Tim Muehlhoff:
Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a Professor of Communication at Biola University in La Mirada, California. I'm also the co-director of Biola's Winsome Conviction Project that tries to open dialogue rather than close it, both inside the church and outside the church. One of the great things about being at a university is we get some unbelievable guests coming to the university.
It is such a treat to be here, and when we get these guests come, we obviously want them to talk to our students. We care very deeply about our student population. We do want to raise up a new generation of Christians who are serious about speaking truth and love, but we also have these guests come and speak to our faculty. We call them Faculty Table Talks. We provide lunch, and we bring in some of the top speakers and writers today within Christianity.
A real treat today was we had Rebecca McLaughlin. She holds a PhD in Renaissance literature from Cambridge University, and a theology degree from Oak Hills College. She is Co-Founder of Vocable Communications, and former Vice President of Content at the Veritas Forum. Rebecca, welcome back. We actually had you on in a previous podcast a while ago, but it's so great to have you back. Thank you for joining us.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Thanks for having me.
Tim Muehlhoff:
It was a great conversation last time, and I encourage you, listeners, go back. We talked about a book that won Christianity Today's Book of the Year Award. I don't want to brag, Rebecca, but Rick and I wrote a book that got a Merit Award from Christianity Today, which is a really polite way to say we came in second, but you got the Book Award, which means according to Christianity Today, this is the best book of all categories that they really suggested.
Let me just give my hearty endorsement of it. We actually read it in a small group, spent months talking about it, and it was such a treat to read your book, and deeply encouraging to my faith.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Oh, gosh.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Thank you so much for all the work you did. Listen, you have to have an apologetic library, and I think along all different levels, and I think your book really fits the middle. It's great research, but it's accessible.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I love it.
Tim Muehlhoff:
I'm glad it's a rare combination to have both of those. You spoke at Table Talk, you spoke to our faculty.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I did.
Tim Muehlhoff:
They absolutely loved it. I actually confronted Rebecca walking over here, because I think it's totally unfair. She spoke without notes. She has a killer British accent and she graduated from Cambridge. You got to think about people you leave in your wake, Rebecca.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Shall I try and do an American accent for the rest of the time?
Tim Muehlhoff:
Oh, do it. Oh, can you do an American accent? Okay, I won't make you do it.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I can only do a particular thing my mother-in-law says, so I'll... No.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Do you know what's really sad? When I try to order a burger or water, people don't understand me, so I'm on a flight and they say, "What do you want to drink?" I say, "Water." They say, "What?" I say, "Water." They say, "I'm sorry?" A drive-through McDonald's is my absolute nightmare.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Oh, that's hilarious.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
"May I have a burger, please?" Like, "What?" "Just a burger." It's bad.
Tim Muehlhoff:
You totally remind me of Emily Blunt because she married an American, John Kravinsky, and she says that her kids are now, she tried to raise them with a British accent, but they're now adopting an American one. She used water as the example.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yeah, it's pretty hard.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah, she said it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Okay, so back to the life-changing-
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Sorry.
Tim Muehlhoff:
No, no, this is great. Back to life-changing thing. Here's what I loved about your talk is at a time that I think Christians have lost confidence a little bit, because we read headlines, and the way we get framed, at least in the American context, in media, boy, we get pegged as being the out-of-touch, conservative, anti-intellectual, homophobic. I think Christians start to duck and cover after a while.
Your talk today was, boy, we need to have confidence. You actually made the point that you think today is the most evangelistically pregnant time in a long time, that people are right to hear the gospel. Now, can you just break that down real quick, and then we'll talk about the substance of your talk?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yeah. I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or the People's Republic of Cambridge as it's sometimes called, and I go to a little Southern Baptist church there, believe it or not. We are seeing people walk into the doors from all sorts of different backgrounds. I'll tell one story. For example, a young woman who I had coffee with a couple of weeks ago who comes from Canada, she's a scientist, parents are Vietnamese, so she'd been raised Buddhist.
She moved to Cambridge for a postdoc to sort of further study of science after her PhD. After a year or so she, started thinking, I don't really have answers to the big questions of life. She started reading a bit of philosophy, and she sort of found it interesting. She still wasn't quite sure. Then a guy in her lab, like a fellow scientist, started telling her about Jesus. He recommended she read C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, so she did.
He recommended she read Tim Keller's The Reason For God, so she did. After reading those, she thought this makes more sense than anything I've ever come across. She started reading the Gospels just this past summer a couple of months ago, and she said, "That was the love that I was looking for. I saw it on the pages of the Gospels." She started coming to our church. Now, this is one of, I could spend the rest of our time on this podcast telling you stories of people who demographically shouldn't have been the ones who responded to Jesus.
They shouldn't have been interested. They checked all the boxes, people who were Gen Z, identified as LGBT, grew up in California, went to a world-class university, scientists. People who on paper you would think, they're not going to be interested, who are walking into our church again in Cambridge. We're not in the Bible belt. This is Cambridge, Massachusetts. I see that anecdotally on the ground. Then the book that I'm currently working on is going to be called How Church Can (Literally) Save Your Life.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Oh, nice.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
It's looking at the mental and physical health benefits of going to church every week, which have been highly documented by the Harvard School of Public Health no less. We are in a period of mental health crisis. We have an epidemic of loneliness. We have unprecedented levels of depression and anxiety. We have all sorts of things which all of us would recognize are really bad happening in our culture today.
The data shows that going to church once a week or more is really good. People around me in Cambridge are desperate for the next mental health hack or what's going to protect my children from ending up in a mental health institution in their teenage years, which is sort of more and more common for young women in particular. People are looking for how can I live a longer and healthier life? We're in California, where everybody is desperate to live a long and healthy life.
It turns out that going to church every week is one of the best things you can do for your mental and physical health. Now, that's not the gospel, but I think it's important for people to hear that, because it's not that, we probably are all aware church attendance has declined in the US quite dramatically in the last 25 years, but it is not ushering in the sort of happy, healthy secular age. It's literally killing people. It's producing sadness, and loneliness, and depression, and isolation, and all these things.
I feel like we're in a season now, and I think back 20 years to when I was in college, 20 years ago, I knew that Jesus was the hope of the world, and I knew that the students around me who were making completely different choices, I knew there were bad choices because I read my Bible, but now I can also show them the receipts. It's demonstrably actually bad for them. I just think we're in a somewhat different season where people are searching.
People come to our church, saying, "I've tried different kinds of sexual relationships. I've tried astrology, I tried crystals, I tried tarot cards, I tried meditation, I tried Zen Buddhism, and nothing worked. Tell me about Jesus."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Wow. A parenthetical comment and then a question. We need to hear more of those stories. When I went to school, I went to Eastern Michigan University Secular School, but I went to crew as an undergraduate. We would hear these testimonies almost every week in the weekly meeting of, "Hey, I shared the four laws, the gospel with my next door neighbor. He prayed to receive Christ. I actually shared with my professor and they were really open to the gospel. We had a great..."
You would sit and listen to these, and you'd go, "Maybe I should take a chance, because this seems to be working." I don't think we hear enough stories of people walking into churches and actually being open to the gospel and receiving the gospel. I think we need to hear more of these.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yes. Well, see, I agree. That's partly, I have a podcast called Confronting Christianity, where amongst other things, I interview people. Like last week I interviewed someone who was raised in a Hindu family, then was Zen Buddhist for a while, and then she's a professor at Georgetown University or George Mason University, forgive me, I think, in economics. She became a Christian a couple of years ago, already a professor.
Again, demographically, you would've thought, no, probably not her kind of thing. There are so many of those stories to be told. At the same time, I have a friend called Glenn Scrivener who's based in the UK, he's Australian, but he's lived in the UK for a long time. It's like, there's a sort of global exchange of, I moved to America from Australia, it's all, and Chris Watkin, another friend of mine moved from England to Australia, so everybody, we're all passing around.
Glenn's got a new book coming out on evangelism, where one of the points he's making is sort of saying, "Hey, how's your evangelism going? Does it feel like kind of hit-and-miss, but honestly more missed than hit?" All of us, I think if we're honest, we'd be like, "Yeah, it's a lot of miss." A lot of times I might try something, and this just falls flat, or somebody doesn't want to hear, or somebody seemed interested and then they just never followed through. Like, look, miss, miss, miss, miss, miss, hit. Miss, miss, miss, hit.
Glenn says, "Look at the Parable of the Sower. That's actually exactly what we should expect if there are these different kinds of soil, and it's not up to us to figure out where the good soil is. It's up to us to throw that seed to in season and out of season, take the opportunities we have to share the gospel with people, and then it's up to the Lord who is going to receive it, and grow, and produce a harvest of a hundredfold."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Oh, that's good. Perfect transition to your talk, because you said in the talk that we need to re-educate people. I think this re-education could be tilling the soil, is that people have certain ideas about Christianity and you're saying, "I think they need to be educated." You mentioned different areas that you thought we need to reclaim as Christians. Do you want to share those real quick, and then maybe we can dive into each one?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yeah, yeah. I think we need to, number one, reclaim diversity. Number two, reclaim the university. Number three, reclaim morality, and number four, reclaim sexuality. We need to do all of those things with humility, and not by watering the scriptures down, but by lapping them up.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Oh, that's great. But by the way, we work with a group called Bridging the Gap, run by Simon Greer who identifies himself as a secular Jew. He does not believe in God, but very much values his Jewish heritage. He came to Biola University and spoke in chapel, and here's what he said in chapel. He goes, "You guys are holding back too much. You need to give us Jesus as you believe. I get why you guys are a little bit gun shy, but we need more of you, not less of you."
I thought, boy, what a great admonishment coming from a secular Jew. I love what you're saying is we need more of the Bible, not less of the Bible. I know we don't have a ton, but let me cover one thing real quick. I'm going to put two stars by this, Rebecca. Two stars.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Okay,
Tim Muehlhoff:
You said that, all right, so we're going to re-educate, but love should swell from our hearts as we re-educate people. Okay. Let me tell you about a project that we're doing right now. It's called The Heart of Civility. Tyndale House is going to publish this book, it's going to be church curriculum and for Christian high schools, churches, parachurch groups, because we believe it's got to start in the heart. We have to have a heart change before we get to techniques.
Techniques are going to get thrown out the window the minute your emotional button gets pushed. Okay. What would you say to our listeners? Okay, I don't have a love for these people. I honestly don't. I want to re-educate, but I want to do it with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I really want to educate you and set you straight without the love. What would you say to a person who honestly has said, "I'm stuck. I don't love my neighbors, I really don't. If anything, I'm really angry at them." Where do we start? How do we begin to get traction?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yeah. My friend Rachel, who's also on campus at the moment, often reminds me that anger is, people say a secondary emotion, that usually if you're angry, if you sit and reflect for a while, it probably springs at least in part out of fear or out of hurt. That's usually, we've got to angry from another source.
My suspicion is that many people today, who, if they're honest, as you say, look at their neighbor who may not be a Christian and who may be very opposed to Christianity and what they're saying, or how they're living, or whatever, and they're feeling anger, my guess is that there may be a couple of things going on. One is that I think it's easy to feel hurt, because when you've been pigeonholed, or called names, or demeaned by people, it's easy. All of us are going to feel hurt. It's easy for sort of anger to come out of that.
To that, I would say, Jesus presents for us in the Gospels, he teaches any models, a vulnerability and a willingness to receive hurt actually and to love back when he says, "You've heard that I've said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' I said to you, 'Love your enemies. Pray for those pesky.'" He didn't just say that. He did it, literally being nailed to the cross. I think there can be that sort of hurt that produces anger. I think there's also a fear that can produce anger.
Again, I'm commenting a little bit of a voice from the outside, because I come from a different country, I've been here 16 years, but what do I really know? I have at least an outsider's perspective, which can, sometimes I find outsider's perspectives helpful as I reflect on things.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yes, yes.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I think there are many people in the US today who feel the pain of a sense of culture having moved a lot during their lifetime. Maybe there are folks listening who experienced this, and they've gone through in their lifetime the shift from a culture which appears to be aligned with Christian values, or at least when my husband's from Oklahoma, and he would say when he was in college, if he told somebody he went to church, even if they didn't go to church, they respected the fact that he did.
It gave him a little bump in their estimation. They admired him a little bit for that. We've gone from that to a world where most often, if you say you go to church, people are going to think less of you. That's a painful shift to have experienced. I think in many believers' minds today, it can feel like what we need to do is get back to once upon a time. We need to get back to a world where America embrace Christian values across the board.
Now, the tricky thing with that is that, let's say we go back to the 1960s, which often people point to as then there was abortion was legalized, and then there was the gay rights movement, and then there was the, everything's sort of gone downhill since the sixties in many people's minds, but the problem is, if we cite the sixties at the time when everything started to go downhill, the sixties was also the first time black Americans are getting any kind of justice.
That story only works if you actually disregard, completely disregard the experience of black Americans, and also Native America. There's more to say there, but there actually isn't a once upon a time when there were Christian values across the board. Now, the tension points, the collision points between Christian ethics and the culture around us have certainly changed. Where today, I think questions of LGBT identity, that's kind of where the rubber is hitting the road there.
It's not that once upon a time, everyone was following Christian ethics across the board. We had different kind of configuration of problems. Unless we have a hopeful vision for the future, we will just be stuck in fear and nostalgia. Actually, if the followers of Jesus here today work toward living consistently with Christian ethics, and applying that across the board, whether it's to abortion, or whether it's to questions of LGBT identity, or whether it's to love across racial difference, or whether it's to caring for refugees.
If we, to some extent, leave aside some of our political categories and get back into our Bibles to see being a follower of Jesus is putting me out of kilter with all sorts of people on all sorts of questions, but I have a hopeful vision for how we're actually going to move forward and not... You sometimes hear a kind of, "Well, desperate times call for desperate measures," kind of like we are being beaten down, and therefore we need to fight back. I'd want to say, "Yes, we need to fight back, but we need to fight only with the weapons that Jesus has given us."
Tim Muehlhoff:
What are those weapons that come to mind for that?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
He's given us love. He's given us praise, given us hospitality. He has given us gentleness. He's given us care for the most vulnerable. He hasn't actually given us some of the weapons that we want to grab hold of.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Which are, in your estimation?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
A propensity towards slander, and meanness, and lashing out at people, and trying to tear them down and demean them as human beings.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yeah. Daniel Taylor is a Christian professor, he's a writer. A quote from him is, "In our fight with culture, we've adopted the culture's tactics. We fight ugliness with ugliness, sarcasm with sarcasm, distortion with distortion." I think sadly, at least online, if we take a look at how Christians communicate online, boy, it starts to get pretty murky that there's a clear distinction between how Christians treat online communication and how non-Christians treat it.
We get in there pretty strongly as everybody else. One professor at UNC Chapel Hill when I was doing grad work, said, "Evangelicals are the pit bulls of the culture war. Small brains, big teeth," is how he described us. I was like, "Boy," so I love the weapons that you mentioned, but boy, it's going to take a lot to use those, right? I'm thinking of Peter saying, "Give a blessing for an insult. I do not want you to give an insult for an insult, give a blessing instead."
We're like, "Yeah, I'm not doing that. One, they don't deserve it. Two, it's not going to work." It just won't functionally work, and it'll come across as condoning, and they're going to get away with it. Yeah.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
When an actual fact, the times that I have the opportunity to show love towards somebody who is attacking me, whether it's online or whether it's in person, somebody comes up to me and kind of unloads on me after a talk I've given or something, it's actually incredibly powerful what the Lord does with gentleness and respect. I don't think it means losing every fight.
I actually think often, it means really changing people's minds, because it wasn't what they expected. This is not, I think people sometimes hear that as like, "Oh, you're pitching this new kind of winsome deceptive, or you're sort of fitting in and trying to do something." I'm like, "All I'm trying to do is read the Bible and apply it here. Actually, none of this is my idea or your idea. We're trying to read what Jesus and the apostles have told us to do."
Tim Muehlhoff:
You have a great quote from Confronting Christianity. Here's the quote, "But disagreement is not in evidence of disrespect. Indeed, I debate hardest with the people I respect the most, because I take their ideas seriously. Our society seems to be losing the art of debate within friendships. We instead surround ourselves with people who think like us."
So much research has been done on my side bias. My goodness, this is Janice. This is a group think that came out of the 1960s that we are surrounding ourselves with people that think like us. Maybe we need to break out of those bubbles, and intentionally try to do that, which can be hard and destabilizing sometimes too.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yes, and it also cuts both ways. I was talking with a young woman who's a student at Harvard Law School the other day, and she's a Christian. She was relating how she was in class, and somebody made a comment about Christians who'd grown up in small towns and had never had their ideas challenged. She sort of raised a hand, like, "Hey, I'm a Christian. I grew up in a small town. I feel like I actually have had my ideas challenged, because I've spent time with people who think very differently."
She was pointing out that often people who have only inhabited sort of progressive spaces have never had their ideas challenged. They may never have met a Christian, or they may have never have met somebody who was pro-life, or they may never have met somebody who didn't affirm same-sex relationships. Their only category for people who fall into any of those areas or all of those areas is like, "You must be stupid and evil."
They have no... They've never had their thinking on any of those kinds of questions meaningfully challenged by somebody who is clearly smart and loving.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay, let's get back to the four categories.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Okay. Go back.
Tim Muehlhoff:
No, no, this is great. Oh, my gosh, this is so great. Can we start at the bottom for the sake of time? I want to give you a compliment. Let's start with sexuality, that we need to re-educate people on the Bible's view of sexuality. One thing I so respect about you is your transparency to share your story. It's a story of you being same-sex attracted as long as you can remember, but you're not shy to share this story.
Why choose to go public with that? You could have very easily written all your stuff without bringing that kind of information to the table. Why make the decision to share your journey with people? If I understand this, correct me, you're still same-sex attracted though you're married, and have I think three children?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Indeed, three children.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay, three children. I have three children. There's that magical moment you go from two to three. You go to two to three, it is like, "Okay, this is not funny. This is wild."
Rebecca McLaughlin:
My girls were eight and six when my son was born. It wasn't the fire and furnace that having three really small kids at once is, I think.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Why be so transparent? What's the value of sharing your story with people like that?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yeah, I think a lot of people I encounter who are not Christians assume that you could only come to the conclusion that same-sex sexual relationships were sinful if you didn't actually understand, if you were in their terms, like a homophobic bigot who just doesn't get it. I think I do understand. I think if I had not been a follower of Jesus for as long as I can remember, if I'd never had the chance to, or if I wasn't a Christian, I think most likely, I'd be legally married to a woman rather than to a man.
I understand, and I think the reason that I wanted to share my own story is because I just want to get past that first base with people of saying, "Okay, trust me that this is not just my random hatefulness. It's actually about Jesus." One of the things I sometimes say to people is, "Christian sexual ethics is much weirder than you think. It's not just that I believe that sex only belongs in marriage between a man and a woman, but I believe this is all about a metaphor of Jesus's love for his people."
That's the reason I believe in what the Bible says about sex and both the yeses and the noes, and I think the noes are exceedingly clear, I just wrote a short book called Does the Bible Affirm Same Same-Sex Relationships, where I'm sort of trying to engage with the most common arguments that people make to say, "Oh, well, actually, if we read the Bible this way, we'll see that there is room for same sex marriage for Christians." I don't think there is.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Is that book out right now?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Yes.
Tim Muehlhoff:
It's called?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Does the Bible Affirm Same-Sex Relationships?
Tim Muehlhoff:
Okay, great. Yes.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I'm very clear about what the Bible says. I'm also, and this is where people sometimes sort of mishear me, or they think that when I talk about a lifelong experience, or ever since I've had romantic feelings or whatever, that they've been directed toward women. People sometimes mishear me as saying, "And therefore, I think that same sex attraction is just fine," so long as you're not acting on having actual sexual relationships with people that I'm sort of saying that that desire is a morally neutral thing or a perfectly fine thing.
I actually don't think, I think it's a sinful desire. I also think that sinful desires come out of your heart and out of everyone listening to this podcast, if we listen to what Jesus says, he says, "It's out of our hearts that come the sorts of things that make us unclean." He gives as one example of that, sexual immoralities. They come from deep within us. When I talk about my own experience of same-sex attraction, I'm not saying it to celebrate it. I'm not saying it to say, "Isn't this great," or to say, "This is morally neutral."
I'm saying it to say like, "Hey, regardless of what your sinful desires are, I have sinful desires. In this particular area of sexuality, my sinful desires are oriented towards other women." I'm sorry to go on about this too long, but people will sometimes talk as if, "Oh, well, what somebody in my position most needs is to have those desires switched to the opposite sex." The Lord absolutely can and sometimes does change our patterns of attraction.
I'm not saying that that doesn't and can't happen, but if I found myself on occasion attracted to other men, aside from my husband, that wouldn't be a good thing. Do you know? Whether I have desires toward other women or other men, it's actually like, they're all sinful desires. The question for me and my prayer is less like, "Lord, please may I never have a sinful desire toward another woman again."
My prayer is more like, "Lord, please make me holy, take away my sinful desires. When I have sinful desires in whatever, whether it's toward envy, or toward jealousy, or whatever, please help me to say no to sin and yes to you in all of those situations."
Tim Muehlhoff:
Yes, but I so love your decision to be transparent. I think that when Paul says, "Oh, wretched man that I am," we all listen. This is like, holy cow, this is Paul. There's something really, I was in grad school and doing my PhD, which was a long trek in the same direction. I said to somebody, "Hey, how you doing today?" I said, "You know what? To be honest, pretty crappy day." They literally said this, they said, "Wow, don't hear that very often," just walked away.
I thought to myself, what kind of image am I giving? My wife and I speak at marriage conferences. We speak at family life marriage conferences, even while I was in grad school. I'm sure everybody thought, well, you guys got it wrapped up. I thought, I need to let them see the struggles more. Somehow I got this weird idea that being a Christian witness meant I kept them from the struggles. I love the fact that you bring us into the struggles.
Listen, we're kind of out of time, but would you be our permanent guest?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
No.
Tim Muehlhoff:
You just... Wow. She would not-
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I'm flattered that you asked.
Tim Muehlhoff:
... Even pray about that. No, listen, if people want to find out more about you, you have a podcast.
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I do.
Tim Muehlhoff:
It's called?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Confronting Christianity. It's easy.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Creative. That was...
Rebecca McLaughlin:
It wasn't my idea.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Didn't see that coming. That was really good. You have a website?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
I do.
Tim Muehlhoff:
Called? Confronting Christianity?
Rebecca McLaughlin:
Do you know what? It's currently called RebeccaMcLaughlin.org, but it's going to switch to Confronting Christianity [inaudible 00:32:16].
Tim Muehlhoff:
That's awesome. Listen, you're all over the place, Amazon, check out what Rebecca's written, check out her website, her podcast. Thank you so much for coming to Biola University, for taking time to be a part of this podcast, and for at least considering being a permanent guest. Listen, you've been to listening to Winsome Conviction podcast. Thank you so much. You can go to our website, WinsomeConviction.com.
Check us out, a bunch of free resources. You can listen to all of our past podcasts. There's free resources, and the Stalemate website. Go check it out. Listen, we don't take you for granted. Thank you so much for tuning in.