James Talarico

I mean, this is powerful stuff.

It's part of why I made the decision to go to seminary because I was like, if I'm going to talk about my faith and my beliefs and my values in a public setting or on this podcast when millions of people are going to listen, I better know what I'm talking about.

I better be thoughtful in how I approach these things because it has real power.

And so I think you've seen that from the beginning of the Christian tradition.

You've seen it across traditions of those in power, whether it's people with political power, social power in terms of homosexuality or economic power.

using that faith to hurt and control other people.

Let's take the issue of homosexuality in particular.

One is something Jesus never talks about, even though gay people existed in the ancient world.

Is it in the Old Testament?

So in the Old Testament, there is a prohibition against men lying with other men.

And here's the thing, and any biblical scholar will tell you this,

In a lot of ways, we're dealing with ancient euphemisms.

And it's hard to tell what a euphemism means thousands of years later, right?

I had a professor at seminary.

This is going to sound weird.

But he was like, think about 2,000 years from now, how difficult it'll be for people to tell the difference between a butt dial and a booty call.

Right.

Like those are two things that sound very similar on a piece of paper and they have very different meanings.

And so that's funny.

You know, so like in in in the Hebrew Bible, you do have this this prohibition.