouldn't be.

That's interesting. That's a very different way of thinking about it. I'm sure, you know, there are people listening now who might have questions and pushback. What are some of the most challenging claims you hear from folks that do push back against what you are asserting in this book?

Rebecca McLaughlin: I think that probably the most sort of pastorally challenging one is when people will say, how can you expect someone who is maybe exclusively attracted to their same-sex to be lonely for the rest of their lives? And I think it's so interesting that the question is often posed in that way, because the implication is anyone who is long-term single is therefore lonely.

And if that's true, which I think often, if we're brutally honest, often in our Christian communities, single people are left out. Like a lot of single people who are single for whatever reason, this is just as true of people who would love to be married to somebody of the opposite sex, are experiencing loneliness. But actually, to the extent that that's true, we are completely failing to live according to Christian ethics.

As I mentioned, the number of times we are commanded to love one another, as Christ has loved us in the body, as brothers, and as sisters, is so overwhelming that the ways in which we have collapsed all real love and intimacy into the nuclear family is actually completely against what the New Testament teaches. Not because the nuclear family isn't important, but because it actually belongs in the broader context of the local church family and that actually, you know, the family of the church, I think is a primary family unit when it comes to... if we sort of read the New Testament. Honestly.

So I think it's a question that comes often with a lot of pain, because as I say, many people are experiencing loneliness in singleness for whatever reason.

Eric Huffman: And in marriage by the way.

Rebecca McLaughlin: Yeah. It's all part of the same problem, actually, because the ways in which we don't live into Christian love of brothers and sisters impact single people and it impacts married people.

Eric Huffman: That's right.

Rebecca McLaughlin: And it impacts children as well, actually, because they don't get the opportunity to be raised in the context of the larger family of church. It's all down to their parents. And we place all the weight on this one particular relationship as if you're meant to marry somebody who will fulfill all of your relational and emotional and sexual and all needs in actual fact. Whereas it is true that your spouse is the only person who's meant to kind of step into your sexual life, as it were, from a Christian perspective. Actually, it's not at all true that they are meant to be bearing the full weight of all your emotional and relational needs.

Eric Huffman: Oh, that's impossible.

Rebecca McLaughlin: And I think we leave married people disappointed because we've set up marriage to be the ultimate thing, which it isn't. And we leave single people feeling left out because we've set up marriage to be the ultimate thing, which it isn't.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Rebecca McLaughlin: Actually, Jesus is the ultimate. Relationship with Him is what we are made for. And missing out on relationship with Him is the most devastating possibility. So we need to reframe everything around the centrality of Jesus' love for His people, which from a biblical perspective, makes sense of marriage and puts it in its right place, not as a destination, but as a signpost, and also makes sense of why, according to the Apostle Paul, single life is even better than marriage.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. I do want to talk about Paul because you've talked a little bit about Jesus and things He said and didn't say about sex and same-sex relationships. And there's a lot more to say there, but we're going to run out of time.

One of the most common critiques you'll hear about the traditional Christian point of view is that Paul, when he condemned same-sex relations, what he was really talking about was exploitative relationships, where the most common example is pederasty. Where an older man would basically make a sex slave of a younger boy and a common practice in the ancient world, I suppose. But that's the sort of thing Paul was condemning, not loving monogamous same-sex relationships, he wouldn't have even known what that looks like, blah, blah, blah. What do you say in the book about those claims regarding Paul's writings in particular?

Rebecca McLaughlin: There's an awful lot to be said, so I do go into more detail in the book. But just at a very basic level, the word that Paul uses a couple of times to describe a sexual relationship between a man and another male is one that he has chosen very carefully. It seems like he may even have invented this word, because he takes two words that are found in the Old Testament prohibition on a man lying with another male as with a woman, is how it's expressed. He takes the word for male and the word for bed, essentially, from that verse in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, and he puts them together to make a new word.

Now, for those interested in the technical level of things, the Old Testament is written in Hebrew, the New Testament in Greek, but many Jews of Jesus' and Paul's day were reading the Old Testament in a Greek translation known as the Septuagint. Paul takes the male word and the bed word out of that verse and uses it to make this word to describe somebody who beds males, I guess this would be, or a male bedder. Now, just as in English, the word male in Greek didn't specify age, so it didn't specify a boy or a child or a man. It was just like any male.

Paul uses this word rather than reaching for any other words that he could have used that would have described particular kinds of relationship, like the ones that you were alluding to there. Because there were words in Greek for a man having a relationship with an adolescent boy. Which actually in Greek culture in particular, I don't know that they would have seen themselves as sort of sex slaves. It was more like this was a sort of part of growing up as a young man, that you have this sort of mentor and that there was a sexual kind of component to this. It was actually very romanticized.

For Romans, it was often translated into the context of a master and a slave, which we have very good reasons for being horrified by that idea today. But many in the ancient world, slaves of either sex were used sexually by their masters. It's one of the reasons actually why Christian sexual ethics was such incredibly good news for slaves in the ancient world as well as for everybody else, because it absolutely put an end to any kind of slavery.

Paul could have used terms that refer to those practices, or he could have used terms that strongly differentiated between the active and the passive partner in a sexual relationship, which in the Greco-Roman context, it was very shameful to be penetrated as a male, but it was actually fine to be the penetrator regardless of what sex the person you were penetrating was.

Paul seems unconcerned with these differentials. He seems very concerned with whether it's the same sex or opposite sex. Actually, in his letter to the Romans, where he famously talks about women and women as well as men and men, the fact that he highlights female-female sexual relationships also kind of undermines the idea that he's only going after exploitative, unequal relationships. Because whereas much of the same-sex male sex that was going on in the ancient world was in that paradigm, actually, when it came to women, there wasn't really an understanding that women who would have relationships with women like that. That there was a sort of differential between them.

Eric Huffman: Interesting. That would seem to undermine the whole argument, which is problematic for those who want to make it. What is your message as we wind down here? What's your message generally to what's happening with progressive Christianity or denominations that are sort of drifting in, I guess, a leftward direction or something, a more secular direction on matters like these? What do you hope for the church in particular in America, where you see these sorts of things happening?

Rebecca McLaughlin: My hope is that we would all become more biblical across the board. And I think that is a corrective. It's certainly a corrective to people who might be on the sort of more progressive end of the spectrum of saying, Hey, do you know what, if we don't trust God's word, and if we're not willing to say Jesus has the right to tell us what to do, regardless of how convenient that is for our lives or how difficult that is in our culture, we're not really followers of Jesus.

I think it's also corrective for those who may identify more on the conservative end to say, for example, are we making marriage an idol and leaving single people out? I think often we are. Are we taking seriously the New Testament's call to vigorous, full-blooded love between brothers and sisters in Christ? Or are we sort of pulling back from that? Are we putting people who might experience same-sex attraction in a completely different bucket than people whose sexual attractions and temptations and areas of sin might be toward the opposite sex? Or are we recognizing, actually, no, we're all sexual sinners here and we all need to follow Jesus together, we all need each other's help in this?

I think often the ways in which people on the more conservative end have talked about, for example, people who identify as gay or lesbian outside the church, have been genuinely hateful and actually quite against what the New Testament is calling us to. I mean, Jesus says that we should love even our enemies, let alone our kind of people who ideologically might be in a different place to us. I don't think a lot of how Christians have treated those outside the church who identify as gay or lesbian historically has been loving, has been in line with Jesus' commandments. So I think the solve here is for us all to become more biblical and not less.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, I agree. Biblical illiteracy is our biggest problem, at least in the church circles I've been a part of. Finally, one last question. For anybody that's watching or listening right now that might be experiencing same-sex attraction, I guess, and maybe they've lived into it, maybe they haven't, but they also love Jesus or they are interested in Jesus, what's your sort of boiled down brass tacks message to them? What do you want them to know?

Rebecca McLaughlin: One of my favourite verses in the whole Bible is when Jesus looks into the eyes of Martha in John chapter 11, whose brother has just died. And he's died because Jesus didn't show up for her. He didn't come when she called and told Him that her brother was sick. Instead, Jesus deliberately waited until Lazarus was dead. And He looks into this woman's eyes and he says, "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me, even though he dies, will live and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

I think for all of us, that is the central question. Do we believe that Jesus is the resurrection and the life? Do I believe that Jesus is my resurrection and my life? Not just that He's a kind of means to an end if I'm in need. But if it is true that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, then no other path that seems to be promising me life is worth pursuing if it's taking me away from Jesus, no other human being is going to be able to satisfy me at the deepest level, no other person has loved me to the point of death like Jesus has.

If it's not true, if Jesus is not the resurrection and the life, He's not worth following at all. And frankly, if Jesus isn't true and if there is no God, we're all just a bunch of atoms and molecules. It doesn't matter what we do. We aren't even meaningful beings in our own right. We're just mammals with delusions of grandeur. So I would say, let's go back to that question: Is Jesus who He claims to be? And if He is, everything changes and He becomes the Lord of everything we have. And He will prove it true to us what He said to some of His first followers. Anyone who wants to save His life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Eric Huffman: Amen. Well said. Rebecca McLaughlin, thank you so much for joining us on Maybe God. And thank you for this important book. I encourage everybody who's watching and listening to pick up, Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships? as well as your other works. You're making a difference. So I'm grateful for you and we're grateful for your time today.

Rebecca McLaughlin: Thanks, Eric.

Julie Mirlicourtois: This episode of Maybe God was produced by Julie Mirlicourtois and Eric and Geovanna Huffman. Our social media manager and associate producer is Adira Polite, and Bob Vance was the editor of today's episode. If you'd like to watch any of our interviews, head to Maybe God's YouTube channel where you'll find all of our uncut interviews and more. And don't forget to rate and review us wherever you're listening. Thanks for listening, everyone.