Is the Bible self-evident about sexual ethics? About anything?

Paxton Barkdull recently had me on the Theology With Friends Podcast to talk about vocational singleness and LGBT+ topics, including how I arrived at a historic sexual ethic.

It’s been a journey!

I grew up hearing that every biblical Christian believed that God was against homosexuality.

I was taught that God’s wisdom in Scripture is self-evident to every Spirit-filled Christian and all come to the same conclusion.

Then I met smart Jesus-loving people in college with different interpretations. The simplicity of a self-evident Bible crumbled, disorienting my sexual ethics and my whole understanding of God’s wisdom.

I had a crisis of faith: How do I know God’s wisdom? *Can* I know God’s wisdom? Is God even real if so many disagree?

Serious doubt nearly destroyed my faith, but I dug deeper for better answers.

At the time, a friend quipped, “It’s either a pope in Rome, a pope in the mirror, or something in between. Choose your pope!”

I wasn’t Catholic, but I also didn’t trust my own interpretations over the next human’s. So I explored the in-between’s in Christian history.

As I studied, I was struck by Christ’s promise that He would give us the Church, led by His Apostles and their successors, to teach the Scriptures and lead His people.

And I was surprised to learn that a vast majority of Christians throughout history have believed that the most trustworthy human interpreters are those Church leaders who can trace their authority back to the Apostles.

To be clear, most Christians haven’t believed the Apostles (or their successors) teach perfectly. But if I personally arrive at a different interpretation than the strong consensus of the successors of the Apostles on a particular theological question, then I’m probably mistaken.

After that, the question of sexual ethics was fairly easy.

When I read the whole of Scripture with the historic Church, I found overwhelmingly more evidence for historic sexual ethics than for ex-gay theology or a revisionist sexual ethic.

Listen to the rest of the episode at https://open.spotify.com/episode/1ZXJ8EgFbmrnABbWvenGMo?si=OAyFNS8GS3KeJzRVjb2OQg