Tribalism is Devouring Reformed Christian Circles

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There is an essence that the world is watching what we're doing and how we're doing it, and we're reflecting our

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King. But there are times, I'm just going to be frank, I see even in the Reform world, the way there's this tribalism that's happening, and we're just, you know, it's overwhelming, just things like, what are we doing?

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This is, the world doesn't look at what we're doing and go, wow, you're a follower of Jesus. They're not asking about the hope that lies within us.

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And I just, you know, I think it's healthy to stop and have this conversation and saying, we're defending one part of Scripture with completely ignoring another.

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We have to do both. I think we defend what is right and true and speak the truth, but we always do it with the proper attitude.

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Yeah, amen. You mentioned tribalism, even in the Reform world, which we understand ourselves to be a part of.

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I think in the last six months, even, I'll just use that timeframe, I have been somewhat discouraged by the kind of tribalism and the kind of like separatism that I see within the confessional

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Reform world, broadly. I'm talking Baptists, Presbyterians, Reform Church, you name it.

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There is something about us, man. Like, and brother, I think everybody that listens to this show knows, and everybody who knows us personally knows, you and I care a lot about doctrine.

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I care about good theology. I mean, we've been talking about it for five years on the air now. We care about orthodoxy.

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And at the same time, there is this spirit that I see. We all, first of all, we all have a legal frame.

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That's using old language that people have used for centuries. We have a legal frame. There's a kind of legal wiring to us.

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But then I have seen in all of us, we all have this kind of inner fundamentalist going on.

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There's like, you know what I mean? Like where we just cannot help ourselves. We're fundamentalists at heart.

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And I don't mean that in a good way. I mean that in like, we can't calm down about anything. And we don't do theological triage very well.

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Like we don't know what's a primary matter. We have two speeds. It seems like we have two speeds.

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If I'm in a fellowship with you, I got two gears in my gearbox, essential or irrelevant. And it's like, and so we better agree on everything or we can't fellowship.

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It's how it comes across. Or if I think that you have been unwise in this decision that you made, like our friend,

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Chris Gordon, I'll say it. I mean, our friend, Chris Gordon, who did an interview with Doug Wilson. Chris is getting absolutely crucified by many within the reformed world for the fact that he even had a conversation with Doug.

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That is insane to me, John. We're going to have a conversation with somebody and we're going to write a man off who's had a faithful ministry for years because he was willing to sit down and engage with somebody with whom he disagrees.

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Like, what are we doing? And what are we doing? It isn't encouraging to me.

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And I'm all for like, again, I love church history. I mean, Martin Lloyd Jones and, you know, Jim Packer, John Stott, Billy Graham, the whole ecumenism movement of the 20th century.

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I'm all with it, man. Like unity for unity's sake is meaningless. I completely agree.

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Doctrine does matter. We've got to have doctrinal agreement. Amen to all that. But my goodness, we need to have an ecumenical spirit at the same time where we are willing to lock arms and do things together and encourage one another and promote gospel preaching, gospel heralding ministries, rather than just burning everybody down who doesn't agree with us.

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I just don't understand. Anyway, rant over. Yeah. I mean, even going back to the article, I mean, the event with Chris Gordon, I wrote an article on that because of what was happening in the comment sections.

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You know, it was I mean, it was so bad. Doug Wilson had to write his own article saying, guys, please stop.

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And if you wrote something, please delete it. And unfortunately, there's within certain crowds, there's a history of just harshness and just vulgarity and over the top.

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I did appreciate how Doug handled himself with Chris. And I thought I thought it was a meaningful conversation. So I'm but we are fighting such a powerful enemy.

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I mean, go back to Timothy. He is saying, people who are opposing us are doing the will of the devil.

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That is an unreal thought to think about. Right. Like we're trying to win people back from being stared by the devil and we're shooting at each other and we're presenting ourselves to the world in such a way that is not going to draw their attention to Christ.

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They're like, well, you're acting like just everyone else that is in the world. Why would I want to pay attention to what you're saying?