Latest / Revolution of Purpose Podcast / Forging Truth: Kathy Baldock on the 1946 Mistranslation That Changed Everything

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Forging Truth: Kathy Baldock on the 1946 Mistranslation That Changed Everything · Revolution of Purpose Podcast

0:00
Welcome to the Revolution of Purpose podcast.
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I'm your host, Jon Street,
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and each week we bring you conversations
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with thought leaders, entrepreneurs,
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and individuals who have aligned their life with purpose
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and created extraordinary results.
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So I'm gonna live through it and accept it radically
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with grace and hope and love.
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I mean, I would be proud to be in this concert.
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It was an honor, I had so much fun.
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Tune in every Monday
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for the Revolution of Purpose solo show
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and every Thursday for Revolution of Purpose Conversation.
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Welcome back to the Revolution of Purpose podcast.
0:32
I am your host, Jon Street,
0:34
and each week we bring you conversations
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with thought leaders, change makers,
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and individuals who have aligned their lives with purpose
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and they're making a meaningful difference in the world.
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That right there explains Kathy Baldock to a T.
0:50
Like if I were trying to describe Kathy Baldock,
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I would say she is someone who is a thought leader,
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who is a change maker.
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She is someone who's living her purpose.
1:00
Kathy is an author, a speaker, an educator,
1:02
and founder of Cannon Walker Connections.
1:04
For more than two decades,
1:06
she has worked to build bridges between LGBTQ people
1:09
and the Christian community through education,
1:12
historical research, and compassionate dialogue.
1:16
She is one of the leading voices helping people understand
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how theology, culture, politics, and history
1:23
have shaped the church's relationship with LGBTQ people.
1:28
Kathy is also one of the primary researchers
1:30
featured in the documentary, 1946,
1:33
the mistranslation that shifted culture.
1:36
Her newest book, Forging a Sacred Weapon, sorry,
1:40
explores the fascinating story
1:42
of how the word homosexual first appeared
1:45
in the Bible translation in 1946
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and the far reaching impact that decision had
1:51
on faith communities and culture.
1:54
What I appreciate most about Kathy's work
1:56
is that it isn't driven by ideology,
1:59
it's driven by a desire for truth,
2:01
understanding, and reconciliation.
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And that's what makes this conversation so important.
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Because today we're talking about much more
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than just Bible translations.
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We're talking about purpose.
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We're talking about courage.
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We're talking about what happens when one person
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is willing to follow truth wherever it leads.
2:24
Kathy, I've been looking forward to this conversation
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for a long time.
2:27
Welcome to the Revolution of Purpose podcast.
2:30
We've known each other, we're trying to figure it out,
2:33
maybe 15 years.
2:34
Yeah, since 2010.
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So 2010, we first chatted in,
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well, maybe even actually the end of 2009
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on GCN forums, that stands for Gay Christian Network,
2:47
which is now the Q Christian Fellowship, I do believe.
2:50
Is that right, or Q Fellowship?
2:51
Yeah, Q Christian Fellowship.
2:54
Yes, Q Christian Fellowship.
2:55
Yes, at the time it was GCN.
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And yeah, Kathy was instrumental for me.
3:01
Like, I kind of want to begin with a personal story
3:05
of just thanking you, because I grew up as a gay kid
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in conservative Birmingham, Alabama, in the Bible Belt,
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in evangelical Pentecostal church.
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And for many years, I didn't even know
3:19
that there was a place for my faith and sexuality.
3:22
And I know finding GCN at the time
3:26
was like a breath of fresh air.
3:28
And then actually speaking to Kathy
3:31
and some of the things that Kathy,
3:32
she was so active in the forums,
3:34
the online forums at the time and helping people.
3:37
And I remember talking to you, Kathy,
3:38
if you may remember this,
3:40
before the Nashville conference in 2010,
3:43
I was so nervous about going.
3:45
My mom, who was a former Pentecostal evangelist
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was telling me I shouldn't go,
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even though I was like, you know,
3:53
however old I was then, 33 years old,
3:55
but she was just adamant.
3:57
You cannot do this.
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This is heresy and blah, blah, blah.
3:59
And I remember you took the time in those forums
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to talk with me and really encourage me
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and kind of allay some of the fears that I had.
4:08
And so what's interesting is,
4:10
so I, because of our conversation,
4:12
I attended that Nashville conference,
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and then that led me to the Denver conference
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the following year, which is where I met my husband, Joe.
4:20
So in a very real way,
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like my life changed so much because of you
4:26
and how God used you in my life.
4:29
And I can't tell you how many other people
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you have touched over the years, I'm sure.
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So it's so good to talk to you, Kathy.
4:38
You're so welcome.
4:39
And in those conferences, if people resist them,
4:41
I mean, if you're looking, you know,
4:42
they say, how do you meet potential spouses?
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You go where people gather
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around the things you're interested in, right?
4:50
You know, two of my absolute closest friends,
4:56
Dean Johnson and Richard Archambault,
4:58
they met at the GCN conference
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when the last day is kind of wind down
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and everybody goes out to dinner.
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They met and they sat at the same table,
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I think in a Denny's,
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and they started talking about their mutual love of travel.
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And they've been married almost 11 years now.
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That's amazing.
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Go where the people,
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go where the thing you like to do, those people are.
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And you went and you had the courage to go
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because it's a bit easier now, but at the time, yeah.
5:32
It was a different place.
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Oh, it was so bad, yeah.
5:34
Well, you know, and I don't know that I've,
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I may have shared this with you at the time,
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but it probably, it's been years since we've talked about it
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but what happened with that with my mom too was,
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you know, I had this conversation with her.
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I decided I was going to go.
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She was, you know, literally just so against it.
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And then the morning before I left,
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she called me and asked me to come by and I went.
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And my mom who was, you know,
6:01
Pentecostal, evangelical through and through,
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when I get there, she has tears in her eyes
6:08
and she said, I can't explain it,
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but God has told me you're doing exactly
6:13
what you're supposed to do
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and that you are supposed to go to this conference
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and that you didn't choose this.
6:20
And it's not for me to understand
6:22
and to just know that he created the way you are
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and he loves you.
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And I mean, that God did over one evening
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what arguments could not have done over months for my mom.
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And so I went to the conference when I came back,
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she was so excited about hearing about it.
6:40
She used to have a prayer meeting.
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She was like, invite your gay friends to the prayer meeting.
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All of a sudden she became affirming overnight
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and it was a miracle of God.
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And here's what's wild about that.
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That was in January of 2010.
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She was diagnosed with cancer in June of 2010
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and passed in July of 2010.
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But we had that last six months
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of me being completely out, her affirming everything.
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And I'm so thankful for that.
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I really am.
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And it just goes to show you
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that God can do anything like that.
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So my story of going to the first GCN was in 2007.
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I had read an article in the New York Times.
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I mean, I'm a New Yorker.
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So since I've been 15,
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I've subscribed and read the New York Times to this day,
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even though the rate is now $33 a month,
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but still I subscribe to the New York Times.
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I work at the crossword every day.
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I do all the word puzzles.
7:37
I do, I love connections.
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I love Wordle.
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I love them all, Spanagram, all of it.
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And I do them every day.
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And I mean, you must know someone that loves words
7:48
is gonna play the New York Times words puzzle.
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So I was in a relationship
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and had been in one for almost six years
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with someone I really, I was divorced.
8:00
I started the divorce process in 2001.
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It took quite a few years to get divorced
8:07
because my husband kept wanting more and more and more,
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or actually I called him my husband.
8:12
And so I was in a relationship with someone
8:14
I really thought I wanted to marry,
8:17
very high profile in the drug enforcement community,
8:22
the highest profile DEA agent that had ever worked in it.
8:28
And so I was kind of in this sweet spot of,
8:31
senators would call him and he had a good reputation,
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but he didn't like gay people.
8:38
And so this change started happening in me,
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which I'm sure we'll get into,
8:43
but I wanted him to give me a ride to the airport
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because the first one I went to was in Seattle.
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And he was so resistant that I thought,
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why do I want this person that's just like gonna
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rain on my parade to even take me to the airport?
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So I said, you know what?
8:58
Don't even take me to the airport.
9:00
And I had a friend take me and I had a friend pick me up
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because he was so like, you shouldn't go,
9:06
you shouldn't go, you shouldn't do this.
9:07
What are you doing?
9:08
What are you doing?
9:09
What are you doing?
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And I knew I had to go.
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So I wouldn't even let him take me to the airport.
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And two weeks after I went to that conference,
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that relationship ended because I knew I had a choice,
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but that's all that this discussion is about.
9:23
Like what choice did I make?
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So anyway, we'll get into that,
9:26
but I had pushed back on going to a GCN conference too,
9:31
as a straight person.
9:33
I love that.
9:33
Well, and I love that you were,
9:35
whether you use these terms or not at the time,
9:38
but you're protecting your energy.
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Like you knew that's not the energy you wanted
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to start this conference with.
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And I think that's really awesome
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because I do a lot of teaching about energy and energy work
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and how important it is to flow in alignment.
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And if something doesn't fit,
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there's no need to entertain it.
9:59
You knew down deep,
10:00
he doesn't need to be taken to the airport.
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So you're like, no thanks.
10:03
Yeah.
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And I remember you telling that story in Nashville actually,
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or Denver,
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and talking about when you came back
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and broke up with him because you had to make that choice.
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And I think that plays into what we're talking about today
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in a very important way,
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because you chose authenticity,
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you chose your purpose,
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you chose your calling
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over what seemed like a very stable,
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or I guess like, I mean, as successful as he was,
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like that would have been the safe choice
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to just stay with him and keep your mouth shut.
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But you said no.
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Even financially, right?
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Because at the time I was a single woman
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and he had far more than I did,
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not just reputation and wealth.
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He had even bought a parcel of land.
10:58
People that know me know I hike.
11:00
And he bought a parcel of land between those two canyons
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where I hiked all the time
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with the intention that, oh, this is where we'll live.
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I mean, all of that was just laid out on a plate before me.
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And I said, no, that's crazy.
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I said, no.
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Wow.
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That's amazing.
11:23
That's amazing.
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Well, I'm so thankful that you did
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because it has changed my life and so many lives.
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Well, and I know your life changed a lot too.
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I want to ask you though, one question.
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I ask every guest this question
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and I think it's a beautiful question
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to really stop and ponder,
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but who is Kathy Baldock today
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that the younger Kathy would be proud of?
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I think I've always expressed myself.
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Even my mother said, my mother used to tell me,
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even as a kid, I mean, she would just say,
12:01
you're a pain in the ass.
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And the reason I was a pain
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is because I was a question asker.
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And my mom, that a lot of people
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affectionately know as Buttercup,
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my mom was not well-educated.
12:18
My mom went to Catholic school in New York.
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We're New Yorkers.
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I'm a fourth generation Manhattanite.
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And so she went to Catholic school, as did I.
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And then she went to a school that no longer exists,
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Mother Cabrini High School.
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In Inwood, in New York.
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And then after that,
12:39
she went to do some secretarial school.
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And I say it in the acknowledgements in my book,
12:46
my mom only read two books in her life.
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And only two books she ever, two books.
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I mean, and I'm just like always in a book.
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I mean, I have to juggle them like,
12:57
what do I want to read next?
12:59
My mom read Dr. Zhivago in 1957,
13:03
which is a really fat book.
13:05
And my first book,
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those were the only two books she ever read.
13:08
And so my mom was not curious at all.
13:12
And so that was kind of,
13:15
she tried to tamp that down me, in me as a child.
13:19
And because it was problematic to her,
13:24
because I would ask a lot of questions
13:26
that she couldn't answer.
13:28
And then sometimes the questions to her,
13:30
she felt were embarrassing.
13:33
A couple of months ago,
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these three memories just flooded back.
13:38
But one was as simple as,
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I couldn't have been more than six or seven
13:41
and we were picking up something at the dry cleaners.
13:45
And nobody, we don't use dry cleaners
13:48
the way we used to use dry cleaners,
13:50
but there was that smell to dry cleaners, right?
13:53
So whatever that ethylene or that ene,
13:56
that something ene smell was, I found it curious.
14:00
So we go in to pick up dry cleaning
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and that machine is going around and around and around,
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to pick your clothes off that rotating rack, circular rack.
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And I said to the person, what's that smell?
14:13
And like, why, when I come in here, do I smell that stuff?
14:16
And what do you use it for?
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My mother like banged on my arm
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and said, stop asking questions, stop asking questions.
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And then, and that was very often as a child,
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very often.
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And I always knew I was curious,
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but it was kind of presented to me as an embarrassment.
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Like don't embarrass people by asking questions.
14:43
And then when I got into college,
14:45
I had a tiny, I had a lot more freedom.
14:48
I went to an engineering school
14:50
and I had a lot more freedom, intellectually I did,
14:53
but I still had this thing in me was like,
14:58
don't embarrass people, don't ask questions,
15:00
don't speak up, don't speak up,
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don't bring attention to yourself,
15:04
don't speak up, don't ask questions.
15:07
And then I married a man
15:09
who was pretty similar to that, right?
15:11
Not similar to me, but stop asking questions.
15:15
Like, why are you always asking questions?
15:18
And one, I mean, I didn't plan on saying any of this.
15:21
So yay for you.
15:23
Our last trip together, we were in Spain
15:26
and we were in this town that was an olive growing region.
15:31
And we were in a parador.
15:33
I think that's what they're called.
15:34
They take these old historic sites
15:36
and they turn them into hotels
15:38
so that they have this dual purpose
15:40
of keeping up these historic sites.
15:42
It was an old castle and making money on them, yada yada.
15:48
And I was standing on the balcony
15:49
of this old castle and it overlooked an olive grove.
15:53
And I was standing and leaning out as far as I could
15:57
because I was trying to see where this trail
15:59
that I could see through the olive grove was going.
16:03
And I came out and he said, what are you doing?
16:08
This was our last trip together.
16:10
And I said, I'm just trying to see where that path is going
16:12
because I wanna know if I should go walking on that path,
16:16
where will it bring me?
16:17
So he said, why can't you ever be happy
16:21
with what's right in front of you?
16:23
Why are you always looking over the next hill
16:26
for the next thing?
16:28
Why are you always looking somewhere else?
16:30
Why can't you just be happy?
16:33
And it was a repeat, like, right?
16:36
It was a repeat of what I had been told since I was a child.
16:41
And I am so darn glad that I was able to do that.
16:47
And I am so darn glad that I broke away from those voices
16:54
that tried to hold me from walking in a room
16:58
and bringing attention to myself.
17:00
Like I want to now as a speaker, walk into a room
17:03
and say that, have even my clothing, the way I dress,
17:08
the way I present myself, people to look at me and say,
17:12
she knows what she's talking about
17:14
on this issue.
17:15
And I want that attention, not because I want the attention,
17:19
but I want people to listen to me.
17:22
And I am so glad that I am a person that found my voice.
17:28
And I think I would have been surprised as a child
17:32
that my voice and my curiosity were good things,
17:37
because I was told they were not good things.
17:40
So that's a, oh, it's an answer that I never expected
17:44
to be giving you, but yay for you, John.
17:46
Well, yay for you.
17:48
I think it's, you know, using your voice
17:51
is changing the lives of thousands of people.
17:55
And so, you know, I know you just said, you know,
17:58
as a child, you never really thought about
18:00
what that would look like.
18:01
What was the moment that made you say,
18:05
I'm done letting people tell me to stop ask questions?
18:10
Like, what do you, was there a specific straw
18:12
that broke the camel's back?
18:14
Um, I think just over time, I realized,
18:19
I realized that I have some unique gifts
18:23
that I didn't appreciate,
18:26
that I didn't even see in myself.
18:28
I have two children.
18:29
I have Andrew, who's 40, and I have Sam, who's 39.
18:34
Sam's a girl, Sam's Samantha.
18:36
And, um, one-
18:37
And hundreds more from GCN that probably you could adopt.
18:41
And so Andrew lives about an hour and a half away
18:45
outside of, I live near Tahoe.
18:46
He lives up the lake and outside the lake.
18:50
And then Sam lives in Brooklyn.
18:52
So she's become the fifth generation New Yorker.
18:55
So, um, and I would watch Andrew as a little boy,
19:00
and I homeschooled them because of course,
19:02
I'm that conservative mom.
19:05
And so I homeschooled them.
19:07
And, um, I would teach, um, lots of topics.
19:13
And I would watch Andrew.
19:17
Sammy, Sammy is an excellent student.
19:19
Sammy graduated number one out of high school,
19:22
number one out of the business school.
19:23
Sammy's just a go-getter.
19:26
You hand her a task.
19:28
She's the person that accomplishes it.
19:30
Absolutely.
19:32
Andrew didn't get the same grades as Sammy,
19:34
but Andrew is really wicked smart.
19:37
And the way Andrew would put it,
19:39
like I would teach him maybe some history
19:42
and some cultural things and some religion.
19:47
And I would teach him and he wouldn't say much.
19:49
And then Andrew would spit back
19:52
this kind of original statement
19:54
that took all of these things and put them together
19:57
and gave me something back.
19:59
And I would look at that kid as he was growing up
20:01
and think, how the heck does that kid do that?
20:05
Like I didn't, how does he do that?
20:07
And then I realized I did that.
20:10
I didn't realize I did that until I saw my child do it
20:15
as a child, as a little boy.
20:17
And I, so when I started realizing,
20:22
and I didn't realize that
20:23
until probably writing the first book.
20:26
So the first book published in 2014.
20:29
And as I was writing it, I realized that my asking technique,
20:34
which I knew I had, and I had a voice for now,
20:39
but my asking was critical,
20:42
but I didn't realize I had this gift.
20:45
And it is a gift of being able to take
20:48
all these disparate pieces of information
20:52
and kind of weave them together to see something.
20:56
And when I realized I had it
20:59
and that not a lot of people had it,
21:03
that I should use it.
21:05
I should use it to explain things.
21:08
And I think in writing the first book,
21:12
I realized that what I thought I was in this conversation for,
21:18
why I thought I had been brought into this world
21:22
was to do kind of exactly what I did for you,
21:24
to mother people.
21:26
I mean, that's what I thought I was here for,
21:28
was to be an encouraging mother.
21:31
I remember being at a lot of conferences
21:34
like the Evangelical Network and other affirming spaces,
21:38
some of the older affirming spaces,
21:42
Alliance of Affirming Christians.
21:45
And I'd be brought into that space
21:47
and my job would kind of be at the end
21:50
when people would say,
21:51
so people do this now,
21:52
like Free Mom Hugs does this.
21:55
A lot of parent groups do it.
21:57
But at the time I was the mom in the room.
22:00
I was the straight mom in the room
22:01
and I would kind of be put in that position to hug people
22:05
and to love people and to tell them they were okay.
22:08
And my role changed.
22:12
As soon as I realized this about myself
22:14
and I started going down the avenue
22:17
of what I was uniquely gifted to do,
22:20
that went not by the wayside,
22:23
but I didn't do that anymore.
22:26
And the wonderful thing is parents were rising up,
22:29
like parents started rising up in these organizations.
22:33
I think the first time I really saw it,
22:36
and I can't remember the year,
22:37
but was when GCN went to Portland.
22:40
And when I came down this escalator
22:42
and saw the parents gathering for lunch
22:44
and there were hundreds of them,
22:47
I thought, oh, wow, they're here.
22:51
And that also made me feel like, oh, they're here.
22:55
That's their job now.
22:57
I can go do what I think I'm supposed to do,
23:00
which was an incredibly odd choice
23:06
because I've never taken a writing class.
23:14
In engineering school at the time,
23:16
they didn't even require, they do now,
23:20
I'm pretty sure they do, require humanities.
23:23
We weren't even required to take any humanities.
23:26
I took reading classes because I liked to read.
23:29
And I thought if I don't take a class,
23:31
I'm gonna lose that time set aside to read.
23:36
So I would travel pretty far on the campus bus
23:38
to go to the women's campus just to take a reading class.
23:42
And so it was very odd that I thought
23:50
that I had something to say
23:53
and that I had the ability to communicate it was,
23:56
I'm not gonna say arrogant,
23:58
but it was a big thought to imagine
24:02
that that was a direction I could go in.
24:05
But I took it and it was the right direction.
24:09
It was the right thing to do.
24:11
Because I still think I'm uniquely gifted to take,
24:15
because I love to read.
24:17
I'm very curious and I love to read.
24:21
I've read books that like people say,
24:24
well, where'd you find that?
24:24
I said, I don't even know how that crossed my mind.
24:28
I mean, I've found things in footnotes
24:30
and I said, oh, I wonder what that's about.
24:32
And then it ends up being a really key piece of material.
24:36
So I moved in a direction I should move
24:40
and moved out of a very comfortable spot to do it,
24:44
but it ended up being right.
24:47
Wow.
24:48
Exactly.
24:49
Well, and I think that's one of the things
24:51
that makes your books so amazing,
24:55
which I haven't read the latest book yet,
24:57
but with Walking the Bridgeless Canyon,
25:01
the amount of scholarship that you put into that.
25:04
I mean, the hours of intense work
25:08
and like, I mean, even going back old school,
25:11
like now we're like, oh, everything's at our fingertips,
25:14
but you actually went to like old libraries
25:16
and look at, you know, the old,
25:18
what are those, what is that called?
25:19
Like the Fisher films or something?
25:23
That's this book.
25:24
That's this book too.
25:26
That's this book.
25:27
I mean, that's how I found the letters
25:29
that started the whole book.
25:30
But if you think that book is academic,
25:34
this book, I mean, and it is fat.
25:40
That's awesome.
25:41
It's a hundred pages more than the other book.
25:44
And it's, and I have, I've had great editors.
25:48
I've had unbelievable indexers.
25:52
I mean, the person that even indexed it,
25:55
I think you can look at a book
25:57
and tell how well researched the book is by its index.
26:02
And so Carol Fuse Reed indexed it
26:05
and she's high level and Heidi Mann
26:07
and Wendy Prell Danbury edited.
26:11
And they just really cared about the topics.
26:14
So I've had really good people working with me,
26:16
but this book, I'm proud.
26:19
I mean, I honestly don't think
26:21
I could have done a better job on it,
26:23
but this book is more deeply researched,
26:30
but it's still accessible,
26:33
which is what I've tried to accomplish
26:35
because I'm not an academic.
26:37
I mean, I've never, I never in college,
26:41
never took a history class.
26:43
You know, as I said, never took a writing class,
26:46
but these are things I've just been curious about.
26:49
And, but I've also been really intent
26:52
on taking difficult topics
26:55
and trying to make them as accessible as possible.
26:59
You know, people say that you should write
27:00
at a 10th grade level.
27:02
I can't write at a 10th grade level.
27:06
I don't know what level I write at,
27:07
but I'm not writing academic papers.
27:09
I have friends that are wonderful scholars
27:14
and I'll tell you a funny story
27:15
and I'll link her to this so she can even see it.
27:18
Karen Keane, wonderful person.
27:22
She's married to Sally Gary, who was centerpiece.
27:24
That's the, so Reformation Project
27:27
and centerpiece trade years off, right?
27:30
They're very similar.
27:32
So one year centerpiece will do the conference
27:35
and the next year Matthew will do it
27:36
with Reformation Project.
27:38
Sally Gary and Karen Keane were both side B Christians,
27:42
Christians that knew they were gay,
27:44
knew they were lesbians,
27:45
but didn't think that they should ever get
27:47
into a sexual relationship while they're married.
27:50
So obviously they figured it out.
27:52
Well, Karen Keane is wicked smart.
27:55
Karen Keane is probably, any room you walk in,
27:58
she's probably the smartest person in the room.
28:00
She is the smartest person in the room.
28:03
And so one year, several of us went down to Dallas
28:08
to Matthew Vine's wedding and we were having lunch
28:11
and we were talking about Sally's progression of books.
28:15
I think her first book was called like,
28:17
Good God, Good Girl or something like that
28:20
when she was not affirming.
28:22
And then the next one she wrote
28:23
and she's written three books and they're all great books.
28:27
And Karen sat there and she said,
28:29
we were saying like, why did you write the second book?
28:31
And she said, well, I wanted to write a book
28:33
that was far more accessible.
28:35
And three of us sitting together started laughing
28:39
because we thought she thinks this is accessible
28:43
and it's still this incredibly high level
28:46
because she's brilliant.
28:49
But her stuff is for people
28:52
that really know the topic anyway.
28:55
Like the file system is already set up in their heads
28:59
and they can just take her information
29:01
and drop it in someplace in the filing system
29:03
because they're already there.
29:05
She's wicked smart,
29:07
but she's not as accessible as I want it to be.
29:10
I wanted a mom of a gay kid to be able to pick this book up
29:14
without all the file system set up
29:17
and be able to understand it.
29:18
So I'm glad that I'm able to write at that level
29:24
because all of us are needed in this, right?
29:27
Karen informs me, I inform other people.
29:30
There's some people that are just great speakers,
29:32
they're not good writers, right?
29:35
We all have this place in this thing
29:37
and I'm just so lucky because these people are my friends.
29:41
But I laugh about that because Karen is,
29:44
I tell you, she's the smartest person in every room.
29:48
That's amazing.
29:50
So for our listeners,
29:52
the book that she's talking about, her newest book,
29:54
Forging a Sacred Weapon.
29:57
So give us like a brief synopsis of what this book does.
30:01
I mean, I have a good idea,
30:03
but for those who maybe are watching this
30:05
and we have a lot of listeners
30:07
who are from all different types of walks of life
30:11
because we interview people
30:12
from all different types of walks of life.
30:14
So if somebody is like,
30:15
I don't know what this is talking about at all,
30:17
maybe just give us from a 10,000 foot view
30:20
what you accomplished through this book.
30:22
So first of all, anyone could find information in this book
30:28
because the Bible is so influential
30:32
on discussions of faith, sexuality, and gender.
30:36
I don't care if you're an atheist,
30:38
you're going to engage, come up against,
30:42
have to encounter people of faith
30:45
that are going to want to hold LGBTQ people
30:51
back from not only faith communities,
30:54
but voting rights, parental rights,
30:59
bathroom rights, everything.
31:03
The Bible has been used to keep gay people fenced in.
31:10
So whether you believe it's written
31:13
or inspired by the Holy Spirit,
31:16
written by men of God,
31:17
been properly translated or not,
31:19
it impacts the lives of LGBTQ people, absolutely.
31:25
So it is a book for anyone.
31:27
And I use the Bible as a text.
31:31
The Bible, I put it in historical context,
31:33
but where it started.
31:35
So I had been teaching,
31:36
I do six to eight hour presentations
31:39
and they're not boring,
31:41
but I like to do them.
31:43
They're definitely not boring.
31:44
They're not boring.
31:45
And I do them along a timeline.
31:47
I put a big timeline up on the wall.
31:49
And for years I had said,
31:51
and it's this place,
31:53
right in this place in 1946,
31:55
where the first time ever,
31:58
the New Testament version
32:00
of the revised standard version of the Bible,
32:02
used the word homosexual for the first time in history.
32:05
And I've spent time before that
32:07
building up to what do people think this thing is?
32:10
Is it a mental illness?
32:12
Is it a crime?
32:13
Do you get seduced into it?
32:15
Do you get molested into it?
32:17
Does it have to do with body shape?
32:19
Does it have to do with the hair on your body?
32:22
Why are people this way?
32:23
We don't know,
32:24
but this is the first time it's used.
32:27
So what do the people that are on this team,
32:31
what is their thinking?
32:33
What do they culturally,
32:35
theologically, ideologically,
32:38
think about what this word homosexual is?
32:41
And I would say they knew nothing.
32:43
They actually,
32:44
only because I've been in the archives at Yale University,
32:48
the archives were there
32:49
because the head of the translation team,
32:51
Luther Weigel,
32:52
was the Dean of Yale Divinity School.
32:55
And most of the work took place
32:58
on the Divinity School campus.
33:02
Most of the translation work in a room there.
33:05
And so when he died,
33:08
all of his papers were preserved at Yale.
33:11
So what did those people that were doing that work,
33:20
and I know that work on 1 Corinthians,
33:23
people will say the word,
33:25
what did they think in 1946?
33:27
No, it's actually,
33:28
what did they think in 1937?
33:31
Because that's when they did the work on 1 Corinthians.
33:37
And they signed off on it in 1941,
33:39
but they didn't do any work beyond 1937.
33:42
They did it,
33:42
they signed off in 41.
33:44
So people will always say,
33:46
they did this work in 1946.
33:48
That's wrong too,
33:49
because what people understood about homosexuality
33:53
from 1937 to 1946,
33:55
it's going to change again.
33:56
Because when the Second World War happens,
33:59
it's kind of called the national coming out
34:01
because of the military.
34:03
Because people are finally,
34:04
both men and women,
34:05
are in same sex environments
34:07
and they're realizing like,
34:09
oh, no wonder I didn't like,
34:11
you know, I was in love with Sally Mae
34:13
from the next farm over
34:14
because I really like Dennis, you know,
34:18
because they're now in same sex environments.
34:21
So I believed that those men on the team,
34:28
the RSC team,
34:29
they had no theology beyond to support what they did.
34:34
I believed that their decision
34:36
was completely cultural and ideological,
34:39
but I couldn't prove it.
34:41
You know, I could know all the history around it
34:44
and I'm really good about,
34:46
you give me certain periods of history
34:49
and I can pretty much peg
34:51
what was thought about same sex behavior
34:53
during any period of history.
34:55
And so, but it was Ed Oxford.
34:59
So Ed Oxford, who's the financial advisor
35:02
in Long Beach, California,
35:03
he had come to several of my workshops
35:08
and he'd gone to seminary at Fuller or Talbot
35:11
and he said,
35:13
the second time he came to listen to me,
35:14
why have I never been taught this?
35:16
So Ed went the next step
35:18
and started collecting Bibles
35:21
to see what word was in the Bible
35:24
before homosexuals.
35:26
And he had amassed this beautiful Bible collection
35:28
and another time when I was down there,
35:29
he said, come see my Bible collection.
35:32
So I went to see his Bible collection
35:35
and I was so impressed.
35:37
And then several months later,
35:38
he called and he said,
35:39
I mean, we were then buddies
35:41
because he had a good collection of Bibles.
35:45
And he called me and he said,
35:49
the head of the translation team,
35:51
Luther Weigel, who I knew,
35:53
the translation team was born between,
35:55
you said a short view.
35:56
No, I never give short views on anything.
35:59
The translation team was born
36:01
between 1870 and 1917.
36:04
So these were the people,
36:06
as there were young men in this period of unknowing
36:09
that the translation were very important to know.
36:12
So the head of the team, Luther Weigel,
36:15
when he died in 1976,
36:17
all of his archives, everything of his,
36:21
birthday cards, baby cards,
36:22
everything went into this archive.
36:25
And so Ed said,
36:26
his archives are saved at Yale University.
36:30
And maybe in those archives,
36:32
there will be records of the meetings
36:37
when they did the translation.
36:38
And maybe you can find out then
36:41
what the conversation was.
36:42
So I expected when we went there,
36:44
we went there for five days in 2017.
36:47
I expected to find
36:50
what people would kind of be doing today,
36:51
like somebody sitting off to the side and saying,
36:54
Dr. Craig is talking about this,
36:56
and Dr. Moffat says this,
36:57
and we had this discussion,
36:59
we finally settled on,
37:01
no, none of that was there.
37:03
None of that detail that I was looking for was there.
37:06
And I was very disappointed.
37:08
But on the third day,
37:10
going through other records, other microfilms,
37:13
we went through 94 boxes of paper,
37:16
and then we went through 22 rolls of microfilm.
37:20
And on the third day,
37:21
as I was going through the microfilms,
37:23
I found a series of four letters written in 1959
37:26
where somebody questioned directly to the team,
37:31
why did you use this word?
37:33
And documented why he thought it was wrong.
37:37
And unbelievable details,
37:41
so accurate that it really could have been written today.
37:45
If somebody wrote that letter today,
37:46
I would be impressed.
37:48
And with the thinking skills.
37:52
And then the more incredible letter
37:56
is when Dr. Weigel writes back to him
37:58
and essentially says,
37:59
I'm only answering this
38:02
because you put so much time into it.
38:04
And in his answer,
38:06
I could see why they did it,
38:08
and I could see all the fallacies of the limitations
38:12
and the fallacies of the thinking.
38:14
And then Dr. Weigel said,
38:16
you're right, this was not the right word.
38:19
He admitted to a mistake.
38:21
And those letters had never been found.
38:24
So one of the things I did,
38:26
I also wrote a biography for David,
38:28
because here's the guy.
38:29
He was 21 at the time.
38:32
He died in 2023.
38:34
But that is the basis of this book.
38:38
So I finally found evidence
38:41
of why they made the decision.
38:44
So I felt like,
38:46
now that I have evidence
38:47
and I'm not just saying,
38:49
I think it's cultural and ideological,
38:51
I could see the fallacies of their limited theology.
38:58
And I wondered, could I write an academic paper?
39:00
And then people said,
39:01
if you write an academic paper,
39:02
it's gonna get buried.
39:04
Write a book.
39:04
And I thought, oh, there is not enough for a book.
39:07
So like 564 pages later.
39:11
So that's the basis of it.
39:12
Finding those four letters
39:15
became the basis of a book.
39:16
So I've written from essentially 3200 BC
39:21
to the impact today.
39:23
How same-sex relationships have been seen,
39:26
how procreation has been seen,
39:28
the role of men and women,
39:29
same-sex behavior,
39:31
the Bible texts in context,
39:34
how these things change
39:36
and get interpreted through time.
39:38
And finally to the 1970s,
39:40
when the word homosexual gets embedded
39:44
in four other Bibles
39:46
and then off we go to the races
39:47
and end up in reparative therapy.
39:49
So it's a very complete book,
39:53
but it takes each chunk of time so slowly
39:57
that when you get in that room in 1937
40:00
and these guys are trying to figure it out,
40:02
you understand why they did it.
40:04
There was no malice attached to it.
40:06
They were men of their time
40:08
operating on assumptions of their time
40:11
and they made a poorly informed mistake.
40:15
Please pardon me while I interrupt your podcast
40:17
with a word from your sponsor, me.
40:19
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40:21
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And now let's get back to this podcast.
41:25
Well, and I love that you're just stating facts
41:29
and you're not trying to paint someone as evil
41:33
and someone as a hero.
41:34
You're just saying this is why they made this.
41:36
We're a product of our environment.
41:38
These were the assumptions they made
41:40
and this is why they made them.
41:41
And now that we, as Maya Angelou said,
41:43
when we know better, we do better.
41:45
Now that we know better
41:46
and this is no longer a psychological disorder,
41:50
you know, we can actually, you know,
41:52
paint this in the correct context of current time
41:56
and see what it really means for us today.
41:59
I mean, would that be a fair statement, you think?
42:00
Yes, yes.
42:02
And so I'm trying to correct even our side that says,
42:06
you know, these 12 homophobic men sat down and made this.
42:09
No, they were not.
42:10
That was not on their mind at all.
42:13
They were just making,
42:14
they were operating in their assumptions.
42:16
And in chapter 20, when I do the letters
42:19
and I put the letters completely in there,
42:21
but I analyze each letter,
42:24
I analyze it with what they knew.
42:28
Like here are their language limitations.
42:31
Here are their psychology limitations.
42:35
Here are their limitations.
42:37
And this was kind of the only decision
42:41
they could have made.
42:43
But I also believe that when this all ramped up
42:46
in the 1970s and 80s,
42:50
somebody before Ed and I,
42:53
somebody should have asked the question.
42:55
It's just a simple question.
42:57
I wonder why they did that.
42:59
Let's go look at the translation notes.
43:01
Somebody should have asked.
43:03
And I believe on either side,
43:06
somebody before they turn the cannons
43:09
on the LGBTQ community,
43:11
someone on the Christian loving side
43:15
should have said, are we right?
43:17
Like all of our behavior,
43:19
all of our actions towards the LGBT community
43:24
are based on assumptions.
43:25
What are those assumptions?
43:28
That's what they did in the scientific revolution, right?
43:30
They went back to like,
43:33
what did Ptolemy say about astronomy in the universe?
43:36
What did all these other people say
43:38
about bodies, et cetera?
43:40
They went back and they looked at the assumptions.
43:43
And that's when the scientific revolution happens
43:46
because they look at their assumptions and they say,
43:49
our assumptions are based on something from 300 BC.
43:52
I think we've learned something since then.
43:55
We should have, Christians should have done the same thing
43:58
on either side.
44:00
We should have looked at our assumptions.
44:02
And it's crazy that it was us
44:05
that were the first two to do it.
44:06
I'm so thankful that you did,
44:09
but it's so interesting what you did with those letters
44:14
are what so many Christians never do
44:16
with the Bible in general.
44:18
We're reading somebody else's mail
44:19
when Paul wrote to Corinth,
44:22
but can we go back and look at the original language,
44:24
look at the original context?
44:26
Like all of that is so important.
44:28
What was happening at the time?
44:30
And I think it's almost a lazy Christianity to just say,
44:35
well, the Bible says it, so I believe it.
44:36
And therefore it's true.
44:38
But they don't, when people say that so often,
44:41
you don't give any credence to the times
44:43
that the Bible contradicts itself,
44:46
and to what the actual language is
44:48
and what does it actually say?
44:50
And why has it been translated?
44:51
And who was to gain when things were put in
44:54
or things were left out?
44:55
And when you wrap the scholarship around it,
45:00
I believe instead of it being something
45:01
that challenges your faith,
45:03
it's something that can actually make it
45:06
much deeper and more beautiful.
45:07
Actually, I came out of this
45:10
because I've had people say,
45:12
are you still a Christian?
45:13
I say, oh, better, even more.
45:16
Because now I understand what the Bible says.
45:18
I understand those texts.
45:21
I agree with them in context.
45:24
And something, John, that I want to point out all the time,
45:27
and I think I've pointed out three to five times
45:29
in the book, it's just like beat a dead horse
45:31
because it's important.
45:33
The first accessible academic book
45:36
on Greco-Roman sexual ethics
45:41
was written in 1978.
45:44
So anyone doing translation work before that,
45:48
including the translation team in 1937,
45:53
had no access to understanding
45:56
what Greco-Roman sexual ethics looked like,
45:59
the abusiveness,
46:01
how people that were enslaved and prostituted
46:05
and lower status and foreigners
46:07
and people that were captured
46:08
had no ability to consent or not consent.
46:12
And it was not only in the Greek society,
46:17
they had sexual relationships with citizen boys
46:20
until they got hairy.
46:22
And that was not only tolerated,
46:24
it was expected.
46:26
It was a mentoring program.
46:27
You can't even call it pederasty
46:29
because there was none of this negative stuff
46:34
attached to it.
46:34
It was expected.
46:35
It was what young men did.
46:38
And then when you get to the Roman times,
46:41
it changes a little bit
46:42
who they could have sex with.
46:44
But we didn't know that.
46:46
The translation team didn't know that
46:50
when they did this translation work.
46:51
So they couldn't see the abusive nature of it.
46:54
And so when Kenneth Taylor does his work
46:57
in the living Bible published in 1971,
47:00
and he puts it in five more places,
47:02
he didn't know that either.
47:04
But anyone doing work after 1980
47:09
should have known this.
47:11
When I was writing one part of the book,
47:13
I just looked up at my library
47:16
and I thought, and I've said it,
47:18
I think I said it as a personal note in the text.
47:21
I said, I'm looking at my library
47:23
and I have four dozen of these books,
47:27
four dozen of these books
47:28
that explain Greco-Roman sexual ethics.
47:32
And anyone doing work before 1980
47:35
wouldn't have had one.
47:36
And the reason was because as those,
47:39
that information was being accumulated
47:41
starting in the 1920s,
47:44
the censorship laws were so high
47:47
in the United States and England
47:50
that anything even squeaking out of Germany,
47:54
people were fined for selling those books.
47:57
That information wasn't coming out.
47:58
And then when the Hitler regime comes in
48:01
and burns all and destroys all that information,
48:05
decades of accumulation of sexual differences
48:08
gets destroyed,
48:10
it's gonna take time to build that up again.
48:12
So that information doesn't make it around.
48:15
People say, oh, that's ridiculous.
48:17
No, it's not getting out of Germany.
48:20
And some of those authors are writing specifically
48:24
for doctors and lawyers
48:26
and that information doesn't get out.
48:28
So all of these cultural assumptions
48:32
are being made about who these homosexuals are,
48:35
including by the RSV translation team.
48:38
They had no academics on it.
48:41
So you can understand why they didn't understand
48:44
that these were abusive, exploitative relationships
48:48
where the person being penetrated
48:51
had no ability to drop out,
48:53
to say, yep, don't wanna do that.
48:55
So these are not homosexual relationships.
48:57
These are power dynamics.
48:59
Mm-hmm.
49:01
So what would you say to anyone who watches this,
49:05
who is maybe a member of the LGBTQ community,
49:09
who has frustration or aggravation
49:14
or resentment because of a mistranslation
49:19
that led them to be told that they're gonna burn in hell
49:22
or something like that?
49:25
What do you say to those people?
49:26
And then I want you to also,
49:28
I'm gonna ask you another similar question
49:30
to a whole nother audience,
49:31
but to LGBT people, yeah.
49:33
What would you say to that?
49:38
I think my teaching and my writing
49:41
has spoken to a lot of people
49:43
because I get lots of mail
49:45
or lots of comments on social media saying,
49:49
until I understood this,
49:50
I actually listened to a podcast this morning
49:52
while I was hiking,
49:53
Rocky, who did the movie,
49:55
1946, the mistranslation of the chipped culture,
49:58
which is the documentary associated with this work.
50:01
I was listening to two former pastors in Australia
50:08
who have a podcast there now interviewing Rocky.
50:12
And that one pastor, one of the pastors,
50:15
he was trying to come out.
50:17
He said he just couldn't come out.
50:20
He couldn't come out
50:21
because he had valued the Bible so highly
50:24
that he just couldn't do it.
50:27
He couldn't get over that hurdle.
50:28
But when he saw the documentary
50:31
or heard what we were doing,
50:33
that was his hurdle
50:35
because he saw that this was a mistranslation
50:39
and that broke through all of the other objections.
50:42
He just needed to know
50:44
that he was still in alignment with God.
50:47
And when he said, wait a minute,
50:49
this is not God doing this.
50:52
This is people.
50:53
This is assumptions.
50:54
That was when he was able to get free.
50:57
So that's what I see as the benefit
50:59
to the LGBTQ community is
51:01
just that freedom of saying,
51:03
wait a minute, this is not God.
51:06
This was never said about me.
51:08
And I hear that.
51:09
That's what I hear all the time.
51:10
It's like that click goes like,
51:12
wait a minute, I've been deceived.
51:17
And people come out.
51:20
And good, good, good.
51:22
Go to a conference.
51:24
Go hear me speak.
51:26
And somewhere in the audience,
51:27
find your next spouse, your spouse.
51:34
Well, but you know,
51:36
there's so much freedom that comes in forgiveness.
51:39
And realizing that,
51:42
just like you went back to that room in 1937,
51:47
they weren't necessarily homophobes.
51:49
They were people who were doing what they knew to do
51:51
the best that they knew to do it.
51:54
And unfortunately, it began a doctrine
51:59
that just built on itself
52:01
and got worse and worse and worse.
52:03
And so, you know, I think being able to say,
52:08
I forgive them.
52:09
I forgive those who preach this.
52:12
That gives freedom
52:14
because it also says they have no power over me.
52:18
You know, and I mean, I grew up in a church that,
52:21
you know, I believed that God loved everybody but me.
52:25
Because I mean, we have people who used to be murderers.
52:27
We have people who are drug addicts.
52:28
We have people who are rapists.
52:30
Everybody was welcome unless you were gay.
52:32
I mean, if you were gay, that was it.
52:34
That's like the blood of Christ does not cover that.
52:36
You're an abomination.
52:38
And so, you know, there's a lot of like,
52:40
well, how dare they, you know,
52:42
but we're a product of our environment
52:45
and being able to forgive is gonna give us freedom.
52:49
Unforgiveness is like drinking poison,
52:51
hoping the other person will die.
52:53
And so we have to find the way to forgive and move on.
52:56
My second question along this though,
52:59
is for someone who might be hearing this,
53:00
who's like, what am I watching?
53:02
Like, you know, John usually talks about mindset stuff,
53:05
but this is so important, you know,
53:07
and especially being Pride Month,
53:09
but that's not why I have you,
53:10
but it is perfect timing.
53:14
But if someone's like, well, what do I do?
53:16
Because I was always taught that, you know,
53:20
being gay is a sin and it's a choice and all that.
53:23
What do I do with this information now?
53:25
What would you tell those people
53:26
who are maybe open to change
53:28
and they don't know how to change moving forward?
53:32
The first thing I would do is you can't say,
53:36
oh, go collect a few gay friends like I have.
53:38
But I think a really safe place to start
53:40
would be just watching the documentary.
53:42
So 1946 mistranslation, it's called 1946 the movie.
53:46
You can find it online.
53:48
You can rent it on Amazon.
53:49
You can rent it on-
53:50
Very good, I've seen it like three times.
53:52
Right, and pretty soon you're gonna be able
53:54
to own the DVD for it.
53:56
So that's the first place to start.
54:00
And if you're intrigued enough by that,
54:04
and so I would say a couple of things.
54:08
I think I produce really good material.
54:10
And so the next thing I would do is
54:12
I would just go search me online.
54:14
And I have two and a half hour video teachings online
54:19
that a very gracious church in Austin,
54:21
when I taught there a few years ago,
54:23
recorded and put up, which was very kind of them.
54:26
And then the next thing I would do,
54:28
and I'll send you all the links later, John,
54:29
is watch the interview that I did with Reverend David,
54:33
who wrote the letters,
54:34
because our friend Tina Wood found him
54:38
11 months after we found the letter.
54:40
She found him.
54:41
He was a retired United Church of Christ,
54:46
United Church of Canada minister.
54:48
He had been a minister and he was retired
54:51
and living on Vancouver Island
54:53
in a little town named Nanaimo.
54:56
And I knew I wanted his story out there.
55:00
And I have a very good relationship with Matthew Vines.
55:03
And we were talking about this just a few days ago,
55:05
that because I was his first board member
55:09
and we're friends,
55:11
I know I can push him a little bit to get what I want.
55:13
And so at a conference, I told him,
55:16
I don't know how you can do this,
55:17
but I need to do an interview,
55:20
a public interview with Reverend David
55:22
so he can tell his story so that this gets on video,
55:25
because he was 80.
55:26
You know, and I knew I could hear in relationship
55:30
that I could hear him slipping.
55:32
And I also knew that he was having heart and lung problems.
55:35
And I said, you know,
55:37
I don't know how you can do it, Matthew,
55:38
but it's what I want to like,
55:40
there's not time in the conference.
55:41
I said, well, cut at dinner time.
55:43
I don't care what you do, Matthew, listen.
55:46
And so there's an unbelievable interview.
55:50
It's an hour and a half with,
55:51
it's called An Evening with Reverend David
55:53
and it's on the Reformation Project site.
55:56
I would go there.
55:57
And then, and that should get someone curious enough to say,
56:02
oh, there might be something here.
56:06
And if they're not willing to like dive into a deeper book,
56:11
I think my first book is good.
56:12
It's a good overview.
56:14
But if you're someone that's been asking this question
56:16
and wants some really good academic facts,
56:22
my second book, Forging a Sacred Weapon,
56:24
I think it is going to end up being a classic tool.
56:28
I think it's going to be,
56:29
I believe it's going to end up in seminaries
56:32
because it's such a good classic overview,
56:35
but you've got to be willing to sit down and say,
56:39
okay, teach me, teach me,
56:43
because that book will teach you.
56:46
And I cannot imagine someone getting
56:47
to the end of that book and saying,
56:50
yeah, I don't think she's right.
56:52
I don't think she's right.
56:53
I had the opportunity to talk
56:55
to a Southern Baptist pastor in Texas
57:00
from a completely non-affirming church.
57:02
Someone put me in contact with him a few months ago.
57:04
We had a lovely conversation
57:08
and he came to my site when the book published
57:12
and he ordered it.
57:14
And a couple of weeks ago,
57:17
I got a text message or an email,
57:19
I can't remember which it was,
57:21
saying I'm 130 pages in
57:24
and this is really good and it's compelling.
57:29
He said, you did a great job.
57:31
And I, you know what?
57:33
I know I did a great job.
57:34
And so the other part of what I did was
57:36
I wrote a discussion guide to go with it.
57:39
So I wrote the book with parents in mind
57:42
that want to love Jesus, love God,
57:44
the Bible and their child.
57:46
I wrote this one with David in mind
57:48
because I wanted to honor him.
57:50
But I wrote this one with pastors
57:53
and elder boards in mind
57:55
because I challenged them.
57:57
The questions are not light.
58:00
The questions really make you think,
58:02
what did you think about this?
58:04
What are you going to do with this information?
58:06
Because I want pastor and elder boards
58:08
to go through eight week discernment process
58:12
and if they decide to become affirming, great.
58:15
But if they don't, they will at least be informed.
58:18
And their decisions
58:21
will not be built on assumptions anymore.
58:24
It might be built on finances,
58:27
which it probably will be,
58:29
but it won't be built on assumptions.
58:30
And they often are.
58:31
As they, and you know,
58:33
those are the final chapters of my book.
58:34
Like, who do I expect to change?
58:36
I don't expect big denominations, mega churches,
58:39
because it's money.
58:43
Sorry to say.
58:44
We don't like to say that as Christians,
58:45
but churches are businesses.
58:49
Yeah.
58:50
But one thing I want to talk to you about
58:52
in the business aspect of this,
58:54
because I've got a haircut this afternoon.
58:56
So I got about 25, 20 minutes.
58:58
So what I do want to talk to you about
59:00
is the business part of this,
59:02
that how I made this decision.
59:04
It was a business coach.
59:05
Can I tell you that story?
59:06
Yes, please do.
59:07
Please do.
59:09
So I was selling printers
59:11
and storage technology,
59:13
storage systems after I got divorced.
59:15
My husband and I owned a business together
59:16
and I was, I loved that.
59:18
We had retail business.
59:20
We're successful from the start.
59:22
Mom and pop, card store,
59:25
Christmas store, very successful.
59:28
And I did the buying and the merchandising
59:30
and we were off the hook successful.
59:33
And then when we got divorced,
59:37
he ended up with the,
59:39
the husband ended up with the business
59:41
and I was like, what do I do now?
59:43
So I do what I always do.
59:44
I make charts like, what should I do?
59:45
Should I stay in retail?
59:46
Should I do this?
59:47
So I ended up working for this printer company
59:51
and I'm going to only mention one of the owners.
59:53
The owner, well, it was a couple, but Wendy.
59:56
Wendy McClintock, I'm going to name her.
59:58
Wendy McClintock owned the company.
1:00:00
She actually owned it.
1:00:01
And so I was a salesperson
1:00:04
and my personality is like,
1:00:06
I could sell you anything.
1:00:08
I mean, you as the business coach know that.
1:00:10
Like if you were looking for a salesperson,
1:00:12
you would hire me.
1:00:14
Hands down, you'd hire me.
1:00:15
Absolutely.
1:00:16
Right? I'm a salesperson.
1:00:18
So at a business event,
1:00:22
at a networking business event,
1:00:23
I won a two hours,
1:00:25
a two or three hour session with the business coach.
1:00:28
And her name is Alice Heineman.
1:00:30
And she still does that.
1:00:31
And her father was very important in this whole field,
1:00:35
the Heineman Associates.
1:00:36
H-E-I-M-A-N, not H-Y.
1:00:39
So H-E-I.
1:00:40
So Alice, I won a coaching session with her
1:00:43
and we were supposed to meet,
1:00:47
it was just before Christmas.
1:00:48
And we were supposed to meet in like a neutral spot,
1:00:51
like maybe a library or a coffee shop,
1:00:55
but we had had a lot of snow.
1:00:57
And she said, because we've become friendly,
1:00:59
just in networking things.
1:01:00
And she said, why don't you come to my house
1:01:02
and just, I'll make a pot of tea
1:01:03
and we'll just sit down and we'll talk about,
1:01:05
we'll do this business coaching thing.
1:01:07
So I went up to her house.
1:01:08
She's not terribly far from me.
1:01:10
And I went up to her house
1:01:11
and she asked me all the questions,
1:01:13
like what drives you?
1:01:14
What's your passion?
1:01:15
I'm sure it's what, how you deal with people, right?
1:01:17
You know, what's this?
1:01:18
What gives you energy?
1:01:20
You know, what exhausts you?
1:01:21
What do you like?
1:01:22
What do you not like?
1:01:23
And at the end of this thing,
1:01:25
she said to me,
1:01:26
I am so confused.
1:01:29
I said, yeah, why are you selling computers?
1:01:33
Why are you selling printers?
1:01:35
You shouldn't be selling printers.
1:01:37
You're not meant to sell printers.
1:01:40
You're meant to follow this passion of yours
1:01:42
and go make a difference in this.
1:01:44
And I remember crying
1:01:47
and not because she touched a spot in me.
1:01:49
My crying was like, oh crap.
1:01:53
How am I going to make money?
1:01:55
Like I'm going to, I'm going to leave
1:01:58
a successful career of being a salesperson
1:02:04
to go follow a non-money passion
1:02:07
when, you know, for the next few years,
1:02:10
all I'm going to do is hug people.
1:02:12
Like I didn't even know that much.
1:02:14
And you know how this doesn't make any sense.
1:02:20
And so I just, I was, the reason I cried
1:02:22
was I was scared to death.
1:02:25
Like I knew she was right, but I was so scared.
1:02:31
And so I, it was just, as I said,
1:02:34
it was just before Christmas
1:02:35
and I had taken a break in the day.
1:02:37
The bosses knew this and I went to,
1:02:40
and I had to go deliver Christmas baskets
1:02:43
to my top customers.
1:02:45
And one of those customers was,
1:02:46
I think it was an assemblies church.
1:02:48
It was a prophetic Pentecostal church.
1:02:52
Pentecostal church.
1:02:54
And I thought, oh, when I go in
1:02:56
and this pastor always, you know,
1:02:57
he recognizes I'm a Christian and, you know,
1:03:01
he's always saying encouraging things to me,
1:03:03
but I know he's got a prophetic voice.
1:03:04
And the last thing I wanted him to do
1:03:06
is like to look at me and say anything, anything, nothing.
1:03:11
So I walked into his church.
1:03:13
He actually answers the door.
1:03:15
I want to take this gift basket
1:03:17
and put it on his entryway
1:03:18
and get the heck out of there
1:03:20
because I don't want some prophet
1:03:22
looking at me right now, right?
1:03:24
Don't want it.
1:03:25
And he said to me,
1:03:26
Kathy, come in here and sit in my office for a minute.
1:03:28
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
1:03:31
I need to go.
1:03:32
And he says, come sit with me.
1:03:34
And so I sat in his office.
1:03:36
I was like, oh, because my pastor at the time,
1:03:40
who eventually said you don't fit here anymore
1:03:42
in a few years, had a prophetic voice
1:03:46
and he was pretty accurate.
1:03:48
And so I sat there and he said,
1:03:52
something is troubling you.
1:03:53
And I thought, oh, game face, game face.
1:03:57
And he said, I don't know
1:03:59
what the spirit is speaking to you,
1:04:01
but the spirit is speaking something to you
1:04:04
and the spirit is leading you in a direction.
1:04:06
And you need to go in that direction
1:04:09
and you need to not be afraid
1:04:11
because God has got you.
1:04:13
He's going before you
1:04:15
and you need to listen to the spirit.
1:04:18
And I just was like,
1:04:21
and he said, Kathy, what is this about?
1:04:22
And I said, yeah, no,
1:04:25
I'll take your words under advisement,
1:04:28
but I knew I couldn't speak to him about it
1:04:30
because it was this small Hispanic Pentecostal church
1:04:36
and there was no way I was going to say,
1:04:37
oh, God's telling me to go love gay people.
1:04:41
So, so I thought about it for a few days
1:04:44
and then I thought, yeah, I think God is calling me.
1:04:49
So I went to my bosses one day
1:04:52
and I said to them, and I cried.
1:04:54
I mean, I couldn't even,
1:04:56
I got in their office and I started crying
1:04:59
and I said, I have to leave this job.
1:05:02
Oh, I said, I respect you too.
1:05:05
I love you too, but I have to leave this job.
1:05:10
Because I think God is calling me to do this other thing.
1:05:14
And Wendy came back into my life
1:05:16
about three or four years ago.
1:05:17
She lives a couple of neighborhoods away
1:05:18
and she's, I hiked with her about three
1:05:20
or four times a month.
1:05:22
I put this post up on Facebook a few days ago
1:05:25
because I gave her the book
1:05:26
and wrote an epistle in there,
1:05:28
Wendy's pictures in there.
1:05:30
And I said, I need to go do this thing
1:05:34
and I need to quit my job.
1:05:37
I need to quit my job.
1:05:41
And she said, even reminding me a few days ago,
1:05:46
she said, Kathy, I knew it.
1:05:48
They were Christians.
1:05:49
They are, she's a Christian.
1:05:51
And she said, I just knew.
1:05:52
And she thought if the Holy Spirit
1:05:54
is talking to this woman, I'm not standing in the way.
1:05:58
And so she said, yes, we get it.
1:06:03
And then she said something more important to me,
1:06:06
which mattered to me
1:06:08
because I knew that I was coming up.
1:06:09
I had cross toes and everybody knows I'm a hiker
1:06:13
and those cross toes would not have served me well
1:06:16
hiking for until I'm 90 and I needed surgery.
1:06:20
And she said, we are going to keep you on the payroll
1:06:25
for three months
1:06:26
and keep your health insurance for three months.
1:06:30
You go get the surgery you need
1:06:32
and then go on to what God's calling you to do.
1:06:35
And Wendy did that for me.
1:06:38
That's amazing.
1:06:40
That's amazing.
1:06:41
Isn't it amazing?
1:06:42
So, and I'm not saying this was easy.
1:06:45
There were challenges.
1:06:46
There were certainly financial challenges.
1:06:48
I mean, what I had for dinner that week
1:06:51
was what Rayleigh's put on the discount meat bin, right?
1:06:54
You know, like $5 off, $10 off.
1:06:56
I did that for years.
1:06:58
I shopped for years at thrift stores.
1:07:00
This is not a pretty story.
1:07:02
I shopped for my clothes at thrift stores.
1:07:04
I did all of those things.
1:07:06
But I knew I was doing the right thing.
1:07:08
But it was a business coach, Alice Hyman,
1:07:12
that said, what are you doing sewing printers?
1:07:15
I thought, I don't know.
1:07:18
So, yeah.
1:07:19
So business coaches.
1:07:20
I love that.
1:07:22
I love that.
1:07:22
Because you do, you've got to figure out
1:07:25
what it is that is your purpose,
1:07:26
what it is you're called to do.
1:07:28
That scripture that says,
1:07:30
God gives us the desires of our heart.
1:07:32
When I was young, I thought that meant,
1:07:33
oh, well, if I desire a convertible,
1:07:35
I wish for one.
1:07:36
But no, I realize it means God plants those desires
1:07:39
in our heart that we are supposed to have.
1:07:42
And when we surrender to those,
1:07:44
we live a fulfilled life.
1:07:46
We live an enlightened life
1:07:48
when we are flowing in those desires
1:07:50
that God's given us.
1:07:51
And the fact that you felt called.
1:07:53
And even those talents, even those gifts,
1:07:56
like as I started this thing,
1:07:57
that people tried to squash in me,
1:08:01
those were put in me as a child.
1:08:03
Absolutely.
1:08:05
Absolutely.
1:08:06
And you know what?
1:08:06
It just made you stronger.
1:08:08
Like everything happened for you instead of to you.
1:08:11
When you look at it and say,
1:08:13
okay, God somehow used that.
1:08:15
You know, God somehow used your mom telling you,
1:08:18
oh, don't ask questions.
1:08:19
And your husband telling you,
1:08:20
why can't you just be happy
1:08:22
with what's right in front of you?
1:08:23
And all these other things,
1:08:24
like all of those things made you the voice
1:08:28
that you are now.
1:08:29
And that voice is giving hope to thousands of people.
1:08:34
And that is how you flow in your purpose.
1:08:37
And I want to close with one more question.
1:08:41
And that's this one.
1:08:43
What do you think is one truth with purpose
1:08:46
that most people are missing?
1:08:48
Are they, is it that maybe they're too scared?
1:08:53
Like maybe they have an idea of what the purpose is
1:08:55
or what?
1:08:56
Like it took you making a decision
1:08:58
that you were going to quit your job
1:08:59
to run after your purpose.
1:09:02
Once you knew that was your purpose,
1:09:04
did you feel like you even had a choice?
1:09:06
I mean, where were you?
1:09:08
So I was in a great,
1:09:12
I thought it was a great relationship.
1:09:13
But when I came back from that conference
1:09:15
and he pressured me,
1:09:19
he pressured me, he said,
1:09:20
so what did they teach you to do?
1:09:22
And I knew he was going to pressure me.
1:09:26
And this is terrible.
1:09:28
And I've never said this like on audio video,
1:09:34
but he, the next time we were at the gym together,
1:09:37
he actually introduced me to somebody
1:09:40
that had never met before.
1:09:41
This is what he said.
1:09:42
He was raised Catholic.
1:09:45
He said, this is my girlfriend, Kathy.
1:09:47
She thinks she knows more than the Pope.
1:09:50
And she thinks it's okay for two men to have anal sex.
1:09:55
That's how he introduced me,
1:09:59
introduced me to somebody.
1:10:02
And I thought, oh, this is going to be an uphill battle.
1:10:05
This is going to be an uphill battle.
1:10:07
Like if I'm, like I knew at that GCN conference,
1:10:11
when I watched worship,
1:10:14
I knew this was real.
1:10:16
And I was faced with it.
1:10:18
And I went home from there.
1:10:19
No, I went to work the next day.
1:10:21
And I was supposed to have dinner with him that night,
1:10:24
stop by his house and have dinner.
1:10:26
And when I stopped by, again, crying,
1:10:29
I said, I can't do this.
1:10:32
I can't do it, five years.
1:10:33
So I quit my job after that,
1:10:35
quit a relationship, doesn't pencil out.
1:10:38
I'm telling you, John, none of this pencils out.
1:10:41
And I said to him, I feel like I have a choice before me.
1:10:46
I can either choose a purpose.
1:10:48
And I said, I could either choose a person, which is you,
1:10:51
or I could choose a purpose,
1:10:53
which I think God is pushing me towards.
1:10:55
And I'm going to choose the purpose.
1:10:58
And I ended the relationship that night.
1:11:01
None of this makes sense.
1:11:04
But the biggest thing that should have held me back,
1:11:08
and I don't know why it didn't.
1:11:10
I just don't know why it didn't.
1:11:12
I think the thing that holds people back is finances.
1:11:15
Absolute fear of where, how am I going to pay for my home?
1:11:19
How am I going to meet the mortgage?
1:11:22
How am I going to do all these things?
1:11:26
And I was very cognizant of them.
1:11:30
And I was trying to figure out,
1:11:32
like Wendy and I, when we were hiking the other day,
1:11:34
I thought, I wonder, like, if I had really sat down
1:11:39
and penciled this thing out,
1:11:40
would I have made this decision?
1:11:41
Probably would have made this decision.
1:11:43
But how did I do that?
1:11:46
I don't know how I did it.
1:11:48
But the Holy Spirit, you,
1:11:51
God gave you what you needed to make the right decision.
1:11:54
Because it doesn't pencil out.
1:11:55
And you've got to know, like,
1:11:56
it doesn't pencil out with a lot of your people too.
1:11:58
It just doesn't pencil out.
1:11:59
It doesn't with me.
1:12:00
I mean, I left like a really lucrative job
1:12:03
to start doing this a couple of years ago.
1:12:05
But on paper, I'm like, I'm still floating, you know?
1:12:08
I'm like, I thank God.
1:12:10
But I am so happy.
1:12:12
I am so happy.
1:12:14
Absolutely.
1:12:15
I am so, I have now created the life that I love.
1:12:19
I love where I live, still in the same house.
1:12:22
I love the people I'm in association with.
1:12:24
I love doing this intellectual, academic,
1:12:29
sharing with people, encouraging people,
1:12:32
equipping people.
1:12:33
I am so happy.
1:12:36
I am so happy.
1:12:37
I am so happy with my life.
1:12:42
But it has been a struggle to get here.
1:12:44
But I am 70, and I love my life.
1:12:47
Mm-hmm.
1:12:49
And it radiates.
1:12:50
It radiates.
1:12:52
Well, I better wrap this up, Kathy.
1:12:54
But thank you so much.
1:12:55
What stands out to me from everything we've talked about
1:12:58
in this whole conversation about purpose
1:13:01
is that it is not always comfortable.
1:13:03
No.
1:13:04
You know?
1:13:04
And sometimes choosing our purpose
1:13:07
causes us to leave certainty.
1:13:10
It causes us to leave our comfort zone.
1:13:12
It causes us to challenge other people's assumptions.
1:13:16
Sometimes purpose asks us to build bridges
1:13:19
where other people are building walls.
1:13:21
And Kathy, you are spending your life doing just that.
1:13:26
And it is just beautiful to see
1:13:30
how you flow in your purpose every day.
1:13:32
Like I said, when I first launched the podcast,
1:13:35
I'm like, I need to talk to Kathy Baldock.
1:13:37
I'm like, I do not know anyone
1:13:40
who really is just flowing in your purpose
1:13:42
to such an 100% level as Kathy.
1:13:47
So thank you so much for spending this time with me.
1:13:50
I really appreciate it.
1:13:51
And I want to be with you in person again.
1:13:53
So wouldn't that be great?
1:13:54
Oh, yeah.
1:13:54
We need to make that happen.
1:13:56
Absolutely, for sure.
1:13:57
And please never stop living your purpose
1:14:00
and never stop shining your light, Kathy.
1:14:02
Thank you, sweet thing.
1:14:04
Oh, thank you, too.
1:14:05
Bye.
1:14:06
All right.
1:14:06
Bye-bye.