Spiritual Anemia with Christopher Yuan // S04E04

How do you know if you’re malnourished? What about spiritually? When you realize you’re lacking important eternal vitamins and minerals, what do you do to fix it? This week, we welcome Dr. Christopher Yuan to discuss spiritual anemia, spiritual sustenance, and the vitality of swallowing truth pills.

Books written by Dr. Christopher Yuan

Holy Sexuality and the Gospel: Sex, Desire, and Relationships Shaped by God’s Grand Story

Out of a Far Country: A Gay Son’s Journey to God. A Broken Mother’s Search for Hope.

Giving a Voice to the Voiceless: A Qualitative Study of Reducing Marginalization of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Same-Sex Attracted Students at Christian Colleges and Universities

Bible Verses from Spiritual Anemia with Christopher Yuan

Jeremiah 29:11. Romans 12:9, Matthew 22, Amos 8

Questions Addressed in the Spiritual Anemia with Christopher Yuan

• What does it mean to be spiritually nourished?
• What is Spiritual Anemia?
• What is Holy Sexuality?
• How can I raise children who understand Biblical Sexuality?

QUOTES FROM SPIRITUAL ANEMIA

“I think that was the most powerful part was that is the stereotype. And it’s actually very common, to hear that there are Christian parents that they grapple and they have no idea how to deal. And so the relationship just becomes so broken with your children who identify in that way. And it was so cool to hear the exact opposite happened for you because isn’t that always how God loves to show his glory by doing the unexpected, through us, the unnatural, because it’s natural to split when things just don’t make sense when things hurt too much when there’s all this disappointment, but through God, there’s redemption in that.”                        

Michelle Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S04E04 Spiritual Anemia

“You know, I do. I try to walk, like I want to with Christ, I try to, I try to do the best that I can and I still stumble. And so I liked that point of being broken, hurting for the lost, and I’m pretty sure that’s what drives all of us that are sitting right here. There’s an eternal forever in heaven type of, of life or an eternal hell type of life.”

Shea Watson, The Pantry Podcast, S04E04 Spiritual Anemia

“Well, I mean, if you define anemia, I mean, it’s, it’s not having the right nutrients. And, and, and so you’re weak in essence, right? Physically, but spiritually anemia, obviously, you know, and that’s fitting in so well with this series, when you’re living apart from Christ.”

Christopher Yuan

Annotated Transcript

Shea: Hey, I’m Shea.

Michelle: And I’m Michelle. And this is The Pantry Podcast and you’re listening to an episode from Season Four, Unnaturally Nourished, where we’re talking about how God nourishes us in ways that the world just can’t understand.

Shea: Shout-out to Warcry Network,

Michelle: The Christian Podcasters Association,

Shea: Eternity Ready Radio,

Michelle: And the Spark Collective. Check out ThePantryPodcast.com to support us by buying our awesome Merch, sending in prayer requests, and figuring out how you can connect with us and some of our awesome guests.

Shea:  Hey!

Michelle: Hi!

Shea: Man. I’m excited today. I know, I know I say this every episode, but like I’m telling you, we score some of the coolest people. And when I say that, it’s not like, Oh no, I’m just saying some people that have just beautiful stories about redemption and, and, and, and getting through and facing the adversity that they, that we can go through in life and still coming out on top, but through one person, Jesus Christ, today’s episode spiritual anemia. And on that jump off point, I’m gonna pass it over to you so you can just introduce him. Yeah.

Michelle: Yeah. So today we have Dr. Christopher Yuan and I, after listening to his testimony and you know, this whole season being about unnaturally nourished, I knew how I wanted to start his intro. So Dr. Yuan found the best meal of his life in the garbage, and because of that Bible that he found in the prison trash, he now teaches the Bible at moody Bible Institute and speaks on faith and sexuality across the globe. He and his mother coauthored their memoir out of a far country, a gay son’s journey to God, a broken mother’s search for hope. And he recently published Holy sexuality and The Gospel sex desire and relationships shaped by God’s grand story. I’m going to leave the rest for the conversation, but we’re honored to have you here today with us. So welcome.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Thanks for having me on Shea and Michelle. It’s a pleasure.

Shea: It’s just good to, to bring in people, with, with stories. Yeah. You know, you hear us introduce them, doctor, you know, doctor this moody Bible Institute and, and you know what that is the beauty of God. That’s where we like to sit. That’s where we like to be. But as we have you here, I’d rather hear it from you from your own mouth. 

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Well, I mean, if you define anemia, I mean, it’s, it’s not having the right nutrients. And, and, and so you’re weak in essence, right? Physically, but spiritually anemia, obviously, you know, and that’s fitting in so well with this series, when you’re living apart from Christ, you may think here, you’re getting everything that you need and being full, but it’s not actually meeting your needs. Well, you know, my story, as sensational, as sometimes people say, as sensational as a story is nothing is more sensational as a person going from death to life, regardless of what happens in between.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: So my journey begins as an unbeliever. So I was not a son of Christian parents. Didn’t raise me a Christian. We didn’t own a Bible and I’m Chinese. So my parents raised me with very traditional Asian values, which is strong family values. We don’t necessarily believe in God, but, it’s all about family. You know, it’s, it’s basically every other culture except, you know, Latin culture, African culture, Asian culture, whatever culture, except the West. And, so my parents raised me with these very great values, but I wrestled with my sexuality. I’m 50 years old. I was born in 1970, raised in the eighties. Sexuality was a big, you know, huge stigma, no one talked about it as a young child, recognizing I had these attractions. I was exposed to pornography at nine.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And I know that’s shocking for some, but I know you guys talk on, on this and that’s not a shocking age anymore. Especially in our internet, age nine years old is almost average, unfortunately, and often by accident. So that was the first time that I realized that I had these attractors, but I didn’t tell anyone. And I wasn’t about to tell anyone who wasn’t gonna tell my parents wasn’t to tell my classmates, because I knew that this was bad. This was, you know, you’re going to get teased. And I was getting teased as it was. So I kept those hidden through high school college, even the Marine Corps reserves. I didn’t come out of the closet. As I used to say until my early twenties, I’m from Chicago. And I moved from Chicago to Louisville and I was pursuing my doctorate to dentistry. And it was there that I thought, you know, fine. This is just who I am. And I told my parents and it just crushed them. The timing was really bad. My parents actually there, they were already beginning to paperwork for divorce. And my mom gave me an ultimatum, choose the family or choose this. Well, I thought, well, this is not something I could choose. So I told her, if you can’t accept me, I have no other choice, but to leave

Shea: Normal response from the world, you know, Hey, look, you don’t accept me. Get out of my face. You know, it’s like, that’s what we go through. 

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Yeah. You know, and so I left home, went back to Louisville, Kentucky devastated my mom. But through that crisis, my mother actually comes to faith and she knew that if God can loves her, even though she’s a sinner, she could love me. Even though I was living as a gay man. And you know, the funny thing is right now, you hear there’s a narrative from their world that Christian parents who believe in the Bible cannot love their gay children. Right? And you actually have to shed that old fashioned teaching from that mythology, you know, mythological book called the Bible. You have to get rid of that to actually loving your gay children. I had the exact opposite experience. My parents were not Christian. They rejected me. They became followers of Christ. And they knew that they could do nothing other than to love me as God loved them while they were weak while they were sinners while they were still enemies.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: So I, I was in Louisville and I kept doing what I knew how to do best, which was have fun, right? I mean, if there’s no, God, there’s just one thing to do in life. And that’s to have fun. And I was doing what my friends were doing, which was to party, go out to the bars. I started doing drugs. I started selling drugs while I was a dental student. Eventually I was expelled from dental school and I was just three months away from getting my doctorate, you know? So I moved from Louisville to Atlanta and there, I kept doing what I knew, how to do best, which was sell drugs. And I became a supplier to other dealers. And this whole time, my parents had no clue that I was doing drugs. They just knew that my biggest need was know Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: So they try to reach out to me with the love of Christ and I wanted nothing to do with it. They came to visit me one time in Atlanta and I told them to get out, but they weren’t preaching at me. They weren’t even telling me I was living in sin, but just the fact that God had so radically transformed their lives, that they radiated Christ. That was offensive to me. And I told them to leave before my dad left, he wanted to give me something. And it was his very first Bible. And I told my dad, I don’t want your Bible, but he gave it to me anyway, they left. And soon as they were gone, I took my dad’s Bible and I threw it in the trash can. That’s how much I despised God and despised the Bible. And it was so obvious to my parents that I was just hopeless, just unreachable, but my parents committed not to focus on the hopelessness, but upon the promises of God,

Michelle: I think that was the most powerful part was that is the stereotype. And it’s actually very common, to hear that there are Christian parents that they grapple and they have no idea how to deal. And so the relationship just becomes so broken with your children who identify in that way. And it was so cool to hear the exact opposite happened for you because isn’t that always how God loves to show his glory by doing the unexpected, through us, the unnatural, because it’s natural to split when things just don’t make sense when things hurt too much when there’s all this disappointment, but through God, there’s redemption in that. And when we’re thinking about, you know, the nutrition and how he provides for us in ways that the world can’t understand, I’m interested in, you’re actually the second person that we’ve had on the pantry that has walked away from that past, and come to a different place. How has the reaction been

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Those who don’t know Christ, see me as I’ve lost my mind, you know, because a Christian means you throw out your mind and especially those in the gay community, see me as kind of betraying the community, you know, and I realize that because the gospel is falling to those who are perishing and, and I don’t blame them because I was in their shoes. They’re very feelings of me was the very feelings that I had of Christian. So I get it. And I understand that it really takes the grace of God and the work of the Holy spirit to begin to transform someone’s mind to remove the blinders from their eyes, to be able to see the truth that is evident around us. As you know, Psalm 19 says, it’s its creation that is revealing the glory of God, but we reject it. It gives me just more compassion. I know for some, they, they see that and say, Oh, you know those atheists and those unbelievers, those pagans. Yes. But if we put ourselves in their shoes and realize that that was us, right, it’s only by the grace of God go, I, it doesn’t make me more angry at those atheists. It just breaks my heart. And I could very well still be in those shoes.

Shea: I think that’s a good power point. Yeah. Because there’s something that we agree on in our own family here. A yeah. And you know, we, we can look at that throughout the world and they say, well, will they believe in this? Or they do this, but I mean, how much better am I really in the sense that I still do as a Christian? You know, I, I do. I try to walk, like I want to with Christ, I try to, I try to do the best that I can and I still stumbled. But, and, and so I liked that point of being broken, hurting for the lost, and I’m pretty sure that’s what drives all of us that are sitting right here. There’s an eternal forever in heaven type of, of life or an eternal hell type of life. And I don’t like to say it in such a hard way, but that’s where the heartbreaking is. And when we see the battle that’s being waged, like your parents weren’t even believers. So there wasn’t like this, like buildup of hatred towards God, because your mom, look, I gotta let Asian friends, so they can be pretty vicious. Sometimes Asian moms, moms. Yeah. I remember I’m walking into walking into my friend’s house and his mom was like, Shay, you fat.

Shea: Thanks mom. She goes, I love you. I miss you. And I’m like, but, that’s actually a compliment. I’m serious because it means you’re healthy. You’re right. Oh no, no, no, no. She was like, you fat, but on a, on a series though. Right. But this buildup, like you didn’t have this buildup of hatred towards Christians from a family. Right. But it was societal. It was my friends. Exactly. Yeah. And so, and so that, that right there clicked in me. And so what drove that really sat inside of you and created this anger towards God.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Hmm. You know, Shea, when I was younger, I, I knew that there was a God I heard being raised in America about this Jesus Christ. And so I, I was pretty open to God and Jesus Christ. So there wasn’t any animosity. I was not mistreated, by people who call themselves Christians. So you’re right. It wasn’t from my childhood. It wasn’t from my school. It wasn’t from my upbringing, my high school or college. It wasn’t for my parents. It was really from society for media and my friends. So once I came out, I was told several things. First of all, that your parents, aren’t going to understand you. That was number one. Number two, Christians are hateful. Plus, now that I have Christian parents that just became Christian, that was a double whammy. And, and that was affirmed by my friends who kept telling me stories, from, from media where you would, you keep seeing, you know, these portrayals of so-called Christians that would hold up these signs and say, God hates, you know, bags or whatever, you know? And so that was my impression. So that feed that into, then my animosity toward my parents and my desire to have nothing to do with Christians and definitely nothing to do with my parents who were, homophobic and bigoted, et cetera.

Michelle: Right. Right. I’ve been thinking a lot about like food analogies for this season. Right. It’s a lot easier to eat the things that taste great when you’re of the world and when you’re a Christian. So when you’re a Christian, you might have accepted, you know, the top 10 things that are sin. Right. Okay, fine. You’re cheating on people as a sin, being gay is a sin abortions. Isn’t like the, the headliners. And then we conveniently say, okay, those are sin. And then we ignore all the things that might be a little more cutting to us specific in the same way that the world is like, okay, I don’t like the Bible because it says these things. I love to do our sin. Where in your walk with Christ, did you come to a place where you started accepting the conviction and, and do you find it comforting when you’re convicted? Or is it still something that’s a struggle?

Dr. Christopher Yuan: I mean, if it’s in Proverbs where it says, you know, when you’re starving, even those things that are bitter or sweet. So we don’t realize that what we were eating though, it might have fulfilled a need. And that may be specific paying of hunger. It’s temporary. Yeah. I’d like to think of the things of the world that seemed to satisfy. And even sometimes things in our Christian culture that satisfy, but they don’t truly, they’re not lasting satisfied satisfaction. And for example, when Jesus met the woman at the, well, I’m going to give you living water and she’s like, what do you mean? You don’t have anything to draw water with? And you know, he’s saying, well, you know, you can drink water, but you’re going to be thirsty again, but I can give you water and you will never thirst again. She’s like, Oh, and that’s so true because we keep drinking the water of the world that satisfies for the moment.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Right? I mean, sin satisfied for the moment. If we don’t recognize that we’re not recognizing the appeal and the draw of sin, you know, a really Holy Christian be like, Oh, you know, I don’t like sin. Well, that’s not being honest. You know, you might not like someone else’s sin, but we like our sin. We love our sin. My good friend, Rosaria, Butterfield. She says, if you don’t, if your sin doesn’t feel good, you’re doing it wrong. Our sin feels good for the moment, but it leads to death. It’s if I can use a metaphor, it’s junk food. Yeah. Right. Junk food, you know, I love junk food and it’s going to make you fat right. To shape. Exactly. But it’s not actually nourishing you. And it’s, I’m going to actually fill that seat. You’re going to get that high, that sugar high. But what happens?

Dr. Christopher Yuan: You get that crash. Right. And that’s the world. So I was, I was being nourished and I didn’t realize that I was actually famished. I was actually not being truly nourished. And so it took a while for me to realize that, you know, so I rejected my parents and they, they, they prayed my mother prayed of bold prayer, do whatever it takes and that whatever it takes, she fasted every Monday for seven years, she wants fast at 39 days on my behalf. And that miracle came with my arrest. So that arrest, I was found in jail, in federal, federal, not state, but federal. And, I was that complicated, all my money, my drugs. And I was convicted of the possession of the equivalent to 9.1 tons of marijuana. So I wasn’t just a dealer. I was supplying a lot and I wasn’t even dealing with marijuana.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: It was a lot of other stuff, mostly, ice, crystal meth, pure crystal meth. So I found myself in jail and God has his ways of getting our attention. And, you know, that’s, that’s what he, I’m, I’m the type of, I learned by like the two by four. I, you know, I’m, I’m the two by four method. Well, you know, the two by two by four across your forehead. That’s what I need. Just because I’m so hard headed. And I’m so stiff neck, you know, I read the Bible when it’s like, you stiff neck people, you know, Israel. I’m like, that’s me stiff neck. And so he needed to put me in prison, take me physically out of my world, out of my culture, out of my friends and just drop me in prison. And that was, and it was, it was, it wasn’t even then that, that I was like, Oh, I got it.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: You know, I, I got this huge revelation. No, it was slowly that God had to peel back my hard heart because I was holding on to my own will and my own desires until I realized that no, this is I’m being fed the lies from the world. He was in prison. I found the Bible and the trashcan of all things. So crazy. God is so humorous. And I began to read it, but not at first thinking, Oh, here’s the word of God. I just, I read it because I had tons of time on my hands. I had to pass better, pass it somehow. And so I began reading it and it began to convict me not, you know, if you’re like, Oh, this is such good news. And I’m reading it. I’m like, there’s nothing good in here for me yet, a broken sinner. I’m like, what’s good in that.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: So I was in prison for about just a few weeks. And then I was called in to the nurse’s office and she told me I was HIV positive. And I’m like, okay, I’m in prison someplace. I never thought I would be, you know, cause when you’re dealing drugs, you think you’re like Superman, like Charlie sheen, you just think, no nothing’s going to touch me. I’m I’m Superman. Right. Find myself in jail. I’m I’m actually really going to face a lot of time. I thought I was going to be fine because I’m, you know, I’d never been convicted. I’ll, you know, first time. But now they don’t care about that. Especially when you’re dealing that much. I realized I was disobedient to my parents and dishonoring them. And then I got this news and I’m HIV positive. Like how worse can it get? A few days after that I was laying in my bed and I looked up at the metal bunk above me.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And someone had scribbled if you’re board read Jeremiah 29:11. Wow. I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord plans to prosper you and not to harm you plans to give you hope in a future. You know, I mean any verse could have been up there. And that was the verse that God used. Fortunately, this is a cell that I would just move to. And I didn’t have my Bible because I couldn’t bring anything with me. And I was just like going through all, I don’t know what the diversity is. I, you know, I know it’s a Bible verse and I was thumbing through like some of the garbage again. I mean, I mean, it wasn’t garbage, but it was just all this kind of paper stuff. And I newspaper and I, and there was a Bible kind of at the bottom, pulled it out that had the old Testament in it and I opened it up, read it.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: I read the whole passage. And if you read after Jeremiah 29:11-14, it says how God was going to call Israel out of exile. Like I have a plan and I hope for you. And I’m even going to pulley, Kate, take you out of exile. And I’m like, I’m an exile. I’m in prison and I’ve rebelled against God. And yet Israel rebelled against God. They’re an exile as a result. And God is saying, I still have a plan for you. Plan that’s of welfare and that’s not going to harm you. That’s where the hope and a future. And I’m going to take you out of exile. And that meant so much to me because I was, if God could have a plan for Israel, if God could call Israel out of exile, you can do the same for me, but I had no clue what that meant.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And so I just, it just, God gave me just one, you know, enough faith to get through that day and the next day and the next and the next, well, the first thing that, that God began to convict me was this, this, like, like you were saying, Michelle, about identity because I had wrapped my whole sexuality around who I was, this is who I am. And as I was reading God’s scripture, I realized that this is not who I am, but it’s how I am. There’s a big, important distinction that I think Christians, we miss because we, with our gay friends and loved ones, we want to address and talk about their sinful behavior, which it is sinful behavior. But if our loved ones and friends do not first see their sexuality as something they do or something they feel or sinful behavior, but they see it primarily as who they are.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And then when we address or we bring up that same sex attraction or same sex relationships are sinful. They don’t hear us saying, well, you know, what you’re doing is sinful. They don’t hear us saying is, you know, the desires that you have are, you know, lustful and sinful. What the hero saying is you’re a whole person from head to toe is reprehensible to God. They can’t separate their behavior from their identity. And so for me, and I think also as we engage with our friends and mothers in the gay community, we need to start there with identity because that is step one, step two then is, and to be able to talk about us as sinners as a whole, but when you talk about identity, that means we need to bring up the fact about God and the image of God and the importance of that and how we’re sinners.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Because even if I convince someone that this was sinful, they don’t know God they’re still lost. And so recognizing this identity aspect is so key from a wrong identity, flows, wrong thinking, wrong behavior, wrong relationships. I think almost everything flows from that misunderstanding. And actually that’s all of us. I mean, don’t, we all often put our identities in the wrong thing. You know, I’m a, I’m a sports fan or I’m a football player. I’m a cheerleader, or even put your whole identity in being a mom. I mean, that’s a good thing, but if you make your whole identity wrapped around your kids, that’s distorting something that’s good into more of an idol. I almost see like the wrong identity as essentially an idol. We’re taking something that was not meant to be our whole person are not meant to be our whole life priority and turning it into something that we are worshiping

Shea: All for what acceptance. Yeah. I think that as we sit here and, and from our own stories, you know, chasing identity from, from the world, and I know that in a lot of circles, there’s a lot of pressure for that. A lot of pressure for, for you are, you know, Oh, you’re my friend because of this, you know, I, yeah. Allegiances. And that’s amazing, man. Yeah. Right, right. And so God steps in and he says, you know what, everything that you were seeking from others, because I know that probably like you and Michelle and me, we all come from this, this, this, this place of a void, you know, it’s like each chase things, you get things, you receive things, you sell drugs, you know, you have relations. And then all of a sudden God steps in and says, you’re Holy.

Shea: And see, this is another step off for you for a question and a little kind of thought, because I really liked that idea or that, that thought I know where that truth, you know what, it’s not even an idea or a thought, it’s a truth of, you know, when you bring in your book, Holy sexuality. And I remember hearing you speaking, towards this and speaking towards, you know, it’s not really, what’s being done on the sinful side as to where you need to be on the Holy side. Can you kind of break into that a little bit more for us?

Dr. Christopher Yuan:  I, you know, with all my time, the time on my hands in prison, I began to read scripture, but I also began to apply scripture to myself as opposed to, I was trying to, you know, apply my S you know, trying to kind of read scripture and shape scripture to fit me. I was actually trying to read scripture and fit myself to mold into the reality of scripture. So I was reading scripture, not only did I realize how I would put my identity in the wrong thing, but I was like, what’s, what’s my goal. As an individual who is coming out of same-sex relationships is coming out of atheism and, or maybe not even atheism, but just ignore CISM because yes, I kind of believed in God and Jesus, but then I was not living like that. I was basically living as an essential atheist, essentially atheist.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: So I, I needed, what’s my, what’s my goal as an individual coming out of same-sex relationships. And what I had heard from the world and what I had heard from media and from my friends was, was that for a Christian, the goal for all of those in the gay community is to become straight, is to become a heterosexual. What does that mean? Well, that means I need to be attracted to women almost, you know, the more sexually attracted I were to lots of women, the more of a Christian man I would be. But the reality is even if, and as I read scripture, even if I had opposite such attractions, I was still need to flee temptation and resist sin, right? So it’s not actually, then that heterosexuality is the goal. It’s the right direction, but it’s too broad. It’s the category of heterosexuality is not even something you find in scripture.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: You don’t find the word there, even the concept, because actually the Bible condemns many different forms of heterosexual sin. Yes. Marriage being a man and a woman as Jesus articulates in Matthew 19 and Mark chapter 10, they said that he actually is echoing from Genesis two is actually, something that, that is blessed by God, but marriage between a man and woman is not equivalent to the much broader category of heterosexuality, which includes sinful behavior like adultery, fornication, et cetera. So I recognize that if the world is being ambiguous, right, 50 shades of gray or more, we need to be clear and we need to be precise and heterosexuality is not precise. But one of my favorite old time pastors is Spurgeon. And he said something that was, it’s so amazing. He said, discernment is not actually knowing the difference between right and wrong discernment is knowing the difference between right.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And almost right. Heterosexuality. It’s not fully wrong, but it’s not fully. Right. Yeah. And so what is fully right? This is where I come up with this concept of Holy sexuality. When I read through the full counsel of God, there’s only two paths that God lays out for us first path, if you’re single, not married, then how do you live in relationship to your sexuality that you’re going to be sexually abstinent? The other path would be, if you do become married and marriage is I’m only going by the definition of scripture and of Jesus, which is between a man and a woman, then how do you live? You are going to be faithful to your spouse with the opposite sex. So Holy sexuality is quite simply chastity and singleness or faithfulness in marriage. And that is really good news for all. And I realized there was no one term for both of these paths because heterosexuality that, even though that might talk about, you know, how we should live, you know, in one way, but it says nothing about how we need to live as single individuals, which we all were single or are still single at some point in our life.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And actually we’re going to be single in eternity, Matthew chapter 22, where Jesus says, there’s, you know, that there will be no marriage in heaven, but that’s, but that’s because all of us as a body of Christ as the bride of Christ will be wed to the lamb of God. But, you know, there’s, we have these two paths chastity in singleness and faithfulness in marriage. And so I kind of coined this term and I call it Holy sexuality purposely to juxtapose it against the secular and incorrect framework of heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. And instead of using the secular framework, use the biblical framework of holiness or unholiness,

Shea: I was just going to say, it’s kind of funny in the Bible, how the only people that ever were brought up about being stolen were the ones that were cheating. You know, it does say either say, you know, don’t engage in homosexual acts and all the stuff. Right. I got that. But then the only time that there’s ever an incident or the stonings, it was always unfaithfulness in natural marriage, you know? And so I was like, that’s just kind of how it came to be. It was like, wow. Yeah. You know, when you think about it, yeah, that’s the extreme one that should stick in our heads, but that’s become so much more socially acceptable or excusable I’ll say, compared what you said about your identity being longer,

Michelle: A tribe, right. An identity tribe of the world. But instead being who you are in Christ, when you’re acknowledging and digesting truth, it’s so important to be able to divorce what the words saying about actions, the, how you are from the who you are in one thing I say all the time is it’s not about what we like. It’s about what works and what works is. God’s way. It’s so important for us to divorce this idea that when he is condemning an action that he’s condemning us, you know, he’s, he’s convicting us against this action and showing us that there is a jump off point where we can abandon that ship. And there’s something better for us. That’s right. Is how will you get nourishment? If you’re still getting confused with the identity, you’re going to be malnourished because you’re going after what feels good? What sounds good? And you’re avoiding the things you’re avoiding the leafy greens because they don’t taste. Right. They don’t feel good.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: We need to be able to hate our sin without, without hating ourselves. Yeah. And this is why the world confuses sexuality with who we are, and this is why it’s wrong to then say I’m a gay Christian, right? I don’t say that, but I’m not. I’m not then saying I’m a straight Christian. I’m actually saying both are incorrect. We shouldn’t say that. That’s who we are. We could say, well, I have opposite sex attractions or I have same sex attractions, but you see how those depth definers, those modifiers, those adjectives are actually describing our experience, our attractions, our behaviors. They should never describe who we are because when we conflate the two, then that’s clouding and polluting who we are. That’s colliding and polluting our main identity in Christ. How I identify is I’m a Christian pure and simple. I don’t ever want there to be any modifier or any adjective added on to that then to limit who I am in Christ.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: I mean, certainly being male is way more important and actually more of an ontological reality than, you know, my sexual attractions or even temptations that I might experience. But I don’t, then I would never like introduce myself as a male Christian or, I mean, even, yes, I’m Chinese. I mean that, even though I’m, I’m born here and my citizenship on papers here, but my citizenship true citizenship is in heaven and man, but I’m, I’m Chinese, that’s my ethnicity, but, and that’s important to me. And I think my culture is something that’s really cool and I’m proud of being Chinese, but I don’t want the main thing that people think about when they think about Christopher Yuan is, Oh, he’s a Chinese Christian, right. You know, that’s those things, whether my ethnicity or my gender are a far, far second before my main identity in Christ, why in the world would I take, you know, my sexuality or my potential of experience, certain desires, then all of a sudden become a forefront. Don’t make the reality of that. You have certain attractions or the reality that you don’t have certain attractions

Shea: Who you are enemy likes to come in and throw in those adjectives. Right? And God gives us that one adjective you’re Holy. It doesn’t even matter what you are, what you’ve done your past, what you still do. Let’s just be real. You know, what, what people still struggle with. We’re a constant evolving a movement to that ultimate holiness. When we finally, you know, enter into his kingdom, I liked the idea that we can take the anemia away because see evil wants to keep us anemic. It wants to keep us in this state of like unhealthiness, you know, Romans 12:9 has been on my mind since the beginning of this conversation because of how we’re talking about the imbalance between, you know, the Christian belief and, and the world and how, you know, we’re hated because we hate them. That’s what they say. But see, when you look at Romans 12:9, and it says, let love be genuine.

Shea: Number one, write a bore. What is evil? Right? And when you look at that in, in the Greek, right, it actually breaks it down and says, have a horror of like, it’s, it’s, you know, this horror, this, this be careful, you know, and any speaking, not to me, labeling someone outside. Yeah. But he’s speaking to me first. You need to, because what is, what then comes from that? Hold fast to what is good. See when we start to see evil, when we separate, I saw, okay, here we go. I’m just going to say, I’m so tired of people. Just not seeing the larger picture, especially in our Christian fellowship, not seeing this larger picture of the supernatural warfare, that’s going on. They’re seeing it for what the world is, the flesh and blood. And we’re sitting here in a supernatural principality warfare. And if we don’t take it into the kingdom, we don’t take it into the holiness.

Shea: If we don’t sit there and say, you know what, what, they’re what they’re doing, God doesn’t agree with. But man, I love you. I love you because you know, God loves you. I’ve been called to love you. Don’t let’s not mistake that. And I like how, the doc here has walked us through that and walk this, I, man, I’m sitting here like digging this in and just like, man, I got notes going on over here. And it’s because it’s a beautiful idea to what we need to be as Christians. When we look at the world, we look at it like, man, it needs God, it needs that holiness. So on that silence is no longer an option. When you say that, what do you mean?

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Well, you know, Shea, as you mentioned, we’re not, we’re not at peace right now. This is not peace time. We’re at war. And we’ve always been at war. You know? I mean, we’re very fortunate to be in the United States where we’ve experienced peace for a long time. There has not been war on our soil since the civil war, you know, world war one, didn’t touch us world war II. I mean, other than, Pearl Harbor. Well, I mean, of course, if you count nine 11, but that was not, that was just an attack. But we basically been at peace and we’ve, we were spoiled. I think don’t deceive ourselves. We are not at peace. This is not peace time. And it never was, never will be peacetime until the Lord of Lords and the King of Kings returns. I mean, and when he does come, it’s going to still be because he’s going to fight the war and then he’s going to win.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: Hallelujah. And I’m so can’t just be, you know, lazy and lax we’re at war. And so when I say silence is no longer an option, I’m calling out parents who are being lowered by comfort in the world or by busy-ness. And I get that. We have relinquished our responsibility to disciple our youth, to the youth pastor we’ve relinquished our responsibility to talk about sex and sexuality to the world. This has been something that Christian parents and parents relinquished to the world decades ago, the primary responsibility for sex education does not belong in the hands. Yeah. Public schools, period. Yeah. It does not belong in the hands of Hollywood. It doesn’t belong in the hands. Even primarily of the youth pastor. Now they better be talking about biblical sexuality, but that it doesn’t belong in their hands primarily because it should rest on the shoulders of parents and grandparents.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: I’m going to add. So I’m going to kind of cover all even older people as well. What we’ve done in the past is, Oh, I don’t know what to say or I mean, how, you know, as a father, how, how in the world, that’s the last thing I want to do is talk to my teenage girl, which by the way, that’s already too old or junior high girl about sex. You know? I mean, I, I’m not a dad and I’m just imagining that. And I’m getting like anxious, just thinking about that. I get that. But man, up it, because father, if you do not talk, and I know that Satan is telling you, giving you every single reason right now to not talk about sex with your ten-year-old daughter or your ten-year-old son. But if you do not Mark my word, the world will and they will do it gladly with passion and power and energy and excitement.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: And they will do it in a way that leads our children, not to life, but to death. We have just been silent, even worse. When we pull our kids out of the youth group, when they’re talking about sex, when they’re nine or 10 or 11, which you remember nine or 10, 11, they’ve they know probably much more about sexuality. We are communicating to our kids. Actually. I don’t want you to learn about sexuality. I want you to learn from Hollywood. And I want you to learn from public school, that distorted un-biblical view of sexuality. That’s what I want. That’s what parents are communicating to their kids when they pull their kids out. I’m so convinced that we as adults have to do a better job at communicating the beauty, the gift of biblical sexuality and helping this younger generation to not only understand it, embrace and celebrate biblical sexuality, because it’s a good thing.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: We think sanctification is something you try. We think sanctification is something that you do. It’s not sanctification is a whole lifestyle. Sanctification is the way you live. And it’s, it’s a daily thing. Actually. Sanctification is the only way to live a full life. That’s how you are fed because if you continually to take in the garbage from the world, there’s absolutely no way that you’re going to be able to take in the goodness, the true food, the meat, the meal of the word of God and a sustenance that we get from being in the body of Christ, eat the flesh of Christ. You know, eat the bread and drink from the cup. It’s because that’s what is our true nourishment? It is Christ. That is our true nourishment. It is the living word. That is our true nourishment. If our stomach is full of the garbage of the world, there’s not going to be much room for the truth of God.

Dr. Christopher Yuan: For the word of God, silence is no longer an option. It’s just a challenge to all adults that we need to take it back. What the world has, has taken. I’m the parent, I’m the one that’s going to raise my kids. And I’m going to do the hard things that it’s going to be difficult to talk to my kids because we can’t build a Christian life on God’s. No, it’s God’s yes. And my newest book, that’s my whole purpose of Holy writing, Holy sexuality. And the gospel is to build off of where many of these books and speakers have have told us, this is what you should not do. This is where the Bible says, same-sex relationships are sinful. This is where it says that, you know, divorce and, you know, adultery, all these things, you know, are, are, are not God’s will, but what is God’s? Yes. And so that was my hope with the book, because silence is no longer an option.

Shea: It’s so many levels on so many things in our Christian, in, in our walk with our, with our, with our groom. When we start there, then everything starts to, to filter down into where it needs to be. We have homes that stick together with families. We have people who are married to Christ leading the way like doc here, you know, I’m sorry I use doc, I’m a military guy, but like doc here, who’s leading the way in, in his marriage to Christ. Cause we, we don’t want famines of the word like Amos 8 says we don’t want that famine. We don’t want our young virgins and our young men being malnutritioned, in their walk. If we’re, if we’re giving them God and we’re giving him his love and we’re giving them the relationship, then we’re going to build our children up.

Shea: We’re going to build people up. We can build communities up. And we can take over and get that control back to our homes. Thank you so much for being here. It’s been a real privilege to be able to talk to you, to hear your story, to hear the winning your mother, praying without ceasing. Right? How awesome is that? To know that the battlefield was being fought long before you even knew it, that it came full circle Bible in the trash, out of the trash in prison, because why there was a power that was going on a fight that was going on. And man, your mom was fasting for seven years because of this battle and look where it brings us. It brings us right to where we’re sitting today in this beautiful, this beautiful eulogy of how God loves us. Thank you so much for being here, doctor. Thank you so much,

Michelle: The Lord is good. Yes. Yes he is. Yes he is. Amen. And we are so thankful that Christopher joined I’m well fed and I am sure all of you listening are as well. You can connect with us in our usual places. You can support us with our awesome merch, prayer requests, all that good stuff@thepantrypodcast.com. And in this week’s show notes, there will be links to both of Dr. Yuan’s books, as well as how you can connect with him online and on social. So until next time. Bye bye. Awesome.

KEYWORDS: WHAT IS TESTIMONY, HOW TO FIND YOUR PURPOSE, HOW TO SEEK GOD, HOW TO FOLLOW JESUS, PODCASTS FOR WOMEN, PODCASTS FOR FAITH, PODCASTS FOR CHRISTIANS, CHRISTIAN PODCASTS TO FOLLOW