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Preston Sprinkle (Ph.D.) joins Tim and Rick to discuss what to do when you don’t know what to do to foster healthy conversations on sexuality and gender and how to mix truth and love into these conversations. They discuss the importance of understanding “the already spokens,” a phrase coined by Mikhail Bakhtin, a Russian philosopher and linguist, that refers to the social and personal histories, past hurts, and context embedded in every conversation. They also reflect on the need to resist cultural trends (i.e. social media) as our go-to for interacting with others before considering whether our communication as Christians is qualitatively different from the broader culture on issues around sexuality and gender.
Transcript
Preston Sprinkle: And I was like, "Wait a minute. So you're telling me I've got a PhD in the New Testament and I'm so confident in my theological view and yet I didn't know Jesus never mentioned it?" And that was kind of a theological kick in the pants to say, "Wait a minute. You know what you believe but you don't know why you believe it."
Tim Muehlhoff: Welcome to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. My name is Tim Muehlhoff. I'm a Professor of Communication at 51 in La Mirada, California. And I'm also event director of the Winston Conviction Project that seeks to reintroduce compassion and civility into our disagreements with those outside the Christian community and also those inside, talking to each other. I'm joined by my co-director and cohost, the Dr. Rick Langer. Rick, welcome.
Rick Langer: Thanks so much, Tim. And I'm a professor at 51 as well, in the Department of Biblical Studies and Theology, and I'm also the Director of the Office of Faith and Learning. And it's our privilege today to have with us Preston Sprinkle. And Preston is the President of the Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender. Also a Bible scholar and international speaker, New York times bestselling author. And he has given thousands of talks to people worldwide on issues of faith, sexuality, and gender. And he and his wife, Kris, and children are from Boise, Idaho.
Rick Langer: So we're thrilled to have Preston with us today. And let me just begin by asking you, whether you intended this or not, it seems you've ended up making a bit of a career out of addressing issues related to the LGBTQ community and the Christian community. We appreciate the fact that you've been able to engage in these conversations with grace and gentleness, but you've also been able to do it without adopting the strategy of simply eliminating all moral convictions from this question. That isn't easy, so give us some tips on speaking prophetic truth but doing it in pastoral tones, so to speak.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah, well, you're leading with a really tough question but thanks for having me back on.
Rick Langer: We thought we'd just dive into the deep end of the pool here. How's the weather? How's the weather up there?
Preston Sprinkle: There we go. Get me warmed up, here. Yeah, with the sexuality and gender conversation it's particularly particularly difficult because there's people's lives that are mixed up in the middle of this conversation. And I think there's been a lot of really bad ways in which people have gone about this conversation, and so there's a lot of just pain and history. I guess that's the biggest point I want to make is, if somebody out there is listening and they just want to enter into this conversation or learn more, you're entering in at the eighth inning and the first seven innings have been a kind of a brutal battle. A lot of people have been really hurt, and there's a deep history here. So just understanding that point I think is helpful, to understand what has happened within the LGBT community throughout the 20th century or even especially since the Stonewall Riots. What has it been like growing up LGBTQ not just in America, but a lot of people have grown up in the Christian church. And what has that experience been like?
Preston Sprinkle: So yeah, it just takes a lot of listening and a lot of, first of all, desire to want to understand where different people are coming from.
Tim Muehlhoff: Yeah. Well Preston, that reminds me of my students. We take a look at a Russian linguist named Bakhtin. He said that every conversation has what he calls the already spokens. And I really like that, because you're so right about this dialogue. When we enter to talk about the gay community and not recognize the past hurts. I read a book a while ago called Victory. It's looking at the gay rights movement in the United States starting in the 1900s. And I was appalled how gay Americans have been treated in this country. It blew me away. And to not know that history, to not know the context of what the gay community has had to go through. And then their feeling that the AIDS epidemic, when it was raging, that by and large the conservative church stood back and moralized instead of helping. Bakhtin would say you have to take that into account of all the already spokens before you're going to have this one conversation with a person from a particular community.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And that was something I learned early on in my journey. I've been engaged in this conversation for seven or eight years now. It feels like it's been longer than that, but that's relatively a short time. But early on in my journey I just sat down and just talked with LGBT people and just said, "Hey, I just want to hear your story. What's your impression of Christians like? Were you raised in the church? What was that experience like? And early on the most common response I got was, "Well, I've just never met a Christian that was kind to me." And a lot of them were like, "Man, I grew up in the church but I was just so dehumanized and felt just an overwhelming sense of shame because of my experience.
Preston Sprinkle: I thought it was the only one. I wasn't allowed to talk about what I was wrestling with as a teenager." And like you said, just really horrific, horrific experiences. And for a Christian to simply engage a theological conversation about sexuality and not understand the deep, profound, relational pain that a lot of LGBT people have been through by the hands of Christians, you're just not going to be able to engage in a conversation well without that pre-understanding.
Rick Langer: So in effect, what I'm hearing you say is that we need to engage, meet, talk with the person rather than directly address the issue, at least at the outset. There might come a time for talking about the issue, but if we haven't talked to the person first, the issue conversation probably won't go well, so to speak.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. We need to enter as really, really good listeners. And maybe some people were like, "No, we need to just give people the truth," or whatever, but I see that as a false dichotomy. Kind of like either truth or love, or either listening or speaking. It's like healthy, biblical Christian speaking is one that involves a whole lot of listening, otherwise you're just speaking into the wind.
Tim Muehlhoff: Preston, you just made me think of... For the past year, I've been working at domestic violence shelters in Orange County, teaching in verbal and physical self-defense. I have a black belt in Kung Fu. I've literally been thinking of ways to disarm you as you've been speaking, just kind of [crosstalk 00:06:45]. So if I hear what you're saying, how crazy would it be for me to go to one of these meetings and talk to these women about relationships and not take into account these are women who have endured verbal, physical, mental abuse, and just ignore that and tell them about, "Hey, well, here's what you should do in a relationship?" How crazy would that be?
Preston Sprinkle: Oh, it'd be insane. It'd be irresponsible if not destructive. But yeah, that's a great analogy to how Christians need to frame the conversation about sexuality and gender.
Tim Muehlhoff: So maybe here's what we needed to do: I think many of us would simply say, "I do not know the already spokens. I don't know the background, the history of the LGBTQ community. I don't." And that's okay to say that, but don't stay there. Get the history from a person or get the history. There are some very interesting books, like the book I mentioned, Victory, that we just need to read and be aware of before we enter into these conversations.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. Yeah. I think educating yourself both by reading books or even some blogs. Early on in my journey, a friend of mine, a gay Christian said, "Man, there's been an ongoing discussion through various blogs about this topic. A lot of people sharing their stories." And he says, "I would recommend going there. Just go and read. Listen. Be a listening reader in these testimonies that are being given." And that can put flesh on this topic, but also... Yeah, so reading books, reading blogs, but also, yeah, just getting to know LGBT people and just listening to their stories, which, 10 years ago I would often get people say, "Well, I don't know anybody." And now it's like half of my family's LGBTQ, so it's just a phone call away. So yeah, it's pretty easy, I think, now to get to know somebody and come in with no agenda. There's no agenda except I want to listen to your story so that I can know how to better love you in your journey.
Rick Langer: And I can imagine with that, that that usually actually is well-received in terms of people saying, "Yes, I will talk to you about that. Let me tell you. If you're interested in actually hearing, I'm interested in sharing." Has that been what your experience has been with that, or is there more defensiveness than that in these conversations?
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. Well, I love what you said, "If you're actually willing to listen." Yeah. I would say for the most part it goes well. I will say this, that I do know, I would say a growing number of LGBT people who are just getting exhausted, what feels like them having to explain their existence to Christians. And so I am sympathetic with that. I can only imagine what it would be like having yet another... If it's somebody who has had to explain over and over and over, and then to look up and people still don't seem to get it and then explain their story over again and again. So if that's been their journey, you want to be sensitive to that. But I think if you're genuine and you ask a question and you wait to be invited into their journey, then yeah. Typically that does go well. But yeah, be sensitive with somebody's story that they just may not want to go there yet again.
Tim Muehlhoff: And after the Floyd murder, we thought it'd be great, Rick and I... And again, this is a little bit of us being naive, a little bit. We thought, "Boy, wouldn't it be great to pull together some African-American friends, colleagues, and let's just hear their story?" And here's what we got Preston, was, "I can't. I just can't do this again." Because you're looking at the Floyd situation. I'm thinking of something that happened 10 years ago, and we all shared our stories and absolutely zero happened. And they're just fatigued. And I think we have to honor that and become aware of that to say, "Gosh, guys, this has been going on for so long and I'm really sorry that two white hosts want to try to do..." You know what I mean? To me, that's a little bit insensitive. It's like they've done it and nothing happened. Nothing changed and now we're back to, "Oh my gosh, the Floyd situation." And they're like, "Oh, this is crazy."
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. As you started sharing that, I was going to... In my mind I was thinking, "Oh, I bet they're going to respond like, "Oh, you wait until yet another murder happens before you want to speak out, just because this one happened to catch attention," or whatever. And yeah. Gosh, that's... What do you do? We're all on a journey and there's... We are all. If you're a human, that means you have major blind spots towards somebody else's experience, that's not your own. So yeah, it should be very understandable that certain people, having gone through a lot of misunderstanding or even oppression, are just kind of worn out where it takes people too long to finally reach out and try to understand.
Preston Sprinkle: And it's the same thing when white people, typically they wait until Martin Luther King Day when they're going to acknowledge his existence, and then the rest of the year they go about just quoting white authors or whatever. And honestly, if I could be totally vulnerable, I have a hard time navigating that because if I don't say anything, then is that good? Just pretend like George Floyd wasn't killed? If I hadn't had these conversations for the first 20 years of my life, whatever, and now I want to rectify that, how do I go about that? So yeah, there's no... I think just having the humility and teachability to be able to just continue to learn, even if people are like, "You know what? Right now, just sit this one out." Then that too is a learning experience.
Tim Muehlhoff: That's what scares me about this segment that we're doing, Preston, is I just feel like there's friends of mine, white majority friends, who are like, "See, I'm not doing anything. If I don't do anything, then I'm in trouble. If I try... And who's this Bakhtin dude with the already spokens? Then I just tripped that wire." And now it's like I'm just not saying anything because I feel like anything I do, I'm too late in doing it or I just don't know the trip wires. So what do you do to friends of mine and even myself that it's like, I just don't know what to do? I don't know where to start this thing.
Preston Sprinkle: Honestly, I think start with actual real, embodied people in your life. In my experience, the social media world is quite different than if, I can say the real world that we live in on the ground, in our neighborhoods and stuff. I don't know. I doubt that if you were in a relationship with somebody, maybe a coworker, neighbor, whatever, and you really got to know them... Say you're a white guy and you want to get to know your black neighbor better than you have, and you just ask them about it, I would say you're going to have a much, much better response than if you Tweet something or post something on Instagram. You'll probably get some backlash with that. But I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. It's tough. I would love to hear your thoughts. You're a communications guy, but it just seems like that that social media response or the internet world does feel different than the actual role on the ground for the most part.
Tim Muehlhoff: No, we're interviewing you, Preston. We're interviewing you. I'm sorry. It doesn't work that way.
Preston Sprinkle: Going back to the sexuality conversation, yeah, I've had some just... Just thinking off the top of my head, several either just dehumanizing accusations against me, just really aggressive, like... And I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh. I do not know if I'd want to meet this person in person because they're so angry at me, and I'm a pacifist so what am I going to do?" But I've actually had moments where I've actually met people where I'm like, "Oh my gosh, that is that social media person," and it's gone incredibly well. There's just something with the embodied relationship. Eye to eye, human to human. You can sense somebody's genuineness rather than just reading some Tweet and reacting harshly against it or whatever. So no, I have seen the best kind of relational work across the divide happens in real, embodied relationships.
Rick Langer: I think that's a really helpful thing for everyone who's listening to stop and realize. I think sometimes we feel overwhelmed by the everything and everywhereness of problems like this. Race problems, issues with sexuality and all this. They just seem ubiquitous and they seem absolutely toxic, and we just want to run away. But the individuals who are our coworkers or our neighbors or the people we might meet in a business transaction or things like that, it is amazing the difference it is when it's one-on-one. And I've had this experience as well, talking with a variety of people, that the face-to-face actually goes easier, particularly when you have genuine curiosity and interest in the other person. It isn't an agenda you're driving, and say, "Hey, this is a person made in God's image. Let me give them the gift of my undivided attention for a few minutes and just see what comes of it."
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. Yeah. Sometimes there are cases when it's still doesn't go well or whatever, but for the most part... And this is pretty... I think there's no real debate about this, that people are much, much willing to fly off the handle, get super angry and close their ears in an online platform, especially if it's somebody you don't know. You go back and forth on Twitter. And you're like, "If we just sat down at a pub and shared a pint or something, this probably wouldn't go this way. We would probably be much more humanizing in how we're going about it." So yeah, I think that's a basic observation of human nature.
Tim Muehlhoff: Well, what a great plug for our website, Preston. [inaudible 00:17:09] conviction.com, because we do an essay on GK Chesterton, who had the ability to debate HG Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Bernard Shaw, humanists. And I think what we're lost today is what they did after the debate. They went to a pub. They went to a pub and had a drink and a cigar and sat down and laughed and ribbed each other. So my question is, where's our pub today? Where's the place we can go that we get away from it and laugh at each other and poke fun and talk sports or arts or something like that? I don't think we have that ground, that demilitarized zone. I don't think we have that today.
Preston Sprinkle: That's a great question. Let me speak around it for a second. There is something unique about the American situation, especially in the last 10 years since the rise of social media. American culture, and especially politics, are so polarized. They're so polarized. We're extremely tribal in how we approach denominationalism or certain doctrinal subcategories within Christianity, or especially politics. I spent three and a half years in England, or in the UK, in Scotland and a bit in England. And it's so different there. And like our media outlets, our news outlets are so polarized. It's not nearly as polarized in the UK. And so I just want... And politics is very different in the British atmosphere. And I witnessed firsthand exactly what you're talking about. You'd go to Christian conferences and, man, these scholars would just go after each other.
Preston Sprinkle: I remember seeing NT Wright give a talk and then John Barkley, who's probably the most world-renowned New Testament scholar alive today, or one of them at least, he stands up and just rips in. And this doesn't come easy. He just dismantled Wright and his argument. And Wright snapped back. And I'm a PhD studying looking and saying, "Oh my gosh, I think a fight is going to break out." An hour later, they were literally at the pub laughing and sharing a pie and talking. "How is your family doing and everything?" And I saw that happen over there, and the evangelical climate is quite different there. And I just wonder if it is at least impacted in part because the broader cultural media outlets, they're very different than how it is in the States.
Preston Sprinkle: It's just a theory that I have going on. So I wonder if Christians stopped listening to media. Turn off CNN, turn off Fox News, whatever, and then just stay off social media for a month. I wonder how much of social media, news outlets are shaping our values, our interests, our passions, our habits. And I just think the church needs to just separate ourselves from that. We are being controlled by a polarized culture way more than we even realize it.
Rick Langer: Let me take a quick turn here. You mentioned that you've been engaged in these issues for seven or eight years or so. And I assume when you were doing your New Testament studies or whatever, this wasn't necessarily most forefront in your mind. Was there a particular conversation or encounter that you had that was an awakening or a turning point that made you say, "Wow, this is an important issue that I need to give a significant measure of my life energy to?"
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. There were several early on. Number one, on a theological level I remember students asking me what the Bible says about homosexuality, was how they framed it. And I said, "Well, it's a sin." Kind of waiting for another, more important question about the time of the rapture. And they're like, "Well, where does it say this?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. Go read the gospels. You won't get very far in the Red Letters of the Gospels before you encounter Jesus addressing homosexuality." And sure enough they're like, "Actually Jesus never mentions homosexuality." Talks about marriage. Talks about marriage, talks about sexual immorality, but in terms of same-sex relationships, Jesus never even goes there. And I was like, "Wait a minute, so you're telling me I've got a PhD in the New Testament and I'm so confident in my theological view and yet I didn't know Jesus never mentions it?" And that was kind of a theological kick in the pants to say, "Wait a minute, you know what you believe but you don't know why you believe it." So that sent me on a-
Rick Langer: So that was a moment of self-discovery at that point where you just realized, "Oh, there's a hole in my own thinking about this."
Preston Sprinkle: Right. Exactly. And I've always despised this brand of evangelicalism that's so passionate about what they believe but doesn't know why they believe it. And I'm like, "I never want to do that. I want to know what I believe what I believe." That means actually reading the Bible and taking my views back to the script. So that took me on a long theological journey. But on a relational level, yeah, it was meeting loads of LGBT people and just hearing about their experience with Christians. And the one that stuck out was the mantra I heard over and over and over, that, "I've never met a Christian that was kind to me," or, "I've never met a Christian that just wanted to hear my story." And I'm like, "Look, I don't care where we land... I care where we land theologically but even if we land in the quote unquote right place, in the Biblical place, there's no theological relational excuse for having the reputation of not even being kind to a whole group of people." So yeah, that sent me on a long journey.
Rick Langer: That was another wake up call for you, so to speak, in terms of how things were. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
Tim Muehlhoff: That self-discovery is important. We've got to first look at ourselves and say, "Are we different as Christian communicators? Are we qualitatively different than other people?" Do we speak truth in love? What Peter says, "When insulted, give a blessing instead. Peacemakers shall be called the children of God." I think this is a referendum today on Christian communication. Do we believe the directives that we're getting from the New Testament of how we should communicate with people? But we get hit all the time with, "Man, we do not need winsome persuasion. We do not need winsome conviction. We are in a fight and we need the prophetic. And you guys are like... Maybe that would have worked 10 years ago but we are in a different time and we're losing this battle, and it's time for us to step up and to fight and use the prophetic parts of the scripture, is not this speak truth and love, give a blessing for an insult." How do you respond to
Preston Sprinkle: That's a great question, and I understand the concern. And I think, yeah, there is a place to be prophetic for sure. I would say, for one, if I'm kind in my approach, if I'm listening to somebody else, if I'm trying to understand what they're saying, or, God forbid, if my opponent, my quote unquote opponent raises a point that I'm like, "You know what? That's a good point. I think they might actually be right in that point." To have the humility to acknowledge that and learn from it. Some people interpret that as me being weak or not as prophetic, but I'm like, "No, I think part of being prophetic, part of being gospel-centered, part of being a courageous Christian is approaching these issues with the totality of how the Bible says Christians should be." It's the kindness of God that leads to repentance.
Preston Sprinkle: It's not because I don't care about repentance that I'm being kind. It's precisely because I'm care about repentance and because I care about the truth that I'm being kind. We also see in the posture of Jesus. He was most quote unquote prophetic against religious elite people that were erring on the side of legalism. When it came to those who were in what I call socially unacceptable sins or people that were marginalized by the greater religious society, that's when he extended a radical welcome and kindness. So in a sense, if you're being winsome and kind in how you approach these hot button issues, I think you're following in the footsteps of Jesus. And thirdly... I don't know if I gave the first two. One, two, three. Thirdly... Finally. How about that? With the younger generation, if you're at all concerned about Gen Z and younger Millennials, they don't do the barking from the stage God's truth. Slam the Bible down and believe it, or... That doesn't resonate with them.
Preston Sprinkle: And people could say, "Well, you're just giving into their weakness," or whatever. That's not it at all. We want to communicate truth in a way that's actually going to be received by the target audience. We see this throughout the book of Acts. When Paul was in front of a Jewish audience, he preached a certain kind of sermon. When he's in front of a Greek audience, the sermon looks almost entirely different. There's the same truth there, but the way he goes about it looks very different. So I think there's like widespread Biblical evidence for knowing your audience and contextualizing the message in a way that is actually going to be received by them. I can probably give several other points, but it's sufficient.
Rick Langer: No, that's great. Let me take this in a conversation, a bit of a different turn. In the last five or six decades there's been a tsunami-like sea change in the way our country views and practices norms relative to human sexuality in general. Let me put it this way: Back in 1960, roughly speaking, there were 2.2 divorces per thousand Americans. By the time I had graduated from college, that rate had increased by a factor of over 250%. There were 3.5 births per woman, children per woman. Now there's 1.7. So a radical decrease in the number of children we're having. Out of wedlock births were about 5% of the total live births in 1960. That total has now risen to over 40%, a factor of eight. The number of living children living in single parent homes has risen by 290%.
Rick Langer: The percentage of never-married individuals has risen from about 9%, and this statistic was from 1970, to about 35% in 2018. Now, I'm quoting all of these statistics, and note that I haven't included anything about same-sex attraction or same-sex marriage or any of the other things. And I'm doing that intentionally because here's my worry: that the last five or six decades of the sexual revolution has basically been a complete dismantling of all of our social expectations and norms around straight sexuality. And furthermore, the best explanation for what some people might call the rise of the gay agenda may very well be the collapse of the straight consensus, both in terms of our norms and practices. So having said all of that, I'm wondering, who do we need to be speaking our prophetic voice to in the church?
Rick Langer: Should we be concerned with the LGBT community first? I'm not arguing that this has to be an either or. Or should our primary concern be the complete change in our own vision about the meaning of marriage, the meaning of family, the viability of divorce, the importance of raising children in a two-parent, intact home. Is that really where we should be concerned?
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah, that's great. That's great. And yeah, I've got several thoughts on that. Absolutely. The sexual revolution I would say has been destructive on society. And what I mean by that is not... I'm glad you focused just on straight sexuality because, no, I believe it's all a package deal. I believe when we start making sexuality something about our own individual desires, our own happiness... Which is, again, that's something that we conservative, straight people have done for many years. I think we have a very anemic view of marriage. I think many Christians bemoan the sexual revolution, and rightly so. Again, I think it's been absolutely destructive on society. But also, like most scholars would say, it was the invention of the pill that basically laid the groundwork for the sexual revolution. You can't have a lot of independence and autonomy and self-autonomy when you're still getting pregnant.
Preston Sprinkle: And once we took care of that, that allowed the sexual revolution to happen. And yet, in the evangelical church that might have an otherwise conservative sexual ethic, I think we haven't reflected on the relationship between, for instance, procreation marriage and sexual relationships. So I think that even some of these values that we bemoan in the broader sexual revolution, I think that we've kind of subtly adopted them. If you look at that standard evangelical sexual ethic and marriage ethic, it's basically a secular ethic but we add a footnote that says, "Wait until you get married." That's it. That's it. No, really. But what is marriage? Well, when I romantically fall in love with somebody. I'm really incomplete until I get married. And singleness is for the dogs, and you can't be happy until you're having lots of sex. And women, here's how you can please your husband, or whatever. And then sex.
Preston Sprinkle: Oh yeah, if you want to have kids, that's fine, but sex is just mainly for pleasure and bonding. The only footnote we add is, "Wait until you get married." But our very structure of what it means, of what marriage means, what sex is for. Why did God create sex? What is marriage for? If somebody wants to get married, are they called to marriage, and how do they know they're called? Is it just, "I fell in love and I have these emotions running through me?" Or is there an actual vocation surrounding your call to marriage? So yeah, I would say... Sorry, I'm going a little long here, but I think that there's a much, much bigger, deeper conversation that needs to happen about marriage and sexuality as a whole. And singleness. And I think same-sex sexuality really should be part of that discussion, not something completely separate.
Tim Muehlhoff: And that's the problem we get into, Preston. I can already imagine listeners going, "Oh my goodness. I just want to talk about God's blueprint for marriage." It's kind of like when I speak at these marriage conferences. My wife and I have been doing it forever. And a couple comes up and they've been married 20 years and they've got a lot of problems. They've got a lot of issues. Understandable. But they're like, "Hey, we want to fix it this weekend." And it's like, "Okay, well hang on. Yeah. Okay." And I think the church is just going to have to embrace, it took a long time to get here and we're going to have to really... And that's what we so appreciate about you, Preston, is your analysis, your insight.
Tim Muehlhoff: We need people like you to say, "Okay, let's... But we don't just need people to say, "We've got to do it." That's what's so important about people like you is, "Okay, what's the first step?" I just need a first step or otherwise people are just going to get discouraged in a heartbeat and nothing's ever going to change. But we need to do this deep thinking of how we got here.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. Yeah.
Rick Langer: And I appreciate you pointing out, too, the issue about the importance of the pill and the disjunction between having sex and having children. Our technology changed our imagination, so to speak. And we can no longer imagine those two things being connected the way all the rest of humanity has tended to have to take it for granted.
Preston Sprinkle: Yeah. Yeah, totally. And... Go ahead.
Tim Muehlhoff: Oh, I was just going to say, Preston, can we continue this? Can we have you on every once in a while just to blow out some categories and get us to think about the long conversation that we have to have? We've just got to do it. So Preston, thank you so much for being on our podcast, and we're huge fans of your podcast. And thank you so much for helping us think about uncomfortable but important things.
Preston Sprinkle: My pleasure. Yeah, thanks for having me on, you guys.
Rick Langer: You bet. And we want to thank all of you guys for listening to the Winsome Conviction Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. Feel free to contact us. A great place to go to do that would be the winsomeconviction.com website. And we'd love to have you subscribe by finding us at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to get your podcasts. Thanks so much for being with us.
