Why Does God Care Who I Sleep With? Sam Allberry

Sam: The gospel is not well served by lots of mic drop moments, and there's such a cultural pressure to have the kind of zinger. Those make us look good, but typically the things that make us look good don't make Jesus look good. So, if we look a bit stupid, if we look a little bit inadequate and insufficient, actually that is a better witness to Jesus because He is the sufficient one.

Shelby: Yes.

Sam: Than me thinking, oh, I've got to look good, otherwise He won't look good. No, I just need to look weak so that He can look strong.

Shelby: Somewhat anxious, always authentic. This is Real Life Loading…

I'm Shelby Abbott, and I've got my friend Sam Allberry back with me again today.

Last time, Sam, you told us about your experience as a same sex attracted Christian who chooses not to act on those feelings, and you also wrote a book about it called Is God Anti-Gay?

Now to kick off this episode, I want to do a little segment with you we call One Star Wonder. I'm going to read to you some one star reviews from your book on Amazon and give you a chance to respond to those reviews. So, we'll start with Emily.

Emily wrote that, “The opinions expressed in this book are actively causing deep psychological harm to members of the LGBTQ community around the world, and I personally find that despicable. I'm glad he believes that gay people deserve to be loved, but claiming to love someone while simultaneously telling them that something core to their being is inherently sinful is extremely harmful. I'm honestly very sad for Allberry because he's clearly suffering from self denial and self repression. For him to pass off his choices as wise and dispense advice to the vulnerable is just depressing.”

Wow. So, a little bit of a light question to start things off.

Sam: Well, I mean, that's actually a very thoughtful one. Yes, I think I'd want to say, firstly, I really do understand why she feels that way, because by her own logic, she's right. If disagreeing with something that's part of someone's core identity is intrinsically, catastrophically harmful, then yes, by her own logic, what I'm doing is despicable and awful.

So, I'd want to say to her, “Well, firstly, what if it isn't part of your core identity? What if that actually is itself something culture is pushing on us and making us think and believe? Culture is kind of funneling us to see our true sense of identity as being based on our sexual feelings.

What if that is a thing actually that is restrictive and suffocating and diminishing of who someone really is? What if there's so much more to us than that one part of our existence? Such that we then don't freight that one part of existence with so much life and death, be all and end all. If this isn't affirmed and going well, then life is over itself.

Shelby: Yes.

Sam: So, I think I'd want to say actually, “It's that very worldview itself that is pouring gasoline on the mental health issue.” Because it's culture that is saying this part of your life is the absolute key and if that's not affirmed by everyone, then they hate you and the world's against you and you're not, you're missing out on the one thing that can make you truly satisfied and authentic if this isn't going well.

That is such a dangerous message.

Shelby: Yes, yes.

Sam: So, I'd want to share all that. I'm glad she heard me say people are worthy of being loved. I'd want to lean into where that comes from. What it means to be made in God's image. And again, to use that as a basis for why to reduce someone to their sexual feelings is actually, that is the thing that is deeply diminishing their humanity.

So yes, I get why she's saying what she's saying. But there are some massive underlying assumptions behind what she's saying, and I wonder if she's ever really thought those through because those are often just assumed foundations for the way people think.

Shelby: Yes, that's great. I know that you would be kind and sensitive to a person like that as they were talking with you and sharing you know like I said very heated opinionated kind of stuff.

I'll share one more with you here. Milton said about your book, “It is religious dribble”, which I think is an interesting word. “Religious dribble trying to convince gay men and women that homosexuality is wrong and should remain celibate. It says, live your life and find a liberal church that allows you to be who you really are. Same sex relationships should not be shunned. This is bigotry in the highest form.”

Sam: Yes, yes. And again, there's a similar worldview there of you've got to be who you are with the assumption that we know who we are. And therefore, we know what it means to be who we are because we're grounding that in, Oh, sexuality. That is the thing that shows me who we all are.

So that needs to be thought through and needs to be gently prodded against. Why is that the case? Why is so much of the rest of humanity not made the same connection between identity and sexuality? Is that, maybe that's just a weird Western thing.

Shelby: Mm hmm.

Sam: And therefore, this idea that you've got to be who you are to have the best kind of life. Again, to think about what that means in the light of Jesus himself saying that it's out of the heart that come evil desires and that's across the board. That's not aimed at any one demographic, that's species level diagnosis.

Shelby: Yes.

Sam: Which is why the more we burrow into our own hearts and being true to our own hearts, the more depressed we are. And it takes a lot of mental energy to convince myself that all the things I'm seeing deep in my heart are really good, and everyone has to agree with them, because they're not. And it's okay that it's not, because that's why Jesus has come, to help us with that, and to supply from himself all that is lacking in us.

Shelby: Over the years... No doubt you've become a lot more adept at being able to answer hard questions like this, whether you do like a Q& A after a talk, or you have an open kind of forum discussing your book. Has there ever been times when you're just like, I do not know how to answer this question, and What did you say in those moments? Like when you were like, I don't know.

Sam: Yes, I used to be terrified of any kind of public Q and A kind of thing until I realized it honors Jesus When we say, “I don't know.”

Shelby: Okay, what do you mean by that?

Sam: Well, as in we're not called to know everything. Jesus knows everything, so my job is to point people to Him, not to pretend to be Him.

And so sometimes the honest answer as a Christian is, I don’t know the answer to that. But here are some reasons why I don't need to know the answer to that to live as a Christian right now. All I can do is give the best account that I can of why I follow Jesus Christ and to commend Him is as well as I can.
I'm not going to be able to answer every question everyone throws at me. But I can be honest, I can always be honest. And sometimes it's when I've answered a tricky question with, “You know what, I don't know”, but this thing over here is helping me with not knowing the answer to that thing over there.

Sometimes people have come up to me afterwards and that's been the thing that's had the greater impact than any snappy answer to some other question.

Shelby: Yes.

Sam: So therefore, if I don't have to fear saying, “Oh, I don't know.” Then I don't need to fear being asked things. And occasionally someone will throw a question at me, and I'll be like, “Oh I've never thought about that before.” I remember I was doing something not long ago where someone said, “Well, can you think of a reason not from the Bible why same sex relationships are wrong?

And I was starting to think, I was like, “Oh, I don't know.” Because I'm so used to answering this question from the Bible.

Shelby: Yes, from the Scriptures.

Sam: For me, that's, that's the authority and the reason for it all.

Shelby: Was there, did you come up with anything?

Sam: Not in the moment. No. But since then I've been trying to think at a more conceptual level about how our culture prizes diversity. It prizes diversity of male and female. And so, when there's a company board that's all male, there's an outcry, “You need female voices in there.” And I want to say, “Let's take that principle and apply it, not just to what can make for a healthy company, but what can make for a healthy romantic relationship?”

And say, if we recognize at an instinctive level, there's something a female voice brings that additional male voices can't bring.

Shelby: Right.

Sam: Would we not expect that also to be true at the most intimate part of the spectrum of human relationships?

Shelby: Yes, that's really good. Yes, there's been plenty of times when I'm like, in the moment, I'm like, I don't know, and I'm like, oh, I wish I would have said this.

Sam: Yes, on the drive home I have, you know--

Shelby: --That's when you're like, “Oh, that would have been brilliant.”

Sam: But the other thing is, again, I don't worry about that because the gospel is not well served by lots of mic drop moments. And there's such a cultural pressure to have the kind, the zinger, and those make us look good. But typically, the things that make us look good, don't make Jesus look good.

If we look a bit stupid, if we look a little bit inadequate and insufficient, actually that is a better witness to Jesus. Because He is the sufficient one for me thinking, “Oh, I've got to look good.” Otherwise, He won't look good. No, I just need to look weak so that He can look strong.

Shelby: Yes. Because yes, “My is power is made perfect in our weakness.” [Paraphrased] Wouldn't that then mean that we should even like go looking for our weaknesses and find them and lean into them in ways that God can shine.

I'll wrap up this segment time, is that a few people, I'm not going to quote them specifically, but they also said that the book is essentially an attempt to push the pray the gay away agenda, which you've probably heard that before. Now that's a cliche that gets thrown out around a lot. What's your response to someone who might call your book and attempt to do that?

Sam: If it's an attempt to do that, it's not been very successful. There was a ministry I was involved with that was trying to resource the wider church around these conversations and just try and help people have nuanced, gracious ways of articulating biblical truth. Someone in the UK parliament said, “This is another form of gay conversion therapy.”

So, we had to go and we were investigated by the charities commission. We had to go to their office and this suited guy said to us, “You know, are you trying to do reparative therapy?”

And I said, if we are, we're really bad at it because it's not worked on us. And he actually said, “Oh, I don't think there's anything else to ask then.” [Laughter]

So, no, I've, I've never. That's not the point of this, because the point of the gospel is to make us more like Jesus and making someone more heterosexual does not make them less sinful. So, no, it's not so much pray the gay away.

Obviously, you know, I was reading 1 John recently. John says, “I write this so that you may not sin. But if we do sin, we have an advocate who speaks in our defense.” So, we want in our gospel preaching for all of us, to be helping people not sin. We want to be those who, in the language of that epistle, have overcome the evil one, that we're not bound to sin in the way that we once were.
That is a deeper, better form of change than simply trying to switch from, you know, same sex lust to heterosexual lust.

Shelby: Yes, yes.

Sam: So, it's not pray the gay away in terms of here's seven steps to becoming straight. It's more how can we all move forward in our sanctification and love Jesus more, hate sin more. Put to death the deeds of the flesh, which again, are not unique to one particular demographic.

Shelby: Well, I wanted you to know, as I read through the one star things and tried to pick out a few things, I felt very defensive over, over you, my friend.

Sam: Well, the only, the only one star reviews, I don't tend to read reviews, but the only ones that really offend me are the book arrived damaged one star and I'm like, that wasn't my fault. They can't pin that on me. That's not the book's fault.

Shelby: Yes, yes. I totally saw a few of those too. It's like the paper was printed in a weird way. I was like, Sam did not do that.

Sam: Yes, the delivery guy put it in the wrong place.

Shelby: Blame FedEx, not me. As we talk about this kind of stuff, it's easy the minutiae of all the details of what's going to be happening, and how culture is shifting, and how the church is losing, and all that kind of stuff. So where are you hopeful for the future when you think about the LGBTQ community and the church?

Sam: Yes, I'm hopeful because Jesus says, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail.” Isaiah 9. “of the increase of his government and of peace, there will be no end.” There's so much we get wrong in any typical generation. We look at the church around us, we look at the American evangelical scene now and it's easy to think, man, are we, are we getting anything right?

And that's discouraging, but you sort of think, “Okay, well the gospel is still the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.” So yes, there's certain things that feel more challenging culturally now than maybe they did 20 years ago. There may be certain things the church is blundered into that are not helping us right now.

But the gospel is the gospel. People are still people. Jesus is still with us in our charge to make disciples of all nations. If this was down to us, then I would be very depressed. But it's not, it's the Lord's work and in any generation of just Christians being crazy, God is still working to bring people to Himself. And uses knuckleheads like you and me somehow to do that too.

Shelby: So, a lot of things that can get us down are the, like you said, “The knuckle headedness of Christians.” And you experience that very up close and personally. You used to work for Ravi Zacharias International Ministries. And for you, if you're listening, you don't know the significance of him. Ravi was a Christian apologist who was world renowned. He was known all over the world, traveled and spoke everywhere, defending the Christian faith, wrote tons of books. There were a little bit of rumors that maybe he was mistreating some women in particular, some allegations of sexual abuse and it was kind of dismissed for a while. Then Ravi ended up getting cancer and passing away.

After he passed away, then all of this stuff kind of came to light that it was true, that a lot of what he was being accused of was true. And you used to work for the organization. You didn't know Ravi that well, but what did God teach you through that?

Sam: I mean so many things. There's more I need to be taught, I'm sure from the whole process. But the thing that really came home to me was you just said, I didn't know Ravi that well.

Everyone assumed someone else did. And I was talking to guys who were senior in the organization who'd been there for decades. I was like, you must have, you know, I assumed you were like best buds with Ravi and everyone, never went to his home, never hung out.

And I was thinking, “Okay, this guy was not known by other people.” And it reinforced to me how essential it is for our Christian health to have people who know us. James 5 says, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed.”

Shelby: Yes.

Sam: That's not an optional thing that, we need that. We need people who know the worst things about us, who know what's really going on in our lives. - That we can be open with and honest with and there's a measure of healing that comes just from the process of doing that.

Ravi didn't have that, probably from what I can tell by his own design. He kept people at arm's length. But just who do you confess your sins to? Is a question that has been resonating with me ever since then.

I remember coming out of that crisis thinking, “Honestly, I just want to be a healthy Christian in a healthy church.” I really don't care about anything else. At one point, I remember thinking, “Okay, I don't know what I'm going to do next. It's all over now for this organization. I'm about to be unemployed. What am I going to do now?” I just started to move here. I love my church here in Nashville. I remember just thinking, “Okay. Healthy Christian, healthy church. You found a healthy church, stay there and whatever it takes to stay there, do that.”

I remember thinking, “Okay, if that means getting a job at Starbucks so that I can stay here and be at that church, that is going to be better for my long term spiritual health than taking up some flashy ministry position anywhere else.

I still feel that way. I'm now one of the pastors at that church, but I, I even said to, you know, when they were interviewing me about that and putting me through the process, I remember saying, “Yes, this is an amazing honor and amazing privilege, but on one level, I don't really care if I'm a pastor here or not. I actually care whether I'm a member here or not. And being a pastor isn't the win for me, being a member here is a win for me.” And if the pastor thing doesn't work out, I can live with that, but I'm still going to be here.

Shelby: Yes, and they were like, that's exactly what we wanted to hear, you're hired.

Sam: But yes, but that's honestly how I still feel that way. It's, I love being a pastor here, but, um, not as much as I love being a member here.

Shelby: A lot of people had, you know, when, when scandals like Ravi's came out and other scandals, their faith was rocked by that. Your faith doesn't seem like it was rocked by that. Why would you say it wasn't?

Sam: Well, I know for some people, there were, there were people for whom Ravi's ministry had been so significant, either in their coming to faith or in their growth as a Christian.

Shelby: Helped me a ton.

Sam: I know people are like, I came to faith through his ministry, so what does that say about my faith? That can feel like a, an existential kind of question. That wasn't the case for me. I actually, not through any design on my part, it just hadn't been a big part of my own Christian growth.

So I was slightly one step removed from that point of view. But the other thing for me is that as the scandal broke and all the truth came out and just the awfulness of it all, it just made the gospel more precious and more urgent.

And I remember thinking, we're never going to discover some dirty hidden side of Jesus.
The only surprises we get with Jesus are the good ones of, “Oh wow, He's even better than I thought He was.” He's even more gracious.

And therefore let's just keep looking to him. I remember thinking in Romans 5 where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, and thinking the extent of the mess of this particular man's sin is so far reaching. It's global. But that must mean that eventually the grace will go even further.

Shelby: Now, some people might hear what you say, they might be responding with like, “Is it really that simple? Like, to just be able to move forward and treasure the gospel more and not be affected by that?” Are there some like practical ways that a person can move into appreciating and loving Jesus more in the midst of having a hero of them fail?

Sam: Yes. When I talk about looking to Jesus through all of that. I don't mean to imply that's the only thing I needed to do. It is always obviously the most important thing I needed to do. There were lots of other things I was doing at the same time. There's lots of soul searching that needs to go on.

You find that the organization you've been embedded in, this has been going on at the center of it. You've got to ask yourself a lot of questions of what unhealth has there been in this organization that's rubbed off on me. And I need to assume more of it has than I think has.

So, there's a lot of self examination, there's lots of questions to ask about how we do governance in our, our ministries and what boards are for and the culture of our ministries and whether the culture of our ministry is matching the message that we are proclaiming.

There's listening to victims and making sure they are heard and cared for. So, there's a whole suite of things that we do need to do and be responsible to do. Looking to Jesus for me was, was the heart of it all, and the thing that actually then enables you to do all of those other things as well.

Shelby: Yes, there is the hard work of diving into it and picking out the unhealthy things from the healthy ones, but ultimately it rests on Jesus.

Sam: And that is not like, “Okay, I'll get all of that done on Thursday.” That's many, many months and it's still going on these years later.

Shelby: Well, I wanted to talk about one last thing with you and share this. So, I told you about the letter of forgiveness that I ended up writing to my father. That happened in the context of, I would call, an awakening for me. I was reading in Mark chapter 8 when Jesus pulls aside the blind man, and He spits on his eyes. And then the blind man says, I see men, but they look like trees walking. And then Jesus covers his eyes again, and then he's healed, and he could see clearly.

God really used that scripture to help me understand that in many ways, I could see for a long time, spiritually speaking, but A lot of what I was seeing was trees walking as opposed to the clarity of people.
God used a particular instance of pain in my life, physical pain with my nerve in my back that really like focused my attention like laser focused what I needed to be concentrating on. I was able to see clearly in ways that I never had before, because the gospel was not just this thing that I shared with other people or this thing that I talked about on a podcast. It was actually applicable to every part of my life from my ministry, of course, but to how I talked to my children, how I reacted to my wife's accusation of whatever, to how I thought about the other person in the car who just cut me off when it's just me in the car. The gospel was affecting every part of my life in ways that it hadn't before.

And I thought, you know, I've been a Christian now for 20 some odd years, and I'm finally seeing in ways that I hadn't seen before. Now that doesn't mean that like all my past was just, you know, worthless. Of course, it wasn't. But it made me think, “How is the gospel transforming my life in ways that it hadn't been transforming before?” So, I started to ask a few of my friends this question. For you, where are you currently seeing clearly like gospel wise, instead of seeing trees walking?

Sam: I think one particular area. It's not that I that was completely absent and now it's fully present, but where I feel like I have changed is really seeing people as made in the image of God. And thinking every single person I run into A is amazing, B is a mess, and so I'm less frustrated with people than I used to be and more amazed at people.

And it's not that my doctrine of sin has diminished, it's actually intensified. But just that sense of how much every single person matters and how much I want everyone to feel dignified by any encounter they have with me. Because if the opposite happens, I'm picking a fight with the God in whose image they're made.

If I'm despising them, I'm despising Him, and I can't hide behind their sinfulness and say, “Well it's just their sin that's annoying me.” Because I'm still denigrating, James 3 says, “We sing God's praises and curse people made in His image.” God has helped me with that. Again, I've got further to go on that front. But I feel the change that has brought about. I'm more interested in other people than I am fearful of them.

And I think back again to teenage socially anxious me, I was terrified of people. I still have those moments, that there are moments when that social anxiety still will occasionally peak and intensify. But generally, I'm more interested in the person who's just run across my path that I am kind of fearful of what are they going to think of me? Are they going to hate me? Are they going to reject me? There's more self forgetfulness than there used to be and realizing how profound every single person is.

Shelby: Fantastic perspective. I had one such moment like that and it went away, and I need to work on it more. But I was at the airport, and I was going through security at TSA and normally that is the event that always triggers me to make me angry at everybody from the person behind the counter to the person running the machines to the people I'm in line with. But I had this like beautiful moment where I was like all these people matter to God all of these people matter to God. As opposed to they're in my way in preventing me from getting where I want to go. I need to be thinking these people are important to the God I serve.

Sam: Why is this person thinking they can take a can of kerosene through the x ray machine? And you know, my equivalent of that is not the TSA line. It's the boarding process. Because I know what group I am in. And so, the group that is boarding before me, I'm like, I can't believe this many people are part of that group.

And I actually start looking over people's shoulders to try and look at their boarding pass to think, should you be boarding before me? The Pharisee is just exploding out of me. I'm like, Wolverine, what are you doing? How much does this really matter?

Shelby: Yes, well, I love talking with you whenever I get the chance to do so. You are one of those people that it really is such a pleasure to be able to call you my friend, and so I'm thankful.

Sam: Well, I feel the same way about you, Shelby. You've been a great, great friend to me. Thanks for having me on here as well. Fun to be with the rest of you listening,

Shelby: I hope you were able to see either a bit of yourself in Sam and find hope in the gospel, or see how Sam responds to some really tough things in life and say, “I want to find hope in the gospel the way that he does.” Regardless, there is always hope in the gospel of Jesus, because it's the power that legitimately changes lives.

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I want to thank everyone on the Real Life Loading... team. You guys are amazing. I'm Shelby Abbott, and I'll see you back next time on Real Life Loading...

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