August 8, 2024 Show with Alisa Childers & Tim Barnette on “The Deconstruction of Christianity”

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Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson, 19th century hymn writer

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George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports legend

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Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us, iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

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We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this eighth day of August 2024.

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Before I introduce to you my guests and our topic today, I just want to remind all men in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free biannual

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We look forward to seeing you there Thursday, October 10th, 11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the

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Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania. But I'm absolutely thrilled to have two first -time guests today on the program.

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Today we are joined by Elisa Childers. She's a singer, songwriter, and author.

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And we were also joined by Tim Barnett, apologist, speaker with Stand to Reason, str .org.

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And he's an author. And they're both going to be addressing their brand new book, The Deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond.

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And first of all, it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio, Elisa Childers.

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Great to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having me. And it's also wonderful to have you on for the first time,

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Tim Barnett. Yeah, thanks for having me. This is going to be a great conversation. I'm looking forward to it.

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And I'm already going to give our listeners our email address if you'd like to join us with your own questions.

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It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say your church is going through something that you're not happy about, that is in some way connected to our conversation today.

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We obviously don't want you to identify yourself so people will know what church you're talking about.

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So you may remain anonymous in cases like that. But if it's a general question, give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence.

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And we have a tradition here, Elisa and Tim, whenever we have first time guests on the program, we have them give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include the religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and the kind of providential circumstances our sovereign

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Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. So, Elisa, let's start with you.

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Let's hear some of your story. I grew up in a Christian home in a

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Christian atmosphere. My dad was one of the converts of the Jesus people movement in the late 60s, early 70s.

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So he found the Lord and trusted in Christ through the ministry of Chuck Smith and Calvary Chapel.

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And so I was actually not raised in Calvary Chapel. We moved to the San Fernando Valley because my dad was in music.

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And that's where the music industry was at that time. And I grew up in a,

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I would say, conservative, charismatic environment and trusted in the

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Lord from a very, very early age. In fact, I don't actually remember not being aware of the

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Lord and being aware of the gospel and that I was a sinner and that Jesus was my savior. But when I was about five, my mom,

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I remember just being in the living room and she asked me if I wanted to trust in Christ. And of course

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I did. And I prayed with her that night. So somewhere in there was the beginning of my journey.

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But I just always have loved the Lord. I've always been very deeply devoted to him and just persuaded in my bones that the

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Bible was God's word. I grew up in a home where that was very much taught to me that the Bible was our authority.

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And we studied the Bible as a family. And of course went to a Presbyterian grade school, Baptist High School and got a lot of great discipleship from different streams of Christianity.

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And really never questioned it until I was a bit older when

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I had a faith crisis after spending some time in the Christian music industry. And it was really at that time when

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I began to really study the arguments for the existence of God, the reliability of Scripture and then really studying

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Scripture myself. I didn't grow up really understanding hermeneutics or systematic theology. So that was really the first time as an adult that I began to study those things.

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And then I guess you could say made my theology my own and made some course corrections as God rebuilt my faith.

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And then I started an apologetics ministry from that point on. Well, praise God for that. And let me announce your website.

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I will be repeating that later on in the program. But it's ElisaChilders .com, ElisaChilders .com.

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And now Tim Barnett, let's hear your story. Well, like Elisa, I was raised in a

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Christian home as well. I grew up in a small country church.

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You know, half the people who attended the church I was related to. And the other half, you know, we called aunts and uncles because it was almost like we were related.

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It was a really great church environment. Now there wasn't – that's not to say we didn't have some challenges along the way.

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But overall, it was a great church experience. Going to camp meetings is probably where I gave my life to the

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Lord. I can't give you the exact date when that happened.

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But like Elisa said, there really hasn't been a moment where I could say, you know,

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I haven't been believing on Jesus for my salvation as far back as I can remember.

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Now, I, growing up, loved the sciences, physics in particular.

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And so from an early age, I knew, man, I want to be an engineer or a science teacher or something like that.

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So I went to a secular university. And there, studying physics, I encountered all kinds of challenges that I hadn't experienced before because of that more isolated environment where I grew up with, you know, a lot of other

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Christians. And so it was really the challenges that came from not within but from without that started me on a journey of really seeking to understand what

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I believe and why I believe it. And so it was through that process where, you know,

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I was reading people like Richard Dawkins at the time and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

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They were very popular in the early 2000s. And then, of course, there was guys on the other side like Christian philosophers,

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William Lane Craig and many, many others. And what I found was that, man,

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Christianity actually has the goods. There really is good reason to be a

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Christian. And because of the trajectory of my life, wanting to become a science teacher,

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I thought, man, how is it that I've grown up in the church my whole life, going to youth group, doing the

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Sunday school thing, I mean, all the Christian stuff, and I never heard this stuff before. How is that possible?

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And so I made it kind of my mission that I would try to prevent other young Christians from growing up and not experiencing those arguments.

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So I started just kind of volunteering to speak at churches, and that really began to snowball.

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People began inviting me to speak at more and more events, to the point where I actually ended up leaving full -time teaching to become a

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Christian apologist full -time. And I love being able to introduce apologetics, especially to young people.

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And you just see their eyes light up. And, man, there are really good reasons to believe this stuff is true.

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And I've dedicated my life to doing that ever since. Well, praise God, and for more information on Tim Barnett's ministry, you can go to his website, timbarnett .org,

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timbarnett .org, and you can also go to the Stand to Reason website, str .org,

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str .org. Well, Elisa, let me start with you.

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The obvious first question to start our discussion is, what is, as even your subtitle claims, what is deconstruction of Christianity, and how did you first become aware of it?

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Well, the whole deconstruction conversation sort of traces along the narrative arc of my own story.

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So I hinted at this in the first question, but I'll elaborate a little bit to give you my perspective on this topic of deconstruction.

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So after I spent about seven or eight years as a part of the contemporary Christian group,

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Zoe Girl, we came off the road, and my husband and I started attending a church in middle Tennessee where we live, and this was an evangelical non -denominational church that had the

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Nicene Creed on its website, and we loved this church. And so after attending for about eight months, the pastor invited me to be a part of a smaller study and discussion group.

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He said, this would be like going to seminary. And I was really excited about that, but what I was unprepared for was that the pastor had already deconstructed his faith, but I didn't know that at the time.

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And so the arguments that he was bringing were really skeptical. They were sort of making us doubt the reliability of Scripture.

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They were casting aspersions on even things like the fundamentals of the faith, things like the resurrection and the virgin birth and the nature of Jesus and the character of God.

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And there was a lot of discussion that really was undermining the idea of biblical authority and errancy, inspiration.

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And so it really rattled me and sent me on a quest to figure out what I believed about all of these things.

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And so what ended up happening was I was propelled into a faith crisis that nearly took my faith out. And then years of study to rebuild is essentially what happened.

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And so I thought that I had been through deconstruction. In fact, in my first book, Another Gospel, where I talk about that journey,

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I describe it as a deconstruction. Well, fast forward all these years later, and I've been watching the deconstruction movement.

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I have actually changed the way I talk about my faith crisis, because what Tim and I discovered when we were researching deconstruction was that deconstruction is not simply just taking apart your faith, searching for truth, going to Scripture, even going to evidence in reality to figure out what is real, what is true, and then lining up your beliefs with that.

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That's actually not what's going on in the deconstruction movement. What's happening in the deconstruction movement is it's really a shift of authority from an external source of authority for truth that's outside of yourself.

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In other words, truth is true for all people at all times in all places. It doesn't matter what you think about it.

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It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Truth is true outside of all of those things. And it's really a shift of authority from an outside objective standard of truth to a subjective one.

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In other words, what I feel is good or bad or helpful or harmful, oppressive or liberating.

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And that's what we really see going on in the deconstruction hashtag. So I actually changed the way I talk about my journey.

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I was always on a truth quest. And although it was agonizing and painful, it really wasn't a deconstruction.

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And so the way Tim and I define deconstruction in the book is that it's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith but not requiring scripture as a standard.

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Because that is the primary way we see deconstruction expressed in the movement, which is largely happening online.

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It's not like there is a bunch of authoritative books written on this. This is sort of happening in real time.

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And as we can get into throughout the podcast, we use that word postmodern intentionally because it has philosophical baggage.

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But it really does have a dominant expression in culture. And that's how we are defining it.

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And, Tim, is this movement portraying itself as evangelical, even if it doesn't use the term?

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Perhaps it does. And what are the inspirations, the sources of this that have begun to transform, for the worse, those men in ministry that are leading this movement?

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Well, what you'll find if you go on social media, and that's where a lot of this is taking place, is if you type in hashtag deconstruction, you're kind of teleported into this phenomenon or this movement that's happening on social media.

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And right next to that term, hashtag deconstruction, you often find the hashtag exvangelical.

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And so what we noticed is that while in the deconstruction movement, people end up in all kinds of different locations or destinations.

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So someone may deconstruct and end up as an atheist, whereas someone else may deconstruct and end up in the

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New Age movement. And another person may be in a different kind of Christianity, like a progressive Christianity.

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Well, the destinations are always different. The source of what they're deconstructing, that original starting place, is usually referred to as evangelicalism.

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Now, what's really interesting is when you start to do the research on what does it even mean to be an evangelical, you get all kinds of different answers.

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There was a time when evangelical meant something very specific.

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And so there's something called the Bevington Quadrilateral, where it focused on four things.

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You know, the Bible is a source of essential truth. The cross as the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

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You have personal conviction that conversion was necessary for salvation.

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You have some kind of activism, which is usually evangelism. And so you have these four elements.

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But today, evangelicalism means something totally different. I mean, we cite this in a book, a study by Ligonier and Lifeway in 2022.

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They found that 43 % of self -identified evangelicals in the

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U .S. do not believe that Jesus is God, but rather just a good moral teacher.

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I mean, imagine this, that you have 43 % of self -described evangelicals who actually aren't

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Christian. They're denying something central to the Christian faith. This is not a peripheral thing.

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The deity of Christ is central. So when someone says that they're ex -evangelical, it's hard to know what that even means.

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Were they one of the evangelicals who actually held to what we call the

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Bebitun Quadrilateral, who were legitimate Christians who understood

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Christianity, or were they describing themselves as evangelical because of maybe the political party they, you know, their parents voted for, or because of, you know, they just went to church

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Christmas and Easter, and that's just, you know, so they identify as evangelical. So it's hard to know exactly where that person's coming from.

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What we do know is that they identified whatever it was as evangelicalism, and they don't want to identify with that anymore.

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And so they're describing the process they went through to leave that starting place as deconstruction.

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So that, I mean, that's, I don't think you'll find many in the deconstruction movement who will want to label themselves as evangelical.

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They'll want to use a different term. Now remind me of the second part to that question.

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The second part would be the sources of inspiration of the leaders.

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Like are there any particular leftist theologians perhaps of history that they've clung to?

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Like, for instance, you hear about some of those figures from history that those in the woke movement and social justice movement have gravitated toward.

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Are there any specific figures from history that are gleaned from by the leaders of this?

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Well, this is a good question, Chris. I actually think that they don't necessarily know the leaders who are forming kind of the foundation of their belief and the methodology they're using to break down their beliefs, deconstruct their beliefs.

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Like they may not know who Jacques Derrida is. But what we found was his postmodern methodology is all over the deconstruction movement.

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So while they don't know these figures and maybe they never learned about them in their philosophy class or their history class, they're actually using his playbook and that's because these philosophies trickle down into our media, into movies, into the music we listen to.

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It's literally the kind of the water we're swimming in. It's the air we breathe.

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And so it's like a fish not really knowing it's wet, even though it exists in water.

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And I think in a similar way, the postmodern philosophy has so influenced

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Christians even that they don't even realize that they bought into it.

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And so many of the things that they'll say, as Lisa just pointed out, when it comes to truth, they think they can be the source of truth.

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It can be true for me, but not for you. When it comes to authority, they can be the ultimate authority.

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And so I don't know if it's specific individuals that they would point to from history.

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I think it's more just the influence of the culture and the philosophies that have trickled down over the last few decades.

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We have to go to our first commercial break and when we return, we'll pick up with Lisa. And if anybody, once again, has any questions.

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And we do already have people waiting for their questions to be asked and answered on the air. But if you'd like to join them, if you want to get in line, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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So go to royaldiadem .com, mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And I am now back with Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett.

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We are discussing their book, The Deconstruction of Christianity, what it is, why it's destructive, and how to respond.

30:31

And our email address for questions is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And we do have already, and I'll allow

30:41

Elisa to answer this question since we left off with Tim.

30:47

We have a listener in a city that must be the funniest named city that I've ever heard of,

30:54

Minnehaha, Washington. Morgan in Minnehaha, Washington, wants to know, how did

31:00

Elisa and Tim meet and begin to collaborate on writing and I have a second question, and I'll wait until you answer that,

31:08

Elisa, and then I'll ask the second question. Okay, well, we met, I want to say it was back many years ago at one of the reality conferences,

31:17

I think. I don't entirely remember the first time I met Tim, at least virtually. We met in person when we were both on the reality tour, which is a youth apologetics tour that Stand to Reason puts on, which is just phenomenal.

31:31

And so, I think that's how we met, but I started to notice that Tim was posting about deconstruction and progressive

31:39

Christianity, and I loved some of the things he was saying, so I just knew that we were like -minded on this topic and it just kind of made sense for us to work together.

31:48

Okay, and the second question that Morgan has is, can you name names of primary figures promoting this deconstruction?

31:58

Well, you know, that's an interesting question, because we could definitely name some, and we do in the book, and I'll do that in a moment, but the thing to understand about the nature of deconstruction is that there are many, many just anonymous people on TikTok and on different social media platforms that might or might not even have a massive following, but they'll have videos that have millions of likes, hundreds of thousands of, excuse me, millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes.

32:26

And so, while there are certain figures that kind of lead the movement, I'm thinking of people like Derek Webb, even to a certain extent, progressive

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Christian leaders like Brian Zond and Brian McLaren and people like that. You have people like Jen Hatmaker.

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You have people like even Glennon Doyle. It's so loose and it's so fluid and constantly moving and changing that a lot of the figures can just be maybe a progressive

32:55

Christian figure or a New Age figure. There's people like the Naked Pastor. And I don't know, Tim, who am

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I missing? Yeah, I mean, this is what's crucial about this. You could have someone like the

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Naked Pastor, and don't Google Naked Pastor, but that's kind of his handle.

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That's his handle on Instagram. And when we started researching the book, he had, you know, tens of thousands of followers.

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Now he's well over 100 ,000 followers just on Instagram. He's on TikTok as well.

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And he consistently puts out videos on deconstruction and how to deconstruct.

33:31

And he actually credits himself about 10 years ago with kind of, or 15 years ago, of coining the term deconstruction, using the term, coming out of a hermeneutics class where they were applying

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Derrida's methodology, and actually they were being taught not to do that. And he came away saying, actually, that's how we should deconstruct the scriptures.

33:55

And so he started applying it to faith. And so you have these individuals who maybe, you know, in the big scheme of things, aren't like best -selling authors or whatever, but they have a following.

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People start to watch their videos, and they show up in our algorithms. And I think that's where it's having the most impact is those kinds of profiles and those kinds of influencers, rather than, say, a

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Brian McLaren, who is kind of a thought leader in this movement, but maybe isn't getting the traction and the influence that some of these people online are having.

34:36

Excellent. By the way, Morgan, please give us your full mailing address in Minnehaha, Washington, because you've just won a free copy of The Deconstruction of Christianity, compliments of Tyndale House Publishing, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com.

34:54

We'll be actually shipping the book out to you. Thanks for the excellent questions.

35:00

We have Boris in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Boris asks, is this any way connected with the emergent church movement that seemed to die out?

35:14

One of the things that seemed to be familiar in my ears is that the emergent church seemed to have this idea that we're still on a journey, and it's wrong to have concrete, established, systemized theology, because we're all just in a process of learning and shouldn't judge each other for where we are on that journey.

35:38

Well, so regarding the emergent church, I might challenge just a little bit in that question that the emergent church died out.

35:45

It actually didn't die out, in my opinion. It just sort of morphed and changed and changed its name.

35:50

In fact, Brian McLaren, who was an early leader in the emergent church, said just that in a blog post that he wrote in 2012.

35:58

He said, it's not like we went away. We just kind of went underground, and now we call it something else. And when it reemerged, really what you have is what we know today as progressive

36:07

Christianity. So the relationship between progressive Christianity and deconstruction is a close one.

36:13

It's not exactly the same thing, whereas progressive Christianity might be one of the destinations that deconstruction can take you to.

36:21

There are people who deconstruct, and Tim did such a good job earlier of explaining how really it's leaving that singular starting place in deconstruction.

36:30

But people can go to various different destinations, whether it be progressive Christianity or secular humanism or agnosticism or some type of new age or some sort of mixture of all of those.

36:41

And so progressive Christianity is really the sort of the continual work of that emergent church, and it's very closely related.

36:50

So what I would say, I would probably say it this way, is that people who become progressive

36:55

Christians have deconstructed, while not every person who deconstructs becomes a progressive

37:00

Christian. Anything to add, Tim? And by the way, yeah, this actually relates to the previous question from Morgan about kind of where this book came from, because what's fascinating is

37:11

I, a number of years ago, put together a whole bunch of material to teach five different days at a camp, a kind of week -long camp thing, and it was all gonna be on deconstruction because that was the hot topic of the time.

37:25

I mean, there was well -known people like Joshua Harris, who wrote I Kissed Dating Goodbye.

37:30

There were people like Marty Sampson from Hillsong. I mean, the list went on. John Steingard from Hawk Nelson.

37:36

A lot of musicians in particular were copying on Instagram or other platforms and announcing their departure from Christianity, and they were using the term deconstruction.

37:46

And so trying to bring some clarity, I put this series of classes together. About halfway through the week, it came to me that, man, a lot of the people who end up in progressive

38:01

Christianity got there through deconstruction. And so in my mind, it's like this was the vehicle. Progressive deconstruction is like a vehicle that takes you somewhere.

38:12

It's not a that. It's a how. It's a methodology. And because Elisa had written a book,

38:18

Another Gospel, basically responding to progressive Christianity, I reached out to her and said, Elisa, you need to write the book on deconstruction because it's like the prequel to your book.

38:30

It's how people end up in what you wrote about. And so when

38:35

I emailed, when I texted her, she's like, well, I'm really busy right now. She was actually working on a different book at the time,

38:42

Live Your Truth and Other Lies. And then I just kind of threw it out there. Hey, do you want to write this one together?

38:48

And then she said, let's talk. And so that's kind of where this whole thing started.

38:53

But it was because of this connection. It was because of the connection between the process of deconstruction and a destination that a lot of these people end up in which is progressive

39:04

Christianity. Well, thanks, Boris. Give us your full mailing address in St. Petersburg, Florida, because you've also won the

39:11

Deconstruction of Christianity. Thanks to our friends at Tyndale and thanks to CVBBS .com.

39:17

We'll be shipping it out to you. We have Max in Calverton, Long Island, New York.

39:25

And Max wants to know, what is the appeal of this to people who are established in evangelical churches?

39:33

I know that very often left -wing Christianity, which we know is not really Christianity, appeals to the compassion of people and makes the lie that they are more like Jesus because they're more forgiving and tolerant and compassionate.

39:51

And they will even cite that liberals are very much involved in feeding the poor and clothing the poor and housing the poor.

40:03

Do you want to take that one? Yeah, sure. I'm sorry about that. Sure. I mean, I'll start.

40:09

I think part of the appeal is, I mean, go back to the Garden of Eden and look at the appeal to Eve.

40:17

You know, did God really say? And of course, he hangs this fruit and it's kind of like, you can be as God.

40:25

You can be your own authority. You can determine truth for yourself. And there is something really appealing from that message and that philosophy.

40:36

And I think just as people fell for it, you know, they fell for it in the garden. They've been falling for it ever since.

40:44

I want to determine what's true for myself. I want to determine what's right in my own eyes.

40:50

And this is what we're seeing today. Now, what's new about it? So it's an old story.

40:56

It's this kind of the same old thing. What's new about it is social media.

41:02

And so people have been deconstructing. They've been going through this same process since the beginning.

41:08

But now you have people going online and announcing it to the world.

41:14

And there's something very evangelistic about it, like about how the process takes place.

41:22

When Joshua Harris, who had a massive platform on social media, said, you know, he went on Instagram.

41:30

First, he announced that he was divorcing his wife. And of course, that made headlines because this is the guy that wrote, I kiss dating goodbye.

41:36

Purity culture. Like, this is how you're going to have a lasting relationship. Follow these steps. Well, now he's divorcing his wife.

41:43

So the next week, he goes on Instagram and says, well, here's what I left out, that I've actually gone through this process of deconstruction.

41:52

And this sent shockwaves. And you read the comments underneath this post. And people were responding and saying, good for you.

42:00

Man, this has started me on my own journey of deconstruction. So I think that part of the appeal is that you get to be your own

42:09

God, little G God. And that's been the appeal since the very beginning.

42:15

I don't know if Elisa has something to add to that. That's good. The specific question about, you know, maybe what is the cause or what's the crisis that causes that to happen?

42:27

And one of the things we discovered in our research is that there is usually a crisis that begins the deconstruction process.

42:36

And it can be such a mixture of things. It can be several different crises. And it's very hard to untie some of those knots because you might have somebody who went through a legitimate experience of spiritual abuse or church abuse.

42:48

But then you might just have somebody else who feels abused because their sinful behavior was not tolerated or they were brought under church discipline for their unrepentant sin.

42:57

And those are two very different things, but they're both being called abuse. And so there can be a lot of tangly knots to untie when it comes to the crises.

43:05

But you could have some kind of a spiritual abuse thing going on, but also at the same time, maybe the moral feeling of a leader or maybe, you know, the evangelical support of Donald Trump was a huge part of what triggered a lot of people into deconstructions.

43:21

And then a lot of that stuff all kind of tangled up together. So like Tim said in the beginning, really just depends on what somebody thinks evangelical means.

43:30

But in almost every case, that's what they're leaving. And that's why that hashtag exvangelical is often used synonymously with and in conjunction with the deconstruction hashtag.

43:41

Now, very often when you have aberrant and heretical and dangerous movements rise up that have some kind of an appeal to the evangelical movement, very often there are evangelicals themselves, evangelical leaders and churches more in the mainstream that are giving some kind of approval, some kind of a platform to folks in the aberrant group.

44:13

And they're like turning a blind eye to anything that they disagree with. Is anything like that happening with deconstruction?

44:21

I think there's some of that, and that's intentional and some of it that's unintentional.

44:27

I mean, you got me thinking here. This is a really good question. And this is actually something we wrestled with when we were trying to write the kind of the description or definition of the word deconstruction.

44:36

We knew this was going to be the hardest sentence in the entire book to write because people were using the term to mean all kinds of different things.

44:45

And one of the things we were going to do was actually add adjectives to the front of the word deconstruction.

44:50

So you could add good deconstruction and then you could have bad deconstruction or maybe healthy deconstruction and unhealthy deconstruction.

44:59

And what we're seeing is, I think unintentionally, there's some evangelical leaders out there.

45:05

There's some evangelical pastors out there who are standing in front of their pulpits and they're saying, or behind their pulpits, and they're saying, okay, let's deconstruct together.

45:16

Let's do good deconstruction. And the problem with that is,

45:21

I think they're just throwing so much confusion out there because when the congregant goes online and they type in deconstruction, they get launched into this world where they get to meet people like the naked pastor who will help them deconstruct.

45:39

They'll meet people like Jegezus, who is a guy who dresses up like a gay

45:45

Jesus. I mean, this is like blasphemous stuff. But he's got a quarter of a million followers on TikTok.

45:51

You got Queen of the Heathens. I mean, the list goes on and on. These people have these kind of creative names that they come up with, and like the character or an influencer, and they get half a million followers.

46:02

And so pastors, I think, don't realize what they're doing when they encourage people to do deconstruction.

46:11

Even though they may be well -meaning, they're thinking, well, what we're going to do is kind of break down our beliefs using the scriptures.

46:18

Well, it turns out no one, or hardly anyone, in the deconstruction movement is pulling out the scriptures to see what things are so, like the

46:29

Bereans, okay? They're not Bereans. They're deconstructors. And that's why we just abandon trying to take that approach.

46:37

It would be like, you know, when you have Mormons using similar words to historic

46:44

Christians. I mean, they may use the word gospel. They may use the word Jesus. They may use the word God. But what they mean by God, and what they mean by Jesus, and what they mean by the gospel is completely different.

46:55

It's the same word, but it's a different dictionary. And so I don't, you know, God isn't just one of many, and having spirit be his children, and this kind of thing.

47:05

And Jesus isn't the half -brother of Satan, and all this other stuff. It's just not there. Our gospel is not a gospel of works.

47:12

It's grace through faith. So it's really important, especially now, to bring clarity to these issues.

47:22

And that is honestly one of the reasons we wrote this book, is because we saw so much confusion, especially in the church.

47:29

And it wasn't just the deconstructionists that were bringing confusion. It was a lot of well -meaning evangelical pastors and leaders who were adding to the confusion as well.

47:41

And so our advice, what we're saying, which is different from what others are saying, we're saying, don't use the word deconstruction.

47:50

It's already being used. We don't—to mean something very particular, we don't have to try to baptize that term.

47:57

We have other biblical terms, like how about reforming your faith, right?

48:03

How about discernment? How about disentangling? There's other ways that we can talk about this without using a word that's just going to add to the confusion.

48:11

Okay. We have Valerie in Stanford, Connecticut.

48:20

And Valerie has a question specifically for Elisa. And Valerie said, is this movement more appealing to women or to men, or does it seem to be equally heavy -handed?

48:37

That's an interesting question. We don't—I don't have statistics on that. I don't have data. I would just have my observations.

48:44

And my observations are that I think, and Tim, you can tell me if you agree with this, I feel like it's pretty equal.

48:50

You have, you know, it might take on a different flavor or a different look for women than it does for men. But it is not distinctly feminine in its movement, although there are a lot of female people leading the charge.

49:01

But I see many men as well. And you know what's interesting too is that people would think, oh, well, maybe this is just happening among the younger generation.

49:09

But it's been astonishing to me how many people my age are leading the charge of the deconstruction.

49:15

I'll be 50, gosh, sooner than I'd like to think about. But many people who are leaders are about my age, maybe even a little older.

49:24

Some of them are even— I hear deconstruction stories of older people. So it sort of doesn't seem to be hitting one particular demographic.

49:32

I don't know. Do you agree with that, Tim? Yeah, I totally agree with that. It's no respecter of persons.

49:37

It can come for anyone at any age, especially—you talked about the crisis earlier— especially if that foundation isn't set.

49:47

In the book, we make a really important distinction between the crisis that's like the fuse that leads to deconstruction, which is the explosion.

49:56

And we ask the question, why is it that two people who can have similar stories, raised in the same home, maybe go to the same youth group, same church, they experience the same crisis and one deconstructs and ends up abandoning their faith and another maybe does reformation or reforms their faith and ends up having a deeper faith.

50:18

And so that foundation is so important. Now, it just turns out that when you're younger, typically you just accept your beliefs like you accept

50:28

Christmas presents. It's like when my parents told me God exists at a very early age, two, three, we start learning to pray and you just repeat after me kind of prayers, gentle Jesus, meek and mild, this kind of thing.

50:42

I just accepted, okay, Jesus is God. Okay, God exists. The Bible is his word and so on.

50:48

And it wasn't until I was a little bit older where, man, I got to start making this foundation a little bit more solid to stand on.

50:55

And that's where you start to build on it. And then it takes sometimes those doubts and those questions and maybe even a crisis where you really start to fortify that foundation.

51:05

And so for young people, if they don't have that foundation built, and sadly, I don't think, again,

51:11

I'm not trying to beat up on the bride of Christ or something, but I don't think the evangelical church has done a great job at preparing young people for the challenges that are out there.

51:23

That was my experience. I didn't know about the problem of evil and some of these really difficult challenges to deal with when

51:32

I was young. No one talked about this. I didn't know what the word apologetics was until I was like 23 years old.

51:40

And yet I grew up in the church. But there's also people in their 60s and 70s who don't know what the word apologetics is.

51:48

They don't know why they believe the things that they've been believing for decades. And so they're kind of in the same boat as that young of age

51:58

Christian. They're a young Christian, but they just happen to be old. So they're still on milk and not feasting on meat.

52:08

And so this is, again, I think the foundation is so important and we got to start when we're as young as possible.

52:16

Discipleship, this is so key. Someone becomes a Christian, that's not the end. That's the beginning.

52:22

And they need to be discipled. So when they've been decades, 20, 30, 40 years with the

52:29

Lord, they are the person that our younger people are going to for answers and being able to lean on when they're going through their crisis.

52:40

So yeah, I don't think there's a particular, we haven't done the sociological study. I don't think anyone has.

52:47

But what's really important is that we focus it on that foundation, whatever the person's age.

52:53

Well, we have to go to our midway break. And once again, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

52:59

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01:09:24

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01:09:33

Earth, I have helped many people in the Ion Sharpens Ion Radio audience spanning the globe find biblically faithful churches, sometimes even within just a couple of minutes from where they live, and that may be you, too, if you are without a biblically sound church home.

01:09:48

So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:09:54

and put I need a church in the subject line.

01:10:00

Also, I just want to remind you that my former church, where I was a member before relocating to Pennsylvania, Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick, New York, is going to be having their

01:10:12

Courageous Marriage Seminar on Friday and Saturday, August 23rd and 24th, featuring

01:10:20

Dr. Joe Rigney, who is a best -selling author, and if you would like to register for this marriage seminar,

01:10:28

Courageous Marriage Seminar, go to gracereformedbaptistchurch .org,

01:10:34

gracereformedbaptistchurch .org, and once again, if you want to send in a question to my guests today,

01:10:42

Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett on the deconstruction of Christianity, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:10:50

chrisarnson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence, and I just want to read some of the endorsements for this book by folks who

01:11:01

I have had on this program as guests of my own, some of whom are personal friends too, like Rosaria Butterfield.

01:11:09

She says, this book is the wake -up call that the true church needs, and my friend

01:11:16

John Cooper from the band Skillet says, it's finally here, the clear, gracious, definitive book on deconstruction.

01:11:26

If you've been confused about what deconstruction is and why it's happening, or if you want to help people who are questioning their faith, then get this book.

01:11:40

And Ginger Dugger Volo, who I've had on this program, and I am very close friends with her husband

01:11:46

Jeremy and her in -laws, Ginger Dugger Volo says that this is highly recommended, and Gregory Kukul, who

01:11:57

I've had on this program, says if you have loved ones caught in the deconstruction web woven by evangelical, in quotes,

01:12:07

YouTubers and tiktokers, let Elisa Childers and Tim Barnett guide you out of the confusing tangle.

01:12:17

Well, and there are more than that as well, and those are very powerful endorsements.

01:12:24

Let me go to, I think, a very good question.

01:12:30

In fact, they've all been good so far. We have, and we'll start with Elisa, we have

01:12:37

Shasta in Ballston Lake, New York, and Shasta says, earlier you had somebody ask if this movement of deconstruction is more attractive to men or to women, but I'd like to know, is it specifically more attractive to one theological group of evangelicals over others?

01:13:00

I think that's a very good question. Like, for instance, the Emergent Church, if I'm not mistaken, seemed to be very attractive to the

01:13:06

Young, Restless, and Reform movement, which came out of my own movement of reformed

01:13:13

Christianity, Calvinism, if you will. But Elisa, what's your answer to that? Elisa, are you there?

01:13:24

Oh my goodness, I had myself muted. I am so sorry. That's all right, I've done that many times. I had unmuted on the thing in the night, anyway.

01:13:32

All right, I'm back. That's another question that I would have to sort of just guess from my own observation.

01:13:40

Again, there's not really any real -time data on these types of things, and I'll definitely want

01:13:46

Tim to weigh on this too, but it seems to me like they're deconstructing out of every stream of evangelicalism.

01:13:53

In the beginning, I thought maybe this is just largely a reaction against maybe Calvinism or something like that, because a lot of, especially

01:14:01

Derek Webb, was such a fascinating figure in this movement, because he deconstructed out of Calvinistic belief, and yet even as an atheist, it's almost like he's still a

01:14:13

Calvinist, because he has song lyrics that say, it's really true, like he has song lyrics that say, you know, maybe

01:14:19

I just wasn't chosen, and I don't have any say in that, and he's like wrestling with the previous

01:14:25

Calvinist ideas that he had held. And there are certainly others, in fact, one of the things that Tim and I encounter quite a bit is people will say, oh, you're just defending your

01:14:35

Calvinistic, you know, doctrine, that's something they just assume about us, because we're, so there is definitely a strong theme of Calvinism that's involved with it, but I also see people deconstructing out of hyper charismatic churches and out of hyper legalistic churches, and in some cases, what you find is that what they're deconstructing out of, you know, you could make a legitimate complaint about certain doctrinal things, but it's like they're wanting to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and this is sort of something

01:15:04

I experienced when I went to the church that had the deconstructed pastor, is that as a touring musician, we played shows in all sorts of different kinds of evangelical churches, and so there were definitely some things that I back then was thinking, man, we need some reform as an evangelical church in some of these areas, and so some of the people in my class had the same critiques, and so I thought we were on the same page wanting to reform the church, but really what

01:15:34

I was not realizing was that so many of the people that I had been in that church with were willing to just throw the gospel out with their critiques and complaints of the evangelical church.

01:15:44

So I can't really say it's focused on one particular stream, it just seems to be happening to every stream.

01:15:54

Huh. Tim? Yeah, I would totally agree with that. One thing

01:15:59

I would add is I think that some who deconstruct, it's a reaction to a belief system that puts every doctrine as equally essential.

01:16:15

And so we've seen people who were questioning end times, like a different view of end times, their eschatology, or maybe they're questioning a different view of creation, and they go from that to, well, then if my view that I was raised in isn't true, then

01:16:37

I'm out completely. And you're thinking, wow, I don't think the church has done a good job teaching what you might call theological triage.

01:16:47

I know Al Mohler's talked about this, and others have talked about this idea of, look, there's essential, there's secondary, and tertiary doctrines.

01:16:57

And we need to make sure we keep first things first. The gospel is a matter of first importance.

01:17:03

But there are other important issues that aren't essential issues, like for salvation.

01:17:09

And so we want to figure out what the true answer is, but as the body of Christ, we can disagree as brothers and sisters.

01:17:16

So I think there's this rebellion against every doctrine being essential to where you end up.

01:17:24

I think this is where progressives end up, where no doctrine is essential anymore. And so you can believe whatever you want.

01:17:31

I mean, I'm working on some Red Pen Logic video responses, and there's someone saying that it doesn't matter if Jesus is

01:17:39

God or not. They're a progressive pastor. I'm thinking, wow, you've jumped right out of the boat here.

01:17:46

It doesn't matter what you believe anymore. And so I think that there is some of that reaction happening in the deconstruction movement, where they were just taught, yeah, every doctrine is equally essential.

01:18:00

And so if there's an undermining of one of those doctrines, look, let's be honest, none of us has perfect theology.

01:18:08

None of us are Jesus. We're all kind of trying to figure this out. Oh, speak for yourself, pal. I'm only kidding.

01:18:16

There are things that 10 years ago I believed, and now I don't believe those anymore because I'm trying to get closer to the truth.

01:18:23

I'm trying to align my beliefs as best I can with Scripture. And that's the goal of sanctification.

01:18:34

And so I just think that we need to do a better job teaching that.

01:18:41

And we may see some of these people who thought that that was the only other option, you know, was just leaving completely.

01:18:50

Well, maybe if they understood how this whole thing works, they would have stuck around. Yes, and I have, unfortunately, become familiar with folks that are bordering on being cultic, even if they have

01:19:04

Orthodox theology, but who make everything an issue of separation.

01:19:13

And it really is a revelation, I think, of pride and thinking of one more of oneself more highly than you ought, as the

01:19:23

Bible forbids. And I even know of a fundamentalist pastor who, for a time, disfellowshipped his own son -in -law, who is another pastor, because his son -in -law did not agree with his view of only having the

01:19:40

Lord's Supper on Wednesday night because he was convinced that Christ was crucified on a Wednesday.

01:19:46

Things like that, you know, I mean, that's bordering on lunacy. But so it seems to me that what you're saying—and you could correct me if I'm wrong, and then, of course, after Tim responds, at least

01:19:59

I would love to hear what you have to say—that in response to this overly anal -retentive micromanaging of people's beliefs that go beyond the pale of biblical orthodoxy but start to really get involved in minutiae and making secondary and tertiary and even issues on lower levels of importance all bordering on salvation issues, or even not even bordering on them, making them salvation issues, that seems to have had a response from certain

01:20:43

Christians who have become minimalistic. And if you believe in the

01:20:49

Apostles' Creed, that's fine with me, that's all you need to know. And then from there, are you saying it's that Christian minimalism that maybe has given birth to this deconstruction?

01:21:03

Am I hearing that right, or am I missing something? Well, it's not necessarily that it gave birth to it.

01:21:10

Well, I think you've got to look at each deconstructor on a case -by -case basis.

01:21:17

In the book, we say, if you've heard one deconstruction story, you've heard one deconstruction story.

01:21:24

It's not you've heard one, you've heard them all. Now, there are commonalities, and we try to highlight those in the book.

01:21:29

But I think what we're trying to say here is, there is a certain group who were raised in churches where there was just essentials, everything was essential, like you just described, even things like, we have to take the

01:21:44

Lord's Supper on a Wednesday. And then they start to, well, whereas they're asking the question, you know, well, why

01:21:51

Wednesday? Why couldn't it be on a Sunday morning or whatever? And then they received the pushback, no, you're out if this if you don't believe this.

01:22:03

Then it sets them on the course of deconstruction. Well, if my dad, who was a pastor, was wrong about this, then he must have been wrong about everything else.

01:22:15

And so kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. What we do in the book is we want to encourage people, hey, it's okay to experience doubt.

01:22:23

It's okay to ask questions. We cite a few people who were treated as if questioning was sinning, like confessing your questions is the same as confessing your sins.

01:22:37

And so what happens is you just end up pushing those, suppressing those questions down.

01:22:43

But of course, that's not the solution because those things are eventually going to rise to bubble to the surface.

01:22:49

And so we need to have a biblical way of wrestling with questions and wrestling with doubts.

01:22:57

That's why we actually did dedicate an entire chapter of the book to that enterprise.

01:23:03

How does the church better respond to doubts and questions? Because I think there's a biblically faithful way to do that.

01:23:12

And so that's kind of our encouragement and our exhortation to the church, hey, maybe this is the better approach.

01:23:20

So we could avoid at least some of the deconstructors going down this path because of the way that we've treated doctrine and the way we've treated questions about some of those doctrines, if that makes sense.

01:23:34

Yeah. And Alicia, have anything to add? Yeah. I don't think it's necessarily a reaction because of minimalism.

01:23:43

In fact, most people in the deconstruction don't even understand that there are fundamentals.

01:23:50

There are beliefs that we can't agree to disagree about, beliefs that would put you outside the

01:23:56

Christian faith. It's like everything is sort of put on the same level. So one of the things that I've been asked is when

01:24:02

I try to make distinctions between maybe something that faithful Christians disagree about versus something we can't disagree about,

01:24:10

I'll bring up maybe the resurrection. That's something that is foundational to Christianity. You can't disbelieve the resurrection and be a

01:24:18

Christian. And then people will say, well, yeah, but Calvinists and non -Calvinists can't even agree about how salvation works.

01:24:26

And it's almost like this false equivalence of bringing in, they don't sometimes get that the distinctions are there between.

01:24:34

And of course, as we all know that just because something is secondary doesn't mean it's not important.

01:24:40

But I don't know if in many of the environments in which these, maybe some of them,

01:24:47

I don't want to say everybody, of course, but in some of them grew up, they weren't really taught that, hey, this is our church's position, say on eschatology, but our brothers and sisters in other streams have a different view and we love them.

01:25:01

We're still brothers and sisters. I think something like that goes a long way to stave off this type deconstruction that we're seeing.

01:25:09

Now, we'll have you, Elisa, start and then Tim can chime in with this question.

01:25:15

When I observe the left in my years of being a born -again believer, which started in the 1980s, in my mid -20s, there has been a shift in the apologetic of the left in that, for the most part, when

01:25:41

I was a new Christian, the left, those who were professing to be

01:25:47

Christians, and even not professing to be Christians, they seem to be unified, that we can't trust the

01:25:54

Bible. The Bible is just cover to cover, a book that's filled with myths and fables, and anybody that would believe in any of this stuff is a moron, and it's all laughable.

01:26:08

But now you have a much more sophisticated leftist, where you will have brilliant theologians using, in their own rhetoric anyway, the original languages of the

01:26:25

Bible, and they will be claiming to teach that the

01:26:31

Bible actually proves their points, and sometimes they may affirm things that we all agree, like the deity of Christ, the

01:26:41

Trinity, the bodily resurrection, but they will approve of homosexuality, and so on, perhaps even approve of abortion.

01:26:50

So this movement that you're talking about, deconstruction, is there some kind of an intelligentsia in an academic realm that they are drawn to?

01:27:05

And, of course, you just answered my question in one way. I think it was Tim that said that each person involved in deconstruction is like a story unto itself, so I know that you can't say it's all from, all reflecting the same phenomenon, but is it all more of the mushy, gushy, believe -whatever -you -want realm, or are there more hardcore theologians out there claiming that they can truly affirm from the

01:27:39

Scriptures that what these deconstructionists are saying is true? Yes, to both.

01:27:47

Yeah, both are true. So every heresy has its scholars, as we well know. So, yeah, what you described just then in the way you framed that question is what

01:27:56

I experience very often in progressive Christianity. I think there's this false idea among many evangelicals that progressive

01:28:02

Christians are all just trying to be cool, trying to wear their skinny jeans, and, you know, say the cool, be cool with culture, and I'm not saying that that pressure isn't there.

01:28:11

I think that is there. But many progressive Christians are, I think, very persuaded, very sincere in their belief that conservative

01:28:20

Christians are the ones that have hijacked the faith, and so they do have their scholars. There are people like Pete Enns. There are people who are trained

01:28:29

Bible scholars. In fact, interestingly, Bart Ehrman, who grew up evangelical and then deconverted, who is a

01:28:35

Bible scholar, is often used as a major authority among this group of progressive

01:28:41

Christians and deconstructionists, and so it's very interesting. Now, here, one thing I wanted to comment on when you said, you know, people who might believe in the resurrection and that the

01:28:52

Bible is inspired in God's word and a couple other things, but also affirm homosexuality. I'll be honest with you.

01:28:57

I don't know anybody who holds all of those. It seems to, in my view, what happens is once somebody embraces the

01:29:04

LGBTQ, you, especially now in our with the critical social theories, you can't only have that one issue because that's related to that oppressed versus oppressor narrative.

01:29:15

So, if you're shifting on that and you're going to be shifting on everything, and I have,

01:29:21

I can only think of one person in my mind that claims. Matthew Vines. That's right. Matthew Vines, who is, you know,

01:29:28

LGBT affirming, who still at least says he believes in inerrancy.

01:29:33

I don't know of anybody else, and I think that's my opinion. I think it's very strategic on his part, but typically what happens is when people embrace the

01:29:43

LGBTQ inclusion or whatever they want to call it, affirmation, everything else starts to go out the window.

01:29:50

Everything else just goes, and pretty soon the Bible is just a human book about God that maybe sometimes

01:29:57

God can use to bring an inspiring thought to you, but I will say this at the same time because nobody's,

01:30:04

I'm not accusing them of being consistent with this. So, what will often happen as well is that they will accuse, let's say, evangelicals of being literalists.

01:30:13

So, that's like an insult in the deconstruction movement that you're such a literalist, and yet they become the most wooden literalist when they want to catch you in something that they think is hypocrisy.

01:30:27

I'll just give you an example, and then we can throw it to Tim, but there is a meme that went around that said, hey,

01:30:33

Christians, you say you take the Bible literally, but did you sell everything you have and follow

01:30:38

Jesus? And, of course, that's a reference to the rich young ruler where the rich young ruler wanted to follow

01:30:43

Jesus or, you know, said, what do I need to do? And Jesus said, sell everything you have. Well, obviously,

01:30:48

Jesus didn't require that of all of his followers, but he was identifying the idol in that guy's life.

01:30:54

He was saying, you know, what is it that you don't want to let go of? What is it that you don't want to die to yourself? And so, that was what it was in his case, and then he went away sad, right?

01:31:03

And yet they say, well, if you take that literally, then Jesus is saying that. So, you have to go sell everything you have, but obviously, they don't,

01:31:10

I don't think they even really believe that. They just kind of weaponize that language of literalism, and they'll use the

01:31:16

Bible conveniently to their advantage when, you know, when it's convenient. By the way, do you remember, you may be a lot younger than me, and in fact,

01:31:25

I know you're a lot younger than me, but I don't know if you're too young to remember the West Wing.

01:31:31

Do you remember that program? Okay, how crazy you would ask that because I never watched it when it was on the air, but a couple years ago, my husband and I started watching some episodes, and I was just blown away at how, like, the

01:31:43

Democrats were like the conservatives today. It's like, it's like a decline of our culture.

01:31:49

Like, even the Democrats were more like conservatives back then. Well, there was a classic episode where Martin Sheen, the

01:31:55

President of the United States, was played by Martin Sheen, and he was having a confrontation with this radio talk show host who was supposed to be patterned after Dr.

01:32:05

Laura, the ultra -conservative Jewish radio host, and I think in this episode, they made her a

01:32:12

Christian, an evangelical Christian, but he was confronting her with the same kinds of things.

01:32:18

Oh, so you believe the Bible should be taking, literally, should we outlaw football because they use pigskin?

01:32:25

Of course, they don't even use pigskin, that's a nickname, and he went on and on and on with wearing mixed fabrics, and he was going into ceremonial law from the old covenant, trying to, and of course, in the episode, he shamed her and shut her mouth.

01:32:42

She just didn't know what to say to any of that. That was a very frustrating episode to watch. Right, and before we go back to Tim, I just wanted to push back a little bit on there being no pro -homosexual leftists that believe in the inerrancy of Scripture and so forth.

01:32:59

I just arranged a debate, I don't know how many months ago it was, maybe six months, between Dr.

01:33:06

James R. White, my dear friend of Alpha and Omega Ministries, who debated Dr. Gregory Coles, who is one of the champions of the so -called

01:33:17

Side B Christianity movement, and he claimed to absolutely believe in the inerrancy of Scripture.

01:33:26

He even believed that homosexual activity, just like heterosexual activity out of marriage, was sinful and damning, but he believed that there was absolutely nothing innately wrong with being homosexual and identifying that way, and he even said that if someone offered him a pill that could magically cure him of his homosexual proclivity, he would not take it, and he actually believed it was a gift from God to be this way, even though he doesn't believe that you can have sex outside of marriage, and marriage, he agrees, is only between one man and one woman, and that lust was wrong, but he redefined lust, really, even though obviously he wouldn't admit that.

01:34:20

So how do you put that category of people? No, you're absolutely right.

01:34:27

The Side B conversation is sort of a fight I've been in here lately, so I hadn't really, you're right, no,

01:34:34

I think you're absolutely right, because typically when you think of gay affirming, Side B people will say, well, we don't agree with the behavior, but they're okay with the identity, as you put that very well.

01:34:47

So yeah, you're right, Side B people, many Side B people would affirm inerrancy and inspiration.

01:34:53

Yeah, you're right. Even the whole Revoice movement. And Tim, anything to add?

01:34:59

Yeah, I think this is important. At the outset of our conversation together,

01:35:05

Alisa defined deconstruction this way. It's rethinking your faith. It's a postmodern process of rethinking your faith without requiring

01:35:15

Scripture as a standard, and that last part, without requiring

01:35:20

Scripture as the standard or your final authority. That is so crucial to this discussion.

01:35:26

I think there's two tactics in play. You're right. There are people in the deconstruction camp that will use the

01:35:33

Bible to try to support their agenda. So they may try to argue for abortion.

01:35:40

They may try to argue for homosexuality, transgenderism, all these things you see pop up.

01:35:46

But what's fascinating is I think it's a little disingenuous, because when push comes to shove, the

01:35:55

Bible isn't really their authority, and they are willing to say, well, at the end of the day,

01:36:02

Paul was wrong, or Moses was wrong, or Jesus was wrong. I mean, at the end of the day, we bring the receipts in our book to show a progressive pastor or whoever is going through coaching someone through a faith deconstruction and essentially saying, they're asked, what do you do with these passages where Paul is clearly teaching penal substitutionary atonement?

01:36:30

This particular pastor's approach is not to wrestle with the Scripture and say, well, if we go to this verse over here, no, he just straight up says,

01:36:39

I told her he's wrong. Paul is wrong. I'll just quote what he says here.

01:36:48

He says, folks, this is what's wrong with much of Christianity. All authority is given to a book and then given to church people who claim it's authority for themselves.

01:36:55

If you can't say Paul is wrong, it's going to be even harder to say that they are wrong. That's by design.

01:37:02

So what's going on there? I mean, at the end of the day, there's no biblical authority, and that is a hallmark of deconstruction.

01:37:12

This is great for the listener to hear, I think, because if they're in conversation with someone and that someone they're talking to is wrestling with questions and doubts or whatever, but they still care about what

01:37:25

God says, they still care about what Scripture says, they're in a good place. We may not say they're going through the process of deconstruction.

01:37:37

Maybe they really do care about the truth, and they're using the Bible as the authority, and that's where you want to sit down and wrestle like the

01:37:44

Bereans. Let's see what it really says. But if that person basically says, well,

01:37:50

I don't care what a 2 ,000 -year -old book has to say about this, if they're referring to the

01:37:57

New Testament, well, you're in a completely different situation, and likely that person is in the process of deconstruction.

01:38:04

And what you're going to find is when you start to do apologetics, you're just spinning your wheels, because they don't really care about what's true, and they don't really care about what the

01:38:17

Scriptures have to say. That's going to be a completely different approach when having conversation with that person.

01:38:24

And by the way, our listener in Ballston Lake, New York, I think I forgot to tell you that you've also won the last copy that we have available for free from Tyndale, The Deconstruction of Christianity.

01:38:37

Make sure that we have your full mailing address in Ballston Lake, New York. We're going to our final break.

01:38:43

Don't go away. We'll be right back. James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here.

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I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

01:41:08

Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

01:41:16

I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris, if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com,

01:41:24

where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com. I'm Dr.

01:41:36

Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love,

01:41:47

Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jensen and Christopher McDowell.

01:41:54

It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God like the dear saints at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in His Holy Word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

01:42:11

Christ Jesus the King and His doctrines of sovereign grace in Suffolk County, Long Island, and beyond.

01:42:19

I hope you also have the privilege of discovering this precious congregation and receive the blessing of being showered by their love, as I have.

01:42:27

For more information on Hope Reform Baptist Church, go to hopereformli .net.

01:42:34

That's hopereformedli .net. Or call 631 -696 -5711.

01:42:43

That's 631 -696 -5711. Tell the folks at Hope Reform Baptist Church of Corham, Long Island, New York, that you heard about them from Tony Costa on Iron Sharpens Iron.

01:43:07

I'm Dr. Joseph Piper, President Emeritus and Professor of Systematic and Applied Theology at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

01:43:17

Every Christian who's serious about the Deformed Faith and the Westminster Standards should have and use the eight -volume commentary on the theology and ethics of the

01:43:27

Westminster Larger Catechism titled Authentic Christianity by Dr. Joseph Moorcraft.

01:43:33

It is much more than an exposition of the Larger Catechism. It is a thoroughly researched work that utilizes biblical exegesis as well as historical and systematic theology.

01:43:45

Dr. Moorcraft is pastor of Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, and I urge everyone looking for a biblically faithful church in that area to visit that congregation.

01:43:56

For details on the eight -volume commentary, go to westminstercommentary .com, westminstercommentary .com.

01:44:05

For details on Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia, visit heritagepresbyterianchurch .com,

01:44:12

heritagepresbyterianchurch .com. Please tell Dr. Moorcraft and the saints at Heritage Presbyterian Church of Cumming, Georgia that Dr.

01:44:21

Joseph Piper of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary sends you. This is

01:44:37

Pastor Bill Sousa, Grace Church at Franklin, here in the beautiful state of Tennessee.

01:44:43

Our congregation is one of a growing number of churches who love and support Iron Sharpens Iron Radio financially.

01:44:52

Grace Church at Franklin is an independent autonomous body of believers which strives to clearly declare the whole counsel of God as revealed in scripture through the person and work of our

01:45:04

Lord Jesus Christ. And of course the end of which we strive is the glory of God.

01:45:11

If you live near Franklin, Tennessee, and Franklin is just south of Nashville, maybe 10 minutes, or you are visiting this area, or you have friends and loved ones nearby, we hope you will join us some

01:45:24

Lord's Day in worshiping our God and Savior. Please feel free to contact me if you have more questions about Grace Church at Franklin.

01:45:34

Our website is gracechurchatfranklin .org, that's gracechurchatfranklin .org.

01:45:42

This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our sovereign

01:45:48

Lord, God, Savior, and King Jesus Christ today and always.

01:45:59

Greetings, this is

01:46:13

Brian McLaughlin, President of the SecureComm Group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Shopping Zion radio program.

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SecureComm provides the highest level of security systems for residential buildings, municipalities, churches, commercial properties, and much more.

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We can be reached at securecommgroup .com, that's securecommgroup .com.

01:46:42

But today I want to introduce you to my senior pastor, Doug McMasters of New High Park Baptist Church on Long Island.

01:46:55

Doug McMasters here, former director of pastoral correspondence at Grace to You, the radio ministry of John MacArthur.

01:47:03

In the film Chariots of Fire, the Olympic gold medalist runner Eric Liddell remarked that he felt

01:47:08

God's pleasure when he ran. He knew his efforts sprang from the gifts and calling of God.

01:47:14

I sensed that same God -given pleasure when ministering the word and helping others gain a deeper knowledge and love for God.

01:47:22

That love starts with the wonderful news that the Lord Jesus Christ is a Savior who died for sinners and that God forgives all who come to Him in repentance, trusting solely in Christ to deliver them.

01:47:34

I would be delighted to have the honor and privilege of ministering to you if you live in the Long Island area or Queens or Brooklyn or the

01:47:42

Bronx in New York City. For details on New High Park Baptist Church, visit nhpbc .com.

01:47:51

That's nhpbc .com. You can also call us at 516 -352 -9672.

01:48:00

That's 516 -352 -9672. That's New High Park Baptist Church, a congregation in love with each other, passionate for Christ, committed to learning and being shaped by God's word and delighting in the gospel of God's sovereign grace.

01:48:28

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Now shipping worldwide. When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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And folks, please never forget that this program is also paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco &

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01:51:58

And we're now back, and I just want to go to another listener question, Greenlee in either

01:52:06

Suamico or Suamico, Wisconsin. And Greenlee has a question for Elisa.

01:52:13

Since you were involved in the Christian recording industry, are there any bans that we need to be warned about that are proselytizing this deconstructive heresy?

01:52:28

And before, you just mentioned Cade Cademan Cole, I believe, which I used to, I used to love Cademan Cole. I'm heartbroken about what's happened to them.

01:52:36

But Elisa, are you there? I think Elisa has herself on mute again. Oh, I keep doing that, sorry.

01:52:44

It's because we're on commercial, I just got muted. Gosh. Yeah, Cademan's Cole is one that I'm concerned about, and here's why.

01:52:52

They didn't, as far as I know, and I don't know, you know, the personal status of each member of Cademan's Cole.

01:52:57

But to my knowledge, only one has deconstructed, and that's Derek Webb, who's deconstructed all the way into secular humanism.

01:53:03

But then Cademan's Cole got back together to do a reunion tour and seemingly seemed to be okay with the fact that one of their, you know, main,

01:53:11

I don't know if he's the lead singer, but is, you know, fully deconstructed. That is very confusing to me.

01:53:18

But, you know, as far as the musicians go, a lot of them are not really trying to make Christian music anymore.

01:53:24

When they've deconstructed, they just, you know, John Steingart kind of is doing other things now, and other people sort of left that industry.

01:53:31

That doesn't mean that the industry is without corruption or that, you know, there's not stuff going on. But I don't know if I could think of one right off the top of my head.

01:53:38

I think Amy Grant would be an example of somebody, and I don't know, she wouldn't probably say she deconstructed, but she's become

01:53:44

LGBTQ affirming. I'm trying to think of, I think Reliant K has become

01:53:50

LGBTQ affirming. Those are the only ones I can think of just on the spot. Okay, thank you to our listener in Suamico.

01:54:03

Let's see, we have Andrew in Brooklyn, New York. How do we evangelize a

01:54:10

Gen Z that has been raised to believe marriage can be between anyone or anything, and has been raised to see abortion as a constitutional right for women to do what they want with their own bodies?

01:54:25

I don't see how the church will survive in a world where legions of young people tenaciously hold to these views.

01:54:33

And Tim, if you could. Sure. I think that one of the approaches, especially with Gen Z, is

01:54:42

I know we talk a lot about the influence of a relativistic culture, but I think when push comes to shove, we can't avoid believing certain things are objectively true.

01:54:56

I mean, none of us would be able to live our lives if we didn't. Those who say, well, when it comes to religion, there is no truth, or when it comes to morality, there is no truth, they still will check the bottle of their

01:55:11

Advil to see how many they can take. They still look both ways when they cross the street.

01:55:18

There's these certain things that are tells that they really do believe in objective truth.

01:55:25

So what I would want to do is tap into that in conversations with them. I would want to show them that when it comes to abortion, that taking the life of an innocent human being is wrong, and not just wrong for me, but it's wrong for anyone who does it.

01:55:45

And that may mean having a deeper conversation about the nature of morality. I think that Gen Z are particularly sensitive to the social justice issues that are out there, and so it's helpful to tap into maybe some of those current events that are happening.

01:56:02

Do you think that, you know, you talk to some, they may be more left -leaning, and so you ask them about Donald Trump, and they don't shy away from saying that Donald Trump is evil or whatever.

01:56:15

Well, okay, now you're talking about not just your personal preferences, but likely you're making some objective claim here.

01:56:22

So that's what we're doing with abortion. Next, I would want to kind of lay out that argument. Look, if it's wrong to intentionally kill human beings, and abortion does that, it intentionally kills an innocent human being, therefore it's wrong.

01:56:35

I didn't pull out the Bible. I was able to make that moral argument without it. Now we can go to Scripture and talk about what

01:56:41

Scripture, how it describes the unborn, and how we're all made in the image of God.

01:56:48

We can totally go down that route. I think a similar thing can be done when it comes to marriage and sexuality, and you can, again, peel to the truth, and then, of course, look at what

01:57:00

Jesus has to say. I would say this. A lot of people care about what Jesus believes and what

01:57:06

Jesus taught. There are people in our culture who are secular, very secular, and they want to throw the

01:57:12

Bible out, but they still hold a place in their hearts for Jesus because most people treat

01:57:18

Jesus as someone to be respected and that we can learn something from.

01:57:24

And so I would leverage that. I would want to make Jesus take the hot seat. Hey, my views of sexuality and gender are

01:57:33

Jesus' views. When he spoke about marriage and divorce, Matthew 19, he said,

01:57:39

God from the beginning made them male and female. So there's the two -gender binary. And then he goes in to say a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife.

01:57:47

So there you have the one man and one woman becoming one flesh for one union. Make Jesus take the heat in those situations.

01:57:55

I think that works with most people in the culture. I think it'll resonate with a lot of Gen Zers as well.

01:58:01

And Elisa, if you could summarize what you most want etched on the hearts and minds of our listeners today before we run out of time, and if you could do so in about 90 seconds.

01:58:10

Well, I would just hope to leave our audience with hope because we do have a lot of hope, Tim and I do, as we did this research, which was kind of depressing and difficult to be hearing all of these things people are saying about Jesus and about Christianity in the church.

01:58:24

But I do believe that God is, of course, we know God is sovereign. He is not surprised by this.

01:58:31

And I think in many ways, it's his mercy, because I think I'm praying that we're going to see a lot of people come to him who maybe weren't even

01:58:38

Christians to begin with, but that will come to trust in Jesus after they go through this process and find out that there's no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

01:58:46

So we're praying for all of our loved ones who have deconstructed. And we understand what's going on with your loved one, live the beauty of the gospel out in front of them.

01:58:57

And hopefully when they get to that realization that there's nothing, there's no hope in the deconstruction movement, that's when maybe they'll come back and talk to you and you'll be able to be in their lives and lead them to Christ.

01:59:09

Amen. Well, I want to repeat the websites of my guests. First, Elisa Childers dot com,

01:59:15

Elisa Childers dot com. Elisa spelled A -L -I -S -A Childers dot com.

01:59:21

And Tim Barnett dot org. And Barnett is spelled B -A -R -N -E -T -T.

01:59:26

Tim Barnett dot org. I want to thank you both for being such extraordinary guests. I really do look forward to having you both on the program of many times in the future.

01:59:36

And I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater