Biola University and Dr. Erik Thoennes: Apologize for Homophobic, Transphobic, and Racist Rant

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Transcript:

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Thoennes: There’re some sins I think because our culture sees them as sins we feel a lot of freedom to condemn, and others, because our culture doesn’t see them as sins, we don’t.

You know, I was thinking of the Biola Underground statement… imagine though if there was "the Biola Racist Underground." And I’m just replacing some of their words:

“We thank you for your timely response. Our racist identities, which are integral to who we are, are being questioned in terms of their morality. The University’s upcoming decision will affect our daily lives…”

And just imagine if they say think like, “Biola claims toward dialogue. However, racist students who don’t view racism as sinful aren’t allowed to speak openly, without threat.”

And so, you could go on… but it’s interesting… I think we all would feel a lot of freedom to say, “Racism’s wrong, and it won’t be tolerated here,” right? But we feel less freedom in [condemning] sins that our culture doesn’t see as wrong…

And so what I don’t want us to do in the midst of being kind and [not being] self-righteousness, and loving, is to lack a Biblical backbone because our culture will consider us bigots—to stand up for something that’s consistently being a line drawn in the sand for what Christians will tolerate and what we won’t.

And so, it’s interesting to me how we often take cues from our culture in the sin we’re "allowed" to speak out against, or the one’s we’re not.

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Question from Audience: Why is there no Christian pro-gay party represented on this panel?

Thoennes: Because we think it’s sin! I wouldn’t want a pro-racist person on this panel if the question were on racism. I wouldn’t want someone advocating, proclaiming, [or] talking about the goodness of racism… or of lying.

This is a fascinating sin in our culture. There is no other sin I know of that has parades celebrating it, and days at Disneyland! Can you imagine having “Dishonesty Day” at Disneyland? :laughter:

It’s fascinating the cultural phenomenon this has become and the way in thirty years, I think, there’s been this massive shift. And so, I am not concerned about giving more voice to something that seems like a tidal wave in opposition to the way God has designed things. We’re not unclear on what we think the Bible teaches and what God has designed. And at Biola, we want to proclaim Biblical truth. And so, I wouldn’t want something proclaiming lies or untruth, which is ultimately very unloving to do. We want to be loving. And to propagate lies is profoundly unloving.