Vodhi Bakham’s The Ever Loving Truth—releasing September 26, 2023—draws parallels between Shakespeare’s King Lear and modern marriage collapse, blaming neo-Marxist critiques for distorting Ephesians 5’s vision of husbands as priest-protectors and wives as valued equals. He rejects "oppression" claims about traditional roles, citing higher sexual fulfillment in biblical marriages, and argues the church’s silence on Song of Solomon fueled perversion. Dismissing a "post-Christian" world, Bakham urges repentance over institutionalism, framing Acts 4-style persecution as proof of God’s enduring power—while warning liberal churches to return to gospel basics. His defiance contrasts with pandemic-era secular drift, offering a counter-narrative to cultural despair. [Automatically generated summary]
My guest today is Vodhi Bakham, a wonderful preacher.
I've been listening to him all week in preparation.
The reason I wanted to talk to Vodhi is I have a piece coming out in City Journal.
It won't be out until this winter, but it's about Shakespeare's two great final plays, King Lear and The Tempest, and I hope you get a chance to read it when it does come out.
It's an adaption.
I've talked about it on the show.
But the basic point is that both of these great plays, King Lear and The Tempest, have very similar stories about a powerful man and his daughter.
And in one of the stories, King Lear, everything ends in tragedy.
The civilization falls completely apart.
Everything ends in war and death and loss.
And in the other play, The Tempest, you have what's called the Comedy of Grace, which is a comedy that could have been a tragedy, but by grace it becomes a comedy.
It has a happy ending, and actually civilization is restored.
It's the opposite ending to King Lear.
And I asked myself, as I read these two plays that I love so much, what makes the difference between the two plays?
What makes the difference between a tragedy and a comedy of grace?
And in fact, it all has to do with one thing.
It has to do with marriage.
And in King Lear, the villain is a bastard, an illegitimate child, Edward, and he seeks to destroy the privilege of marriage.
Why should he be exiled and excluded just because his parents weren't married?
What is marriage, that it should have any effect on the quality of his life?
And in doing that, he unravels the entire society.
It's like pulling the string on a cheap suit.
Everything comes apart.
Now, in The Tempest, the hero is Prospero, this powerful magician, and he moves all the elements at his command, which is all the elements, to ensure that his daughter Miranda will not physically give herself to the man she loves until, as he puts it, all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy right be ministers.
She has to get married.
Marriage makes all the difference.
Now, that point of view has gone obviously out of fashion.
A lot of people say, this doesn't make sense to me.
Marriage is just a ceremony.
What's the difference?
Sex is just a physical pleasure.
What's the big deal about it?
And I've been a part of that to some degree.
Not that, you know, I've lived a very conservative life.
I've been faithfully and blissfully married for 43 years.
And I don't say that as just a word.
I've literally, it has been a bliss to be married to my wife.
I don't know about my wife.
She's probably tying sheets together to escape.
But for me, it has been a central joy of my life.
But I'm an artist, and everyone else I know is nuts.
They're all eccentrics.
And so I've been slow to judge.
I don't really judge other people's personal lives.
But there can be no doubt that as we have abandoned the Christian regulation of our personal lives, our society is beginning to look a lot more like the hell-bent tragedy of King Lear and a lot less like a comedy of grace.
So I wanted to talk to somebody who not only speaks with great intelligence and wisdom about the Christian worldview and the Christian worldview about sex and marriage and the personal life, but also with enormous compassion for people and what they are like.
And so I wanted to talk to Vodhi Bakam Jr.
He's the founding dean and senior lecturer in the School of Divinity at African Christian University in Lusaka, Zambia.
He's an author.
His latest book is The Ever Loving Truth.
The Everloving Truth will be available for purchase nationwide September 26th, 2023.
So that's coming right up.
Vodhi, thank you so much for coming on.
I appreciate it.
It is my pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
It's great to see you.
And as I was telling you before, I've been watching your sermons and your lectures, and I was not only struck, obviously your intelligence and your eloquence, but the compassion you show for human beings.
I think that's something that's missing from a lot of preaching, especially conservative preaching, especially preaching that sticks very close to biblical teaching.
I saw you give this one amazing sermon where you said something that really struck me.
You said that when non-Christians attack the Christian idea of marriage, it's because to some degree they see everything in terms of power and they see marriage as a power relationship and only in terms of power.
I so agree with that, but I'd like to hear what you have to say about why the power model doesn't work as an example of Christian marriage.
Yeah, and that's been more and more prevalent with the rise of this new neo-Marxist movement where everything is rooted in power dynamics.
And when you look at marriage from that perspective, especially when you look at Christian marriage from that perspective, you take a surface level look at biblical passages that say wives should submit to their husbands and that the husband is the head of the wife.
And it sounds pretty straightforward, cut and dry, like power dynamics, right?
He has the power and she doesn't have the power.
And there you have it.
You have this recipe for abuse.
But that's just because people don't look at the picture of marriage as a whole.
They don't look at what we find in the scriptures as a whole.
For example, with wives being portrayed as the weaker vessel and as the weaker vessel, the need to protect this weaker vessel and other passages that really fill out this picture of what marriage is.
But they also don't look at the history.
You got to look at the whole and you got to look at the history.
And when you look at the history, you find that Christian civilization is the place where women have been the most valued and the most protected in the history of the world.
And that is because this whole power dynamic lie is just that.
It's a lie.
That's not what Christian marriage is.
It's not what Christian marriage has been.
That's well, what is the way that we should look at it then?
What is the context that we should look at the marriage so we can understand those passages in scripture?
The context is that we have to look at, first of all, that creation with, you know, God making man in his image, making him male and female.
The idea that, you know, God tells Adam to name the animals.
And in this naming of the animals, the text tells us that there was no helper suitable found for Adam, right?
And so God puts him to sleep and takes out part of him and fashions a woman.
And then when Adam finally sees Eve, she's brought to him.
He says, this is at last bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called Isha or woman because she's taken out of Ish or man.
The idea in that statement is this complete equality.
She is what I am, right?
And in that complete equality, God unites them and the two become one flesh.
Again, complete equality.
But at the same time, there is headship and responsibility given to Adam.
He is the priest and the provider and the protector in the relationship.
And there is this beautiful just symbiotic relationship that God creates that is not one of domination, but it's one of headship and submission that brings about order in the midst of chaos.
You know, when you quote that passage, it's such a moving passage because Adam's joy and his relief at seeing Eve is so apparent in the writing.
Here at last is bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, has kind of been left out.
We've kind of been talked out of that, of regarding our wives, our spouses that way.
You know, people are always quick to jump on Ephesians.
Women, submit to your own husband, very specific, not submit to men, but submit to your own husband.
And I think that young men also have a problem with this.
I think that young men think like, you know, I don't really know where I'm going.
I'm not sure what the meaning of my life is.
How am I supposed to be a leader?
What are you supposed to be thinking about as you become the head of a family?
What is a young man supposed to be thinking about as he becomes the head of a family?
Yeah, I try to make it as simple as I can.
Historically, theologians have talked about these three areas.
I'll break them into four.
Priest, prophet, provider, and protector.
Often we hear prophet, priest, and king because these are, you know, Christ's offices, right?
But the idea of priest, prophet, provider, and protector, the priest is the one who represents his people before God.
The prophet is the one who represents God before his people.
The provider sees to it that his people have all that they need to thrive.
And the protector puts himself between his people and anyone and anything that could or would do them harm.
And this is what a husband is supposed to be.
And it is light years away from these simplistic ideas of domination and abuse.
Yeah, I mean, when I think of my wife, and my marriage has been this kind of weird fairy tale marriage that I don't want to compare to anyone else's because I know it's not as common as maybe it should be.
But one of the things I think about her, my wife is not woman.
She is a specific woman.
She has her hopes and dreams and fears like everybody else.
What is a man supposed to think?
You know, here I have now, this actual person in a relationship where I am the head.
What do I want for her?
What do I want her life to look like?
I mean, the picture of a woman in Proverbs is so extensive.
She does so many things.
She's an economic engine.
She's a family, you know, she cooks.
She makes closure, has an orchard.
She sells land.
What do I want for the woman in my life?
What's my telos, my purpose in being the head of that marriage?
To shepherd her in maximizing her God-given gifts, talents, abilities, and desires.
That's our goal.
That's the goal of anyone who is a leader in anything.
We want to make sure that those whom we're called to lead are being assisted in maximizing that, which maximizing their stewardship over that which God has given them.
And also, we've got to understand that this headship is within the context of a relationship.
And that relationship is a partnership.
This headship is one that recognizes and respects the Amago Dei, the image of God in one another, and recognizes that God is the ultimate head of the relationship.
And that ultimately, man's headship in a marriage is his headship under Christ, right?
Women are to submit to their own husbands as unto the Lord.
Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church.
So in all of this, we are absolutely not saying that the man has the Right or the privilege of just doing whatever, whenever, however.
No, we are under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ.
You know, recently, I was watching a video by a friend of mine, Chris Ruffo, who put out this video about how the world is going mad, which I think we can all agree it does seem to be doing.
And he says, you know, in these institutions that have been taken over by women, like academies, universities, you have this culture of irrational, emotive, bullying, emotionally bullying, and manipulative politics that is like kind of a bad wife.
It's kind of like living with a fish wife, the worst kind of woman.
Is there a role in society that women are now playing that maybe they shouldn't be?
And is there a role that they should be playing that maybe they're not?
Is there something that the entire society has to readjust to in their attitude toward women?
Yeah, I see that.
And I think it's a pretty complicated issue.
I don't think it's as simple as a woman in role A versus a woman in role B.
I think it has to do with our culture deciding that in general, there is no such thing as an appropriate role for a woman.
Or more particularly, that what we've seen historically and what we've seen biblically is not an appropriate role for a woman.
And so God creates and designs women in a particular way.
He designs the family in a particular way.
This most important of institutions that is the first institution of health and welfare in any society, right?
And he designs women who carry children, who then feed and nurture children.
He obviously designs them to take the lion's share of that role.
And then we've turned around and we've said that that, which God designed and created, is inherently oppressive and that women need to run away from that at breakneck speed.
And so what you have is women who are being denied that most cherished and that most important of roles and having to go out and figure out how to put something in its place that has that kind of value and nothing else ever will.
Why God's Word Matters00:07:16
And so I think that is part of why, you know, when you're trying to function, you know, as a woman in a society that is rejected, that which really sets you apart, it becomes very difficult to do that in a meaningful way sometimes.
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You know, one of the things no one can help but notice that one of the things that has gone so terribly wrong as a symptom of our craziness has been sex.
And in some ways, I feel a little weird, the two gray bearded men talking about sex, which is not that it's only the purview of the young, but that's where the creation and marriage take place, mostly among the young.
But still, maybe we know something they don't.
So I want to hear.
Well, but there's a reason that in survey after survey, often the most sexually satisfied people, and particularly most sexually satisfied women, are married women in their 50s.
Yes, yeah, no question about it.
But historically, it seems to me, the church has kind of wrestled with this question itself.
The phrase in Paul, better to marry than to burn, is not exactly a ringing endorsement of the marriage stuff.
And even this sort of promotion of virginity and the Catholic idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary and all this, this kind of idea that there's something wrong, that sex is part of the fallen world, not part of God's creation.
Has the church made a mistake in this?
Is there a reason that kind of rampant sexuality has blown back on us is the way it has?
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things that work there.
I think there have been mistakes made in this.
And I think that our tendency to look at sex as something that's taboo, our tendency to not talk openly about sex is hugely problematic.
First of all, it's problematic because God talks about it, right?
You've got the Song of Solomon, which is, you know, again, that's all I'll say, right?
We have the Song of Solomon.
God is not one who says that we shouldn't think about that.
We shouldn't talk about that.
It's a beautiful thing.
And it's not just in the Song of Solomon.
And I think one of the problems is when we who have God's word stop talking about something so central to our existence as human beings, what we do is we remove God's ethical guardrails from around that thing.
And the only thing that can result then is chaos.
Because if we're not talking about it, then those who don't have God's words are absolutely talking about it.
And they're perverting this most beautiful of gifts that God has given it.
And then what's even worse is those inside the church are not enjoying fully this most beautiful gift that God has given us.
Yeah, I see evidence of that.
I mean, I didn't grow up in an evangelical community at all, but when I talk to evangelicals, they seem very messed up on this.
They seem that they were kind of told that this is a bad thing or this is a, you know, even to think about it was somehow committing a sin.
And they always quote Jesus saying, even to lust in your heart after a woman is adultery.
They seem frozen on this issue, which makes it very appealing when somebody comes along and says, just do whatever you feel like doing.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Take that forbidden thing and go run far and fast with it.
Yeah.
Well, to widen our scope a little bit here, something I've noticed happening recently is when I sit and talk to people, even who are not religious at all, even who are expressly atheistic or just don't care, they've started to use religious terms.
And I hear a lot of people using the word demonic.
This is a demonic time.
A lot of people, and I'm talking about people who have no religious background whatsoever, talking about the end of days, that something dark and terrible is happening.
What's your take on that when you step back from a broader biblical perspective?
Are you thinking, oh, here it comes?
Or are you thinking, no, this is just a phase?
What are you thinking about now?
Yeah, I think that the naturalistic, materialistic, atheistic worldview is broken, insufficient.
It cannot account for so much of the things that we obviously see and experience in life.
There is real evil in the world.
And the atheistic, materialistic, naturalistic worldview cannot account for that.
Like Christian theism can account for that.
Like a biblical worldview can account for that.
And the other thing is that our culture, Western civilization, whether we like it or not, is built on, it's rooted in a biblical theistic worldview.
You just can't get away from that.
And so what often happens is people will run away from that theistic worldview.
They'll run away from a biblical worldview, think that they're too sophisticated for it, and go off and go to university and become atheistic, naturalistic, materialist, whatever.
But then when everything goes awry, what they lean back on is that foundation that we all have that gives us an explanation for things like evil in the world.
We're talking again to Vodi Bakum, whose book, The Ever Loving Truth, is coming out next week.
Back to Church Basics00:08:50
It'll be out in four days.
So you want to get a copy of that?
You're preaching in Africa.
I have to ask you this because I was really curious about as I was watching your video.
Why are you not here where we need you?
Well, I tell you what, the church in America is well stocked and well taken care of.
Yeah, you know, if you look at it, you know, somewhere like 95% of all of the meaningful theological texts are written, published here.
You know, the largest, most significant, most influential churches in the world are here.
And I know we have a tendency when we, you know, sort of look in our own backyard to just see more of the things that are wrong.
Or from a global perspective, the church in America is doing quite well and quite well without me.
But on the other hand, you know, I serve another king.
I serve another master.
And when he bids me go anywhere, I go.
And in 2015, the Lord called us to go.
And we went to Lusaka, Zambia, the capital of Zambia, to help start the African Christian University.
We've been there for the last eight years.
Right now, I'm in the U.S. right now.
As I'm talking to you, I'm here three or four times a year to do a speaking tour, book tour, or whatever for about 10 days.
So I am back and forth, but the Lord has his people all over the place.
And he's got more than enough to take care of what's happening here without me.
So what you just said is so interesting to me because during the pandemic, so many churches just shut down and stayed down.
They seemed afraid of death.
They seemed, they then came back and there were posters saying Black Lives Matter and gay pride hung on the churches.
see these all the time.
And I started to feel that, first of all, two things.
One, that our churches had lost their faith in the supernatural, that they were no longer seeing something beyond death or meaning beyond life.
And the other is related to that, which they suddenly were taking the principles of the world and applying them as solutions instead of the principles of the Bible.
I became very, I won't say despairing at all, but I became very depressed about the state of the American church.
You seem to feel that that's wrong.
I mean, I felt that they had gone off the rails and lost their way.
Is that only one part of the picture?
It is.
It really is only one part of the picture.
There are, what, 340 million Americans when you start talking about the millions and millions of American Christians.
And then when you take into account the fact that there are 50 states and the state of the church in California is not the state of the church in Texas.
And so, you know, I had the privilege of being all over this country and meeting the thousands of prophets who have not bowed the knee to Baal.
Now, many of them are pastoring churches with 50, 75, 100 members, and we don't get to know their names and they don't get plastered on television.
So oftentimes the only thing that we see is what the legacy media wants us to see as it relates to Christianity and what's happening in Christianity.
But because of the size of America, there's so much more good going on than we're being made aware of.
That is really interesting because I'm looking, you know, people talk about the post-Christian culture.
Somebody recently wrote to me about the post-Christian world and I said, we don't have a post-Christian world.
We have a post-Christian culture of two entirely different things.
And I see, you know, babies being aborted almost, I think it's over 800,000 just in the U.S. a year.
It does sound very much like Israel before the Babylonian exile, you know, where they were just going back to the old ways of sacrificing children to Dabal and Moloch.
Are we not losing this battle?
Does it just look to me like we are?
No, the church is undefeated and always will be.
We're not losing this battle.
In the end, we win.
But there are ebbs and flows, and we have to be aware of that.
And I think when we see those ebbs and flows, rather than asking, is this the end and have we lost?
I think it's time for us to recognize that God calls us to repent and to believe.
God calls us to cry out to him, not to cry out to him and throw our hands up and say, it's over, the battle is lost, but to cry out to him and say that our only hope is you.
And I think when these ebbs come, it's time for us to be reminded that our only hope is God.
And I think we tend to lose hope when we believe that our only hope is this church, that church, people doing this, people doing that, you know, whatever.
That's not what our hope is.
Our only hope is in God.
Our only hope is in the kingdom and the kingdom is undefeated.
You have this book coming out, The Ever Loving Truth, and I have not had a chance to look at this.
I'm interested.
What's the theme of this book?
Well, basically, what I do is I look at Acts chapter 4 and Peter and John and their experience in a pre-Christian culture and show how what we're experiencing now mirrors that in a post-Christian culture.
And basically, I sort of map out the way that they were treated, the way that they were confronted, and show how we're seeing the exact same things in our day.
But at the end of it, their determination was to continue to preach regardless of the cost.
And I'm afraid that for many people, our determination is to do whatever we need to do to go along and get along.
So I'm trying to encourage people to take Peter and John's example to heart.
Well, if you were walking today into a church that was, say, set in a fairly liberal area and the church is struggling, I mean, I live in a fairly liberal area, actually, and I go to this small church set out of the way.
But obviously, you have to build a church, you have to fund a church, you have to do all the things that go into making a church.
Where would you start?
What would be your strategy for taking back that territory?
For me, it's always going back to basics.
I'm a sports guy.
I'm an athlete, been involved in sports most of my life, and I'm a firm believer in always going back to the basics and to the fundamentals.
And we get too sophisticated and we'll end up running off the rails completely.
And I think for many people, for many churches, for many ministries, what has happened is in the midst of all of this, you know, wonderful success in American Christianity over the last several generations, we've kind of gotten too smart for our own good and ventured off into a lot of things that go far beyond the basics and in time forgets and neglects the basics.
So we've got to get back to the word of God.
We've got to get back to the ordinary means of grace.
We've got to get back to the simplicity of the gospel.
We've got to get back to our trust in Christ as our only hope.
Yeah.
It's a great message, obviously the truth.
The book is called The Ever Loving Truth.
The author is Vodi Bacham, and you should listen to his sermons on YouTube.
They will make you want to buy The Ever Loving Truth, which is out in a couple of days.
Vodi, thank you so much for coming on.
I hope you will come back.
I could talk to you a lot longer about this, and you've actually kind of given me hope in a moment when it seems things are going awry in this country.
But thank you so much for coming on.
Hey, you're most welcome.
It's been my pleasure, and I'd love to do it again.
All right.
Thanks a lot.
Going back to the basics, obviously the right idea, speaking the truth, putting our faith in Christ, obviously the right idea.
You want to get the ever-loving truth on Amazon or wherever you get your books.
And come on Friday to the Andrew Clavin Show and hear more truth and thought and things that you want right there on the Andrew Clavin Show.