00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: There is a cost to this conversation. There's a cost to saying LGBTQ people are fully included in the life of the church, in leadership, in marriage, in calling. There's a cost to questioning interpretations that have stood for generations and saying to them, this is wrong. My guest today, Doctor Thomas J. Ord, knows that cost personally. We talk about Scripture, we talk about tradition, but mostly we talk about people, queer people who have been told they are disordered, broken and second tier in the kingdom of God. And we ask a hard question what if inclusion isn't bending to culture but returning to Christ? This is not a light episode if you've ever wrestled with the so-called clobber passages. If you've been told that your love is second class, if you've ever deconstructed because of this issue, this conversation was made for you. I'm your host, Jeremy Johnson, and you're listening to slutty Grace. Welcome. Thank you for listening. I am excited about today's guest. His name is Thomas J. Ord. He is a theologian and author of more than thirty books focusing mostly on love, freedom, and the nature of God. He is best known for his work on Uncontrolling love, the idea that God's love is never coercive and always seeks the good of the other. Today, we're going to be talking about the question of LGBTQ acceptance. Tom, welcome so much to the podcast. Glad you're here. Thanks for the opportunity, Jeremy. I'm really looking forward to this. I am too. I've read your book, and I know we talked a little bit before, and I really feel like this conversation that we're about to have is probably one of the more important ones. I feel like it's right up there with the question of of hell. But the question of LGBTQ acceptance is a major one for most Christians. In fact, I would even argue that it's probably one of the prime theologies that lead to a Christians deconstruction when they start really wrestling with this theology of can I accept homosexuals? Can I accept that community? What's the Bible say? Really say about it, not what is the translation say? And they really start to come into an acceptance of this beautiful community, but it really starts to open up other doors and they really start to question other things. Can you share your initial journey of moving from, I'm going to say, love the sinner, hate the sin? Because that's a very common phrase that we throw out there, hey, I love the sinner, but man, I hate the sin. And there's some problems with that statement. But where you kind of move from that to full one hundred percent acceptance and inclusion of this community. Yeah.

00:02:40 Tom Oord: Before I answer that, I want to just affirm what you said as a lead up, as how important this issue is in my way of thinking. The queer issue is the issue of our time, and by our, I mean North American. I think it is the issue that we have to wrestle with as humans in general, but also as Christians in particular. My wrestling with this question began quite a while ago. However, I was in seminary in the early nineteen nineties. I was in a course on Christian education, and I really didn't want to be in the course because I was into philosophical theology. But you had to jump through this hoop. So I took the course, and one of the assignments was you had to write a curriculum for a Sunday school class. So I and a couple of my friends decided, we're going to do this together. We're going to write a multi-series curriculum, and we're going to address what in those days we called the question of homosexuality. Yeah. And I come from a tradition in the Wesleyan tradition, which oftentimes talks about addressing big questions using the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, which is thinking about it in terms of Scripture, what the tradition has said, what experience seems to indicate, and then using reason. And so we took that four fold sort of schemata format. And we posed the questions of, of queer issues. I see. And at that time I had not carefully studied scripture on this issue.

00:04:13 Jeromy Johnson: Now, where did you land at that point? Were you pretty much toe in line of like, it's a sin, it's unbiblical? Or were you fairly open to it coming into that?

00:04:21 Tom Oord: I was probably on the hey, it's a sin, but we should love him anyway. You know, kind of the way you set it up. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Kind of a thing. I felt uncomfortable being there, I have to admit, because I realized I hadn't really worked it out. And it was more I was more speaking as a product of my background and the fact that I'm a straight guy, I think a lot of people reject queer issues for aesthetic reasons. They think about queer sex and they think, that sounds gross. That was kind of me at that time. Like it was just like, oh yeah, why would they be doing that sort of stuff? Is that really healthy? Kind of a thing.

00:05:00 Jeromy Johnson: Theology of discomfort?

00:05:02 Tom Oord: Yeah, I call it the theology of yuck.

00:05:05 Jeromy Johnson: That's even better.

00:05:06 Tom Oord: So that meant I read, like, leading scholars on what the biblical text had to say about queer issues. Or again, homosexuality is the word we used in those days. And I realized that the Bible was not as clear as I thought it would be, and that there were good reasons to interpret biblical texts as pertaining to issues of its day and not really applying to homosexuality as we understood it today. And more important, there's a whole bunch of issues related to Scripture that are hard to wrestle with. And I became convinced that the best way to deal with all these issues, not just homosexuality, but, you know, women in ministry, why were certain kinds of clothes, how to think about politics, all these kinds of big questions. I said, you know, Augustine and John Wesley were right. You ought to take love as your interpretive lens and filter everything through that. And if you do that, then there's not just six or eight passages in Scripture that pertain to homosexuality. There are gazillion passages, because if it's about love, then you have to bring that to bear. And so I came to the conviction that I should be I think I called it pro homosexuality in those days. But then that put me in a weird situation, because this is the church of the Nazarene, which is a conservative holiness denomination. Okay. And by conservative, I mean not just conservative morally, but conservative politically too. Like if you look at the way denominations vote for presidential candidates, Nazarenes are as red as you can be. Okay. Usually only the Mormons are more red than we are. And I thought, okay, do I jump ship? Where do I go? Yeah. Is there a group that can take me? And at that time, I really didn't know. I knew the Methodists were probably a little more liberal, but they weren't fully affirming at that point. There was the Metropolitan Community Church, which I didn't know about until I went off to grad school. But I thought about it, and I decided to stay in the denomination for three reasons.

00:07:19 Jeromy Johnson: Okay.

00:07:20 Tom Oord: One, I was convinced that at the heart of our theological vision were the issues of love. And if I thought, well, that's the core of who we are, there ought to be a place for someone like me who thinks that love means fully affirming Homosexuals.

00:07:37 Jeromy Johnson: Are not just accepting them, but like fully affirming.

00:07:40 Tom Oord: And yes, they can be in the pastorate. They can be married. We should endorse, you know, it all. I mean, obviously we shouldn't endorse illicit, you know, sex or whatever, but the kinds of roles that we would afford heterosexuals. Yeah. So that was one. The second is, as I started wrestling with these issues, I started finding out there were other scholars in the denomination who thought like that too, but they were just super quiet about it.

00:08:05 Jeromy Johnson: And the Nazarene denomination.

00:08:07 Tom Oord: And the Nazarene church. Yeah. So I thought, well, maybe if enough of us, you know, get together, a movement can start. And then third, I wanted to be an academic theologian and teach at one of the Christian colleges, the denominational colleges. And I thought, you know, a lot of people start questioning sexuality issues when they go to college. Maybe I can be in a position where I can help people work through those issues, you know?

00:08:33 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:08:34 Tom Oord: So I stuck around, and that's what I did for, what, another fifteen years or something? No more than that. Almost twenty years.

00:08:41 Jeromy Johnson: And I admire that that you chose to stick within that tradition and maybe try to bring about change from within, because that's sometimes the harder road. It's super hard. But then teaching at a college where you're forming Young Minds now, were you were you fully open at that time or like still a little closeted in your support?

00:09:01 Tom Oord: I was fully open, but I wasn't out at the front of the parade. You know, I was keeping things very quiet. Yeah. Only talking about this issue with students who I thought were ready for it. Turns out a lot of my colleagues were also affirming, so that made it good. But I tell you, one of the toughest things I felt during those fifteen, twenty years was that I couldn't be more out and proud. You know, I couldn't be. I do truly think there's an appropriate place for people to being inside an organization trying to change it from within. And that's what I was trying to do. But there are many times I felt guilty. I wasn't more public and more vocal.

00:09:42 Jeromy Johnson: Because you knew, like there was a certain path forward to bring about that change, and it probably wasn't a bulldozer. And you can't just quite bulldoze down everything, right? I mean, we're kind of fast forwarding here, but this kind of led to like a, a, a tribunal of sorts, driven, um, partially by your colleagues. But it was brought about by your insistence of full acceptance of, of the queer community at a high level. What happened and what was that experience like?

00:10:09 Tom Oord: Yeah. Well, I think to set the stage, I need to give you a little bit of background. Okay, thanks. In twenty fourteen, my president of my university brought me in and told me he was letting me go. Um, and he had asked me to answer a bunch of questions and go through a theological trial. I had done that. my accusers had not found me guilty, but they also hadn't said, you know, he's scot free. They kind of they kind of punted. Okay. And they put the power in the in the hands of the president. And at that time, the queer issues were not the issue. The issue was my emphasis upon God's love over God's power that I accepted evolution. It was kind of a general hodgepodge of things.

00:10:55 Jeromy Johnson: Kind of that open, relational theology, right? Type stuff. Okay.

00:10:59 Tom Oord: And so the president came in and told me that he was going to lay me off. I could either face another trial or I could take a severance package. Yeah. And I thought about it for a week, and I said, I'll take another trial. Bring it on.

00:11:16 Jeromy Johnson: He probably didn't see that coming. No, he did not.

00:11:20 Tom Oord: So he thought it was going to happen within the next month or two. And it didn't happen for almost a year. In fact, it didn't happen at all. What happened was he figured out another way to lay me off, because there had been a reduction in enrollment in my school, which he himself had caused, by the way. I eventually lost my job there, and in doing so, that meant that I didn't feel the same kind of responsibility to be as quiet about my views. And so I became more and more vocal. And that then brought led a group in the Midwest to send official charges against me in the year twenty twenty one.

00:12:00 Jeromy Johnson: Is that were you even living in the Midwest at this point?

00:12:03 Tom Oord: No, no.

00:12:05 Jeromy Johnson: And my district.

00:12:06 Tom Oord: Superintendent, he didn't agree with my view, but he was not happy that this group came in. But they're a group. Yeah. They call themselves the Holiness Partnership. They think of themselves as the theology police, even though they are theologically, you know, very thin. Anyway, because of my status as a theologian and so many people knew me, my district superintendent felt like he had to move forward in this. And that led then to, um, what he called a hearing, which was like another trial. And that hearing, there were seven people, five clergy, two laity. And, um, the big question was the queer issue like one way to approach that scenario is to look at the church manual and say, you know, if you kind of look at it, interpret it this way, I kind of can fit. I didn't have that approach. I went in saying, the manual is wrong, the denomination, I'd be fully accepting I'm right because I'm following the way of love.

00:13:04 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:13:05 Tom Oord: And what was wild is that group had the power then to make a recommendation of whether or not I should be disciplined. And they recommended that I not be disciplined. Surprise. Absolutely everybody, because I'm obviously out of line with, uh, the statement on sexuality by the denomination that then kicked into the district. Superintendent decided even though they didn't want me to be disciplined, he decided he was going to take away what we call my assignment. And in our denomination, the Church of Nazarene. If you're not assigned to a church or a college or something, uh, for three years, then you lose your, um, credentials. So they're kind of trying to go through the back door of. Exactly. It put me on the clock. The fact that they even have manuals, I think I read somewhere how many how many rules were there was like in like seven hundred or some ridiculous number like that. Then like, there's a trial like this is crazy. Well, that was just the first of the trials. Oh, there was more. Yeah, there's more to this story. Believe me, we're just getting started. Jeremy. Awesome. Well, take us down this road. I doubt any of them are listening to slutty Grace right now. That's right. So for about a year or year and a half. I kind of tried to stay low. I didn't stop talking about it. But the district superintendent ended up not allowing me to preach anymore. Taking away my assignment. And I started to realize, look, he's just going to try to wait this out. And I just get silently, you know, kicked out the back door. So I thought, I'm not going to go that way. If I'm going to go, I want to make a stand for queer people, for allies, try to move this denomination in a way I think is loving.

00:14:54 Speaker 4: That's awesome.

00:14:55 Tom Oord: So I thought, well, maybe I should write a book that kind of lays out my views. But then I thought, no, you know, what would be really powerful is if I kind of started a movement because I knew that there were X. Nazarenes, current Nazarenes, scholars who shared views similar to mine in like November of twenty twenty two. I got to get my dates right here. Maybe it's twenty twenty one. I came to my middle child and said, let's edit a book. Let's invite people who are current and former Nazarenes, straight and queer scholar, laity, parents, allies, whatever. And more than ninety people accept their invitation. Wow. We sent letters out in November or December, and we published that book within five months. That's insane. And they and they could be anonymous, right, if they wanted to. Nope. They had to. They had to come out and say who they were. Wow. So that many people were like, this is my name. This is what I say. That's awesome. And not only that, I called the book Why the Church of the Nazarene Should be fully LGBTQ plus affirming. So everybody and their mother knew exactly what this book was about. You basically put the thesis as the title. Exactly. Yep. And when that book came out, you know, of course the shit hit the fan. I mean, in fact, even before it came out, one of the contributors, the pastor in San Diego, was taken, was started a trial process, and he got kicked out of the denomination. Wow.

00:16:34 Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a cost. Yeah.

00:16:36 Tom Oord: By that summer twenty twenty two, a new set of charges was leveled against me. This, this. I'm the main person behind it was the district superintendent who was, you know, had taken away my assignment and not allowed me to preach. And I was charged with two things preaching against the doctrines of the denomination and conduct unbecoming a minister for my advocacy of queer, of affirmation.

00:17:03 Speaker 4: Okay. Wait. This was conduct.

00:17:06 Tom Oord: Unbecoming.

00:17:07 Speaker 4: Conduct unbecoming of a minister and follower of Jesus Christ. Because you're loving too much.

00:17:13 Tom Oord: That's the way I am. I the only one that is seeing the irony in this? Yeah. Wow. So they gave me those charges. Let's see the first of August of twenty twenty three. Yeah. So this was not too long ago whatsoever. This was this is fresh history. Yeah. And they told me that I should expect to go to trial. An official denominational trial. In fact, they took it out of my region. This was they took it off my district. It's going to be much bigger, the region of the United States. And that would probably happen in a month or two. So I immediately took the charges against me and the evidence and started writing my response. You know, well, a month, two month comes, I hear nothing, the fall comes, nothing. Winter comes. And now I'm thinking, okay, I think what's happening here is we're back to this. Let's just wait out the clock because, you know, that three year thing comes up. He's going to lose his credentials anyway. We can avoid a public trial. So I did something that, uh. well, I'm glad I did it, but I pushed the envelope in February of twenty twenty four. I sent a note to what we call our general superintendent. We have six general superintendents who run the denomination worldwide. And I said, since I've not heard anything about the trial, I'm going to assume that according to the manual, every person can expect a speedy trial. I'm just going to assume that these charges are dropped and begin telling people that's what's happening. Well, I got an immediate response then. Hey, you were communicating your assumption. That's right. But even though I got an immediate response saying, oh no, it's still going to happen, nothing happened for several months. And then it happened to be that one of the general superintendents was attending a local district assembly. So I walked up to him before one of the meetings and said, what's going on with this? And he said, well, you should be hearing something. Well, maybe three weeks later, I finally got a notice. Now, what I had decided was that I had three goals. One, I wanted to encourage queer people, two, I wanted to encourage allies, and three, I wanted to try to move the denomination toward an affirming position. Given that one of the writers of the book had already been kicked out, I was confident I was not going to win the trial. I was going to lose. Yeah.

00:19:46 Speaker 5: So you might as well try to make as big of a difference as possible through the trial.

00:19:50 Tom Oord: Exactly.

00:19:51 Speaker 5: Gotcha.

00:19:51 Tom Oord: That was my strategy. So I had taken my whole defense and written a book that I had you read called My Defense that you can get on Amazon. I published that baby before the trial.

00:20:04 Speaker 5: Oh, that was before the trial. So people could already read your answers. That's right.

00:20:09 Tom Oord: Yep. And I published it in ninety nine cents. So, you know, it was going to be a price problem. I also started a GoFundMe, and I hired local and national reporters to help carry my story, to sort of look for news outlets and things, and I hired a videographer to to do videos of me to post on social media. So I did this massive blitz. I wanted to get this stuff out there. I wanted a conversation to start. I wanted people to know there are people who are Christians in the Nazarene church who affirm them all, that sort of stuff. Well, of course, that didn't go well with the group. Is that the trial? And I knew it wouldn't. Like, I already knew I was going to.

00:20:54 Speaker 5: You weren't doing it for them.

00:20:55 Tom Oord: Exactly. Yeah. So I finally got my day in court the end of July. They not only found.

00:21:03 Speaker 5: This is July twenty four twenty four.

00:21:05 Tom Oord: Yep. July of twenty four. They not only found me guilty, they took away my credentials and my membership, so they kicked me out of the denomination as well. Yeah, it was pretty wild. And you know, you can go to my website. You can see their full statement, say things like, you know, my position is leading people to hell and all that kind of thing.

00:21:27 Speaker 5: Yeah.

00:21:28 Tom Oord: Um, yeah. So that's kind of I kind of gave you the long story, but I maybe that helps in some.

00:21:34 Speaker 5: No, it totally does. Thank you. And I, I love that you tried to to do as much as you could within the denomination until they wanted nothing to do with you. Right. So you didn't leave. They said, you know, that's it. And I imagine you found more freedom now that you've obviously been out of those constraints a little bit to speak a little of your mind, you.

00:21:53 Tom Oord: Know, it's mixed. Yes. Tons more freedom. I feel very, you know, weight taken off my shoulders.

00:22:00 Speaker 5: But maybe your people.

00:22:01 Tom Oord: Yeah, they were my people. I've been sixty years in that denomination, you know, I'm not quite sixty, but, I mean, most of my life. Yeah. And many of my friends are still a part of it now. Most of those are still my friends, but that's a part of my identity that is, you know, no more. I'm glad I did what I did, but there were costs involved, and one of them was losing a part of my identity.

00:22:28 Speaker 5: Yeah. And having that reformed. Right. Because it is part of your identity. And now it's like, now who am I? And. Right. And in your book, your defense, you argue that theology and correct me if I get this wrong. Theology must be judged by whether it reflects God's loving nature. And you describe that as relational theology? Yes. How does that conviction shape your understanding of the queer question within the Christian tradition?

00:22:56 Tom Oord: Well, what I care about most in life is living a life of love. And what I think God is most about is love. Now, love as a word has a bunch of different meanings when I'm using that word, I mean acting in ways that promote well-being, flourishing the good life. And since I not only know queer people in queer relationships who flourish, who find well-being, there's also just tons of psychological, sociological, scientific evidence that says queer relationships can be helpful. Healthy. Not all queer relationships are healthy, just not like all straight relationships. But there can be healthy. And so that means that I, as a person who thinks love is most important, I ought to be affirming of loving relationships in the queer community and queer identity, queer orientation. For me, that's at the heart of things. I don't want to be in a religion that has rules that I think undermine well-being, undermine flourishing, undermine love. That's my ultimate goal. So if that means leaving a group who I think has an unloving approach to sexuality, then I guess that's if they're going to kick me out, then so be it.

00:24:17 Speaker 5: Yeah, that's for the all the right reasons.

00:24:20 Tom Oord: I think so, yeah.

00:24:21 Speaker 5: Yeah, I do too. But a lot of Christians are told that affirming queer people and their lifestyle, which is so funny that I love that word lifestyle, I know, but but that's but that I'm so I'm kind of speaking like through that lens of, of most traditional or conservative Christians will say, affirming that community in that lifestyle. And they'll say, sinful lifestyle. I'm using air quotes. Yeah. Requires people to set aside Scripture.

00:24:51 Tom Oord: No, no, no.

00:24:53 Speaker 5: So how do you respond to that claim, especially in light of your emphasis on God's love as a core attribute like Scripture? Yeah, because they will use scripture like, hey, there's seven or eight verses that clearly say that this lifestyle is a sin and an abomination to God.

00:25:08 Tom Oord: Yeah. Usually what I do, if someone is really into the Bible stuff, I'll go through each one of those passages of scripture, starting with Leviticus. A man shall not lie with a man. And then I'll bring up the questions of other passages in Leviticus, like you shouldn't plan to feel with more than two kinds of crops, you shouldn't wear a shirt with more than two kinds of fabrics. And I'll say, okay, now, on what basis do you say some of these rules apply today and some don't? We have to have some basis. And everybody functions as if, well, maybe not everybody. There's some really hardcore conservative Jews who try to live by every single one of them. But every Christian I know, they they don't worry about what kind of clothes they wear, having two kinds of fabrics.

00:25:50 Speaker 5: Yeah, they're very selective of Scripture.

00:25:52 Tom Oord: Right. So we all have a functioning hermeneutic interpretive practice. And so for me, that practice is love. And so I don't have any problems wearing clothing with two kinds of fabrics, or men lying with men who are attracted to each other insofar as it promotes flourishing. And there are so many examples of that. I think the the strongest passage is in the one most people bring up is the Romans passage that talks about idolatry, putting away natural desires, men sleeping with men or men lying with men, women with women. I think that's probably the one that's the most explicit and the one I hear often.

00:26:32 Speaker 5: Okay.

00:26:33 Tom Oord: Now, when I first started going through this thing, I heard a lot of people saying, well, what Paul had in mind was the Roman practice of older men having younger boys as sexual objects. And that might be true. But what I find more convincing, especially for people who are really hardcore Bible people, is the fact that the Apostle Paul also says. He says it's unnatural for a man to be with a man or a woman to be with a woman. He also uses the same word unnatural. It's unnatural for men to have long hair.

00:27:08 Speaker 5: Mhm.

00:27:09 Tom Oord: It's right there in the Bible. But ninety nine out of one hundred people I talked to who are Christians against queer things, they. I got no problem with men having long hair. Yeah. They don't think that's immoral. And so I say, well, it sounds like that word natural then, is going to be partly culturally conditioned. What you think is natural is going to be dependent upon your own aesthetic desires and what a culture finds appropriate or inappropriate. And look, we live in a culture in which having men having long hair is no big deal aesthetically. Maybe a few people don't like it, but the rest, the vast majority do. Um, really, what the queer issue comes down to, even though most people don't admit it, it comes down to that yuck factor that I mentioned earlier. Yeah. Lots of straight people like me. We get grossed out thinking about anal sex or fingering vaginas. That stuff grosses a lot of people out. Okay, so you've got an aesthetic problem. It's yucky to you. Fine. I think tuna fish smells yucky, but I don't condemn people who eat it. Yeah. You know, we have to get past some of those aesthetic issues. The irony is, a lot of those same people like their very yucky out on men, on men, but not so much yucky out on women, on women. Yeah, right. That's a that's a turn on for most guys. Yeah. Every once in a while someone will bring up like the sociological and psychological data is so much on the side of queer affirmation, but occasionally you'll come across something that can give some support to a non-affirming position. And one of them is that there's more physical violence in gay relationships. Mhm. But what the people who point that out don't point out, is that there's less physical violence in lesbian relationships than in straight relationships. So if the goal is having the least amount of violence possible, women ought to stick with women. Take. Take the men out of it. Right. Yeah, well. And that that thought really sounds good at the surface of it, especially if you have a theology that this is a sinful lifestyle. Right? If that's your theology. Yeah. Love the sinner. Hate the sin. I used to believe that. You said. You used to believe that. And it it has a certain loving ring to it from our perspective of, look, I love you, but I. I really cannot in good conscience love the sinful choice that you're making. Yep. And they think that that is a very neutral stance. But me talking with members and friends that I have within the queer community, it is far from a neutral stance to them. No, it is a an assault on their very being, because so many of the people that I've grown to know and love over the years. They're like, I, I can't choose to like guys anymore than you can't choose to like women. Yeah. It's just part of who I am. So for you to say that you hate the lifestyle and you hate this. This nature of mine is. You are telling me that you hate me. Yeah. And they take it as so much of a deep rejection. Yep. Yep. I think you're right. And I think also in today's world, the reason I've been using the word queer and you're using LGBTQ plus is that we know that there's not it's not just about same sex attraction. Correct. It's also about multiple sex attraction. It's also about no sexual attraction. There's lots of variations. Intersex folks and. ET cetera. ET cetera. And I think it's pushing us as a society to try to think in much more pluralistic ways about sexuality. And that's hard to do. I mean, I think we should just be upfront about it, Going from thinking about sexuality in binary terms into non-binary terms. It's hard. It is? Yeah. My middle child has decided that they don't want to be regarded as female any longer. And so now we're trying to, as a family, change our vocabulary to call them they. It's tough man. You know, we've got thirty years of of calling my child she instead of they. Yeah. We're fully supportive. But give us some time. Yeah. Take some different thinking. And that's, I think, the place we are as a culture, at least people older like me. It's going to be harder for us to break certain habits. Yeah. Um, theologically.

00:31:41 Speaker 6: What's what's at stake in saying that God creates or permits love that is fundamentally second class, because some will argue that same sex relationships may be loving, but it's still not God's best design. What impact do you think that has on a person?

00:31:56 Tom Oord: Well, it not only has a negative impact on queer people, but I think it tells straight people, heterosexuals who engage in sexual intercourse that doesn't produce children, that they're second class. Mhm. It says that sexual expression is a must be for reproduction. And then that means that every couple who can't have kids or don't want to have kids, they're second class too. I think when we take a particular image of what the right way is, and that image is heterosexual activity with the aim of reproduction, then we end up not only saying to straight people who can't have kids, but single people who aren't involved in any sexual relationship. You're second class too. And there's good biblical verses you can bring up to say that singleness should be even better than married status, at least for the Apostle Paul. Yeah. So I think we have to, uh, have a much more expansive view of what is healthy when it comes to sexual sexuality, sexual practices, orientations, identities.

00:33:03 Speaker 6: I love how you you word it. Does this does this help you flourish as a right, as a human? And does this help you flourish, or is it are you feeling death right in your soul and in your spirit? And it's and that becomes such a personal choice, right? Because I don't know what's causing you to flourish or die necessarily inside. Right.

00:33:21 Tom Oord: Yeah. Well, and the truth is, each of us as individuals isn't always sure, right? That's part of being a part of life for so many people who are queer, they're pretty confident that the quote straightway is not a way of life giving, flourishing. And so working out what that means is like straight people, an ongoing thing. It's just not going to take a traditional straight form.

00:33:48 Speaker 6: Yeah, there's a lot that I had to undo And a lot of deconstruction and rethinking and and even with marriage, marriage almost became an idolatry in our tradition where like, divorce is the worst thing. Well, if this marriage for the past ten years has created a space where those two people are not able to flourish, are not able to grow and to expand and to to live life, but like it has been just giving them death and death and death for the last decade. Is that still a good relationship that they should be in, and should divorce be? Probably the best option? Is the person's individual Flourishment always come at a cost for that tradition of marriage. And so your theology really starts to unpack a lot of questions.

00:34:32 Tom Oord: Yeah, I think that's a great example, the way that today we realize that divorce might be the best thing for a couple. But let me add to that. Okay. Marriage today compared to a hundred years ago is radically different. How so? Let me give an it obvious case. Nine out of ten people I know have got no problems. For a person of color to marry a white person.

00:34:56 Speaker 6: Yeah.

00:34:57 Tom Oord: It took a long time in our country for that to be legal. Like a hundred years ago, that would have been as out there as a queer relationship of some kind. To be having a mixed race marriage is what they would call it. That would have been way that was against God's design. They would say. Yeah. And and even we don't even have to go that far. A hundred years ago in America, the traditional role of the husband is radically different from today. Even the role my father had compared to me is very different. Yeah, my dad didn't iron his clothes, didn't do laundry, didn't bake, didn't cook. I mean, I do all that stuff. But he would have thought at least. No, he wouldn't have. But people, many people his age would thought it was God's design for men to have certain roles in the house and women to have other roles.

00:35:50 Speaker 6: Yeah. You're being feminine by doing the dishes.

00:35:52 Tom Oord: Exactly. Yeah. So those things change even in straight relationships. I think we need to realize that they can change in other ways, too.

00:36:02 Speaker 6: Can we talk about relational theology a little bit?

00:36:03 Tom Oord: I'd love to.

00:36:04 Speaker 6: And this idea of this non-controlling God, because this also tips into this question, right, of sexuality and queerness and everything else like that is that is outside of God's design, which elicits that control thing.

00:36:19 Tom Oord: Yep, it sure does. Well, maybe I should set it up this way. Um, the number one reason, according to polls, why people say they can't believe in God is the problem of evil. If there's a God who's all powerful and all loving, then why doesn't this God stop? Prevent the pointless pain, unnecessary suffering, genuine evil of the world.

00:36:45 Speaker 6: The death of my sister for cancer. Yes.

00:36:48 Tom Oord: Yeah. Your cousin's rape, the Holocaust. Whatever. The pandemic. Most theologians punt on that issue. They appeal to mystery. Or even worse, they'll say, God keep punishing you. Or God's trying to build your character. You've got hidden sin. Or they'll blame the devil, even though they think God can control the devil, they got crappy answers. I think God can't control any person or anything because God loves every person and everything, and God's love is always inherently uncontrolling. So that means that when there is a abuse situation, there's a pandemic, there's a holocaust. Anything that happens, God alone didn't cause it, and God couldn't have prevented it single handedly. God didn't allow it, as I would have been taught when I was a kid in Sunday School, and that radically changes how people think about God. It doesn't mean that God's up on Mars just watching us from a distance. I think God is present and active, in fact, the most powerful force in the universe, in our lives and in the world, but never, ever, ever in a controlling way. So when it comes to sexuality, then we can say God didn't set up everything a particular way. God isn't causing or allowing her to be straight or gay or whatever. We always have flexibility. God never controls, and therefore we're always joining with God as companions and co-laborers. To use biblical language, our lives actually impact God and creation.

00:38:36 Speaker 6: So it's not even God chooses not to control because that that can set up like a very evil version of God. Like God has the power to control. But then, almost like the watchers in the Marvel Universe, like chooses not to get involved to chooses not to control. You're saying God cannot control, can't, can't, can't.

00:38:59 Tom Oord: That's right. Reminds me, I wrote a book called God Can't that I would recommend your listeners read. It's because it's aimed at a general audience. You don't have to have a theology degree, but one of the one of the people who read the book sent me a note. And she said I was repeatedly abused sexually by my brother when I was young. She said, one night I had this dream that Jesus came over during my time of being abused and held my hand.

00:39:29 Speaker 6: Wow.

00:39:30 Tom Oord: She said for a couple of days I was I was comforted by that. But then I thought, If Jesus is here and he's not stopping it, what kind of loving person is that? So she walked away from belief in God until she read my book and saw my proposal that God simply can't prevent not only free will creatures like her brother, but God can't even present a prevent cells and small organisms and quarks because God loves them too. And God's love is always uncontrolled.

00:40:05 Speaker 6: Yeah. So I, I hold to a belief currently and you know, could change. I'm open to that. But I, I currently hold to a belief that somehow, someway, in the end, God will bring all of creation and restore all of creation to himself, that in the end, none will perish. That God came to save the world through him. How that looks in my mind, and as I look through Scripture, is that if God is truly pure love, and all of the decisions that God makes is through love, we have never been in the presence of pure love. Yet I think in our existence, because we see as through behind a veil, we see as like through a broken mirror, our reality of God and the universe. I believe that if we are wired as as creatures to respond to love, and I see it here in this world through individuals. When you, Tom, love someone, that love changes them. That love has the power to transform them. And that's just from a human love. That in the end, when we finally stand in the pure presence of love, we will not help but be transformed and desire that love and that relationship. And so to me, it's kind of that relational thing that you're talking about. But others view that as as God is controlling, God is forcing people to choose him. God is changing their heart. And, and and I always say like, okay, could someone stick up a middle finger and say, fuck you, God, I'm out. I think that's a possible impossibility. Um, I think that that could happen. And honestly, at the end of the day, what God decides to do, like, that's not between me or anyone. That's up to them. Anyhow, I wanted to lay that out there. What are your thoughts about that?

00:41:56 Tom Oord: Sounds very similar to the view I have. The view I have I call the relentless love view. It says God always loves us. It invites us to loving relationship now and in the afterlife. Because I happen to believe in life after death and this invitation never ends.

00:42:16 Speaker 6: So death doesn't no remove a choice.

00:42:19 Tom Oord: That's right. You still have choices in the afterlife, and you can still say no to God in the afterlife. But God doesn't give up. God doesn't say, you know, Jeremy, I've given you ten million chances. There's ten million in once. This is your last one. Nope. In my view, God everlastingly gives you choices and you can choose to say yes or no. Now I'm like you. I'm optimistic that God's love will eventually woo everyone to say yes. But it's not a guarantee because love doesn't control. In fact, if God was omnipotent and could control that, God's doing a crappy job of running the world right now for sure. And so I don't think God can ever do that now or in the afterlife. But because I think God's love is relentless and God never gives up, I think we have the genuine hope that everyone and everything capable of responding to God will eventually will. And that's the kind of eschatology I find most winsome.

00:43:21 Speaker 6: So it's that hopeful. That hopeful universalism in a sense where. Yeah. And so you're almost saying, like, God's playing the long game, like, I'll, I'll, I'll love you. And if time's not a construct, you're like, you know, if it's a million years into God. It's a day.

00:43:35 Tom Oord: I don't like to label hopeful universalism, because so many people I know who use that their view of hopeful universal universalism is, well, I just hope that God controls everybody, and everyone goes to the good Place. Yeah, yeah. That's not my view, because I don't think God can control. So that's why I call mine the relentless love you. The God's love never stops. And that's why we have the hope that eventually everyone will cooperate. Yeah. Some people hear this and they say, oh, so in other words, it doesn't matter what we do. Everything ends up being okay. And my answer is no. When we say no to God's love in this life or in the next, there are natural negative consequences to that. Yeah. I don't think God ever punishes us, ever torments us, annihilates us, kicks us in the butt. But when you say no to what's good, the alternative is something less than good. And so there are natural negative consequences, not a punishing God.

00:44:38 Speaker 6: Yeah. And I think we even saw that at the very beginning in the garden. There was some very specific consequences. There was never this declaration of this cursed humanity for the rest of existence, as it were. And that idea that that God's love is transformative. I think it plays well with judgment. Some people when when they come back from like a near death experience, they say, I literally saw my life play out. When I did something that was hurtful. I felt that person's hurt. I felt that person's pain, and I saw it ripple out throughout their life and I and throughout their relationships, and I felt it. And when I did something loving and kind, I felt their feelings and how that transformed them and how that played out. And it was like this flash of a moment that took place in seconds, but they felt every single pain and love of their entire life. And so if you hurt more, you're going to feel just more hurt in that space of what I'm going to call judgment, because you are literally feeling the judgment of your actions, right? If that's how it plays out. Yeah. And if you love more, then that feeling of judgment is going to feel less. And I feel like that really aligns with a lot of what Jesus mentioned about about judgment. And those who obviously do more are going to be judged worse. Right? Used to translate, whenever I'd see the word judgment, it just you can just scratch it out and just put hell, right? Yeah. For the LGBTQ plus listeners who have been told that God loves them, but not their relationships, not their bodies, not their, uh, not their love. What do you want them to hear about God's love today? Not some day after they change. But right now.

00:46:21 Tom Oord: I want them to hear that God loves you in at least three ways. First of all, God's love is a love that seeks your flourishing, seeks your well-being. God wants that for all creation, but that includes queer people, and that can definitely include being in queer relationships. Secondly, I want them to know that God loves you means also that God sees things about you that are value, that God that's valuable, that God likes. God appreciates that God thinks are a worthy and beautiful, excellent, etc. and third, I want them to know that God also loves in a friendship companionship kind of way. That's what we've been talking about, relational theology. And that's at the core of that, that it's not just that God wants our well being, as important as that is not just that God likes us because we're value and sees great things about us, but also God wants to be a companion with us in a journey toward greater moments and experiences of well-being. So I would want to say those kinds of loves are not only to queer people, but to everyone. But especially, I think queer people need to hear that.

00:47:34 Speaker 6: That God is right there with you in that loving relationship and a part of that loving relationship. Yes, it goes beyond acceptance, right?

00:47:42 Tom Oord: Yeah, it does go beyond. I think, unfortunately, that phrase, uh, hate the sin, love the sinner. It starts with the assumption that queer behavior, identity orientation is sinful. And I just reject that premise right from the go. I can understand why people start there because of what they've been. They've heard. But I want to tell people the Bible doesn't require you to start with believing that queer behavior, orientation, or identity is sinful. So don't think that you have to. You're leaving the Bible if you're affirming queer people, you're not.

00:48:18 Speaker 6: Yeah, no you're not. I feel like you're actually embracing more of the heart of Scripture. I came across, years ago. A sad story of a mom who did just that. Loved her son, but hated the sin. And he came out to her and, uh, rejected him. And he ended up running away, leaving home. I think through that pain really got involved in in drugs and a flourishing lifestyle, as you would say. Right? Yep. Um, one that that wasn't good for him or for anyone. And he was with his boyfriend. And at some point the mom came along, came to a more embracing and loving. And a lot of times our relationships with that community can is the part that changes us.

00:49:06 Tom Oord: Yeah.

00:49:07 Speaker 6: But she finally started to have him back into her life, started to, um, accept him, but he just couldn't kick the drug habit that had been created. I would argue, in part because of that rejection of a mom of her son, and he eventually passed away of a drug overdose. He was in his early twenties. And as this this mom writes this story, she's like in tears saying, I would give everything to have you and your boyfriend sitting at my table having dinner and like, just the sense of grief and loss. But now she's out there speaking to moms and to other parents to try to really help them. And so many queer Christians can carry a deep spiritual trauma from being told that their love is is disordered and dangerous. From your understanding of God as uncontrollable relational love, does healing actually look like for faith, for identity, for trust in God? Again, maybe for those in that community.

00:50:13 Tom Oord: Well, first of all, let me say your story is a great example of why theology actually matters. People who think that beliefs don't really matter. Actions only matter. Well, most of your actions are fueled by your beliefs. And if you got bad beliefs, you're going to do bad actions. And those can have consequences that are difficult, if not impossible to reverse. So yeah, I feel for that woman and the whole situation for queer people who want to be a part of a faith community. There are affirming communities out there and they're growing. There's more and more of them. They used to just be one in America the Metropolitan Church Community Church. Now you can find the UCC, the Presbyterian Pcusa, I believe it is United Methodist. A lot of Episcopalian UU churches. So there there's increasing numbers of communities that will be affirming. And that's good news. But I can understand why queer people are reticent to become a part of a community again that's Rejected them. And so I would encourage people who are in that place to join some online community, some of which have in-person conferences of queer Christians who aren't a part of any denomination, but realize the importance of being a part of a healing community. You can find some of those various places online. So that's what I recommend.

00:51:46 Speaker 6: What is maybe healing look like in their heart towards God? And that might be individual.

00:51:51 Tom Oord: Well, you know, I'm a theologian, so I start with thinking about who God is. And it requires for a lot of people, a very different image of God. And unfortunately, the Bible isn't always helpful. You can find biblical passages that portray God as unloving. I think the general witness, and especially the witness we find in Jesus, points to a loving God. But I admit there are some portions of Scripture that portray God as a real dick.

00:52:23 Speaker 6: Oh, jeez.

00:52:24 Tom Oord: Yeah. And so I can't just say, just read your Bible and you'll find, you know. Yeah. So I think healing is probably gonna come for most people through a therapist and an affirming community.

00:52:40 Speaker 6: Mhm.

00:52:41 Tom Oord: So I would recommend looking for those to a good therapist and a good affirming community.

00:52:49 Speaker 6: If they're able to kind of rebuilding their idea of God. Yeah. Uh, that God is a good, good father. Yep. And and father may not even be the best term. Right. Like so use mother, use whatever word you need to. But kind of rewriting that God is legitimately good and loving and start there and rebuild it and deconstruct that. Yeah.

00:53:14 Tom Oord: You know, I've mentioned a couple of things I've written on these subjects. You know, this little book, my defense was my my actual defense at the trial. And I mentioned this book, God Can't, which is about evil and thinking about God as uncontrolling. But there's a book I wrote with Tripp Fuller called God After Deconstruction, and it takes the eight or so main reasons most people walk away from religion or God or faith and it legitimizes them. Says, yes, those are good reasons to walk away. But then it says, there's another way to think about this. There's another way to think about God, church, etc. and one of those chapters is on queer issues, but another one's on hell, another one's on the church, the Bible, you know, there's a bunch of different topics. I think I'd recommend that book to folks who are trying to figure out a way to reconstruct after being hurt in one way or another. And is that what ninety nine cents too. I don't think so. Authors have to make money as well. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's twenty bucks or something. Um, I think I actually got the audio version of that one. And you guys, you and you and Tripp really, uh, did a good job laying out a path forward. Because I think a lot of people will just deconstruct for the rest of their life. And I don't think that that's healthy or flourishing. I think right now, to a certain point, we should always ask questions and rethink things. But I think that age of deconstruction should be a period of time, and you should be able to to move through that. So God, after deconstruction. Good. Yeah. Thank you Jeremy, I've enjoyed the conversation. Yeah. Thank you for hopping on. And I love me some Tripp Fuller. Yeah. Um, I always want you to have the last word. So we talked a little bit about my audience, talked a little bit about what this podcast is, is for what would you say kind of leaving. I think I'm going to tell a personal anecdote to close. I told the story of my trial. I was such an emotional time, such a difficult time for me personally and for my family had literal health problems because of that. About a month after my trial concluded, I went to my first pride festival, and, uh, it was in Boise, Idaho, near where I live. I walked into this city block of all these booths and, you know, they had a stage and stuff going on. And I was about five minutes into the festival area, and this thought ran through my brain. These are my people. And I immediately started to cry. I just and I'm not a crying type, but I just like I lost it. I don't know if that was like that was the I hadn't cried during the trial, up to the trial, after the trial, until that moment. And it's just like the tears kept coming and I kept thinking, yep, these are my people. And I looked around and there were some pretty weird people there, and I thought, yeah, I'm weird. Just like these people are. These are my people. Um, and I think I mentioned earlier that going through that trial bring me freedom, but also I lost a great sense of my identity. But going to that pride parade made me feel like I brought on a new identity. And now I was identifying with people who had been outcast and still are outcasts And that's the kind of group I want to be with. Yeah. You felt that in a very real way. What it felt like to be outcast from your your people. Yep. Yep. Mhm. Well, next time you're in San Francisco, we'll go to that gay parade and you'll see a lot of your people there. That is a. That's right. That is a fun hoot. Uh, me and my daughters went there and it was a good it was a good time, but I, I love that story of just, uh. Yeah. Here, people. That's cool. Yeah. You're welcome. Well thank you, Tom, thank you for hopping on. We appreciate you and your mind and your your heart. And I know you say you're a theologian, but you're you lead with your heart. I really appreciate that. And I, I feel like I connected with someone here and consider you my, my brother, so. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Jeremy. I can't stop thinking about what Tom said at the pride festival When he walked in, looked around and thought, these are my people. As he cried, that moment, that shift. That's what this whole episode has been about. Not winning arguments, not bending scripture to culture, not bulldozing tradition, but asking one relentless question does our theology produce flourishing? Because if God is love, then love becomes the filter. And if our theology crushes people, isolates people, drives sons into addiction and mothers into regret, then something is off. If you're queer and listening here, this you and your love are not second class in the Kingdom of God. You and your love are embraced. If you're wrestling, keep wrestling. But wrestle all the way to love. Thank you for listening. Remember to walk in grace. And if you can't share that grace, I'll see you next week.