Big Eva exposes "counterfeit courage" in pastors who opportunistically condemn figures like Matt Chandler only after it becomes safe, shifting focus from theology to political tyranny. She critiques leaders like Willie Rice for promoting CRT before renouncing it and highlights how men flee churches catering to suburban women. The discussion urges Christians to reject knee-jerk media acceptance on issues like Ukraine, using C.S. Lewis's Narnia analogy to demand logical proof over blind trust. Ultimately, the episode advocates identifying "shibboleths" like genuine racial reconciliation to discern true repentance, asserting that core biblical truths remain solid despite cultural shifts. [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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Trusting Our Pastors00:14:10
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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Thanks.
You know, I picked for 2019, coming off of 2018, leaving Acts 29, seeing, you know, what was brewing, the storm that was coming.
I picked 1 Timothy to preach through.
You know, Hi, Mennaeus and Alexander.
I've had it, you know, or in the very beginning, it's like, Timothy, I charge you.
Or I'm encouraging you to charge certain elders, certain men, certain leaders in the church not to teach any different doctrine.
And so, you know, that was like the second sermon in the series, and boom, people left.
And then, or when we got to 1 Timothy 2, verses 9 through 15, I slowed down.
Instead of speeding through it, I did four weeks on that text.
I only planned to do one week, but I ended up doing four weeks and talking about the, you know, the, Callings of men and women, and the distinction between the genders.
One of my big lines was it's not male and female roles he assigned them, but male and female natures he designed them.
Like the difference goes all the way down to the way that we're made.
And I started talking about how, and that extends, I believe, that extends beyond the home and the church.
If husbands are the head of their homes, and then men as elders, and I would argue for a male diaconate, are the head of churches, but then when we step outside of homes, which is the building block of any society.
Is the family so that so we're saying that an entire society is made up of even in a non religious um uh culture, an entire society is made up of the building blocks of families, and men are explicitly called in scripture to lead those.
But then, when we step out of the home, women start leading their husbands, you know, like it just doesn't make any sense.
So, I was like, all right, the civil magistrate bears a sword, the sword is a phallus, it belongs to men, like, and I started just you know, and I mean, I know those are strong statements, but I started thinking beyond the home of the church and say, let's start there.
But I think the implications, I think we do need to be more careful the further we get away from what scripture explicitly says, home and church.
But to act as though this is exclusive to those realms is foolish.
And so I started preaching on that and started preaching on false teaching, started preaching on critical race theory, started calling out Matt Chandler, you know, all those kind of things, and lost a ton of the church.
And it was all tone, tone, tone.
And one of the things that I said was, I remember telling people, I said, a man will always be labeled as harsh if he has the gall to.
To fire off around at someone who's charging, if his comrades in that moment are sitting on a blanket in the middle of a meadow thinking that they're having a picnic.
Right.
Right.
So, like the first guy to fire off around with a platoon when everybody else still thinks that this is just a drill, right?
That we're not actually at war.
There's not actually a threat.
The enemy's not at the gates.
And this guy has the audacity to fire off around.
And then everybody, you know, looks up from their sandwich and their pudding, you know, from the little picnic that they're having and they see somebody bleeding.
You know, laying down, they're like, What did you do?
What's wrong with you?
It's like, Well, I, like, we're at war.
Right.
And they're like, No, we're not.
And so I don't really think it's like, Here's explicit biblical principles of why you cannot, it is inherently sinful to speak like this or to use this phrase or to call out in it.
It is all 100% what you said.
It's that that pastor lied to you.
He lied to you because he knew where he was smart enough to know where you were going with the question.
Of course he did.
Yes.
Exactly.
So he saw your sneak attack coming.
So he just blatantly lied to you.
But the real answer is, of course, it's okay to name names and to use strong language because the Bible says it's okay.
And the only reason everybody has a problem with it is because at the end of the day, we're not arguing about what's permissible in terms of rhetoric.
We are arguing about whether or not we're actually at war.
And the reality is, I think in the pew, yes, there's a disconnect from pastors in the pew, but I would also argue every other pew, because it's about half of the pew, I would argue every other pew is filled with people who have been influenced by those pastors.
Absolutely.
You know, so it still falls on pastors.
Don't get me wrong.
But because it's so pervasive, this problem among pastors, then certainly it's infected some of the pews.
Yeah.
There's no question about it.
And you're very astute.
He, of course, he lied to me.
And what's so interesting about this is that my preaching style, I try to avoid like getting involved too much with sort of what's happening right at this moment in evangelicalism.
So I try to stick in this, stay in the text and explain the text.
And I will make application, but I do try to avoid, you know, naming names or like, Or, like that kind of stuff from the pulpit, because it's just not my style, right?
I don't think that's appropriate.
But what's so interesting about it is this guy who told me this is known for this.
Like, he's naming names constantly so long as it's safe names Rob Bell or Osteen.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Osteen, you know.
And it's so, yes, he was 100% lying to me.
But I think your point is also astute that there's a certain percentage of those in the pews that take a lot of their cues from those who wrote the books that they read, who speak at the conferences they go to.
And stuff like that.
And so they are going to be influenced by this mentality where it's like, you know, tone, it's like, tone really, it's like majoring on such a minor issue.
Like, okay, so we have a disagreement on tone.
If it's wartime and you don't think it's a picnic, you would agree that tone should get amped up.
So what we're really arguing about is it wartime or not?
And the truth of the matter is, to some of these guys, and, you know, we can go into names later if you want, but to some of these guys, there's literally nothing that could happen in the world that would warrant the tone.
As long as they're not all doing it.
So once they all do it and they start circling the wagons and they've all got a target, then it's game on for tone.
Because people can say horrible things about John MacArthur right now and nobody will call them out on it because he's an okay target.
So they've got this little cabal, this guild, and if you're not in it, you're fair game.
If you are in it, there's literally nothing you could say or do that is fair game at that point.
It's a very weird little thing they've got going on.
What you just touched on, I think, is so true that there's this hierarchy.
Beyond the church.
And I've been at churches that have elders and say, you know, that's the most important, you know, leadership position that our church holds.
But oftentimes, those elders, if they've been trained at a seminary recently, they're looking to beyond that.
They're aspiring to be at bigger conferences or get publishing deals.
And most people in the pew don't really understand that because they're not in that world.
But there's very much a professional guild that exists.
And even small time pastors, you know, out in country churches sometimes want to play to that.
And I think a lot of, people, simple Christians who just want to live their lives, read their Bible, raise their kids, they're realizing something's off.
Like my pastor in some cases is not, like doesn't seem like he's a shepherd of this particular congregation.
The sheep aren't really his primary concern.
There's like other like shepherds with bigger flocks that he's trying to win the approval of or something.
And so I think there's been this kind of crisis of leadership and stability and trust and It's happening in everywhere, in every institution.
It's not just the church.
Like this is just one area that we're focusing on, but people don't know if they can trust their doctors now.
They don't know if they can trust their, uh, the governing officials.
Um, they can't trust the media.
They can't trust entertainment industry.
They can't trust education.
And now it's kind of down to the wire and they're like, man, I can't really trust my pastor either.
And, um, I think what you said just now about, you know, it's like every other congregation, like I don't know all the stats on like who's kind of lining up where, but I do know this.
I'd say every other pew.
Every other pew within one congregation, half of them are, yeah.
Well, and that, you know, really.
Is that's probably true because I've traveled a bunch now at different churches across the country that have been the result of splits, or they are themselves gaining all kinds of people from churches that went COVID crazy or woke.
That's what we're doing right now.
So, yeah, there's a lot of reshuffling going on right now.
The dust hasn't even quite settled.
I think it's starting to.
But one of the things Ady and I were talking about this morning, and I think it's just so interesting.
I don't know what we would need to do to figure out maybe more specifically what's actually going on.
But one of the ways to look at this is.
Men overwhelmingly watch AD's content and my content.
Mine too.
It's like 73%.
It's probably the same for me.
At the YouTube, I think it's probably like 65, 70% men.
And it seems to me like men, for the last 20 years or so at least, have been so pushed aside by evangelical churches.
Evangelicals try to reinvent themselves every 10 years, and they really do cater when they reinvent themselves to middle class, Women in the suburbs generally.
Their styles of music, like the way they even decorate their church, it's just like the personality a pastor is supposed to have is very emotional and just it's not this masculine persona.
And it's what a lot of women tend to want.
And that's just my observation that men tend to be alienated from the church.
They're not writing songs that men are going to even like want to sing as much.
They're not catering to men.
So like men, I think, like Christian men who just want to like read their Bible, do what it says, live for the Lord.
They tend to more often than not, I think, see through this because they're not in that guild that we just described.
They don't care about the fluff, the icing, any of the stuff that evangelicals use, the pretty ribbons to get people in.
They're really just focused on the meat.
What's the actual solid biblical stuff that we're coming here for?
And so the tone and the style doesn't influence them.
And I think they're seeing through it a little bit more.
Not to say there aren't women who, there are definitely women who are seen through this for sure.
Totally.
And I know some of them and I'm so grateful for them.
But I think primarily evangelicals tend to be politically conservative.
So that's raising an antenna already.
And then again, it's men who are then helping.
I'm taking big scale here.
There's women that are helping their husbands wake up.
But more often than not, it seems like it's men.
Yeah, in general, it is men that are waking their wives up and saying, like, hold on, like, we'll see.
I think that's the problem right there.
Yeah.
That last part, everything you're saying is absolutely true until you got to that last part.
And I would push back on whether or not that statement is true.
In my experience as a pastor, all the men, just virtually all the men, so I say every other pew, well, we could just say if all the men were sitting on a pew and all the women were sitting, then it is all the men.
Like virtually all the men are like, yes, this is ridiculous.
I see through it.
This is a thin facade.
But that last part where you said they're waking up their wives, I would say half of the men.
That's where we lost.
I think that's true.
Because there's a ton of guys who are watching both of you, they're watching me.
They're watching Eric Kahn.
They're listening to Michael Foster.
They're listening to Doug Wilson.
And I know this because I pastored a church with men like this.
And they're talking to me and they're on board and they're excited.
And then word gets to their wife.
And then they come back to me later on.
Maybe it's a week later, maybe it's a few months later.
And all of a sudden, something's different.
And it's like they're begging me.
They're not correcting me or chastising me, but they're begging me, could you please tone it down a little bit?
And I'm like, why?
Why?
For what?
For who?
Like, this isn't, we were just talking about this and you were so on board.
Like, what happened?
Oh, the head of your home sent you.
To talk about this, your wife.
That's what actually happened.
Pretty harsh.
And then if you don't, yeah, yeah.
And they need those men to be chastised.
And they weren't actually leading their wives, their wives were leading them, and their wives led them right out of the church.
And the men left.
But it wasn't because the men weren't on board.
The men were on board.
They were excited for the first time.
They actually came alive in a church and under a minister's preaching and felt like we're doing something.
We're going to war.
We're gearing up.
I've got a sword.
I'm going to use it.
There is an enemy.
There's a purpose.
There's a mission.
There's a vision.
Like, And, but their lack of leadership in their home allowed their wife the position to pour cold water on all of it.
And then, and I watched those guys who were my friends leave the church.
And you could tell, like the rich young ruler, that he walked away sad.
Like I've watched men walk away from masculine pastors, not saying I'm the perfect example, but walk away from not just my church, but other ministries, other local churches where there actually was a man's man preaching.
And men, like the rich young ruler, walking away sad because the minister said, there's one thing that you lack.
You need to correct your wife.
And they walked away sad because they had much wealth or they had an unruly wife.
I wouldn't disagree with that.
Yeah, I think you're right.
I think that's absolutely true.
One thing that I think about, especially with the woke church stuff, there's one character in the woke church movement who I haven't thought about for probably a year until just this moment.
It's a man named Kyle Howard.
And he's a pathetic man.
I mean, he's a very sad case.
I think he's a tragic story, right?
I used to laugh about his antics, but really it just makes me sad because he's just a shell of a man.
He's constantly.
You know, poor me, it's hard to be me, I'm traumatized.
But I was joking this just today, actually.
There's a picture of a piece of cotton, a cotton field in my hotel.
Comfort vs Rebuke00:02:52
And I just remember thinking, man, you know, I could be real triggered by that.
What are you trying to say?
Put me in the cotton room, right?
But he would go on Twitter and he'd be literally serious that he was triggered by this.
And he would be, I wept about it and stuff like that.
And anyway, so most of his followers and the people who retweet him and stuff are women.
And that makes sense to me because a woman's kind of nurturing nature, right?
They don't want to see a man in pain.
They don't want to see anyone in pain.
Like when my kids are hurt, you know, and they need comfort, they go to mom because that's where they get their comfort from.
Women, and it's a beautiful impulse for women to comfort people, right?
That's one of their prime, you know, skill sets is doing that.
You know, even adults, when you see sad stories of adults, males dying and they call for their mom, you know, like because that's just, it's in there, right?
So, men on the other hand, though, I want to comfort my sons, but sometimes it's like, you know what, you're okay.
It's time to get up and you can walk this one off, right?
And the impulse that I have there is a good impulse because they do need to learn how to brush themselves off and pick themselves up.
But the impulse for my wife is also a good impulse because sometimes you do need comfort, right?
And when you're a wife and your husband's helper, there's going to be times when you need to be just for him and comforting him and things.
Anyway, bottom line is, That this woke stuff, I think, regularly appeals to women just naturally because they want to make it okay, right?
And I think men are naturally suspicious of it, right?
Because they're like, what's this man crying over a picture?
Is it serious?
I cried over the picture that John pointed out with the Gospel Coalition Christmas concert, the picture of the trans woman.
Oh, that made me.
I was triggered by that.
I felt like I needed to write a soap opera, you know, crying.
Go ahead.
I was triggered.
My point.
No, but my point is like, in the home, if I were to always let my wife get her way and comfort them always, and it's never time to stop to crying because, you know, it's not that bad, like, I think we'd all agree, you would ruin your sons if you did that.
They never knew what it was like to be like, man, that really hurt, but I'm just going to walk this one off.
I think we all probably know husbands that do defer to their wives and all that kind of stuff.
And we have sympathy for them, and we know that that's not right, given our beliefs.
We need to have just as much courage telling men in the woke context or any theological issues context.
Where their wife is basically commanding the situation.
It's just as dangerous to allow your wife to rule you in that way as it would be for your kids, right?
We know we don't want our wives making our boys into women by how they treat them.
Counterfeit Virtue00:10:52
And so we're willing to rebuke people for that.
But we also need to be willing to rebuke our friends who we know know what's right, but they just kind of let it ride, let it happen.
It's what you said last night when we were getting dinner together.
They're waiting for it to blow over.
But the reality is, it reminds me of the armies of Israel standing on one mountain, the valley in between.
On the other mount is the armies of Philistine, Philistia.
And Goliath is going out day after day, taunting, mocking God and taunting the armies of the living God.
And all of them are, the Israelites are shaking, knees trembling, waiting for it to blow over, and probably reassuring them.
So this will pass.
This too shall pass.
This too shall pass.
It'll blow over.
And it did blow over because one.
Actual man chopped off his head.
Yeah.
So, so all these guys are like, it'll blow over.
See, that that's the thing.
So, these guys, like, all the way full circle, what you said, they will call out names.
They'll call out Joel O'Sean.
They'll call out Rob Bell.
But this is what they're doing.
They are completely comfortable going up and kicking the already slain, rotting corpse of Goliath once David already killed him.
So, so it's so that's the problem is it like, so you got a bunch of pastors over here.
Right, patting themselves on the back, right, virtue signaling that this pseudo courage, they're all standing in a circle, kicking Goliath, but his four other brothers are still alive and large, walking and terrorizing their families.
They have a responsibility.
So there's sheep being slaughtered, ravaged, you know, giants just taking them and eating them.
And these pastors over here, kicking Goliath, David already chopped off his head.
And then the David is over here trying to take on the next one.
You're describing the rise and fall of Marcel podcast.
Yeah.
You're right.
You're right.
What do you mean?
At the time, they were all doing the same thing that they always do with Mark Driscoll, which is, you know, no big deal.
And then it finally blows up, right?
I don't even know.
I don't know all about this story, so I'm not going to go too deep into it.
But now it's safe to criticize Mark Driscoll.
So they're all doing it knowing that 10 years ago, they were all defending him the way they defend everybody.
So whether Mark Driscoll is right or wrong, again, I don't know about the story that much.
They're doing what they typically always do.
And so now it's new people that are being criticized.
And win 10 years when it's safe to criticize whoever it is.
I mean, who knows who's going to be the one to fall, but when it's safe to criticize Platt or Chandler or whatever, they'll all be doing the same thing, kicking the corpse again.
And for our listeners, just to clarify, when AD says safe, what he means is when the battle's already been won.
It's already been won.
That's when it's safe.
It's safe when actual men with actual courage are willing to step out and be attacked on both sides the giants they're attacking and the people who are supposed to be on their team.
So, this is really the illustration would be more accurate if David walked out from among the ranks of Israel and had to fight Goliath on one side and hold his shield on the other because Israel's throwing rocks at him, telling him that he's being harsh.
And that's where we're at right now.
Well, there's a term for it it's called counterfeit virtue.
It's not real, it's fool's gold.
And So, we've talked about how one of the motivations here is that there's this guild they're playing to, many of these woke pastors.
That could be one motivation.
Another thing is they want to impress men, naturally, do this.
They want to impress, please, gain the favor of their wives, of women in general sometimes.
And if that's what's driving the church, like appealing to these middle class, suburban women, then the church is just going to naturally fall into whatever the knee jerk emotional response is to a lot of this stuff.
And then they'll, you know, and that in and of itself is a virtue signal.
There's counterfeit virtue there.
Like you're not really putting any skin in the game.
You're not sacrificing yourself.
You're just going on with the crowd and, you know, nothing significant is actually even happening.
But then afterward, like you said with kicking the corpse, when it, and I'll give you an example of this.
I was looking into Willie Rice this last week, right?
Running for the SBC presidency.
And Willie Rice, like, hosted a super woke panel.
And I know for those listening, if you're uninitiated into all of this, I mean, we disagree with social justice for a variety of reasons, but among them is it destroys the very basis for revelation itself by making truth subjective in some way based on a social location.
It also subverts Christian ethics because it makes justice somehow equal disparity, and Lady Justice takes her blindfold off to treat some people different than others, so there's no equality before the law.
Disparity equals discrimination.
Right.
They assume that.
It also.
oftentimes will merge with the gospel in heretical ways where it's like some kind of a gospel work or it's part of the gospel or it's you're failing to live out or understand or obey the gospel if you don't do the social justice thing, which is very dangerous.
And it flattens reality.
It shows instead of looking at people in the image of God, which they're obsessed with talking about, but it actually is a sort of laying an abstraction over everyone.
So everyone's ones and zeros.
You're looking at them as some level of oppression and you're reducing them down to that.
So anyway, Willie Rice does this panel in 2020.
And, like, he hits all of those things, like, in the panel.
Like, I'm like, okay.
Speaking the woke language.
It's all critical race theory.
He talks about white privilege.
One of the guests recommends Robin DiAngelo.
Like, he's talking about, as a white man, I can't understand.
I need your stories.
You know, we can't question these stories.
We, like, people don't understand the racism that's still around because it's systemic and it's embedded.
And it's like the whole nine yards is in this, like, hour and a half almost presentation.
Yet, if you look at Willie Rice today and the stuff he's saying about CRT, he's like, oh, it's against.
It's against what we believe as Christians.
It's horrible.
And so I've tried to make sense of this.
And he's one example among many, but how do you have a guy who's going to blast CRT now that it's safe to do so?
And CRT is becoming less popular.
The pews are getting onto it.
They're understanding that that's what's going on.
I think this is the move you guys are doing.
And now they're like, oh, no, we're not doing that move.
We're against it just like you are.
Meanwhile, though, they haven't repented of or recanted any of the previous things they've taught.
They're still kind of bringing it in subversively through other channels.
So it's like that it's a counterfeit virtue of like, I want to please these people.
So I'm going to say the right thing.
I'm going to be against this because I'm a, you know, I want to.
I mean, I can't question everything in Willie Rice's heart.
I don't know.
But on a broad scale, they're trying to bend to public pressure somehow instead of just remaining true to, like, what does the word of God say?
Absolutely.
And part of the reason they're doing that, though, we should be encouraged by that.
You guys, especially, should be encouraged by that because part of the reason that they're playing both sides is because now there actually are two sides.
For the longest time, they didn't have to pay any offs, they didn't have to do any lip service, any counterfeit virtue because.
Everyone was on the woke side.
And now there are certain words they can't say, right?
And there's certain things they have to decry, like C R E T.
Now they still absolutely believe all the same things.
They still have a diversity council, you know, at their seminary and in their local church and all these kind of things.
So they still actually believe all the tenets in terms of conviction.
But they at least in their language have to decry certain things because the pushback, the battle, the fight is working.
Like we're winning.
And the The tide is turning, and I think, like, for me, just thinking like pastorally.
So, you said, like, you know, part of it's because the dust is still settling.
So, like, as you guys were standing up and doing this thing for you guys, it was like, All right, I'm getting like thousands of views, you know, so it's like 2018, 17, you know, and you guys are taking a stand, you're saying stuff, and you're like, Whoa, I'm onto something.
There's a lot of other people who are thinking, and it's either love, hate, nobody's like, This was an interesting video, you know, it's like, This was everything, or, or go to hell, John, you know, or what, like, it's like one or the other.
And, uh, but for me, I was having that same kind of experience, but.
Behind a pulpit, and I don't want to play the world's smallest violin, but it was hard because it was like these aren't just YouTube comments.
And I know you guys had real people, real friends, and family, so I don't want to make light of that.
But for me, it was like these are people paying my salary, this is what I do for a living.
I've got kids, and it was hard.
And so I was in real time watching exactly what Vodi Bakum taught with fault lines.
And so that's what you're saying the dust is still settling.
And now I have a church where I talk about way more of these things with way more candor.
And way more boldness and clarity, not beating around the bush at all, way more than I ever did in my previous church in California.
And all it does is just more people come, more people come, more people come.
And I'm not saying there won't in the future be some problems with that.
Some people who maybe are, you know, they like this a little bit more than maybe they like the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know, who are, you know, maybe they hate wokeness, but not necessarily because they love Jesus, because there are other reasons they hate wokeness besides love for Jesus, you know, like James Lindsay.
Does not love Jesus, hates wokeness.
So I will pastorally have to sort through some things down the line.
But right now, though, what's unique, and so I'm not saying everything's perfect now, problem solved, but what's unique is that the fault lines have shifted.
Back in the day, it was like reformed, not reformed.
That was the big, right?
Those are the two big categories.
Underneath that, in the reformed, you have the subcategories of like continuationism versus cessationism, Presbyterian versus Baptist, of course, and then maybe, I don't know, maybe complementarian, egalitarian, but it was like, I'm reformed and I'm going to fall into one of these categories.
Maybe I'm like sovereign grace, and we're prophesying and we like instruments of worship or whatever.
Or maybe I'm Presbyterian OPC.
But it was reformed.
That was a big fault line.
And now it's so crazy.
So we planted this new church now.
I'm in Texas, Covenant Bible Church, in April of 2021.
In my home, we started with 20 people.
We already now have 100.
And so it's been less than a year, already 100 people.
We're now meeting at a barbecue restaurant where John's going to be preaching this Sunday.
So add that to your resume.
That's a special thing.
So.
But it's exploded.
But what's funny is, right now, I just did a membership class.
And so I'm doing all my membership interviews with these people who are pursuing membership at the church.
And they're not all reformed.
I never, in California, it was like, I just assumed if you're coming to my church, it's because you're a Calvinist.
And so I'm like having to talk about the doctrines of grace.
I'm like, I haven't talked about the doctrines of grace.
I mean, I do every sermon, but I haven't had to persuade someone who's pursuing membership in my church in like seven years.
Authority and Growth00:15:58
You know what I mean?
It's so, it's funny.
You know what I mean?
It's weird.
And it's like, I got continuationist.
Oh, it makes perfect sense.
You know, because, and here's the thing they know I'm a Calvinist, they don't like it.
But they're humble about it.
They know I'm a cessationist.
They don't like it, but they're humble about it because that's not the biggest issue anymore.
That's right.
That's not the biggest issue.
I don't know if you remember maybe two, two and a half years ago.
It was like right after the SBC 2018 to, I don't know, somewhere in 2019.
There was this sort of like unity, unity, unity.
Like these issues, they're not that important.
I remember like Danny Aiken posting something about like Southern Baptist Convention has never been more united than it is right now.
Like, and it's just a name it and claim it, man.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Before it was, I was like, what are you talking about?
I remember this tweet when I had Twitter back in the day, I put out in like late, or I guess it would have been 2019, like early 2019, somewhere maybe.
Anyway, I said, like, what are you talking about?
I think it was in reaction to that tweet.
Like, it's the house is on fire.
It was like one of the dogs, like, this is fine, you know?
And I got like pushback.
I remember, like, and this is public, I remember, like, guys, one of them was like Chris Bolt, I remember, came out and was like, Like, I didn't know what I was talking about, really.
And, like, you know, this is really the thing we got to worry about is a Calvinist Arminian debate and stuff.
And I'm like, are you like, really?
Because this stuff is so fundamental.
Like, we're talking about, like, hey, is like reality objective or like are there like subjective, like, that's right, categories and like, you know, social locations that are barriers to knowing truth?
Like, that's so much more basic than the conversation of the salvation of God falls under the parameters of true and false.
Right.
We have to figure that out first.
Like, it's.
And that's why James Lindsay, as an atheist, is like, this conversation pertains to me.
True and false.
Now, he doesn't have a reason, a defensible reason for that.
I would push back presuppositionally and say, why do you care about true and false?
But it affects, he's right to recognize it affects everyone.
Or like, hey, we steal from folks.
Is that okay?
Or should we not?
It's like, oh, no, no, no.
Calvinism or Arminianism is bigger than that.
No, it's not.
That's so basic.
It's so basic.
And so many people get it.
You keep mentioning James Lindsay, which is a great example because he is a good avatar for a lot of atheists that I know.
That get it.
They understand fundamentally, you know, because they have to live in reality.
That's right.
Right.
So they can deny God's existence, but they still have to live with God's existence and what He's created.
Right.
So they understand that fundamentally there's some issues here.
And I remember talking to you, John, on the way here, actually, just today, where it's like there's so many things that I think are so important about theology that I just choose not to talk about because it's like we just have bigger fish to fry, fundamental fish that we need to fry up every day because it's just such a.
A threat to just our everyday lives.
And so, what's happened is churches have, I don't want to call it a new orthodoxy because that sounds heretical, but like what's important to people as far as being orthodox are basic stuff like basic human sexuality.
Do you have a spine or are you just going to shrink the first time the government tells you that you can't go to church today because it's too dangerous?
Like the COVID stuff has made this even more clear.
It's like, how about this for orthodoxy?
Is your church open?
Like, people are just looking for an open church.
That's right.
And it's like, so we've gotten so debased that it's like one way to know if it's a solid church or not is if it's meeting.
That's right.
You know what I mean?
In the old days, we used to joke in the old days, like, you check their elders' list.
If there's any women, you don't go.
It's not, obviously not.
Nowadays, is it open?
Yep.
Is the church open?
Yeah, no, it's wokeness.
If we could boil it down to like two big categories, it's like, you know, with COVID and all the kind of stuff, like, the big category is tyranny, right?
Political tyranny, medical tyranny, tyranny.
And then with all the race stuff and all like, It's wokeness.
And if those two things, if somebody did a conference called Resisting Tyranny and Wokeness, that would be super helpful.
We could do that.
That's like right on the money.
That's what we need.
I feel like I would speak at that.
That's something that I think I might be able to.
You would be great.
You would be fantastic.
But you know, it's so amazing though, because I think we've all joked that if you do a Venn diagram of woke churches and churches that were COVID tyrants, it's a circle.
It's just one circle.
They're all the same.
But it's the same issue in many ways.
In both cases, it's a central authority.
That's going to be the savior.
It's going to redistribute things or it's going to save us from whatever the threat is.
It's just like more power to the government, more consolidation.
Go ahead.
Yeah, sorry to cut you off.
No, no, no, you're good.
So the people that are at your church, Joel, that are like, I don't understand this doctrine to grace thing, but you're open, they're getting it because you're actually worshiping God.
Your help comes from God, right?
And so these churches that are like, well, the government's going to save us all by redistributing our money, the government's going to save us all by making sure we're all vaccinated.
Where does their help come from?
It doesn't seem to come from God.
No matter how many Psalms you can pretend to sing on Sunday, if you're singing Psalms, but then you're deferring to your actual Savior, that's so apparent to people.
People that want to honor God.
You know what I mean?
So you can end up with, like for me, I'm a Presbyterian.
I go to a Baptist church, and it's awesome.
I love being there because I know the pastor, when he gets up on the pulpit, he's worshiping and serving God.
There's no question about it.
He has a spine, he loves the Lord.
Look, you can talk all about how God is your Savior and is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, but if you have no spine, you don't actually believe it.
Right.
And that's what I want to remind people is okay, we want to be our speech seasoned with grace.
We want to be the people who, if our brother sins against us seven times in one day and comes to you and repents, we forgive him seven times.
So we want to be forgiving.
We want to be filled with grace.
But we also want to be.
Jesus commends the shrewd servants is that, you know, the sons of darkness are more shrewd than the sons of light.
We're called to be, you know, as innocent as doves, but also as shrewd or cunning as serpents.
And so I know this sounds bad, but it's not, I truly believe this is not anti gospel, it's not anti grace, but it is pro wisdom and pro discernment, which is not an option.
But biblically, we are commanded to exercise discernment.
And one of the ways we can tell if a tree is good or bad is the fruit that it bears.
And so I want to urge Christians, you can forgive.
And there's a debate to be had even about that.
But you cannot forget.
You cannot forget the last two years.
And I would argue, right?
Because pastors fail.
I'm a pastor, I'm a sinner, saved by grace, just like everybody else.
Pastors fail.
But these last two years, I think, in the providence of God, were different.
This is not just like any other failure that a pastor might have or any other mistake.
I think you look back on these last two years because guys are coming around now, right?
So who's it, Willie Nelson?
Willie Nelson?
It's not really awesome.
Right?
The doobie smoking SBC guy.
No, Willie Rice.
Yeah.
So I was just kidding.
You're definitely in Texas now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so Willie Rice, you know, like decrying CRT.
But I listened to the panel because you had it in one of your podcasts.
And I listened to, you played like the whole panel or at least like 20 minutes of it.
And I listened to the whole thing.
I was like, this is hilarious.
That is so hypocritical, so night and day.
And what I want to say is that yet, like, repentance is a thing.
God does grant, and I believe as a Calvinist, it is a gift and it's granted by God.
The difference between Judas and Peter at the end of the day is that Jesus granted repentance to Peter and, and, Chose not to grant repentance to Judas.
So, repentance is a thing.
God changes hearts.
He changed Saul, and I'm sure it took a little while for Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul, for Christians to say, We can trust this guy, to warm up to him, you know, after he killed their uncle or something like that.
So, God does change hearts, and we should be willing to reconcile and eventually, you know, bring them back in.
But I think, at least I'm only 35 years old, but still, in my 35 years of living, there has never been what I would call a test.
Right.
So people fail all the time.
But what I would say is the last two years, this was the test.
So when guys say, oh, well, yeah, I got it wrong, you know, but I see now and I'm coming, and I'm like, but no, no, no, no.
Like, right.
So there are homework assignments every day.
Right.
And there are maybe, you know, projects once a quarter.
But this was like, this was, these last two years, this was the SATs.
This was the test.
How you performed, I believe, how a pastor performed over the last two years is not, if you perform poorly, it's not a fluke.
It's not a one off.
It's not, I had a bad couple of years.
No, these were the years.
This was the test.
Everything in your life led up to this and you failed.
And I think we should be slow to trust these guys again.
Very slow to.
Well, God is gracious to us even in this because I would agree with everything you just said.
Forgiving someone doesn't mean be foolish.
You know what I mean?
So I get that.
But God, even though that was the SATs, He's given us some bonus SATs since then.
It's like, just like a little humility would go a long way.
You get these major things wrong, COVID, this woke stuff, all this, and you're the kind of person that the next time CNN puts out a video of a police shooting, you've always been the one, oh yeah, it's racist, without any information, right?
And then sometimes they even apologize after the fact.
I remember Greer apologized for something he did, kind of.
Apologize is a sliding scale when we're talking about evangelical leaders, right?
But he at least acknowledged that maybe he shouldn't have.
The point, though, is that God keeps giving us these opportunities to see who's learned their lesson.
And I don't want to get too in the weeds about Ukraine, Russia, but just to see everybody just swallow the narrative instantly, like no thought whatsoever, instant, it shows you that nobody's learned their lesson.
Everyone's just going to jump back into whatever they're spoon fed.
Oh, yeah.
And that's the real issue.
It's like it's a matter of authority, right?
They get spoon fed something and they just jump on it.
So the next time they're spoon fed something else about racism, they're going to jump on that.
Even those who say they're against Gren's critical theory.
Remember the Ahmaud Arbery situation?
There was a bunch of guys that said something like this.
You see, now I've been very hesitant to jump on these things, but this one I cannot abide.
And it's like, well, what are you talking about?
You saw 30 seconds of a clip, not even less.
What do you mean you can't abide it?
Because this one, the media really promises is really racist this time.
So it's like a little humility would go a long way.
But the thing is, so few leaders will ever show it.
So yeah, they got COVID wrong.
They failed the SATs, and they continue to fail because guys are giving us more tests.
Well, that's why I said the test is, when I said the test, I'm saying the last two years was the test.
Totally.
So I'm saying, so I'm with you.
It wasn't like an SAT in the sense that you show up for one day and take it.
It was two years of a string of tests.
Yeah, just a string of tests.
And I'm talking about the guys who just failed them all.
Yes.
Instead of passing with flying colors, they failed all two years of tests with flying colors.
And I'm like, yeah, that guy, we should be very, very slow.
And to your point, John, I'm sorry to keep jumping in because what you said was like when I said J.D. Greer apologized, you're like, well, true.
True.
Because that's another thing.
It's like, Willie Rice, you said he did this panel, whatever, and now he's against critical theory.
It would be nice to show a little humility and say, you know, I used to believe this.
That's right.
Now I see it's wrong.
I could believe someone like that.
I could understand that.
And I might be suspicious, but at least that would give me something.
What they do instead is pretend like they never said anything.
It's just like there's no repentance.
And act like they've been leading it.
And that's exactly like it is, it takes humility.
It's uncomfortable.
But I had to do that.
Our church, we closed down for two weeks, two weeks when COVID hit.
And I felt like I got to tell the church something.
So I did a quick little video, less than 10 minutes, and I sent it to the members in the church talking about Romans 13, how we need to submit to the civil magistrate.
And I had to, you know, and so we skipped two weeks.
Within two weeks, it's a trap.
Within two weeks, I realized, oh my gosh, I'm completely wrong.
It took me two more weeks, so four total, to convince enough of my elders.
One of them I was never able to convince, but to convince a majority of them to where we could outvote the tyrant.
And then my first sermon to the church was a correct exegesis of Romans 13.
And not with the fine print being, and this is what I've always believed.
But with the beginning of the sermon being, you may remember when I sent out a video that said the exact opposite of what I'm about to preach.
You drew attention to it.
And I'm not going to treat you as though you are so stupid that you can't notice the contradiction, the blatant direct contradiction between what I'm going to preach from God's word today and what I said four weeks ago.
I was, so you might be wondering, well, these contradict.
Can they both be right?
We're not relativists.
Let me put you at ease.
There's a real simple answer.
I was wrong.
Yeah.
But here's the deal.
Even guys who are in our camp, they don't do that.
You know who those guys are?
I wanted to go back, if I could, to something you said earlier, and you kind of hinted at this.
It's an authority issue.
The whole thing boils down to an authority issue.
And with the Ukraine situation that's happening right now, there's guys that were even like skeptical of the COVID narrative, skeptical of BLM and all that.
But they're like within like 12 hours, they couldn't have shown you the Donbass region on a map.
They didn't know who Zelensky was.
But they're like all in for like, you know, white hat, black hat.
We need to send in, you know, military support and all this.
And that's the thing I think that was disconcerting for me a little bit.
It's not like your political position on that as much as it is like, why did it take so little to convince you?
Like a few images, most of them, like a lot of the stuff is fake news anyway that we've figured out.
And a narrative coming from where?
Yeah.
Coming from the media.
The same media you recognized was lying to you for years.
And so it reminds me of something.
If I could just do a shout out to Brother Joseph Spurgeon out there, he's on Facebook, and I don't know, I think he's on the Fight Laugh Feast Network too, right?
Yep.
Pick Soup Podcast.
He and I were at a conference, and he had said, in a really great sermon, that one of the points he made was that Christians are very skeptical about what the media says about them personally.
The media is always liars when it talks about them.
But when it talks about those other guys out there, right?
It's like, oh, we believe what it says.
And I remember thinking at the time, I was like, I've never really thought of that, but the wheel started turning, and I'm like, that's actually very true.
We do tend to look at the media and think, oh, what it's saying in an area that I'm not knowledgeable about is probably true, even though I know in the areas I am knowledgeable about, it's spreading lies.
Sure.
And so we, I don't know, that's a weakness somewhere that we got to like get over and be like, okay, the authority is obviously number one, it's the word of God.
We trust what that says.
If the media reports anything contrary to human nature or whatever, we got to be skeptical of that because the word of God is our authority.
But then, you know, we got to do the work of trying to find sources that are going to tell us the truth and not just, you know, go with the narrative that's out there.
Right.
And that's knee jerk.
I told you that.
Like, I remember you texted me in AD about the Russia thing and you're like, this is crazy.
And I don't understand why so many, like, just hook, line, and sinker people believe in this narrative.
The Edmund Narrative00:02:04
And if I speak out against it, it's like this is a really sensitive thing where, like, even people who are anti CRT and anti woke and anti civil and medical tyranny are you would think that they would have suspicions about this too, but they don't.
And I remember I texted you, one of the things I said was that the first thing it made me think of was the scene from The Lying, the Witch in the Wardrobe, where, you know, Lucy goes into Narnia through the wardrobe the first time, and then she comes back, she tells all of her siblings about it, and they're giving her a hard time, and of course, don't believe her and treating her like she's crazy or like she's lying.
And it sets up the framework for.
C.S. Lewis with his apologetics, his liar, lunatic, or lord argument.
So Lucy is either a lunatic, she's gone mad, or she's a liar, and there's a moral deficiency, or she's telling the truth.
And everybody, all of her siblings, Peter and Susan and Edmund, don't believe her.
And then Edmund follows her just to pick on her one day, and they go in a second time, but this time Edmund's with her.
And then they come back, and Lucy's like, oh, it's so wonderful because this time Edmund came into the wardrobe.
So now he can vouch for me, he can validate my testimony that this place actually exists.
And so she's like, Edmund, tell him, tell Peter and Susan.
You were in Narnia.
You saw it.
And Edmund says, Oh, silly girl, just pretending.
And she just weeps.
She becomes just a puddle of just shame and embarrassment, just weeping.
And not just shame and embarrassment, but this real personal hurt and betrayal from her brother, who saw it with his own eyes and is just cruel, just malicious and cruel, and just wants to hurt her.
And so Professor Diggory, Diggory Kirk, who's the person that they're staying with because the parents are at the war and all that kind of stuff, he's kind of their guardian.
The older siblings, Peter and Susan, go to him.
And they're talking to him, and he's like, What's wrong with the little girl, with Lucy, the weeping girl?
They're like, Well, she's very sad.
He's like, Hence the weeping.
Obviously, she's sad.
What's she sad about?
And they're like, Well, Edmund was pretending that Narnia exists with her, and she really believes in it, but then let her down.
And he was egging her on.
He was enticing her by pretending, he shouldn't have enabled her.
He was enabling her by pretending that Narnia is real.
Racial Shibboleths00:16:04
And he's like, Well, why isn't it real?
And they're like, Well, it's, of course, illogical that a whole other world would exist in a wardrobe.
And he says, Logic, what do they teach kids in schools these days?
And he's like, So Edmund is usually the truthful one, right?
And they're like, Well, no, this would be the first.
And Lucy, she's usually lying.
Well, no, she's normally always truthful.
And he said, Then logically, you should assume she's telling the truth.
Right.
As fantastical as it might sound.
And so I'm thinking about that principle.
I know I just did the whole book of Narnia.
You guys are both looking at me like, Is he going to wrap it?
But my point is, that principle is a profound principle that we should apply, I think, when we come into any news.
If the source is the legacy media and our political leader, like, have they said anything true over the last two years?
Why should we immediately assume that they all of a sudden started today?
And the thing is, ignorance is fine.
If you don't know, you don't know.
We can't possibly, with everything going on in the world, know everything and apply what the Bible says to everything because we're limited.
And that's totally fine.
But, you know, you don't jump on the bandwagon in ignorance.
So that's, yeah, it's a concern I have that, you know, When are we going to have that?
And many of us do.
So I'm not trying to like paint with broad brush here, but like there is a problem somewhere along the line, even with Christians, where we tend to just believe narratives coming from people that they don't even share our basic ideas about ethics and the agenda that we would have for the world.
Theirs is diametrically opposed, but we believe them.
It's like without information.
So we got to check up on things if it's important enough to, yeah.
Here's one question I have, and then maybe we could end with this, but remember the, I don't know how to pronounce it.
And I'm the pastor between the three of us, so you guys are just going to make fun of me.
But Ephraimites?
Is that how you would say it?
Ephraimites?
Ephraimites?
Yeah.
Okay.
Ephraimites.
I think I had a can that would get rid of those things.
No, those are termites.
Termites.
Sorry.
So the Ephraimites, right?
The word that they couldn't pronounce, Shibboleth.
Okay.
Right?
Is that how you say it?
Shibboleth?
That sounds right.
Shibboleth.
So there's this one Hebrew word that they aren't able to pronounce, and their failure to pronounce this word would oust them.
You know, they would be caught that they weren't actually Israelites.
That they, in And so they couldn't fly under the radar and pretend.
And so, my question is as guys like Willie Nelson, Willie Rice, as guys are, and he's not the only one, he's just one example.
But now that we're winning, at least in some sense, that doesn't mean that there's a lot of work to do, but the ties are turning.
There is at least a remnant enough to where the opportunists, right?
There'll still be the idol logs and they'll just show their own colors because they're proud to do so.
But there are the opportunists who play the field.
And as these guys who haven't actually repented, But are simply just following the money, following the fame, following the tide.
As these guys start to shift and are trying to speak the language, and they can now say, oh, yeah, woke.
I'm not woke.
Oh, yeah, CRT is bad.
What is our variation of shibboleth in this hour that those guys still can't say?
What are the words they still can't say?
I don't know about words necessarily, but doctrines.
But to me, it's like critical race theory.
Use the term on my channel before, but if you had a way to just see how many times I use that word or CRT, I just very rarely use it because it really doesn't even matter to me so much exactly what school this came from or whatever.
So to me, it's whether or not they're accepting sort of this idea of racial reconciliation, kingdom diversity.
They're still using that kind of lingo because honestly, racial reconciliation, it sounds like a nice term, but all it is, it just means critical race theory.
That's what it means.
Like racial reconciliation, the actual battles, many of these battles have been won for a long time where, you know, blacks couldn't come to the same restaurant as you.
That's not a thing anymore, right?
That's not a thing anymore.
So, like, you know, churches that didn't allow you to join if you were black or Puerto Rican, maybe they still exist, but point them out and everyone will criticize them, including me.
Oh, yeah.
So, like, to me, like, anyone who's still talking about this as if it's a major issue in the affirmative, right?
Like, oh, yeah, you know, we're still fundamentally racist culture.
I don't care what terms they use to describe themselves.
Pretty much to the man, They're all critical race theorists.
All of them.
No, you're right.
You're absolutely right.
It's not really a term.
It's just that, because I have a feeling that, and I don't know this about Willie Rice, but I have a feeling that he'll probably still talk about stuff like that, you know, about how we need to eliminate the disparities and things like that.
Oh, yeah.
Well, he's a critical race theorist.
He had one sermon.
So this week I have two podcasts dropping about him because I listened to like five of his sermons.
And he had one where literally the first half of the sermon was 1619 Project stuff.
He literally took a sequence from Phil Vischer.
I recognized it because I was like, this is the same exact.
And the same exact thing, Phil Vischer talks about to talk about, you know, show disparities.
And then the second half of the sermon was like 1776.
He was trying to wed these things together in this weird, weird way.
And so he starts off the sermon with saying the death of George Floyd has affected all of us and the racism in this country, right?
But I'm sorry, I don't have to hear the rest of the sermon.
You're already in critical race theory land.
You're assuming that was racism that killed George Floyd.
And somehow the church is somehow complicit and we need correction.
And the disparities are evidence of this.
But yet, I'm also going to say we're thankful for the police.
And we don't think all those monuments should come down.
And America is a great place.
I'm going to stand for the flag.
And it's like, well, you're just trying to please.
You're just playing the field.
You're an opportunity.
And what we're definitely not saying, I don't want to speak for you, but I think I can in this case, is that there is no racism in the country.
Obviously, there is.
People are racist.
There are racists out there.
What we're talking about, though, is sort of this this is like the biggest problem that we face.
It's a public health crisis.
And then, for example, he's 100% right.
Anyone who mentions George Floyd as evidence for the racial divide in our country is obviously not talking from a biblical worldview.
Because the only reason it is evidence of anything is because they're forcing the issue and pretending it is, right?
So it is evidence of something.
It's not a racial divide, it's a fundamental ideological divide.
But the thing is, at this point, anyone talking about this that's not critical of it and saying, you know, and fighting against this kind of stuff, I'm sorry, but they're embracing critical race theory on some level, and most of them whole cloth.
Mm hmm.
Yep, no, I completely agree.
I mean, I think asking, because another way you can rephrase the question you asked is okay, well, yeah, you guys are answering it perfectly, just the opposite sign, which is super helpful.
You're saying these are like, instead of, there are certain good words that they can't say, which is kind of like the way I phrase the question, but you guys are saying there are bad things that they still say.
Every time I've ever heard somebody say, this guy talks about systemic racism, but they do it the right way, every single time I've heard that, they do it exactly like everybody does.
Yeah, they use different words.
Can I give you an example of that?
So at Liberty University, there was a professor of evangelism.
That was teaching a class and using the curriculum that they were providing for them.
And it had a term in it called cultural awareness or, and, um, or no, cultural intelligence.
Sorry, cultural intelligence.
I'm like, oh, I've never heard that term before.
And right, this is right when critical race theory is kind of like not really that, you know, you shouldn't really say that, right?
It's out of vogue.
It's, yeah, people's antennas go up, but like cultural intelligence, like they'll never suspect.
So I was reading, I was looking at the curriculum because there's a student in the class who gave it to me.
And I'm like, this is just like the same racial reconciliation stuff repackaged for this new term.
And then I remember I did a podcast on it, and I got people from the school were mad at me.
I didn't understand what he was really saying, the whole nine yards that I'm used to.
And then all of a sudden, I heard the term pop up in a crew Lenses Institute video.
They're doing this whole thing, and it's blatantly pro critical race theory.
And they start using this term cultural intelligence.
And then I think it was after that I saw an ERLC piece, and it was using the phrase cultural intelligence.
And I was like, wait a minute.
Is this the new word?
Is this like they're switching?
Because the other.
And that's what the left does so often.
Now everyone's motivated about critical race theory.
The left is on to something else.
They're always two steps ahead.
And so you have to, I think what AD is saying is absolutely true.
And you have to understand what do they actually believe conceptually?
So a good question maybe would be something like, do we get a better interpretation of reality and the Bible in particular, the more diverse perspectives represented in the interpretation process?
That's a good question.
It's a trap question.
I like it.
Yeah.
And these guys could lie.
Like, they could.
Like, we're assuming consistency in even asking a question, but, you know, that would get more at the heart of it.
You could ask, like, hey, does this disparity in healthcare and, I don't know, you could list, you know, all sorts of other things, income, like, does that necessarily mean it's an issue of justice?
Right.
Like, if someone says that that's a justice issue, then, you know, like, automatically, like, okay, you're wrong then.
That's just not what the Bible tells us.
So, like, you just have to be really, I think, shrewd in thinking through these questions.
And if you have, like, a pastoral candidate coming in, And you want to test them on these things, you're just going to.
I did an episode where I had like 10 of them, like 10 questions I came up with to like, you know, yeah, yeah.
So, yeah, just think through like what would be a good question in whatever moment we're in, you know, that would get to the heart of the issue.
I think keeping it open ended would be good too.
Like, you know, are racial disparities a problem or are they sinful?
You know, and if so, why kind of thing?
Like, because honestly, keeping it open ended, don't help him out.
You would be like, he's going to have to say, if he's woke, he's going to have to say yes.
I'm interested in the explanation.
Right.
Because that'll tell you everything you need to know.
You know what I mean?
If it's like, you know, yes, but, you know, sometimes these things happen, like, okay, that's one thing.
But, like, if it's yes, any explanation that he gives is very likely going to be very woke.
Now, I could be wrong.
Maybe they have a good explanation, and that's fine.
It'd be the first time I've ever heard one.
But there you go.
I mean.
This thought just came to me.
What, like, here would be, like, maybe a good idea for a pastoral search committee if you give them, like, a document to fill out, give them scenarios.
To navigate like real church scenarios, like okay, you have a girl comes to you, says they're abused by someone in the church.
Like, do you, you know, just walk us through like, how do you handle this scenario?
Is your, you know, do you believe them immediately?
Do you, like, what do you do?
Do you call the police?
Do you, like, um, and you may come up with other scenarios.
Like, these are real scenarios I'm thinking of.
Someone comes into your church, uh, like a family that says, Hey, it's racist to sing these Anglican, uh, these Anglo hymns, which is a real situation, sure, that the pastor told me about.
Like, what do you do?
Do you cater to their preference just because they're, you know, and why would you cater to, like, they have to think through this and that's going to reveal the assumptions.
So, that's a really good point.
And the other thing, too, is whether or not they know the terms, when they explain themselves, you're going to know where their foundations are.
Because the thing is, a lot of times people are like, well, I've never even read a critical race theory book.
It's like, well, you know, you understand, like, you can be influenced by an ideology that you can't identify.
We all can be.
I mean, even I can be.
We have to be humble about this.
Like, we could be, the way we think through things can be affected by, A system of thinking that we couldn't even name.
We all have presuppositions and we're not aware of all of them.
So, I think, yeah, keeping it open ended, and I don't even know how we got on this topic, but keeping it open ended is the shibboleth question.
There it is.
That's right.
It's a legitimate question.
Yeah.
Keeping it open ended, you know, and hearing them out.
But to be honest, I think, you know, John agrees with me.
Like, if they're at this point, I've seen so much, I've heard every explanation under the sun about why this guy's different.
If they're talking about this kind of stuff, the George Floyd incident, At all in an affirming kind of way, they're woke.
That's the bottom line.
You just got to figure out a way to get them to admit it.
Right.
Yeah.
Or they don't even have to admit it.
You can just walk away.
Or you can just walk away and just say no.
That's a possibility too.
With that being said, though, I think that's just one of the difficulties people are trying to find church.
And I think some people have milked it a little bit.
Guys who we would agree with, you know, and some of you may be listening to this and you've made YouTube your church, you've made Gab your church, and you agree with us and we agree with you and we're thankful for your support.
But all three of us would say, you need to go to church.
Absolutely.
You need to get in a church.
And I think some people are kind of like, well, the church has discredited itself.
And yes, it has.
All those things.
We sympathize.
We agree.
But you need to get in a church.
I think part of the difficulty is people just are struggling finding a church because it's like, you know, like there's just the dust is still settling and we're still looking.
That's why I'm saying, like, are there good words that we can use that the woke won't be able to articulate, right?
Are there, because that's what we've had in the past, right?
So with the reform, non reform divide, any church that had on their website, we're Calvinist or we're reformed, you know, like there were people who, like, were, Who hated what was going on.
You're flying the Confederate flag.
That'll work.
Yeah, no, you're right.
Yeah, that could be it.
That could be it.
Well, one thing that I do is I'll try to use the word patriarchy, because there's not a lot of guys who will say, I'm patriarchal.
And that immediately, it's like, well, what does that have to do with the woke thing?
That's a good point.
But that helps to, like, so what are the identifying, like, because like Driscoll back in the day, right?
So with Acts 29, like, despite faults and strengths, I'm kind of torn on Driscoll.
I like a lot of stuff about him and don't like some stuff.
But the point, and what I definitely, I think all three of us would agree, is that Christianity today, Driscoll doesn't need to be tried.
By a bunch of feminists.
So, whoever, you know, whatever he did that's wrong, Christianity Today is not in the place.
This is why I like coming on your show because you're the one who gets in trouble, not me.
So, you're going to get in trouble for your laugh, your agreeable laugh.
Yeah.
By comparison, I'm reasonable.
Russell Moore and Beth Moore, the sisters, two sisters.
But, anyways, so all that being said, like, you know, Driscoll had a flag and we weren't even sure what it was.
You know what I mean?
There weren't actual terms.
It was just, we knew he was a Calvinist.
Yeah.
But then there were intangibles that we couldn't even articulate.
But that we knew this is who he is.
And if you're a part of his network, right?
And yeah, it can become all about one man or whatever.
But if you're a part of his network, I can expect, if I like these things and I think these things matter, I can expect to find these things.
Instead of trying 20 churches over the course of three years, I can find a church that is Acts 29, a part of Driscoll's network, and expect to have some.
And so what I'm saying, everything's still kind of, it's still too new.
It's still too recent.
The dust hasn't even settled exactly.
But we eventually are going to need.
Yeah.
Some way of being able to say, like, I don't want to spend three years to find a biblical church that's not woke.
I don't want to go to a church and make friendships, deep, meaningful friendships over the course of 18 months and then find out that they have a diversity council.
Because all of a sudden they're asking me to be on it because I'm 118th Cherokee Indian or whatever.
I'm sorry, by the way.
Forgive me.
Anyways.
He apologized to me earlier at lunch.
I paid for your meal.
It was reparations.
Reparations, right.
I'm not 118th Cherokee.
I was just making up a random example.
So, neither is Elizabeth Warren.
You're good.
Okay, yeah, no, you're right.
So, anyways, my point is we're going to need that.
We're going to need the Shibboleth word or flag or something.
And not because we're trying to make it about us, not because it's man centered, not because we need one guy, you know, his face, you know, it's none of that.
Finding Local Faith00:02:11
But there is something practically helpful about helping Christians who feel lost right now, who haven't been a member in a church for two years.
Some of them, it's because they're milking COVID and those kind of things.
But some of them, they literally, it's not their fault.
They can't find a church, and we need to be able to.
Yeah.
Help them.
If I could say quick in closing, I mean, this is the reason that we did put discerningchristians.com together.
So we do have a network there that people can go and you can add your church.
You know, you can look at and see if there's churches in your area.
Usually I recommend, too, people check out if they don't find anything there, like go to sermon audio, just see what's in your area.
And the beauty is you can listen to these guys and, you know, see what you think first.
You can search their sermon library, which will also help you, you know, get a good idea.
But, you know, the important thing is, like, not, not, Just to trust God in this.
God has his people in every place.
God hasn't gone anywhere.
Truth is still solid out there.
God's raising up people and He uses the weak people sometimes.
It may not look like what you think.
It may be like a church plant.
You may be the guy that needs to step it up and plant the church.
So a lot of people are doing that right now.
So don't have a crisis of faith in the things that actually matter.
They haven't gone anywhere, they're still there.
God's still there.
Your family's still there.
Your hometown, it's still intact.
The buildings are still up.
The people are still.
That you know, still just need Jesus unless it's in Ferguson, Missouri.
No, some of the buildings are still up, yeah.
But, um, but like, yeah, I mean, it feels like I think crazy that so many things have changed that people's heads are still spinning trying to figure out what's going on, you know.
So, I think that's the whole conspiracy thing is about that is like trying to figure out what's a paradigm that makes sense of this.
But the things that really, really truly matter, they're still there, they haven't gone anywhere.
So, just you know, take hope.
That's good.
All right, well, thanks for tuning in.
Thanks so much for listening, but real quick.
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