Timothy Keller is scrutinized as a "water carrier for the political left," with the host exposing his registered Democrat status, advisory role on the Ann Campaign, and intellectual debts to Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, and Saul Alinsky. The analysis critiques Keller's hermeneutical spiral approach for undermining biblical inerrancy and his rebranding of doctrines on sin and hell, recommending D.A. Hart's "Engaging Keller" for further critique. Ultimately, the discussion warns against conflating behavioral shifts with true repentance, urging a sifting process to distinguish authentic faith from ideological opportunism within evangelical leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Ideologues Flatten Reality00:14:44
Hi, this is Pastor Joel Webben with Right Response Ministries, and you're listening to Theology Applied.
Back by Popular Demand, our special guest is once again John Harris.
He was our guest in last week's episode.
If you haven't listened to that, you need to go back and listen to that episode first because this episode is actually the second part of one singular conversation that John and I had.
It was over an hour and a half long.
And so what we did was we took that conversation, we broke it up into two parts.
Last week's episode, we really laid down just a theological general Framework for calling out the woke gospel, recognizing why social justice is an affront to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It introduces law into the gospel of free grace, but not only that, it introduces not God's law, but man's law, mob justice, and not biblical justice.
And so we lay that framework out, we deal with Timothy Keller, but in this episode, this second half of the conversation, John goes into far more detail, especially regarding Tim Keller, but also regarding Al Moeller and Russell Moore.
So you're in for a real treat.
It's important for us to be able to peg and identify those evangelical leaders in the church today who sadly are merely serving as water carriers for the political left.
That said, don't give your money to those who are serving the political left.
Don't give your money to ministries or ministers or organizations or companies that hate you, right?
It's the second vote that we as conservative Christians have.
We go to the voting booth, but we also make our vote every time we spend our money.
And so, God has reserved in this time, as He has in all ages, a remnant.
We are not, hear me, we are not the only faithful, conservative, Christian ministry out there.
But they tend to be few and far between.
And we're one of them.
And so, if you're looking for someone to support, not only by your prayers and encouragement, but by your finances, please make a donation to Right Response Ministries.
You can do so by going to our website, rightresponseministries.com.
Last thing that I want to do is I want to plug Carpe Fide.
Carpe Fide.
Seize.
The faith.
They were at the G3 conference.
They had a booth set up and they sold most of their shirts, but they're getting their stock refilled.
And these are some of their supply, all right?
This is their first shirt Burn the ships.
It comes from the legendary phrase that Cortez issued to his men when they landed in Latin America Burn the ships.
What it symbolizes is this No retreat.
We're not going back.
We're only going forward.
The other shirt that we have from Carpe Fide is this one Come and take it.
Come and take it.
Now, you'll notice.
That we have here a pulpit on this shirt, right?
So they've kept the Texas Star, they've replaced the pulpit, or I'm sorry, the cannon, the iconic cannon that's typically there, with a pulpit.
So, what they're ultimately saying is that from King Leonidas to the Texas, you know, fortress that was being defended, they're saying that pastors and churches need to defend their church, defend their pulpit, and a portion of the proceeds, if you buy this shirt, the come and take it shirt from Carpe Fide, a portion of those proceeds will actually go to Pastor James Coates and his church in Alberta, Canada.
James Coates has taken that stand and he's told his tyrannical government, Hey, I'm not handing over my pulpit.
I'm not handing over my church.
If you want it, come and take it.
We as Christians here in America and all across the world should do the same.
Without further ado, thanks for tuning in to Theology Applied.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Do you see the potential of a swing the other direction?
And what do you think these guys, your Timothy Kellers, your Russell Moore's, what do you think they would do?
Would they keep going this direction?
Or do you think there's a point where they've lost enough followers and they see what direction the people are headed and they literally run out in front of it and try to pretend like they were there all along?
Do you think these guys have that little support?
So, this is a hypothetical.
Yeah, this is obviously a hypothetical situation to think that political conservatives are going to have.
One of the big problems is we're so leaderless right now, not just in the political arena, but also in the church.
Like there's a lot of, you're right, fed up people, but how many pastors are there?
I mean, it's, there's a demand that cannot, or a supply that, that just doesn't exist to meet the demand that's out there.
And so we, we would have to see a bunch of men stepping up.
Um, but I get, so the main, the main thing you're asking though is like if, if, uh, if it was popular to be conservative or something like that, would these guys just be chameleons?
And I've said, you know, I'll name some names.
I'll get specific here.
And I want to try to be as careful as I can.
But this is from a lot of study as far as reading sermons and blog posts and books from these guys.
So the guys I'm mentioning are guys I feel comfortable saying this about.
Al Moeller, I think, is an opportunist.
I think he might lean kind of slightly left on some things, he might lean slightly right on others.
I think more so, I see him veering kind of leftish.
He is an opportunist.
And I can give you numerous examples of it where he plays both sides of an issue.
And if something becomes more popular, he tends to like shift in that direction.
So there's guys like that.
I think you're absolutely right.
And it's kind of a shame.
It's sad because if, let's say, the Klan was popular, they'd probably be running around with hoods.
Like it's that bad, you know?
They don't have convictions, or at least the ones that they do have, they have some maybe, but not a lot.
And they're out for themselves.
And then there's others who are, I think, ideologues.
I think Tim Keller is an ideologue.
I think Russell Moore is an ideologue.
I don't think they're going to change significantly.
I think that they will be an ideologue.
Yeah.
So I talk about this in the book that just came out, Christianity and Social Justice, which, by the way, I should have plugged it.
You can go to ChristianityandSocialJustice.com if you want to get a copy of that.
And there's a whole section on ideology.
So ideology, As the name implies, it is about abstractions, ideas, and taking these ideas and then imposing them.
So, if the idea is equality or equity, diversity, inclusion, right, that's some kind of an egalitarian utopia of some kind, but everything is compared to that, and everything is weighed on a scale according to whether or not it conforms with equality.
So, the idea is equality.
So, an ideologue is going to look through life and evaluate everything through a very narrow scope of evaluation.
They're going to be looking at, okay, is it equal?
Is it not equal?
And they'll start assigning values to even weird things, right?
Like they'll start assigning values to, I don't know, Dr. Seuss books and things like that, whether or not it forwards their revolutionary agenda.
And so, I think that Tim Keller and Russell Moore are ideologues.
They're metaphysic.
In other words, the way that they look at reality.
When we're looking at it, let's say, and we're not perfect at all, but hopefully we're seeing, we're using the sense perception and the mind that God's given us, and we're trying to see reality, the full spectrum of reality.
We're starting to see in color.
This is what God created.
And if we understand what the Bible teaches about man, we're going to see things from his perspective as much as we can, not perfectly, right?
But an ideologue tends to, instead of seeing the colors, they see the one shade they're looking for.
And they become obsessed with it.
Quality is the only thing that matters, right?
It's the only thing that's of any value and makes life worth living and that kind of thing.
So I do see Tim Keller and Russell Moore kind of veering more towards an ideological perspective.
Way of doing things where they, you even just said a minute ago about Tim Keller when I described his first, one of the first influences he had at Urbana.
Oh gosh, what's his name now?
I'm trying to remember Skinner, Tom Skinner.
Yeah.
And I described what Skinner preached, and you said, well, that's like Tim Keller in like every sermon or whatever.
That Tim, it's a theme that comes up because it's Tim Keller is, if you look at his bio, He's kind of like a 60s revolutionary type.
He never really changed all that much.
He's got the same kind of philosophy.
He's just, he's got become smarter.
He's a theologian.
He's added a lot of knowledge to it, but he's still an ideologue and he still has a vision for how he wants to see things and he's going to carry it out.
And Russell Moore's like that as well.
So I think Matt Chandler's like that too.
I think he's a guy that's just, he has this obsession, like trying to talk with them, trying to, it's like trying to, Describe colors to someone who's colorblind sometimes.
Like they're just not going to see it.
You know what I'm talking about.
Like there's a blindness there almost that like they're just not on that wavelength.
So someone like, you know, yeah, go ahead.
Real quick, you know this because we talked about it in the episode that you came on, you know, a few weeks back, you know, my experience in Acts 29 and Matt Chandler.
But so I certainly have problems with Chandler.
And anybody who didn't watch that episode, go check it out calling out woke preachers by name with me and John.
But I did a whole thing on Chandler.
That said, though, I'm more sympathetic towards Chandler, and this is why I think Keller, after reading your first book and your whole chapter on Keller, and I want us to get a little, I'm going to push you to get a little deeper on Keller because I think it'll be really helpful for our listeners.
I'm less sympathetic for him because here's part of the thing Keller didn't really come to the stage, if you will, in evangelicalism until later in life.
I mean, he was a small town, he was a pastor of a blue collar congregation, right, in Virginia or something like that for a while.
And so, for a long time, I mean, this guy is, you know, a pastor with not a lot of large influence, not a lot of fame or prestige or anything like that, hardly any, just a small local pastor, which is wonderful, by the way, a small local pastor.
Whereas Chandler, here's why I'm a little bit sympathetic Chandler blew up so big and so fast and so young that I honestly think, I don't think that Chandler necessarily is the ideologue that you're describing, at least not in the same way that Keller is.
I think Chandler doesn't know.
I think Chandler literally blew up so fast.
I mean, you think about that.
Like, what does a week look like for a pastor who pastors 10,000 people?
Like, what is, and I don't think Chandler's lazy.
So I'm saying that and saying, I think he's busy.
I think that week looks very, very busy.
And so my thing is, he probably hasn't read all these books.
And then he just has some friends telling him he's taking his cues from Keller.
You know, he's taking his cues from these.
And so if he has older men who have, Done all the reading and the writing and the study.
And they're telling him, then he's just like, all right, I don't have time to study this.
Chandler didn't go to seminary.
I think he has a bachelor's degree, or maybe not even that.
Let me try to.
Maybe I didn't do a good job maybe explaining ideology.
Ideologues tend to flatten reality and cram it into their obsession.
And it's an abstraction.
So they, most of the people we know, social justice warriors are ideologues.
Okay.
So, like most of the people that we think of as social justice warriors, they're probably not thinking through it deeply, but they've still, Um, caught the disease, so to speak, even like we could think of um, even religions sort of in this in a way, like there are people that are adherents to religions that can be very pious, but they're uh, they haven't thought through it deeply.
Now, in the case of Tim Keller, I think you're absolutely right, like he's he's actually like he's been kind of um, enmeshed in this uh, in some bad stuff for a long time, and he's he's had more time to think about things and understand things, and and so I get that, like he's.
Perhaps there's more knowledge behind what Keller's doing, and he's leading the way.
In Acts 29, we used to call like literally everybody would call him Yoda.
That's what Acts 29 calls Tim Keller.
So, like, when you think Acts 29 is separate from Keller, no, Acts 29, Keller is the thing separate from Keller.
No, like the Southern Baptist Convention is not separate from Keller, even though he's Presbyterian.
JD Greer is like, even that sermon he did when the fall affects us all.
If you read the notes, he's like citing Keller all over the place.
So Yeah.
With Matt Chandler, though, I think it's that obsession with inequity and race and things like that.
That's why I say he's an ideologue because there's, I don't know if you read, there was a blog a few years ago from a policeman that went to his church and wrote this whole thing about, like, here's what it's like at Village Church.
And I've heard a lot of people close to Chandler who have come out of that church basically say the same thing.
Like, there's no way to reason to approach him.
He's, He's on a one track mindset of like, we're going to carry out this equity, diversity, inclusion agenda.
And by the way, it is featured in my book.
I talk about Matt Chandler, and he does mix social justice law with the gospel, too.
So it's for a guy as sharp as he was or is, I mean, as much as I benefited from some of the things he said years ago, he should know better than to make that basic error, but he's blinded by something.
And so, It's this obsession, I think, with equality and trying to make everything egalitarian that causes some of this.
So, you're right.
I mean, you might be right.
Maybe I'm not right.
Street Preaching and Poverty00:16:00
No, no, no.
You're right.
I think, but I do think there is a, I think you're right.
I guess at first, when I was hearing you with the ideological person, I was just kind of assuming, it was my fault to assume, but I was assuming that a high level of intelligence and study was required.
To be ideological.
And so I was like, well, then I got to defend my boy Chandler.
You know, but because I think he's sharp.
Don't get me wrong.
I think he's probably smarter than I am.
But I don't think he's like this bookworm, well studied.
You know, he's not coming from the ivory tower, you know.
And so, but you're saying, hey, you can be ideological and be dumb.
You can be ideological and be smart.
Yeah, like, how do you take a whole group of people, like white people, we could say, but you could, like, Nazi ideology.
I mean, you take all the Jews or something and say, They're not even human basically because they don't conform to this abstraction in our minds.
They're not, um, they don't.
We're not going to view them as God sees them to the full spectrum of what they actually are as a person made in God's image.
Like, we're gonna, we're just gonna completely reduce them down to like ones and zeros, right?
And they, there's a deficiency in who they are because they're not forwarding the agenda we want, and and so they, they get you know, whatever bad thing happens to them, happens to them.
That's kind of like that's the way an ideologue looks at things, they just reality gets reduced and flattened.
Into, um, and I know this is kind of philosophical, so that's why I took a long time in my chapter on it to try to explain it to people.
And I probably do a better job in the book, uh, uh, doing that because I was taking a lot of time parsing it out, right?
Um, but it is no, it's helpful.
It really is a rejection, though.
If you know Peter Jones' truth exchange, I don't know if you've like familiar with his teachings, um, one ism and two ism, right?
So it's kind of like that, it's, it's, uh, It's like ideologues tend to like there's one thing and that's the only thing.
It's the only important thing, and everyone must care about it.
We must be obsessed with it.
And anyone who's not is not, you know, worthy of being part of our club.
That's an ideologue.
That makes a lot of sense.
That's interesting because that was, you know, when I was always like looking at young men to become elders in my previous church that I pastored in California, the first church that I planted, that was actually, it's funny that you mentioned that because we had that in our language.
That was one of the things that would.
They would immediately take someone out of the running for even consideration for being an elder because there were lots of Christian men who were good Christian men, but they were a one trick pony, right?
They only marched to the beat of one drum.
Like guys who would do street preaching.
And I'm a fan of street preaching.
So don't get me wrong.
You know, there's a lot of people, well, is it effective?
Like, I don't even have time to go into that.
But like, yeah, yeah, I think so.
I think it is effective.
And, um, There's a lot that God does with his word, and saving is one of those things, but also condemning is one as well.
So, anyways, but some guys, it's just street preaching.
They wanted to go to an abortion clinic every single week, which is great.
I love that.
And the Jehovah's Witness would have some kind of conference in town, all those kind of things.
And so it was personal evangelism, evangelism, evangelism, and street preaching.
But if you started talking to them about other pastoral issues that a pastor should be versed in, and then just also just getting a A ground understanding for their doctrine, and you know, they were just it was anemic, it was, um,
it was just like everything had been funneled into this one direction, and uh, and and that could be you know anything, you know, you know, but anyways, and so, um, I say that to agree with you, it's clicking for me now, and I appreciate you explaining it a little bit more because an elder, they need to be well rounded.
Go ahead, sorry, gotcha, say that again, they don't love, they don't tend to love people as much, they love ideas.
And so when you put them in, they usually have not the greatest interpersonal skills, generally, like hardcore ideologues generally are just much more in love with the ideas in their own head and conforming everything to that vision.
So biblically, though, and just this is the way the world works.
God created the world.
There's actual things out there, tangible things.
People are out there who have souls.
Obviously, they're intangible, but there's a whole real world.
It's not the only.
Ideas in our head aren't the only thing that matters.
Basic Christian assumption that we live in a world that is much bigger than us.
And so, when for pastors, when we interact, when we have a bedside manner and we shepherd and we shoot the wolves, right?
We are also aggressive when we need to be.
We're dealing with the real life stuff.
And we learn to love real things.
And one of my contentions with the social justice advocates is I don't think they have a love oftentimes for real things.
It they have a love for ideas, and then the things that exist are supposed to just either conform to that to the idea they have.
But there are some things out there, there, I mean, there's people out there that just they can get on your nerves, even.
But we love them, and we love the blessings God gives us, and the smell and the taste, and all of that stuff.
I'm not saying social justice warriors don't enjoy some of these things.
What I'm saying though is they devalue the importance of anything that doesn't conform to the one thing, the one agenda, the one right.
Now that's super helpful.
And it makes me think like, you know, they don't love the whole person and they also don't preach the whole counsel of God.
So, in both regards, it's like that's what a faithful pastor does.
And the only difference between an elder and a Christian man is that an elder must be a certain way, meeting these biblical qualifications.
But every Christian man, whether he's an elder or not, should be.
So it's must be versus should be.
Every Christian man should be aspiring, not necessarily aspiring towards the office of eldership, which is a noble thing to aspire towards.
But a Christian man can aspire towards business.
He can aspire towards something else.
I don't want to hold the office of elder, but he should aspire to all of those qualifications.
He should aspire to being doctrinally sound, able to teach that which is true and refute those who contradict it.
He should aspire to being a man of but one wife, and all that he should be.
So, all those kind of qualifications, every Christian.
So, it's for pastors, it's also for Christians.
And what I want to say is that pastors must be, and every Christian man and woman for that matter should be.
Loving the whole counsel of God and applying the whole counsel of God to the whole person.
I think, in a nutshell, that's what it comes down to are we looking at all of God's word and are we applying it with love to all of human life, to all of the person?
And anytime we become obsessed with one agenda, one idea, is what you're saying, then we lose that.
So, yeah, everything you're saying is super helpful.
Let's talk just a little bit more about color.
This is something that you wrote.
I wanted to quote it for you and see if you'll flesh it out a little bit more for us.
I thought it was great.
I thought it was insightful.
Here it is.
In 2010, Keller told Christianity Today it's biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away.
Using the language, and that was his quote, but this is your writing.
Using the language of moral obligation, he implied that the have nots, on the basis of their need, possessed a legitimate claim to resources not distributed to them, which belongs to the haves.
So, the church's job is to address, or sorry, the church's job was to address these inequities by not only meeting needs, but also addressing the conditions and social structures that led to such needs in the first place.
That's something that you wrote in your first book.
And that quote in what you wrote, the part that's from Keller is it's biblical that we owe the poor as much of our money as we possibly can give away.
That is just insane.
Could you just flesh that out a little bit and tell us why that's insane?
One of the big things that makes it insane, I think, is the assumption behind it is if there's a need, right, the poor need something.
And if that's the basis on which we give our money away because a need exists, if you carry that logic further, everyone needs to be saved, and God doesn't save everyone.
And so, what does this say about God?
I mean, is He this would, I think, create a moral conundrum in a way that God's law supposedly says that we're supposed to meet these needs, but this isn't something that He's necessarily even doing Himself.
And so, I do see that this could get into the gospel.
Keller doesn't take it that far, but I'm just saying the logic seems inescapable in my mind.
The obvious thing when we look at a quote like that first is that it's just where do you find this verse that says this?
This is, you know, money all belongs to God.
Every resource does ultimately, and we're stewards of it.
God allows us to have it temporarily, but there's nothing in the Bible that says that we, there's a moral obligation.
We owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away.
And it's such a And what's the standard for that?
How do you figure that out?
So it's so problematic.
There's a principle we're supposed to love one another, and included in that would be meeting needs, especially first to the household of faith, but then to those who don't provide for their families or worse than unbelievers.
It's to the people in close proximity to us, loving our neighbor.
These are things that we're supposed to be doing.
But the poor, that's just, These are, again, we see the language of abstraction and ideology almost coming out here, too.
Is it the poor in our local proximity, the real tangible people that we live with, or is it just poor as a general category?
Right.
And what would happen if everybody actually followed that?
So let's say everybody who has more than they need, right?
So Paul says, if we have food and clothing, we'll be content with these.
So first, how do you measure that?
What's the metric?
Let's say it's shelter, and then you have to, well, how big of a house?
What amount is ethical to pay, and all those kinds of things.
But let's say you quantified all of it.
And then every first world person got saved and is a Christian now, and every single one of them wants to follow Keller's suggestion here and give every penny they have above the line that we've all quantified now for what is actually needed.
And they give it to the poor.
And what if, now I know that the devil's advocate is going to say it still wouldn't be enough because there's so many people who are poor.
And that may be true.
But let's just say, hypothetically, that there were more rich people.
Let's say we lived in a world where there were more rich people than there were poor.
All right, you give it all to the poor, and now the poor have more than they need.
If there's, you know what I mean?
And like, who do they give it to?
Is it okay to have wealth beyond, like, then, you know, and then here's the thing is at the end of the day, so you give it to the poor, now they have more than they need.
So now do they need to give it back?
And then we just keep going back and forth, back and forth.
And the answer, I think that, like, what Kelly would say, and I think a lot of Christians would say, no, you would give it to the poor, but there would still be need.
One, because there's so many poor people, but let's say there weren't so many poor people, there were more rich people than poor people.
We give them everything they need.
I think there would eventually be still at the end of the day, give it five years, give it 10 years.
There would be a need once more.
Jesus said, You will always have the poor with you.
And I think the reason why there will always eventually be a need is I think Keller would say, There will always be a need because he wouldn't say this explicitly, but this is what it implies.
He would say, There will always be a need because wealth is a zero sum game, aka God is not a good provider.
God has commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.
And behind our backs, he's been snickering and laughing because he's called us to do the very thing that will be our own demise.
Because he created a planet that cannot sustain his people obeying what he told them to do.
I think that's Keller's view.
My view would be no, you'll always have the poor with you because you'll always have sin.
And poverty is a result of sin.
In the same way, meaning now it's not always your individual sin.
It doesn't mean every poor person is in sin.
There are a lot of poor people in North Korea, but even that is due to sin.
Not necessarily their sin, but somebody else's sin who is afflicting them.
And so, but the reality is a sinless world, I believe, would be a world that is rid of poverty because I cannot believe that God actually created this world.
With not enough resources to meet the needs and even the common grace, pleasures, and enjoyments of people who are fruitful, multiply, and fill it.
Like that's just insane to me.
But I think, so my whole point is to say if we actually did what Keller's saying, it seems like then all of a sudden the poor people would have more than rich people.
But eventually, the problem is even if we did that, if we did this equal redistribution within a month, within a year, some people, it won't be equal for long because eventually some people are going to invest their money wisely.
Other people are going to spend it lavishly and give it a year, give it a decade, and all of a sudden you have rich and poor.
So if we level the playing field economically today across the whole world, everybody has the exact same amount.
Give it a decade, and all of a sudden you're going to have people who are incredibly wealthy and people who are incredibly poor.
And I don't think that's because of a flaw in the way that God designed this world and the resources it has.
I think it's a flaw in man who chose to rebel against God.
In sin, and because of sin, um, we do things that produce poverty, yeah.
Well, I hadn't thought of that.
That's uh, that's an interesting way.
I was thinking about um, some of the other people who have said similar things in scripture, like Martha to Mary, right?
Um, I mean, Martha didn't really, Martha was just getting on Mary's uh, case for wasting right, uh, resources that could have and not helping her and these kinds of things.
Judas was really the one, though, actually.
I she's the one I really should the patron saint of social justice, Judas, who said, uh, You know, we could have sold this, we could have sold this and given it to the poor, and that's kind of a you know, I hear that kind of in what Keller's saying here as well.
Um, it's it's and again, it's so nebulous, it's so vague.
Um, Ron Sider likes to try to say they're in rich Christians in an age of hunger that there's poor, uh, all over the world, it's our hungry neighbors in Africa and Asia and other places that aren't you know, they're they have trade inequities and these kinds of things, and we're in sin because we're not giving them.
Resources, but there's never a way to actually rectify the situation completely because you'll never, like you just said, you'll never actually get rid of poverty in this fallen world.
So, yeah, I think it's better just to live life the way, according to Providence.
We're situated in different places and we have different responsibilities.
Our family, the sizes of our families are different, the sizes of our church are different, where we live is different, the needs of those areas are different.
Generosity Beyond Giving Dimes00:09:27
There's so many different contingencies.
And We have to just try to be charitable, but I'll just steward the resources God has given us to the best of our ability.
And you know what?
Sometimes that means that you may be taking your family out for a nice dinner, and there's nothing wrong with that.
In fact, the way a market economy works, you're actually feeding a lot of people doing that because they have to wait on your table, and right there, the money's not going and disappearing somewhere.
It's, you know, waiters are getting it, and restaurants are getting it.
And so there's sort of like a misunderstanding of how a market economy even works.
Sometimes I know Piper had said this years ago.
I was at a conference, I heard this firsthand.
I can't give you a recording.
I know I heard it though.
Someone asked him if it was a sin to buy a new car, and he said, Yes, it was a sin to buy a new car.
And I'm like, Well, where do you get this?
You know, that's not in the scripture anywhere.
It's certainly not.
And we just can't go beyond what God has told us in scripture.
And that's the danger of this you tie yourself up in knots when you start going past that.
And so, yeah, there's.
You're absolutely right.
Go ahead.
Sorry.
There's a lot.
I was going to say there's a lot of other quotes in that chapter that are just as problematic.
Keller's a mess when you really start looking at.
His past, his influences, his beliefs on social justice.
I was, my eyes were popping out of my sockets when I started researching it because I knew he was left leaning.
I didn't realize it was this bad.
I didn't realize he was, you know, he was really firmly in that kind of left leaning category.
So, you know, one real quick, real quick, one really interesting thing that I read it was something that Steve Jobs said, just in terms of the poor and wealth and the way that it works.
Somebody once challenged Steve Jobs with his, you know, one of his arch rivals, Bill Gates, and said, Bill Gates does so much for charity.
He's a philanthropist and humanitarian.
And Steve Jobs kind of was known for doing very little, if nothing.
He didn't give away his money.
I said, How come you're not charitable like Bill Gates?
He said, Well, Bill Gates is charitable because Bill Gates doesn't have any talents.
He said, Bill Gates has only ever taken over things or slid into things.
He hasn't ever done anything.
And for guys who can't do anything, they don't have anything to give to the world except their money.
He said, But I have alleviated poverty more than Bill Gates, not by my charity, but by my work.
And I thought that that was really, really insightful.
Now, regardless of whether it's true, whether or not Apple has actually made people's lives that much better, because I think there's an argument to the counter, you know.
They're using the sweatshop labor, I thought.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So, whether or not that's true, the concept, I think, has a lot of truth in it.
So, whether or not it's true in the case study of Steve Jobs versus Bill Gates, I think the concept is true.
And I think that's what guys like John Piper just don't understand.
But guys like R.C. Sproul did.
R.C. Sproul was okay with the finer things in life, Ligonier cruises.
You know, they weren't doing Ligonier bunk beds, you know, at the old Baptist camp.
They were, you know, going on cruises.
You know, and having a good time.
And not to say that R.C. Sproul was, you know, foolish in the way that he spent his money, but R.C. Sproul, from what I've read and what I've heard, he slept with a clear conscience at night and he had nice things and he encouraged Christians to build wealth and all these things.
And yes, be generous.
But you're right, John.
Like, one of the ways that we're generous is not just by giving every dime we have after paying our rent.
You know, but but by started starting a business and uh, that creates jobs for people that, like there, there are guys who who, who have they're, they're Pagans, they've never, they've never actually given to a charity, and they've certainly never given to the church, and yet they've created more wealth for more people than than John Piper ever has or ever will.
And wealth is not the only metric, too.
We need to remember that it's um, there's a quality of life too that uh, Some people, you know, obviously don't have a lot of money, but their quality of life is very good.
And there's other people that are completely miserable who have all the money in the world.
And so the things that actually matter aren't the number that pops up when you log into your bank account.
So many people who have little are satisfied.
And whatever you have, whether it's money or whether it's just giving of your time, time's another thing you can give people, your talents, you know, whatever.
You know, you do you, I guess, to say a California phrase, but God's made everyone different.
And we have to allow for that.
And we can't just pigeonhole everyone into this really super legalistic standard that allows people to really one up each other.
And, you know, well, I don't drive a new car and I, you know, I give all my money to the poor and I could be drawing so much money from my book sales, but I don't.
I donate to charity.
It's like, Okay, but how about you know that's between you and God?
Just live your life.
And I think of like the widow with two mites.
She was the moral of that story.
I remember I heard John MacArthur preach on it years ago, and I had always thought like this was a story about exemplifying her sacrifice and how important it was.
And because it was what she had to live on and she gave it.
And I think though, when you read it in context, it seems clear that actually it's an indictment of the Pharisees that this is the kind of Thing that you are doing.
You're putting these heavy burdens on people that they're giving even the last what they had to live on.
And so I see Keller as in that vein as well, at least with that quote that we just read.
And it's not right.
It's not right.
No, you're right.
It's great.
The hypocrisy is crazy.
So I don't think there's anything wrong with having a $900,000 house.
I don't have a $900,000 house for the record, but I don't think it would be wrong.
But I think it is wrong if you have a $900,000 house and You write a book like Radical.
You know, I think that, you know what I'm saying?
That's when it becomes a problem.
And so, like, RC's, I mean, this is public knowledge.
You know, you can look it up online because it wasn't a church, you know, but with Ligonier, I think he was paid a little over 200 grand.
And I assume he got book sales.
And I assume that he also had a salary from his church as a co pastor there of St. Andrews, the church that he pastored for several years.
And, you know, But RC Sproul, I love RC Sproul.
I don't think there was anything wrong with that.
Because RC Sproul didn't write books telling people to give everything away.
And I guess I'll give Piper credit in this regard.
Piper is one of the few guys who talks like that.
And from what I've heard, does it.
David Platt doesn't.
David Platt talks like Piper, but lives like Sproul.
And Keller, I don't really know Keller, but it.
I mean, he seems to be doing fine, but that kind of rhetoric, right?
We owe the poor as much of our money as we can possibly give away.
The people who take you up on that, this is the irony.
It's usually the poor.
It's usually the poorest Christians, you know, who are barely getting by, trying to love their kids, love their wife, working a job that's hard work, you know, usually physical labor, you know, crawling into bed late at night to wake up and do it all over again.
And they're the ones who are.
Taking Tim Keller up on these kinds of statements.
Well, technically, we could live off of $3,500 a month instead of $800 that we make.
The most generous state is in the country.
What is it?
It goes back and forth.
I think right now it's Utah.
It's between, though, usually Utah and Mississippi, the most generous, like giving the most to charitable causes.
And Mississippi is the poorest state in the country.
So just think about that.
I mean, and then it's also heavily evangelical.
So for all the negative attention that a state like Mississippi gets, they're giving from their poverty.
And And I think I just wanted to illustrate your point that you just made, which I thought was a good point.
So I'm sorry I interrupted your train of thought there.
No, no, you're right.
So let me ask you this, and we'll go ahead and land the plane.
But last question, just again with Keller, because I think we've just got a lot of listeners like myself who have benefited from Tim Keller and for years were reading his books, listening to his sermons, and there was a lot of good stuff.
But we started seeing the writing on the wall and having concerns.
And so I just, you've done some.
Keller's Fascination with Marx00:06:54
Some substantial research on him.
And so, one of the things that you wrote about in regards to Keller was that he seemed to have a peculiar fascination with Karl Marx.
Is that true?
And what did that look like?
Was there anything he disagreed with Marx over?
Or what drew him into Karl Marx?
And where do you see that, whether it be his writings or his preaching?
Where did you get that from?
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I'd use the word fascination.
He okay, then I use the word fascination.
Well, you know, well, he might, he may have a fascination.
He certainly has a fascination, I would say, with like new left thinkers, but I think that's just because of the world he grew up in.
He came, you know, at Bucknell University or Bucknell College, you know, he was involved with the more activist students.
And then, you know, he gets involved with hearing the Tom Skinner thing that changes his life.
And then Edward Ellis, when he's in seminary.
Basically, he tells him that you he doesn't use the term, but it's the same concept you have white privilege, and Keller accepts that.
And then, um, Harvey Kahn gives him the hermeneutical spiral, which is basically a they'll claim it's not postmodern, but it's subjective, it's a subjective way of reading a scripture.
It's the same way liberation theologians read the Bible, pretty much.
Um, this kind of reader response, uh, way of looking at it.
So, like, Keller, these are his influences, and then you see in his writings, you can tell he reads a lot of um.
He reads Foucault.
If there's a, honestly, if there's an obsession he has or a fascination, I think it's Foucault.
He talks about Foucault and some servants quite a bit.
French.
Yeah, Mikhail Foucault, or some people will say Michelle Foucault.
I always get, whenever I say Mikhail, people write me and say, it's Michelle, but it depends, I guess, who you're talking to.
Foucault was a French deconstructionist, a postmodern thinker.
And, He's known mostly for his book Discipline and Punishment, which is about the prison system and how he talks about, he calls them discourses, but how there's these systems set up and they, and basically it's more complicated.
I'm giving you the real shorthand here, but it's not just Marxism's class conflict, but there's this really complicated kind of interplay of language and all kinds of things that constitute power relationships.
And these power relationships form these discourses.
And so it's, it's, there's definitely a Marxist flair to Foucault when you read him, as there is a Marxist flair in most of the postmodern thinkers.
But Foucault, so Foucault's thing was he was obsessed with power.
He was an ideologue and everything was power.
Everything was power.
In fact, I think he created his own term, a power, I'm blanking on the term that he created, but it is basically the concept that he was trying to.
Get across is that basically everything's power.
And so Keller also likes to quote Foucault and Foucault's going after power relationships and analyzing things according to power dynamics.
And Keller will say that, you know, every it's inescapable that power conflicts are part of this world and oppression is part of this world as a result.
But Christianity is the escape hatch, Jesus is the escape hatch.
And I think it's power discourse that I'm thinking of.
I think that was the term Foucault came up with.
But anyway.
So, because Jesus gave up his power as the Son of God and came to this earth, that is the example that Christians are supposed to give up their power.
And so it plays right into the whole let's redistribute our power.
Let's sit down and listen.
I mean, it's the social justice stuff.
And it sounds really good when you're a preacher in New York City.
So, I would consider Foucault a more neo Marxist thinker, but he quotes James Cohn.
I mean, the favorable things about James Cohn and his analysis of.
Of religion.
You'll find a lot of those kinds of guys.
With Marx, though, just for our listeners, real quick, he's the father of Black liberation theology.
Yeah.
So the insight, the main insight he gets from James Cohn is that the religion of the slave masters was basically illegitimate, and the religion of the slaves was a more pure type of Christianity.
Based on what?
How do you know that?
Why would you say that?
Well, based on the fact that they're oppressed, they can identify more with the New Testament and They're basically not in sin like slave masters would be.
So, how you read this back into the New Testament or the Old Testament, forget it, but how you make that work, you can't.
I mean, it's imposing things onto Christianity that are foreign to it.
But yeah, so James Cohn, Foucault, Marx, though, he has some crazy quotes, I mean, I'm just saying they're crazy to me, quotes where he says that, let's see, I'm trying to think if I can pull it up here.
Because I want to get the quote right.
There's actually a few things from Marx that he says, but I can't find it right now.
But basically, I'm going to summarize it that Marx cared about, oh, here I found it.
He was the only major thinker other than God himself who held up the common worker with a high view of labor.
I mean, that's kind of crazy talk.
Marx, you know, the only major thinker other than God who held up the common worker.
That's a quote from Kelly.
Yeah, well, it's a sum.
Yeah, it's so in the I have the quote cited in the book.
This is I'm it's a sentence where there's half of it is a Tim Keller quote, and then I'm summarizing the end of it because I'm trying to reduce the whole paragraph.
But yes, he does say major Marx is the only major thinker who held up the common worker other than God with a high view of labor.
So this is his teaching, and you can go look it up.
It's in one of his sermons.
I'll give you the right, it's made for stewardship, is the name of the sermon.
But he talks about Marxist thinkers as well, saying these weren't bad people.
They were just trying to alleviate poverty, these kinds of things.
So it's obvious that he's got a very left leaning bone in his body.
Warning Against False Resurgence00:10:16
And I updated the article because after I wrote the book, some other information came out.
Like, for instance, he is a registered Democrat.
I didn't know that.
So I put that in there as well and some things like that.
Keller was a registered Democrat?
Keller is a registered Democrat.
He has been for years, but he is a registered Democrat.
Yes.
Wow.
So is Mark Dever, by the way.
So you can actually, and the only reason we know that is because in those particular.
No, I'm not joking.
Are you serious?
I'm serious.
It's in the public record.
You can actually go.
That's how we know in New York State, you can actually look up party affiliation.
And so someone just searched Tim Keller, and then Tim Keller had to go answer it and try to explain himself.
And it's kind of this whole awkward situation.
But yeah.
So there's a million things I could bring up about Tim Keller.
I mean, he admires.
Saul Alinsky's vision of community organizing.
He was on the advisory board for the Ann campaign.
There's just a lot there.
But yeah, so I would say there's political stuff, right?
He's politically progressive.
There's also, though, and these two are connected in some ways, but there's theological stuff there too.
Hermeneutical spiral, that way of looking at scripture where your interpretation is happening along with.
Um, well, the interpretation, the meaning of the text is this interplay between the interpreter and the text itself.
That's postmodern.
That's you get rid of objective truth that kind of destroys inerrancy.
Yeah, I don't know if there's anything you want me to expand on, but that's Tim Keller.
No, that was fantastic.
That's exactly what I was hoping for just a detailed analysis, breaking it down.
Because I, yeah, a lot of that was foreign to me.
I knew there was a problem, I didn't know the engaging color book into engaging color.
Yeah, 2013.
Now, this is if you can find a copy, I think it's out of print.
Um, But it's got some really good stuff in it from traditional Presbyterians.
Engaging Keller, who's the author?
It's by a bunch of authors.
In fact, if I type it in, it's like I think it's like 10, maybe eight or 10 authors that are all Presbyterians who decided to go after some of his theology.
And it's like really basic stuff.
It's not really coming up, it is out of print now.
But, but yeah, you can.
I think D.A. Hart was one of the contributors.
I think that's where I found out about it.
Yeah.
So if you type it in, it will come up engaging with Keller.
And it's Ian Campbell and D.J. Hart is part of that.
There's a bunch of people, Ian Hamilton.
And so they talk about like how he rebrands the doctrine of sin, his doctrine of the church, his doctrine of hell.
I mean, It's like some really basic stuff that they basically say he gets this wrong, and they have all the citations there.
So that's a resource.
If someone can find an imprint book, then they can use it if there's a concern about Keller.
Wow.
That's super helpful, John.
Thanks for that resource.
Thanks for breaking that down.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, any final thoughts that you want to share with us?
I feel like that's been super helpful.
We got to talk about your, well, really both of your books, but your latest books.
We have Social Justice Goes to Church.
But then your latest book is Christianity and Social Justice Religions and Conflict.
I like, I didn't even catch that, but I see what you did now with the Machem, you know, the Christianity and liberalism.
I like that.
Just saying, we'll do like two different religions.
I don't want to end it on like a bummer note, like, hey, Keller's kind of terrible.
I just kind of want to, I don't know.
Okay, well, give us something positive.
Yeah, you can send all the hate mail to me for people that get mad at this, but I love hate mail.
I'll say, I think the book's doing real well.
I've had a lot of, and I'm not just saying that because I'm supposed to say it, but people have really benefited from it.
And, um, I've had a lot of people reach out and just say how it's really made everything clear for them, which was my intention.
So that's going well.
And to riff off of something you said earlier, I think you're absolutely right that there's a change going on.
People don't want the same old, same old.
They don't want the social justice, but really just more the compromised fake pastors anymore.
The deck is being reshuffled.
And my confidence is in that God.
He says the gates of hell won't prevail against his church.
He will preserve his church.
He built it, and the sheep hear his voice.
And so there's nothing that can stop the church.
Tim Keller can't stop the true church.
No one can.
No false teacher can.
And so that's my encouragement and comfort.
And the cool thing is, right now, I think we're seeing that happen.
We're seeing with all the bad things that are going on out there, there's a hunger and there's an energy that you know you sense, and I'm sensing it too.
And people want authenticity.
They want the word of God, and they don't care if it's politically incorrect.
They don't care if people hate them for it.
They're going to cling to it.
And there's really a sifting going on.
We're seeing who the true Christians are.
And that's a beautiful thing.
So I'll end it on that note if we can.
No, that's super helpful.
That's really, really helpful.
And I think if things continue to go that direction, if there is a resurgence, And there is a tipping point and there is a critical mass on all those kinds of things.
I think there will be guys who will try to all of a sudden turn around and say, oh, we've always been on this side and try to benefit from it.
And my caution would be just as a last pastoral note look at repentance.
And I think two factors one, godly sorrow doesn't, godly, real repentance that leads to life, it comes from godly sorrow, and godly sorrow doesn't wait.
For opportune times to repent.
So, one side is when did the person repent?
Was it once things shifted and it became popular?
Once people started wanting bold pastors, then they started being a bold pastor?
So, when did they repent?
What was the timing?
And then also, was it repentance only in deed or was it in deed and in word?
Meaning that they changed their position, their actions.
But was there ever a point, right?
Because if some of these guys come back around, praise God.
But was there ever a point when they actually, in words, said, I was wrong?
I was wrong.
I was teaching this.
I was saying that.
I did this.
I did that.
This is how it directly contradicts with God's word and the truth.
I was wrong.
My concern is that you'll see, guys, if things start to shift, if there starts to be this conservative, Christian, sound doctrine resurgence, You're going to see guys try to get out ahead of it, try to pretend as though they were leading it, and try to get all of these followers to still stay with them and some of them to even come back.
And I would just say, when did they make the switch, right?
That to turn, they turned, right?
That's repentance to turn.
When did they repent?
When did they turn?
Was it once things were opportune or did they turn even when it would have cost them?
And then, two, did they turn only in their actions?
They started writing new articles.
They started changing, you know, having a little bit more aggressive tone.
They started taking some stronger stances.
Did they just change in what they do and what they teach?
Or was there ever a point where in word, repentance and word, where they said, This is what we previously did, and this is how it was wrong.
And that's what I rarely, rarely see from some of the big EVA guys, even the guys who have turned or changed on a certain position, they turn on the dime and then they act like that's where they always were.
Like we're stupid.
They literally just like we're stupid.
It's like we don't know how that's a direct contradiction from what you were teaching for decades.
For decades.
It's all recorded.
We have it, you know, and not just something you taught 20 years ago, but something you said two weeks ago.
Direct contradiction.
And so all I want, praise God, you changed your position.
That's wonderful.
All I want is, in addition to repentance, indeed, repent in word.
So go forward and say, we're going this direction.
And you might have noticed this directly contradicts the direction we were going five minutes ago.
I was wrong.
I'm a man, I get it wrong.
Please forgive me.
It's like, I mean, some of these guys, it's like you could afford to be wrong once or twice, right?
You've been faithfully, according to the record, right?
You've been faithfully ministering for 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, 50 years.
Like, I think you can afford.
And honestly, if anything, I mean, that would probably, which defeats the whole point that I'm trying to make, but that would probably work in their favor with their listeners.
People would probably, they'd probably become even more popular if they would be willing to, you know, just to own something.
So, anyways, all that being said, I agree with you.
Christ is building his church.
The gates of hell will not prevail against it.
And I think, you know, we're not promised that the church will endure.
We're not promised that America will, but I'm hopeful even for America.
I'm hopeful even in the near future.
And to the point where one of my big concerns is not even what are we going to do when we get shipped off to the gulags?
My concern, because I don't actually think that's going to happen, my concern is what are we going to do when we win and the bad guys pretend like they've been on our team the whole time and that they actually even were the architects behind the scenes.
Of this win, right?
Hope for the Church00:00:56
Well, we did that.
We knew all along, you know, the reason we were careful, like, I can just hear the explanations.
And yeah, I want to warn people preemptively against it.
So, all right.
Well, one more time the website, what's the website where your book can be bought?
Me and socialjustice.com.
Okay.
Great.
All right.
Well, all of our listeners, go out, get yourself a copy of John's latest book, and feel free to get the other book while you're at it.
John, thank you so much for coming on the show.
As a special thank you for your gift of any amount, we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store.
To access this offer, visit rightresponseministries.comslash offer.
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If you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of God, this would be a great resource.
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