Ben and Jeff from Backwoods Belief confront "Big Eva" elites, accusing figures like Beth Moore and JD Greer of hypocritical pivots that betray conservative biblical truths. They argue that reliance on numerical metrics creates fragile credibility, whereas decentralized technology like podcasts enables a potential "Reformation 2.0." This fragmentation, though splintering Christianity into diverse groups, is preferable to monolithic suppression, urging believers to engage imperfect local churches rather than seeking institutional perfection or becoming entirely churchless. [Automatically generated summary]
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Public Square Arguments00:14:24
Hi, welcome to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
In this episode, I've got two, not one, but two guests.
I've got Jeff Wright and I have his co host, Ben.
They're from the Backwoods Belief Podcast, right?
These guys are doing a podcast together for your everyman, your blue collar country folk that big Eva elites despise.
They don't like you.
If you're just your average blue collar, salt of the earth Christian who has conservative biblical views, you know, you're one of those.
People who are stupid enough to actually believe that God created the world in six 24 hour literal days, you know, that kind of person.
Big Eva doesn't like you.
I like you.
These guys like you.
And their podcast is fantastic.
And I've gotten to know them.
I've been listening to them.
They have a small following at this point.
They're new to podcasting.
But one of the things I want to do with Right Response Ministries as God gives us favor and grows us is I want to shine light on other guys who are just as faithful, if not better, than I am.
And give them exposure.
These, I think, are two of the most up and coming guys.
What they're talking about is fantastic.
And so today we're going to be talking about Big Eva.
We're going to be talking about your blue collar Christians living life as a conservative Christian in a negative world, in a world that's hostile to true biblical Christianity that hates you and constantly wants to make you feel dumb, constantly wants to make you feel like you're racist or you're bad or you're the one who's.
Hostile and mean, and this and that and the other.
Your tone is too harsh.
That's the conversation.
We named some names in this episode, and I think it'll be helpful.
So, without further ado, let's go.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I'm Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
We're glad that you're joining us today.
I'm privileged to have Not one, but two guests.
They are co hosts of a podcast that I personally listen to.
And just for the record, there's like maybe five podcasts that I listen to because a lot of them really suck.
There's 50,000 or 50 million podcasts these days, and everybody's got one.
The way that email was 20 years ago hey, I have an email.
Well, now that's the equivalent of having a podcast.
But Jeff Wright and also Ben, remind me your last name.
Woodring.
Woodring.
They're the co host of the Backwoods podcast.
You can get it on Spotify.
You can get it on iTunes.
And I'm listening to it regularly.
And they have some of the best insights currently with the evangelical world and just the world in general and waking up, pulling your head out of the sand.
So you need to check that out.
Are you guys on any other platforms besides podcast platforms like Spotify and Apple?
No, we haven't made the leap to video.
So it's just.
Fair.
It's just.
You know, backwoods belief in your podcast player, backwoods belief, and I love the name because I think part of what you guys are getting at is you're saying, um, that it's not uh, ivory tower belief, it's not uh, David French belief, it's not uh, elite belief, it's the uh, the Christians that um, that our leaders within evangelicalism have spent the last decade uh, making fun of and disparaging, right?
While also collecting checks off of, I mean, it's probably the most consistent donor base that Big Eva has.
Right.
The salt of the earth, blue collar people who are funding their vacations and large budgets and large salaries.
But it makes, you know, you fund them, but they hate those people.
They hate evangelicals.
Beth Moore, her infamous tweet, you know, a while back, as soon as Trump won the primary in Iowa, she's like, and she was, you could tell she was trying to not get in as much trouble as she's been in the past.
So that was a toned down Beth Moore.
And it's still just reeking of superiority and just this looking down her nose at how could evangelicals do this?
I mean, not the wrong kind of evangelical is a major.
Rhetorical platform that they have a desperation to stand on top of.
You know, we're the good kind.
We're not the wrong kind.
But the good time is what, like, it seems like the good kind is like it's just them.
The majority of evangelicals, and I'm not saying no evangelical liked Ron DeSantis.
I think Ron DeSantis has better character.
I trust Ron DeSantis to babysit my kids more than I would Trump.
You know, like Ron DeSantis could be a member of my church, you know, whereas I don't, I don't know if Trump, I'd have a membership interview.
I'd give him the benefit of the doubt, but I don't know if the dude's safe.
But he will definitely have my vote.
Of course, he'll have my vote.
And if that makes me a hypocrite that I'm selling out on my vote, like, that's insane.
But, and if you're just, if that's all it was, but we know that these people are saying, How could you vote for Trump?
They're not saying, How could you vote for Trump because we're voting third party or we're going to write in DeSantis.
They're voting for Democrats, they're registered Democrats.
Yeah.
That's insane.
Yeah.
One of the things I like about what we're doing with the Backwoods Belief podcast is not only is it clear that our evangelical leaders have failed us now, but the next crop of good leaders, if we're going to have them, are going to come from those kind of backwoods.
The churches that are disdained and disrespected now, the guys coming out of there who actually believe the Bible are going to be the ones who are going to be leading us in the future, unless God does just tear it all down and destroy everything.
Well, that's what I was about to jump in and say.
I think one good thing is that.
You know, the Lord shakes what can be shaken to show what cannot, right?
And Big Eva is shaking apart in front of our eyes.
And so, praise the Lord for that.
Praise the Lord that so many of them are having to run away from Twitter and hide because they can't sell their nonsense without just getting a flood of pushback.
I mean, you know, for as bleak as it has been, I don't know, maybe somebody out there is going to tell me I'm blasphemous for saying this, but thank God that Elon Musk bought Twitter.
And now you can tell Phil Visscher just how stupid he is in real time and he can't get away from it.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I'm with you.
Elon Musk, I mean, like, I'm not a huge fan of cozying up to China, brain chips in the head, and the very real possibility he might be just controlled opposition.
But aside from all those things, I mean, there's just objectively, there's no denying in terms of major social media platforms, Twitter is the freest by far.
You can't post those things on Instagram or Facebook.
It's the only place where that set of people, Ever meet real life?
They live in such a thick, tightly controlled bubble that the only time normalcy gets to penetrate it is when somebody has replied to a tweet.
And I mean, I just, you know, I mentioned already, but like when a guy like Sam Albury is like, I'm getting off Twitter, praise God.
He's just taken away a microphone he had access to.
He's been profitably bullied out of a very major public venue.
Thank God for that, you know.
And that, you know, it's got to be speaking to his conscience.
Whatever's left of his conscience has to be saying, And they've got a point.
And the Lord can use that to bring him to repentance.
I mean, that's the ultimate goal.
I'll settle for him, you know, he put himself in the closet.
But what we ultimately want is for him to repent.
And I think that's possible.
Yeah, I agree.
Ben, were you going to say something?
I was, but I don't remember what I was going to say.
I'm sorry.
No, it's good.
But I was going to pick up on one thing that you said, Jeff.
You said, because it caught me as ironic, but you said, I thank God for Twitter because for these people, it's like their only introduction to real life.
And the reason why I thought that was funny is because that's the opposite of the saying that you hear all the time Twitter's not real life.
But what I notice is that there seems to be a common denominator between everybody who champions that mantra that Twitter's not real life and it's the people who aren't faring very well on Twitter.
Right.
And so, of course, if you're getting tons of pushback on Twitter, you don't want it to be real life.
And to be fair, I get tons of pushback.
People hate me.
I mean, people hate you guys.
Like, so it's not like I don't get tons of pushback on Twitter.
But I think my point is, I think there's a balance between like Twitter's not real life, there is truth to that statement, it's not real life.
Right, your wife, your kids, your local church.
So that is true.
But if that's the only side that you lean into, then it's like you're not going to hear any pushback.
You're not going to make any changes.
You're not open to any criticism.
Because Twitter, it's not, you know, there may be some bots on there, but there's real people saying, no, we disagree.
We disagree with you.
But I am worried that, like, Beth Moore types and stuff that, you know, As they kind of move away, a lot of because I know some of these people, I have friends and stuff that they just don't like controversy.
They don't like confrontation.
And so therefore, they don't like Twitter, right?
They're on Facebook, they're on Instagram, they're not on Twitter.
And so, a lot of unfortunately, a lot of people who probably follow Beth Moore and actually do listen to her probably don't listen to her on Twitter.
So I think they probably do get to escape some of it.
Yeah, one of the things I love about Twitter is that more than any other social media platform, it is the like public square where ideas are being kind of hashed out and sometimes in really stupid, ridiculous ways where it's just idiotic arguments happening, but people are actually talking about ideas and arguing back and forth instead of the whole, oh, let's just go grab coffee sometime, which is really just a way of getting out of ever having the discussion.
Like you want to get that person in real life so that you can sit down and kind of bully them through the.
The false virtue of niceness into not disagreeing with you.
That's a good point, Ben.
Joel, I think probably all three of us probably value Twitter in this way.
You can have an honest fight.
And I think men like to have a fight and they can walk away from it and say, Well, I'm glad we got that settled, right?
But as you become more feminized, you have to do the kind of, Well, let's get coffee.
I just want to hear your heart, brother.
You know, all this ridiculous, emotive language.
And so Twitter is kind of a boxing ring, and you can get in, even with a friend.
Like I've talked often about how I was wrong on same sex attraction.
I just thought that wasn't sinful.
And Jared Moore wrote Lust of the Flesh, good book.
Everybody had to pick it up.
I mean, he just hammered me on it and just stayed on me and wouldn't let me escape.
And he was right.
And eventually he won.
And we had real fights about it.
So Twitter gives you a chance to do that.
Like I've never been in the same room as Ben.
But we can have a profitable fight on Twitter and come away better men for it.
That's really good.
That's a good idea.
I appreciate you sharing a personal example because sometimes that's one of the biggest criticisms that I get.
I don't know if you guys get that, but like today, I saw on Twitter at the time that we're recording this some account.
I don't, I don't, I haven't blocked, but he was posting, you know, because people were sharing it.
So I ended up seeing it.
But he was posting a picture, old pictures of myself and Eric Kahn and Brian Sauvay.
I don't know if you guys saw that.
I did see one of those pictures.
You saw, yeah.
Brian Sauvay.
You should go back to that hairstyle, man.
It worked for you.
Thanks.
I appreciate it.
Yeah.
No, my, My old picture, I was like, this ain't so bad.
I don't feel that embarrassed.
Blind Sauvage, not as much.
He looked like a hippie.
He had the long hair going.
But here's the deal.
So people do that, and it's old pictures, or they'll clip out from one of your old sermons or something like that.
And for them, it's this big gotcha moment.
These guys are talking about biblical patriarchy, but they were soft five years ago.
It's so funny that people really do think that that is like the kryptonite TKO takedown.
And I'm like, so you proved that I didn't come out of the womb with the convictions that I hold today?
Like, whoa, he solved the mystery, folks.
Way to go, Sherlock.
Let's put those investigative skills to work.
You probably be high up at the FBI with that kind of skill set.
But that's like, yeah, we're constantly.
So whether it's you with Jared Moore hashing it out, I like people need to know that we're not sitting here saying we believe these things and we always have.
No, we're saying we believe stupid things.
I'll speak for myself.
I have believed stupid things.
I started as we were this rinky dink, as some might say, rinky dink vineyard church.
I was egalitarian.
I was, I mean, I had some weird views.
And then I was Acts 29.
And then I didn't realize that wokeness was a bad thing until 2018 after Eric Mason wrote his book.
That's when I pulled out of Acts 29.
You know, and then it's funny.
So I'm like, so I'm like, five years ago, I was in Acts 29, and they were woke before Eric Mason wrote that book.
But I noticed it some, but not enough to my shame.
And then, you know, but then you'll meet somebody like Chase Davis, and it's like, you know, he's like, I'm, you know, I got out Acts 29 three weeks ago, you know?
And I'm like, wait a second, you know?
Like, and, but my point is just like, we're, none of us are saying that we're not, they're not arguments for seniority.
Repentance vs Course Correction00:08:44
They're not arguments.
All of us are learning, but the key is what Jeff said, like with Jeff Moore.
It's like, I was wrong.
I changed.
This didn't, it wasn't 15 years ago, it was much more recent than that.
But the thing is, you said you were wrong.
And I know that's not what we talked about offline, but I think that's worth going into for a moment because right now, the opportunists are going to start flocking in because we're winning.
You know, Christ is winning, but he's using vessels like us.
People are listening.
The blue collar evangelicals that Beth Moore despises.
Are shifting away from these leftist tactics and wokeism and feminism and these kinds of things.
They're sick of it.
And so, my point is, a lot of these guys are going to see which way the wind's going and they're going to come back.
And all of a sudden, you.
And my point is, there's a fine line between 11th hour servants who still get a generous wage, and we should welcome them to the master's field to work with us, to his vineyard.
But there's a difference between the 11th hour servant and.
And the con man who he actually didn't repent.
I don't care when you repent, I care that you repent.
You know what I mean?
That's my concern.
But here's the funny thing God alone sees the heart.
Man looks at the outward appearance.
It doesn't matter when you repent, it just matters that you repent.
However, the longer you take to repent, the harder it is for me as a man who can't see the heart, who's just looking at fruit externally.
It's harder for me because if you repent when there's a maximum benefit to switch teams, it's harder for me to tell the genuine nature of that repentance.
Whereas if you repented, Five years ago, and you were a vast minority, and you because I lost tons and tons of people from my church, I didn't gain anything, you know.
And so, that makes it that even then, you know, somebody could be shifty, you know, but but at least for us externally looking in, it's like, okay, that I feel like I can I can bet on that guy a little stronger.
Is that fair?
What do you think?
Yeah, and I think it goes back to what Jesus said, you know, I send you out, um, and be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
So, yeah, we're supposed to, you know, trust. that people repent and the Lord does do work in people's hearts.
But we also shouldn't be naive or foolish and just, especially with what's happening now where you have these guys who are coming out and critiquing wokeism, but they still want to hold on to all of the things that caused the issue.
I think of, who was it who posted that thread basically defending Tim Keller against Tim Keller's followers and saying, well, Tim Keller was misunderstood.
Well, no, the truth is they got exactly what Tim Keller wanted them to get from him.
And so when I see somebody who's still defending the root, but saying that the fruit that came from that root is bad fruit, well, I think you still haven't quite got to where that actual issue was.
And something we've talked about before, there's a difference between repenting and course correction.
Right.
And a lot of what I'm seeing right now is course correction.
I mean, I know for myself, like back in 2015, 2014, I was like on the course to be becoming woke.
And then, you know, I read that hideous strength and saw myself in one of the main characters who was a bad guy.
And I was like, oh my word, if I keep down this path, I'm going to become one of these people.
And it was just life changing for me.
And, you know, I had to take a step back and be like, I was wrong about all of these things that I was saying and believe.
I even went to some of my friends and told them, hey, I'm sorry for the way that I talked to you and treated you.
I was in the wrong about this.
And I think I need to see some of that happening in some of these cases that we're seeing these bigger evangelical figures course correcting when they really need to be turning around.
Yeah.
Hear, hear.
I mean, I'm thinking about this a lot.
I've been thinking about writing it.
I'm always ready to name names, but the spiritual danger to it is that you invite a guy who's going to turn into Denathor.
Into your camp at the next time a problem breaks out.
So you've, you know, a guy who course corrects, you say, all right, you know what, we're just going to come on in, man.
You know, all's forgotten, all's forgiven.
If he hasn't repented, if he hasn't done the hard work of confessing and repenting, and listen, finding the freedom and the grace of release that confessing and repenting gives, the next time the betrayal is not going to be him outside the camp trying to betray.
It's going to be him inside the camp betraying and dragging everybody's morale down in the middle of the fight.
Right.
And so I don't know if anybody's talked as much about this on Twitter as me.
I feel sometimes like, you know, I'm kind of the crow just constantly harping on it.
But if you take a guy like JD Greer, hey, God whispers about homosexuality, we should use pronoun hospitality, then goes to the Gospel Coalition several months later and says, nah, we shouldn't use pronouns.
Well, I had good friends that I respect say, hey, we should celebrate, you know, when he's saying the right thing because you want to subsidize what you want to get more of.
And I said, no, because that just means he's worming his way back into whatever the group's becoming, wants to keep his hand on a steering wheel.
And he's going to, you know, apart from repenting, Comprehensively, this guy is most likely going to just betray us all again.
So, you have to kind of, I mean, this sounds silly.
I know you guys know this and your listeners do too, but there's a reason the Bible positions repentance as a rock in the stream.
You have to do something with God's command to repent.
And if what you choose to do is not repent, that leaven is going to continue to spread.
I really don't feel like we can take this seriously enough.
There's, There's all kinds of fellowship available, but it's on the far side of repentance.
All right.
Everybody's been asking, can I live stream your conference?
And the answer is a resounding no.
You will be there in person or you will not be there at all.
I'm just kidding.
You actually can live stream the conference.
We're excited to announce we're making it available to anybody and everybody who wants to watch this conference right as it's happening, which is March 1st and 2nd.
That's a Friday and Saturday of 2024.
What conference am I even talking about?
It's called Blueprints for Christendom.
2.0.
We've got Pastor Douglas Wilson, we've got Dr. Joe Boot, we've got Brian Sauvay, we've got Eric Kahn, and then, of course, yours truly, Joel Webbin.
We've got seven primary sessions in the conference, each one being probably 50 to 60 minute long sessions, lectures, sermons, whatever you want to call them, and then two live panels, each being an hour and a half long.
Now, one of the panels is on biblical patriarchy.
We're going to have Pastor Douglas Wilson available for that panel, and we decided to get Eric Kahn because Eric Kahn.
Biblical patriarchy, let's just be honest, it's a sensitive topic, but Eric Kahn, I think, is known as one of the most nuanced, careful, and sensitive individuals, especially on the Twitter streets.
So we're going to have him as a part of that panel.
It'll go really well.
Then the second panel is Haunted Cosmos live show.
You've got Brian Sauvet and Ben Garrett talking about the most unhinged things imaginable, hopefully, some things that are actually truthful.
Now, there will be some truthful things.
They're going to stick to scripture, and when they speculate, and you know they will, they'll at least let you know that it's speculation and they won't pass it off as though it's in the infallible.
Word of God.
So live stream this conference.
How do you do it?
Go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
Again, that's patreon.com forward slash right response ministries.
A lot of guys charge 50 bucks, 60 bucks, 80 bucks.
We are asking that you would simply partner with us for $10 a month.
And let's be real you could do it one month, live stream all the content, and then cancel your subscription.
And if you do, no harm, no foul.
If you want to stick with us and support this ministry, what God's doing through right response, Then praise God.
That's great.
And we thank you.
Either way, technically, it's only 10 bucks.
Right.
No, I completely agree.
I did an interview a while back, and you'll have to forgive me, Ben.
I did not follow the rule.
Writing Wrong Books00:02:45
But I did an interview with Rosaria Butterfield, and it was wonderful.
I mean, it was one of the better interviews.
There's a lot of conservative folks.
You know, that are in, I'll just say it, I'll get in trouble, but I'll just say it.
There's a lot of female voices, podcasters, authors who are conservative, who are Christian, but it does seem uncanny, like almost like clockwork, like a German freight train.
It just, you know, give it three years and they're not conservative anymore, you know?
And, but I will say this, you know, time will tell, but Rosario Butterfield, this is the reason I bring her up is so a lot of guys, they pivot.
So you guys said course correction.
I think of just, you know, pivoting.
Mm hmm.
And, but man, what I appreciated about her, especially on, since you brought it up, it made me think about it, Jeff, the pronoun, you know, hospitality.
She was one of those people who said pronoun hospitality.
But she, like, she said this on the interview.
It was so helpful.
Everybody knows that she just, I'll just say it for anybody who doesn't know, but she, she didn't just change her mind.
She profusely repented.
I mean, publicly, multiple times going on almost to the point where it's like, okay, Like, goodness gracious, like, we forgive you, you know, Christ forgives you.
I mean, she went like, like, above and beyond in lamenting that this was a mistake.
Hey, did I mention this was wrong?
And I did it and it was wrong.
But then she said in the interview, I just found it so refreshing.
She said, I said, like, you know, so I didn't know how many books she had.
I just, I was talking to her about her most recent one, that, you know, Five Lies.
And I said, you know, how many other books do you, and I didn't realize she hadn't, the last book she had written before that was, The gospel comes with a house key.
And she said, Joel, to be frank, she said, I write a book about once every five years because that's about the timeline that the Lord seems to take for me to realize how many things I wrote that were wrong in the last book.
And so she was like, So every five years, I write a book to confess and forgive and ask for forgiveness for my last book.
And I just, again, I was just impressed by that.
And I, Affectionately, I have named her, titled her the base grandma from here on out, you know, because she's sweet, she's kind, but she's not taken prisoner.
So, but anyway, but she was just like, yeah, I wrote that book.
The types of people, Gospel Coalition, she named them Gospel Coalition, that liked that book.
Here I am five years later.
Masks and Hidden Sin00:09:34
I see that as an indictment, not as a compliment.
They liked my book.
I probably didn't write the best book.
I was too soft here, I was too soft there.
Yeah, hospitality is a biblical thing.
But, uh, no, yeah, the gospel comes with a house key, but it also comes with a command to repent of your sins and to believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ.
It was great.
It was a really good interview.
So, anyways, my point is, um, that to J.D. Greer's shame, you know, um, here he is course correcting, pivoting, saying something different.
I mean, he is holding a different position, holding it publicly.
And some guys will say, just give them a break, guys, let up.
They'll think, some guys will watch this and will be the Pharisees and their purview.
They'll say that, um, But no, it matters.
It matters to say that you were wrong.
And one of the reasons why it matters is because we're not just to teach that which is true, but we're also to model the Christian life.
Repentance is the mark of the Christian life.
And so if you can't ever model repentance, then I mean, that's shepherds, 1 Peter 5, shepherds set an example.
So it's not just your teaching, but set an example for the flock.
When our church opened up, to my shame, we closed down for four weeks when we opened up.
The first half of my sermon, it was about 15, 20 minutes where I was just apologizing for closing the church.
The elders and I, we did collectively, but we, I was a part of that.
We closed the church.
And then it wasn't just apologizing, but then I took them back through Romans 13, the very text I used to close the church, and I showed them because it wasn't just, I'm sorry, but I needed to win their trust and say, I'm sorry.
And you can trust that I won't fall for that again.
I've changed.
Repentance has changed.
So I'm sorry I did it.
And then asking forgiveness, would you please forgive me for doing it?
And then third, let me show you how the Lord has changed my doctrine, my theology, my understanding exegetically of his word so that you can trust that I'm.
If you follow me, if you want to leave, I get it.
But if you'll be forgiving and be compassionate enough to continue to follow me, let me earn back a little bit of your trust by showing you how I can rightly divide the word of truth now.
And I went back through Romans 13 and said, this is the proper understanding of Romans 13.
And what I said in that little video that I sent you to explain to you why church is canceled when COVID first hit, that was crappy exegesis of Romans 13.
And if you don't do that, Then, yeah, man, like I don't trust you.
You can't be on the team.
I don't even trust you to mix the Gatorade for the team, you know, much less be the QB.
What are we?
That's crazy.
See, that's the damnable part of that.
You can just see the PR managers who are in these guys' ears to come full circle back to you talking about those people pulling old videos and old snippets.
The reason they think they can own you with that is because, you know, we've all said it being Big Eva means never having to say you were wrong.
Right.
And so if you could do that, To some gospel coalition board member, well, he's going to be crushed, right?
Because his fragile sense of credibility that's built on this false idea that he's impeccable just melts.
But Christians can't build credibility on perfection.
Christ was perfect.
That's his credibility.
Ours is we repent in order to become more like him.
Right.
And so, like you said, Joel, the guy who will not say, man, I blew that.
And here's what I've learned.
And I'm sorry.
Would you forgive me?
You know, you're the steps I've taken.
The guy who won't do that immediately starts bleeding credibility because everybody can tell when the emperor doesn't have clothes on.
But the guy who will say, actually, the word of God convicted me the way we should expect it.
The Lord is sanctifying me the way he says he will.
Well, that person sounds like someone that is actually in the process of God's grace renewing them.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess that's what I would say if I had any charity towards a big Eva person.
It's like, guys, look, if you're trying desperately to hold on to credibility, there's a way to be credible.
But, you know, it's going to involve hugging the cactus.
Well, that's the funny thing.
It involves actually modeling this gospel centrality that you guys have talked about a million times.
Like, you actually would have to do that without it just being vague platitudes.
It would have to be tangible, practical, right?
Because those folks will talk about, you know, repentance and what it looks like, and it's deep and it hurts, you know, it hurts.
You know, repentance breaks you, but the Lord binds you up again and heals you on the third day.
He'll revive you, you know, and, but notice, but they'll never be specific.
Let me tell you about a time that the Lord broke me with a real failure, like a real failure, and not pre conversion 40 years ago, but two years ago.
As I was a minister, I said something.
It was wrong.
I had to own it.
That's, you don't hear those kinds of examples and you don't see them modeling it.
Repentance.
And the sad thing about that, too, is that, and Jeff and I have talked about this before on, on backwards belief.
Once you do that, it's so freeing.
There's nothing that anybody can hold over you anymore.
You've taken it to the Lord.
You've taken it to the people you've sinned against in the cases where that's appropriate.
But there's now no anvil hanging over your head anymore.
And I think that a lot of the problem we see in guys in leadership right now is that they have these anvils hanging over their head of sins they know they're guilty of, have never repented of.
They've pivoted away from them and moved on.
But that guilt's still hanging over them because they never have actually dealt with the sin.
Right.
And so there's just this level of guilt and terror that if anybody should ever find out that it happened.
What could happen to my reputation?
Right.
And as Christians, like, that's just the wrong mindset to have.
The right mindset is yeah, I sinned.
I was wrong.
I repented.
The Lord forgave me.
Let's move forward.
Right.
Amen.
It's probably Girardian atonement lust that's driving some of the animosity towards the blue collar Christians, right?
That if they can convince themselves that, you know, I've got this secret sin I'm hiding over here on my shoulder, I'm not going to deal with it.
But that guy, he's a racist because he won't repent of his whiteness.
You can kind of scapegoat him.
And that gives you this sense that, like, oh, my guilt is removed in some way because his guilt must be greater.
I mean, I don't like pop psychology, but Gerard has some good things to say.
And I assume that's what's going on.
That, you know, you try to make somebody worse than yourself so you don't feel quite as bad about your unrepentance.
Yep, I think you're right.
Yeah.
Or you see it with like the mask wearing.
Like people had this level of guilt.
And so they sought out a way to make themselves appear righteous.
And in this case, it was, you know, well, I'm not killing grandma.
I'm wearing the mask, I'm doing what they said to do.
So, I have to be in the right.
I have, like, I'm the pure, clean one here because I've obeyed the orders.
And it's really just a mask to cover up the guilt that they're feeling for their sins.
Right.
Animals can't hide their shame.
I mean, yep.
Will Wilson said something a long time ago.
It was like a Halloween message, but he said, We have this noticeable, I mean, spike in interest in horror movies.
I mean, there's like some of the highest grossing genre of film.
Ever.
I mean, even in my neighborhood, I feel like people like it's comparable just driving around the neighborhood, the decorations for Halloween as the decorations for Christmas, which is crazy.
And I've got, you know, a few different theories for that.
I think part of it, Halloween is, it's a holiday for adult children who are procrastinating, you know, their indefinite adolescence, you know, whereas Christmas is a family holiday.
It's for grownups who got married and had kids, you know.
And so Halloween is for 30 year olds who are sad, you know, to drink wine and dress like a cat and be a hoe.
And And then Christmas is for traditional Christian families or at least Christian adjacent kind of thing.
And I also think part of it is the multiculturalism.
We've got a lot of different religions in our country.
We've got a lot of different cultures.
We've had loose borders and we just ship anybody who doesn't know.
No borders.
No borders.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, I mean, my neighborhood, it's a lot of people who are Hindu, a lot of people who are Muslim.
So I think that's part of it.
But Doug Wilson's reason that I hadn't thought of, but I thought it was good, he said it's a cheap way of atoning.
So, just like putting on the mask, on one hand, it's hiding shame, what you said, Jeff.
On the other, what you said, Ben, it's like it's an easy way to atone for your guilt, for your sin.
I'll do this penance that's uncomfortable, but it's not as uncomfortable as actually repenting and turning to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and submitting to Him.
Right?
Like, I mean, by comparison, wearing a mask ain't that bad.
I still get to be a commander of my own destiny and do whatever I want.
I just got to.
Put this dirty diaper on my face, you know, when I'm in public.
And, you know, and I get to make all those people who aren't doing it look like the real sinners.
Penance Over True Repentance00:14:47
Exactly.
You know, I get them kicked out of grocery stores or whatever.
Right.
So it's the hiding the shame.
It's also the doing the penance, the atonement.
And to that atonement piece, Doug was saying that horror movies, part of the reason the fascination is, yeah, the prolonged adolescence, yeah, this, yeah, that.
But part of it also is, you know, that you're guilty and that you deserve death.
The wages of sin is death.
You know, you deserve hell, like House of a Thousand Corpses, you know, some of the horror movies that are just, I mean, it's like, It's like a hellish torment, terrible kind of thing.
Like Saul, you know, it's torture, it's demented.
It's a depiction of hell.
And you know you deserve hell.
But what you're able to do in a horror movie is instead of repent of your sin and turn to Christ as your substitute, you're able, it's a substitute, but not Christ.
You're able to walk in and it's, you subject yourself.
You're subjecting yourself to what you know is your fate, what you know you deserve.
But in the last minute, that other character gets killed on the screen in your place and you get to walk back out.
So, two minutes of, of, of, Discomfort and, and you know, you know, but at the end of it, you still get to keep your life, and somebody else died for you.
You know, I thought that was decent insight.
So that's incredible.
That's incredible.
Yep.
It reminds me of the guy who made the show The Sopranos.
One of the reasons that that show ended the way it did, which was kind of on a cliffhanger, was because he brought the viewers along this ride of this really immoral guy, and they loved every minute of it.
And then he wasn't going to give them the opportunity to see him get his just desserts at the end because all of the people watching the show were with him in all of the evil he did.
And now they wanted to see him get justice.
And he was like, no, I'm not going to let you do that because you've enjoyed all of the evil up to this point.
So now you have to live with this question of whether he gets justice or not, which I'm not recommending anybody watch The Sopranos.
But I think that's an interesting point that he made in that.
Yep, that's a good point.
One last thing that I was thinking in this whole theme of.
Course correction, pivoting, PR versus actual repentance.
And we're saying with repentance, there's multiple markers.
I mean, obviously, hours and thousands of pages have been written, you know, on the doctrine of repentance.
But at least a couple little markers would be I always tell my congregation and my pocket, I say repentance should be both in word and deed.
So it's not just in deed, it's not, I was doing this and now I'm doing that.
But it's also a word and acknowledgement.
So it's not just, I was doing this, now I'm doing that.
But, um, But with those that you're responsible for and with those that you've led astray, with the same context of people that you've sinned against, with those same people, you don't just change your actions, but you admit with your words, right?
So you don't just all of a sudden pretend to be the hero on standing up for the church with COVID when you very clearly were not 15 minutes ago, but never in word acknowledge that, you know.
I won't name any names there, but a lot of guys did that.
A lot of guys did that.
And so I've got more than just one person in mind.
But you would have to, in words, so you'd change, we're opening the church, right?
That's the change in action.
But in words, you would also say, hey, you guys aren't stupid.
You might have noticed this is the exact opposite of what I was doing 15 minutes ago.
So I thought I would just go ahead and name the elephant in the room and say, that was bad.
This is good.
I'm sorry.
Will you forgive me?
This from the Word of God is why that was bad, and this is why this is good.
Will you trust me?
Great.
Now let's move on.
So I think repentance, you know, it's repentance in a change in deed and in word.
It's an apology.
It's an acknowledgement.
It's a request, a petition for forgiveness.
And then it's also because they're commanded to forgive you.
If you ask for forgiveness, you go to your brother and repent.
And then lastly, it's, I think, you know, the forgiveness, if you ask for forgiveness, it's owed from other Christians, even if you sinned against them 70 times, seven times.
But, The trust isn't mandated.
So the trust, I think, is earned.
And you may not get it all back, but one great first step to getting it back is show them why you changed your mind.
How you, as a person, not just this one off instance, but that you, as a person, have been radically changed by the Lord Jesus Christ and further sanctified and conformed to his image.
You're a different man who it's not just I made a mistake and I realized it, but Christ has changed me in such a way that I am far less likely to be the kind of man who would make that mistake.
And therefore, I'm more trustworthy than I've ever been before.
So, if you trusted me before, you've got more reason, not less, to trust me now.
If you don't, I don't blame you.
I'm not going to guilt you for it.
But if you're willing to, I'd appreciate it.
I mean, that's like, man, you can build an army of men who are willing to die for you with rhetoric and leadership like that.
But what I was going to say is just the last thing guys who don't do that, they still have big followings.
And so, why?
So, we're saying all this, it's like, Because the people aren't stupid.
Like what I just said a second ago, they're not stupid.
They can see that 180 degree about face.
You know, 15 minutes ago, I was saying pronoun hospitality, and now I'm not.
Rosario Butterfield has the dignity to own it and write a whole book explaining why she was wrong in owning it.
J.D. Greer doesn't.
It treats everyone like they're stupid, still has tons of people willing to follow him.
I've gotten to, I think, I'll just say mine real quick.
I think it's because the people who follow J.D. Greer, In his PR rather than repentance, are the people who follow unrepentant leaders unrepentant people.
It's the same people who also themselves don't want to admit that they were wrong about this and want to course correct and pretend as though.
So the people who are okay with the church turning on a dime, not four weeks in, but four months or a year and a half on COVID without ever admitting that they might have gotten it wrong and trying even to dismiss it by saying, well, you know, we actually have never changed our position.
It's just.
We did what was perfectly reasonable and acceptable given the time and the information that we had available to us.
But now that we have more information, so I haven't changed my position at all.
It's just the circumstances have changed.
And it's like, who would follow that guy?
I think everybody who's just as cocky as he is.
Maybe.
What do you guys think?
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I think there's an element of that.
I also think.
Especially in the evangelical world, we've been discipled for so long into just believing that the guys on the platform are right and don't get it wrong.
And so, you know, I'm just a country bumpkin churchgoer, but JD Greer gets all of this airtime.
He's got, you know, all of these videos.
He's the guy I'm supposed to trust and believe in.
And if he says it, well, you know, I must, he must be right in this particular moment.
And so it's not naive.
I don't think it's just we've been trained for so long to think that these guys are the guys we ought to follow because of, you know, Whether it's because of, you know, well, it's the Southern Baptists remain conservative despite all of the issues they had during the conservative resurgence.
They remained faithful.
And so they're faithful now.
But there has to come a point where you recognize that actually the guys in leadership aren't telling me the truth.
And so I think probably there are some of the guys like you're describing, Joel, who are also in the same boat and don't want to have to deal with their own sins.
But I do think.
I want to say that there's a place for just kind of the, I don't want to use the word naive, but just the Christian who isn't thinking deeply about this stuff and is just trusting that the guys on the platform aren't going to steer them wrong.
And eventually you have to get to the place where there's the straw that breaks the camel's back and they're like, I can't follow this person anymore.
So you're getting at like the driving energy of the last four or five years of my life.
That person you're talking about there is actually practicing a virtue.
He is believing the best.
And the Greers, the wolves, use that against him to destroy him, right?
It's Ezekiel the shepherds grow fat on my sheep.
And so the thing that I get at that DNA level that makes me hostile immediately is when I see a guy praying on a better Christian because the Christian is just believing the best.
And so, you know, since we're piling theories, Joel, mine is just adjacent to yours.
Okay.
Evangelicals were groomed into thinking that immediate numerical measurables are the chief indicator of God's blessing.
You're right.
And the dirty secret is that can be had out of a box.
You know, people talk, you've experienced this, Joel.
How's your church doing?
That's coded language for how many people do you have?
And do you have more people coming than I do?
Right.
You meet another pastor or whatever.
You've been to conferences where that happens.
My answer to that is.
It's not the great awakening, but I'm thankful for what God's doing, right?
I could give away iPads at meetings.
I could do what JD Greer does and get up and tell a world and worldly, either half converted or false converted Christians, what you want is actually what God wants you to have, right?
So JD exists on a continuum with Creflo Dollar.
His is just a little bit more dialed down and sold with better.
Dental work.
You can have numerical success pretty easy.
In fact, the North American Mission Board basically plants mega churches because this stuff can come out of a box.
But because we're in this feedback loop of, oh, measurables indicate God's blessing.
Oh, look, there's all these measurables.
Oh, that indicates God's blessing.
The guy who gets stuck at the middle of it through really manipulative PR tactics.
Well, he gets to have all this credibility.
And that's actually why I think they're so, I think they know it's fragile.
And that's why I think they're so reluctant to say they're wrong because they know this is kind of a house of cards.
And if the wrong thing tips it, oh my gosh, it just fell apart.
You know, if I answer the wrong person and they kind of lay me out, uh, right, I'm gonna, you know, my credibility is gone and I can't get it back by bringing in the latest Tim Tebow or whatever to say, Oh, we had 4,000 people at our last men's conference, you know, right, right.
I think, I think at a practical level, aside from just what's moral and right and what, you know, what we should be striving for to accomplish, I think it's inevitable just in the providence of God that, uh, I don't think we're gonna, I think mega churches are probably going to be a, A thing of the past.
I don't think it's sustainable, like what you're saying, fragile, a house of cards, but especially for a number of reasons.
But one of those reasons, just a practical reason, is it does feel a bit like a Reformation 2.0, that, you know, 500 years, like God tends to sync up in his providence theological reformation with, you know, technological innovation, right?
You know, so you got Luther and you got the Gutenberg printing press.
Sure.
Right.
And, you know, and now I'm not saying we've necessarily, I'm certainly not.
A Luther, you know, but maybe a bunch of mini Luthers, you know, maybe a little army of Luther minions, you know.
I mean, I just don't know if we currently have people as smart as people from back in the day, is what I'm realizing.
I like, I literally just think we're dumber, like across the board.
Our smartest are like kind of lightweights compared to like some average dudes from four or 500 years ago.
But all that being said, so we may not have the Luther, but I think we do have the Gutenberg printing press equivalency.
With thanks to Al Gore, you know, he invented the internet.
But with the internet and then further getting more narrowed in, social media, and then now video and podcasts, and then now we've got, you know, artificial intelligence, you know, narrow AI.
I don't think I personally am of the perspective that transcendence, you know, a sentient AI is something that God providentially just won't even allow.
I don't think humans can do it.
So I'm not afraid of narrow AI.
I think it, like any tool, you know, a tool, a hammer, you can beat somebody.
Crush their skull in, you know, or you can build a house.
And so I, you know, so I think AI can, could be a gift.
I have no doubt it'll be an opportunity for more corruption.
So, but my point is, I think we're just going to get splintered.
And, you know, like, like I just think like every pastor is going to have a podcast, right?
It's like back in the day, it's like, can you afford to do what Sproul's doing?
Did like, and I'm not saying Sproul was worth his salt, you know, like, so I'm not saying he wasn't worth it or he didn't deserve it, but unless you get that, you know, million dollar donation to, to buy property in the Ligonier Valley and set up, You know, a TV studio, you know, with then, then you're not, but now that's not the case.
Now, every single pastor of a church of 30 people can have a podcast, like Andrew Isker.
There are thousands of people who know Andrew Isker.
His church is only 30, 40 people, and it's, but it's because it's his hometown.
He grew up there his whole life.
The Rise of Undercover Christians00:08:01
He went to that church as a boy, and so he's there and he loves it.
He's not there because he can't get a bigger gig, he's there because he's got family, he's got friends, he loves.
People, but my point is, 30 people in his church used to.
That's the way a pastor would, if he ever had a shot at notoriety, it was by getting a big church.
That's the only way, right?
But now it's like you can pastor 30 people, and then Isker can be putting up numbers, beating Russell Moore on the Amazon bestseller list with a book.
That's crazy.
And then doing a podcast, you know, with some other pastor, just like the two of you, never met in person, but genuine friends, like minded, met on Twitter.
You know, or some 4chan, I'm just kidding, but you know, met somewhere, you know.
That's funny.
It's not true, but it's funny.
And the back alleys of the internet.
But my point is just as that happens, as every pastor has a podcast, every guy has a voice, I think it's going to create confusion.
So I'm not saying, I'm not going to sit here and rose color it and say it's all going to be positive.
There will be some big negatives.
But one of the positives, right?
So, like Luther, the Catholics, they said, if you do this, you're going to open up the floodgate of iniquity.
You're going to have 3,000 denominations.
And Luther didn't disagree with them, he just said, so be it.
Better to have a haystack with one needle of truth, and I think we'll have multiple needles in God's mercy, than to have a nice put together bushel of hay where there's no needle at all, right?
That was Rome, you know.
And likewise with Big Eva, better to have Small Eva, backwoods belief, and some of the backwoods churches will be, you know, they'll be handling snakes.
Yeah, they'll be handling snakes, and other ones will be saying, send money to Israel, you know, if you bless Israel, you'll be blessed by God, and they're dispensationalists and hoping for the third temple, and that, you know, and that's going to happen.
But there will also be, I have far more hope with backwoods belief that some of those guys will be faithful.
Not just some, but I think a lot, a lot, than I do with the clean cut, put together Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, big even machine where only 12 guys ever see the public light of day, ever get the notoriety, ever get the platform.
And it's controlled and it's airtight.
And you can't squeeze the truth in even if you try.
There's not room for one needle.
I think what you're saying actually, especially the proliferation of social media and podcasts and things like that, is a big reason why guys like J.D. Greer, who had all of these followers and then, you know, turn an about face and still kept their followers.
I don't think that's going to happen as much as it used to.
And I think it's obvious that's not because of the proliferation of media where, you know, you don't need to go to J.D. Greer to hear the big, you know, video production and all of these really nice put together clips of him teaching for 10 minutes on some topic on the internet.
You can get that from literally anybody, even guys who are unqualified to be talking about it at all, have huge followings on YouTube.
And so now when a guy like JD Greer does an about face like that, you've got random Twitter anons who are like, hey, you said this yesterday and now you're saying this today.
What's going on?
And they can't handle that kind of criticism.
They can't handle the openness of What social media provides.
And so while, yeah, it does have a lot of negative consequences, it has that one positive that the gatekeepers can't keep the gate anymore.
Right.
That's what it is.
Well, Joel, you got to the premise of our podcast.
I mean, you said it as well as we did on the first episode.
We think Christianity thrives on the margins.
And we think that's where God historically has done a ton of great work and where it looks like he'll do a lot of great work now.
So, you, I mean, we're with you.
We think that that's, we want to be there to encourage those guys and say, You're not crazy.
You're not the problem like you've been told.
You're our hope.
You're our future.
Just lean into it.
You know, demand to be normal.
And we want to encourage you in that line.
For every guy that's been called a racist a million times.
Right.
We love you.
Christ loves you.
Yeah, that's the person.
I want to tell that person, God loves you.
Those people are predators.
You're not weird for thinking they're weird.
Keep on, man.
What were you going to say, Jeff?
Just that I need to qualify a few things there, which is rare enough for me.
You know, healthy things grow.
And so, I'm not saying numerical growth is a sign of ill health.
Right.
What I'm trying to cut into is, you know, Jonathan Edwards versus Charles Finney.
Have you ever read Ian Murray's book, Revival versus Revivalism?
Yep.
You know, some of this stuff can be manufactured, and yet we treat it as if it's ironclad credibility.
And that it exists as a counterfeit actually suggests and indicates there's a real authentic version of it.
Right.
And so I just, the qualifier I want to add is that God blesses some people with greater reach and platforms and whatnot.
That's not inherently wrong.
It's the self validating, manufactured big numbers that evangelicals are really going to have to learn to, you know, take a critical eye towards.
Right.
What are you growing with?
Because you're right.
Healthy things grow.
So do tumors.
Yeah.
Right.
So healthy things do grow, but growth in and of itself is not a guarantee of health.
It can be a sign of hell, but you can grow with trash, you know.
And if you're growing with unconverted people, and then six months later, right?
Because that's one of the signature moves also of Big Eva, they'd always brag about how many non Christians they have in their church.
The problem is, six months later, six years later, they still have a ton of non Christians in their church, and they're the same people.
So they've been able to sit under the preaching of God's word, allegedly, for six years.
And in my assessment, you guys correct me if I'm wrong, but even outside of preaching in the church, just in relationship, I've had people, pastoral counsel, one of the common questions, FAQs over the years is how do I maintain this friendship with this unbeliever?
And I'm trying to minister to them.
And I always encourage it, I don't encourage them to be a jerk, but I do tell them in a general sense the person is going to get saved or they're going to back off.
They may not utterly reject you and say, I'll never speak to you again.
But the relationship, if this is a close friend with an unbeliever and you're now saved, you're telling me you're a new creation in Christ Jesus.
You have a different orientation of desires and goals and ambitions and all, like you have a whole nother worldview, a whole nother presupposition.
Then the relationship, they're either going, God's going to save them too, or the relationship is going to start to drift further and further apart.
But if you come back to me in a year and the person's not saved and you're just as close as you ever were, then you're messing up.
You're doing something wrong.
You're an undercover Christian.
You're being ashamed of Christ.
You're holding something back.
You're being a cat.
There's something wrong.
Like, it's either, like, people say, oh, Jesus was the friend of sinners.
Yeah, repentant ones.
Repentant.
Well, he was a friend of prostitutes.
Yeah, the ones who are washing his feet and drying them with their hair and washing them with his tears.
Well, he was a friend of tax collectors.
Yeah, the ones who said they would give four times back what they defrauded.
Drifting Relationships00:07:55
You know what I mean?
Jesus, there's not one example in the gospel narratives of Jesus having an Ongoing long term friendship with an unrepentant person.
Every single friendship he has is somebody who almost immediately is saying, I'm going to follow Jesus.
I'm changing.
I'm leaving something behind.
I'm making a change.
I'm not a perfect man, but we're making a change.
And anybody who didn't want, the best example we would have of a long term relationship with someone who never made a change, a serious change, would be Judas.
And I feel like, I mean, I feel like I have, you know, it's safe for me to say that the son of perdition was a unique.
That Jesus sovereignly knew about and allowed, you know, to build a whole doctrine over Judas.
And well, I'm just, my ministry is to Judas.
What would it, I don't, that's weird.
You guys have got any thoughts on that?
We can land the plane here in a moment, but I feel like this has been good.
There's other things that we talked about going into.
We'll have to say that for another time because I feel like this just became its own episode.
But let's do this.
We'll have to do the AI episode because there you go.
We have some thoughts on that.
Okay.
Demons.
Absolute potential.
I've got those thoughts too.
Yep.
But what I was going to say is for somebody who might be the person who has followed JD Greer and is now following him in his course correction, one of the ways you can sort of figure out that that course correcting is happening and it's not just a sincere change of heart is when you see someone like that.
Like I just saw a picture recently.
It was a Brent Leatherwood.
And he's hanging out with this guy who's just been criticized for all of the things he's doing wrong.
And Brent Leatherwood comes along and takes a picture with him, telling everybody about how good of friends he is with him.
And it's like, this guy's okay.
As soon as you see that wagon circling starting to happen, that's a great sign that there's something up.
And you need to have your ears open to maybe I'm not being told the whole truth here.
Right.
Good point.
All right.
We got to plug this again Backwoods belief, because I want people to check it out.
The Objective Room, I believe, is the title of your most recent episode.
Is that right?
Yeah, Life in the Objective Room.
It's a reference to that hideous strength.
I listened to that three days ago, the whole episode.
Fantastic.
And honestly, Jeff, your Southern draw is just chef's kiss.
It is enjoyable to listen to.
But that was a great episode.
What are some of your top five favorite episodes that people want to check it out that they should listen to?
One that your listeners will probably particularly enjoy.
And it is our easily most popular episode.
I think it has twice the listens of everything else.
Is the episode we did about Allie Beth Stuckey.
Okay.
Um, called Allie Beth Moore.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
All right.
So you guys were, you were not winsome in this episode, I imagine.
You know, one of the things I want to say about it is it's not like we were just trying to be ugly and attack this girl.
Um, but we went through some of the things she said and just showed how wrong they are.
Um, and really destructive to Christian families.
Uh, so that's a, that's a really good one that I would encourage people to go to.
Another one that goes along with some of the things we've been talking about tonight the Made to Order Man episode.
That's one of the early ones we did.
That's a B An original concept right there.
And it's a banger.
It's gas.
Okay.
I haven't listened to that one.
I'm going to have to listen to that one.
Yeah.
It's just about the idea of these men who are kind of created by institutions to be just weak and followers.
We bid the Geldines to be fruitful, you know, castrate them.
Yeah.
And it's about that kind of man and how not to be one.
Okay.
Jeff, do you have any.
We've got kind of a vein that if you're into haunted cosmos or blurry creatures, there's some of that in us too.
We have one called Return of the Old Gods, How Pride Becomes a New National Identity.
Yeah.
Cool.
Yeah.
I think it turned out well.
Hey, Joel, can I?
I know we got to get out of here.
Can I say a backwoods kind of admonition to people who listen to your podcast that I'm legit worried about and I need your.
I need us to be aware of.
Okay.
You know, we've spent a lot of time talking about basically institutional Christianity in our day and how terrible it is.
I'm afraid that a bunch of young men who see this stuff for what it is are going to check out on the local church over it.
And so, you know, we heard so much about Christless Christianity.
I'm afraid that, like, I don't know where you're going to put the stake, 35, 30, and down based guys who see things for where they are.
They actually love Christ.
They're going to be churchless Christians.
And I think that's a recipe for disaster.
And so, if anybody's listening to this who's not going to come over to Backwoods, but some of this, Resonates with you, man.
Find a local church.
Amen.
Yeah.
Find one that preaches the gospel.
Find some that maybe even has some stuff that embarrasses you, like they're KJV only or something, and love those people and work really hard to help them die in the faith.
I think that's one of the blind spots that, you know, people who would listen to stuff we're talking about might not have on their radar yet.
And, you know, when I talk to young men, I'm like, no, no, no, get to the local church, just get away from the fake ones.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
Amen.
That's a good point.
Amen.
And getting to the local church, getting away from the fake ones doesn't mean that you find the perfect one.
Like, you're going, you're just, you're going to have to make some concessions anyway.
Like, I'm the senior pastor of the church that I'm a part of.
And I don't always like my preaching, guys.
I'm like, you know, like, well, I guess I'm stuck in this church.
You know, it's the church that feeds my family.
You know, I can't, you know, I can't change my membership, you know, but the pastor here, he kind of sucks.
Sometimes and it's me, you know, so I don't even like it.
So, you're not going to find a perfect church, and that's the thing is with all these podcasts, you're right, Jeff, because you can, you can, it's like it's effeminate actually, it's gay, it's fake and gay, especially for a man.
Uh, because what it's the equivalent of making a list, which is something that a 14 year old girl would do looking for a boyfriend, but you make a list and you got you know 45 uh things on that list that the boxes have to be checked, like uh, are the women uh, head covering, you know, like well, about a third of the women and third to half of the women in my church head cover, and the other half don't.
I'm just, I leave them alone.
And over time, we'll see what the Lord does.
And maybe they're going to have a different interpretation.
And I'm not going to divide the church over that.
I'm a head covering guy.
That's my position.
Most people know that.
But even as a head covering guy, what I notice is I'll attract that kind of person who head coverings is the end all be all.
And I'm like, well, you might have misunderstood me.
I'm a head covering guy.
You like me because you've heard my podcast or you read this or something.
But no, no, no, no.
I don't make this a divisive issue the way you do.
You need to get a life.
You need to get a life, brother.
And so, anyways, my point is if you've got people who can't see those things, need a guy like you in their life to walk them through learning that.
Like you're teaching them to dance, right?
So, Game Angel, that's a perfect example.
Cool.
All right.
Well, thank you guys again.
Check it out, all the listeners.
Check out Jeff and Ben, Backwoods Belief.
Check out their most recent episode, The Life in the Objective Room.
And then I like the Built to Order Man, or what is it?