March 27, 2017 Show with Joe Carter on “The New Media Frontier: Blogging, Vlogging & Podcasting for Christ”

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Now here's our host, Chris Arnson. Good afternoon,

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

Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you a happy Monday on this 27th day of March, 2017 and in studio with me is my co -host, the

Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello, it's good to be back again. And we have returning to our program today,

Joe Carter. He is a senior editor of communications at the

Acton Institute. He is also editor for the Gospel Coalition.

He is the communications specialist for the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He's an adjunct professor of journalism at Patrick Henry College and award -winning blogger at the

Evangelical Outpost. Today we are going to be addressing a book that Joe Carter contributed to,

The New Media Frontier, blogging, vlogging and podcasting for Christ.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron, Joe Carter. Well, thanks for having me on,

I really appreciate it. It's always a pleasure to have you on, brother. And I want to right off the bat give our audience our email address if they have questions.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

And please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And Joe, I'm sure that a great number of our listeners, especially since a very large portion of my audience listens to this program on the internet, they are no doubt either blogging themselves or reading the blogs of others.

And if you could describe to our audience, perhaps the folks that are my age and older, because I'm just getting used to this internet terminology myself, in fact, one of the words

I had never heard of before in the subtitle of The New Media Frontier. But tell our listeners what blogging is, and I know it has some kind of a combination of web log to the nickname.

Yeah, a blog is just a website where the entries are written in kind of a chronological order, and they're kind of usually displayed in reverse order.

And so the content is kind of usually produced once a day and maybe once a week, but the older stuff is on the newer stuff is on the top.

It's just kind of like the publishing platform where common people can put their own thoughts, give their own opinions, without having to go through some kind of other media format.

So it's essentially just a place to publish your own ideas. And I guessed that vlogging must have something to do with video logging, am

I right? Yeah, vlogging, I don't know if that term really ever came caught on from when we first used it about 10 years ago.

Yeah, this just means video blogging, where instead of writing out the entries, somebody usually just record themselves on video and post the video instead.

And believe it or not, there are still some of my listeners, some of them even my age or younger than me who do not know what a podcast is, if you could explain what a podcast is, because my program is not only live streamed and is not only on an

FM radio station in Lake City, Florida, but it is also a podcast as well.

So if you could explain to our listeners what that means. Yeah, a podcast is a audio broadcast that's kind of converted to a digital format and loaded up on the web.

And once it's loaded on the web, it can be downloaded to say somebody's iPhone, iPod, you know, any kind of tool like that to kind of listen to on offline.

But you can also usually listen to them on the web on a website. And so it's kind of a way to create your own radio show, where you can stream it live over the internet or somebody can download it over the internet without having to go through a radio station or some other medium.

So kind of the distinction between well, I mean, the thing that kind of unite blogging, blogging and podcasting is that you're in control of the medium.

And you can kind of put your thoughts out in a way that traditionally was reserved for people who had access or power to newspapers or TV or radio.

And I guess a tweet would be somewhere in that mix as well. And the President of the United States seemed to be having a good old time with that, much to the dismay of a large portion of our citizens, but also to the delight of another portion.

Yeah, this is a recently in probably the last five or so years, we've seen what's called micro blogging, which

Twitter is kind of a micro blogging site, where the Twitter is only 140 characters long, so you can only post like usually a single thought.

It's kind of like blogging in very short form. And that's kind of taken off. It's also kind of Facebook has kind of taken over a lot of the roles of blogging, because you can post your own thoughts on Facebook now.

And somebody doesn't have to go to a different website to see your stuff, they can see your material and somebody else's.

So social media has kind of taken over a lot of the roles that blogging used to do. So a lot of people who are already active on social media, such as Twitter, Facebook, are doing a lot of the same things bloggers did.

They're just doing a different format. And what we do have already a listener who has asked a question.

And we have Mary in Shillington, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, in the opinion of your guest, is blogging in the name of Christ doing more harm or good for the body of Christ and for the lost world around us at large?

I think that's a great question. I think we have to separate blogging, the medium, from blogging, the content.

Her question could be kind of similar to do radio shows, Christian radio shows do more harm than good, do

Christian television shows. I think it all comes down to the content that's being used on these mediums. I think the medium itself can have some effects.

For example, Twitter, it makes people think and try to use it concisely.

But they don't create full thoughts. They don't make sustained arguments in Twitter form. So the format can have an effect.

But I think overall, the content is what really matters. I think I've seen a lot of people use blogging for the good of the kingdom, to really reach the lost.

There's a lot of great apologetics blogs. Example is your show about podcasting.

I mean, some people probably only hear your show through the podcast because they don't get it live or on the radio station. So the format,

I think, all depends on whether it's good or bad, depends on the content that's used to promote the message.

By the way, Mary, you have won a free copy of the book that we are addressing today,

The New Media Frontier, Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ.

So we need your full mailing address in Chillington, Pennsylvania, so we can have that shipped out to you.

A compliment of our friends at Crossway, who have published the book, but also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, which is cvbbs .com.

That's C -V for Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for Bible Book Service dot com.

And we look forward to hearing from you in the future with more questions.

Mary in Chillington, Pennsylvania, is a first -time questioner.

I don't know if she's a first -time listener, but she's a first -time questioner. And because of that, she is also getting for free a free copy of the

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB, and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

We'll be shipping that out to you. So keep your eye open in the mail, Mary, for a package from cvbbs .com.

That's cvbbs .com. We also have another first -time questioner, Daniel in Bakersfield, California.

How do we keep the message of the gospel, the primary focus, when podcasting and blogging about social justice issues?

Too often it seems to take a backseat. Thanks. I guess he's saying too often the gospel seems to take a backseat to social issues.

It seems to be what he is asserting here. And so how can we keep the focus on the gospel?

I think one of the things we can do is to take time to make sure we craft the message we want to send instead of just rushing something out.

And I think too often we kind of come up with a message and then kind of try to back -fit it to make it fit the gospel rather than the other way around.

So we start off with our own political views and try to justify using Bible verses rather than starting with the gospel and saying, how is this really...if

I really thought about this, what would be the implications? And then producing content out of that rather than the other way around.

And it's tricky because we always want to be first. We want to be fast. We want to get our message out quickly without really...oftentimes

without really taking time to think through the issue carefully and making sure that we're putting the gospel first rather than just the content.

So I'd say that the key thing is just taking your time, making sure your priorities are straight, make sure you have the right motive.

I think that's probably a big key. Too often we want to get our message out for the wrong reasons. To promote ourselves, promote a book we're selling, promote our agenda rather than promote the gospel.

So I think just keeping the gospel first in our minds helps us produce content that makes sure it comes across throughout whatever medium we're using.

Now, this book has a number of contributors. It's edited by John Mark Reynolds and Roger Overton.

And they also have contributing to this book, Matthew Lee Anderson, Terrence Armentano, Matthew Eppinette, I'm probably mispronouncing that name,

Eppinette, Fred Sanders, David Wayne, Mark D.

Roberts, Todd Bolsinger, Rhett Smith, Jason Baker, and Scott Ott and Stephen Shields.

Quite a number of contributors. You are among them, obviously, as I've already mentioned. Hugh Hewitt has written the foreword.

What basically are you primarily covering in this book? In this book,

I cover kind of the basics of blogging for people who don't, never heard about blogging, never got started, kind of explaining some of the tools that you could use to get started.

And also cover, along with Matthew Eppinette, I cover blogging and bioethics, how we can talk about bioethical issues, such as in the wife issues, abortion, things like that, using a blog.

And let me read a couple of the accolades that have been written, the commendations for this book.

Philip E. Johnson, not to be confused with a friend of mine who's very frequently heard on this program,

Phil Johnson, who's the president of Grace to You, the TV, radio, and literary ministry of John MacArthur.

This is a different Philip E. Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial and Reason and the

Balance. He says, this wonderful book explains how a new technology of communication is revolutionizing our culture and how

Christians can and must use the new media properly to spread the good news.

And then also Dan Kimble, pastor of Vintage Faith Church and author of They Like Jesus but Not the

Church. He says, the new media frontier is a much needed book that looks at the historical, philosophical, and biblical whys,

W -H -Y apostrophe S, behind the rising communication forms of blogging, vlogging, and podcasting.

These are powerful opinion expressions and tools that can be used for good, bad, and ugly purposes.

So we'd better be prayerfully and intelligently thinking about the words we type or say.

All persons with a computer, whether living in a major city or in an unpopulated rural area, now all have the same instant ability and potential to build, encourage, challenge, or tear down others to an unlimited audience on the internet.

You will not look at blogging, vlogging, or podcasting the same way again after reading this book.

And that's quite a powerful, not only commendation, but also powerful reasons why we should be reading this book and spreading the word about it.

We do have, oh by the way, I forgot to mention, Dan in Bakersfield, California, you've also won a free copy of the book that we are addressing,

The New Media Frontier, and we are also going to ship out to you a new

New American Standard Bible because of the fact that you are also a first -time questioner on the program, and we hope that you keep returning often in the future with your questions for our guests.

Let's see, we have CJ in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who says,

This seems to be the breeding ground for slander, and people can hide behind their keyboards in the darkness of their own basements while spouting out like experts on things and destroying the reputations of others.

How can we counterbalance this horrible side of blogging? That's an excellent question, something

I've been concerned about for about 15 years now. I think one of the key things is that if you're going to be a blogger, you should put your name to your work.

I'm completely against anonymous blogging. Well, let me clarify that.

If you're going to be an anonymous blogger, you shouldn't criticize other people. If you're going to criticize other people or you're going to criticize other ministries or criticize people by name, you should put your own name to your work.

So I think that would serve a lot of that and also let people see what your credentials are. If somebody's talking about issues such as the gospel, and then you find out they went to some heretical church, it's easier to kind of see where they're coming from and kind of understand that they're not qualified to speak.

So I think making sure people understand who you are, what your background is, that way they can have some kind of reputational capital behind what you're saying.

I think that would prevent a lot of the slander stuff. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people that don't mind slandering other people under their own name, but that's one way to kind of stop that.

I think the other is just accountability. All the people who wrote this book together, this came out of a conference we held in 2005.

All the people there at the conference knew each other. We got to be... We read each other's blogs and we held each other accountable.

We would actually email and call people out and say, listen, you were wrong to slander this person. You need to apologize.

And so there was some kind of accountability, similar to what we had in the local church, that kept people from just using their platforms for the harm of the church.

Now, unfortunately, 10 years later on, blogging has gotten more fragmented.

You have your own little communities where people just kind of encourage each other to slander other people. So it's gotten a lot harder.

But I think one of the things is, of course, is anonymity, stop anonymity, and increase accountability.

I think those are the two factors that could change a lot to stop some of these problems we're seeing. Well, hold on one second.

I just want to thank CJ for his question. And guess what, CJ, in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, you're also getting a free copy of the new

Media Frontier, Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ. Thanks so much for contributing today's program with a question.

And my co -host, Reverend Buzz Taylor, has a comment or question. Well, this is something that I'm interested in because some friends and I are starting a blog.

But it seems to me that I've seen, I'm sure we've all. The apocalypse is not far away now.

We've read articles and then seen some of the, well, for lack of a better term, idiotic responses to them and stuff that people do.

It seems like accountability is almost impossible when you're online. And what about saturation, too?

I mean, like, OK, we're starting a blog. What are the chances that people are going to come across our blogs with so many of them being formed?

Oh, that's a good question. That was the question I had myself when I started a blog back in 2003. And it depends a lot of how much time and effort you put into it, if you're putting quality work, what the purpose and intent you're doing.

If you're doing it to just satisfy yourself, thinking because you have an important opinion, you need to be heard, you're probably not going to make a big difference.

So if you use your blog to serve others, you have a greater chance of reaching people.

But I think that's the problem is today that a lot of people want to use their blog just to, because they're angry, frustrated, they want to use that as kind of a backlash.

And unfortunately, it's easy to get people to pick up on that, at least temporarily, because everybody's, because you're agreeing with what other people say.

I think one of the key things I think every blogger should do, every Christian blogger is make sure somebody in their church, especially somebody in leadership, knows they have a blog that reads it, and will call them out if they're stepping over the line in ways that are unchristian.

I think that's one of the biggest, I mean, I know a lot of people who would say stuff on the blog that they would never, it would be a shame that people in the local church knew they were saying this.

Right, yeah. Yes, I mean, I have even, unfortunately, when

I've been involved in disagreements with people on Facebook over, it's typically over doctrinal issues.

And I believe, although I'm not sinless, I believe that I, for the most part, when

I'm stating a theological belief of mine, I believe that for the most part

I use tact and use some bit of reserved polemics when

I am criticizing those of other beliefs. But when someone lashes back with slanderous, heated, nasty remarks,

I cannot always say that I have nobly responded.

But do you have any advice on how we can be more controlled, reserved, maybe even adult when we respond to people, even if they have heated and nasty responses to something that we might post?

Yeah, I think there's two things we need to do. And this has been a problem of mine all the time, is that I tend to engage politely with first, and then it gets more and more heated, and then

I kind of step over the line. And fortunately, I'm fortunate to have a lot of friends that will call me out quickly on this.

They will, you know, text me or email me or call me and say, listen, you need to apologize. You're talking to another

Christian brother in a way you shouldn't, or Christian sister in a way you shouldn't. And that kind of brings me back to reality.

Like, what I'm saying online is not just being heard between me and this person. We're speaking to where anybody in the world can see this.

Am I representing Christ in this? So again, it goes back to accountability issues. You just have people that will call you out on this stuff.

It makes it a lot harder the next time to get involved. The second thing is I think people just need to step back and remember, people, there's going to be people who disagree with you.

I know it's like if we go to a truck stop and somebody was spouting an opinion we didn't care about, we wouldn't just go there and start an argument with them.

Yet online we do the same thing because it's just we're so tempted to think, well, we're going to correct this person.

We're going to make sure that they get straightened out. When we wouldn't do this in the real world, because most of the time we don't care.

We don't care what this guy down the street thinks. He's not in our lives. He doesn't have any effect on our lives.

So why can't we just let his opinion pass? Yet online for some reason we just kind of amp it up. So I think we withdraw a little bit and say, listen, what people are saying is not the point.

Sometimes it is somebody important. Maybe it's a preacher that they follow or some teacher that they think is misleading.

It's okay to step up then, but if it's just some random person who has an opinion, we don't need to go full force and just lose our civility and lose our integrity by responding to them in ways that are hurtful to the church and hurtful to the kingdom.

Yeah, I have been more frequent these days with the block option on Facebook, and I think that there's nothing nasty about that, especially if you are just trying to prevent unnecessary squabbling and hateful speech that has erupted as a result of something that you either posted or are responding to.

And you also very often, you know, these things can be a real leech for your time.

It could be really robbing you of such valuable time that you could be using in other ways, not only for your own livelihood or career, but for your own family and your church and so on.

Is this not very often a time leech? Absolutely, and that's something I should have said at the beginning that 99 % of people should not start a blog.

They should spend less time online, less time on social media if they're not going to get much value out of this. And even those who do think there's some kind of value to it, they really need to limit their time.

Recently, I just came back from vacation where I took a week off, stayed off social media altogether. And when

I came back, I decided I'm going to spend no more than 15 minutes a day on social media. And it's kind of hard to do because my work entails a lot of dealing with social media, but I'm trying to cut it back to that.

And it's made a huge difference because it's freed me up for all kinds of other stuff. I mean, I don't know how many times people tell me they don't have time to read the

Bible, they don't have time to read good Christian books, and yet they spend hours online on Facebook arguing with people.

So get offline, find something more productive to do, and make sure the time you do spend online is very productive and that you're getting something valuable out of it rather than just it's a way to kill time.

We have RJ in White Plains, New York. In fact, what I think I'm going to do is I'm going to read

RJ's question and then during a station break, which I will immediately go into, you can have time to mull over his question and respond when we return.

But RJ in White Plains, New York wants to know, I hope you didn't cover this already and excuse me if you have, but what are some highly suggested building blocks for the most successful and appropriate blog, especially in regard to the

Christian faith and the gospel? And that's a very good question and we will have you respond to RJ after we return from our initial commercial break here.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA, and you may remain anonymous if you are asking about something that is personal or private or perhaps you are disagreeing with your own pastor on an issue or disagreeing with someone that you care about who has a blog, for instance.

We obviously don't want you to identify yourself or them in this scenario, so you may feel free to remain anonymous if that is your choice.

But we are going to be right back, God willing, after these messages with more of Joe Carter and the new media frontier, so don't go away.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is

Joe Carter. He is one of the contributors to the book, The New Media Frontier, Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ.

And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

We did have a question from RJ in White Plains, New York before the break, and he wanted to know,

Joe, your suggestions for building blocks for the best blog about the

Christian faith and the Gospel. Before I answer that question, let me kind of reframe it and say not every

Christian needs to have a Christian blog. I think that's an important thing that a lot of people think that because they're

Christians, they need to share their faith online. When they get online, they start getting asked questions that they can't answer, or they get the wrong answer to, and they end up giving heretical advice to people.

I think they have the good intentions, but they don't always necessarily know what to say.

So if you're not in a position where your church, your local church, would think, yeah, this person's qualified to teach, you probably shouldn't start a blog that reaches out with the faith correctly online.

I think what we need more of is blogs that focus on a person's calling. In fact, not only is it that not everybody needs to, but there are many people who definitely should not.

Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a lot of great

Christian blogs. I mean, there's a lot of pastors who spend a long time thinking about the scriptures that are really good at using the blog format to get their message across.

Now, if you want to link to them, have a blog that links to them or promotes them That's great. But look at what your own interests are.

What has God called you to do? If he's called you to be a mechanic, maybe you should start a blog about cars or about answering people's questions about, you know, what does this knocking sound of a car mean?

Things like that, where we can use our own skills that God gave us and use our own interests to promote ideas in a

Christian way. There's a way to talk about cars, but it's in a Christian way. It's using our creativity to use the platform for those kinds of services.

I think it's better than just starting another Christian blog. It just kind of mimics what everybody else is already doing. And thank you.

Thank you very much, RJ. And you are also winning. You have also won, I should say, a free copy of The New Media Frontier, compliments of our friends at Crossway, who published the book, and also compliments of our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com,

who will be shipping that out to you at no charge to you nor to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And we thank Todd and Patty Jennings at CVBBS .com for being faithful supporters of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

We do have a listener all the way in Slovenia. Joe says, please ask

Brother Joe to help me with something that I seem to have difficulty with. I have two

Facebook pages that I use for ministry purposes. One is geared toward the lost and is evangelistic and polemic.

The other is geared towards Christians who support my ministry. The main problem that I have is that whenever I post anything that is serious, weighty, or pointed, etc.,

I get very little interaction from my audience. Whenever I post anything light, silly, or extraneous, there is a flood of likes and silly comments.

It seems that almost no one wants to address serious issues. What to do?

Thanks for any help you may be able to offer. That's an excellent question.

Let me say that do not be discouraged by that. That is the natural state of the world. I think a lot of people misunderstand the format of the internet.

They assume that because there are millions of people out there, they are going to find thousands or at least thousands of people that will want to have a serious, weighty discussion on issues.

This has never been true. Look at how many books are published every year. Anybody who writes a book knows that very few people are going to read your book.

The more serious it is, the fewer people are going to read it. People have limited space.

They have limited energy. Most people have a job. When they have their free time, they want to use it for entertainment purposes.

The media critic, Neil Postman, back in the 1980s, when he was talking about TV, that was the main format.

He says the best things on TV are usually the dumbest because it is hard to promote good, solid thinking through TV.

That is the way it is on Facebook. It is really hard to promote good, solid material, even in a short form like Facebook.

The people who do respond are going to be very few, but they usually respond more thoughtfully than the masses will.

I think we need to set aside the idea that our purpose is to try to reach the masses with serious content and just try to reach a handful of people that you can have a big impact on.

I am to the point now where I would rather influence a few key people in a serious way than thousands of people in a trivial way.

That is the way it has always been. That is why scholars have disciples. Jesus only had 12 people he influenced in a major way and went on to change the world.

Don't dismiss it just because you only have a handful of people that are taking your stuff seriously and really engaged with it. That has always been the way.

It is probably always going to be the way. But there is nothing wrong with that at all. Well, thank you,

Joe, in Slovenia. You have also won the New Media Frontier, compliments of Crossway, who published it, and compliments of the

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service. Keep your eye open in the mail. Actually, you tell your daughter in America to keep her eye open in the mail for it.

We thank you for giving us an American address where this can be shipped to you to prevent the really astronomical shipping costs from mounting up for our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

So thank you for the American address where your daughter lives and tell her to keep an eye open for the package from CVBBS .com.

That is what will be on the return address label. So thank you very much, Joe, in Slovenia.

Keep spreading news about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Slovenia and beyond.

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks a question that was much like R .J.

in White Plains' question but in the reverse. What warning signs should we look out for for blogs to avoid?

I think the key one is a real problem today is credibility. If people are spreading fake news, content that's obviously not true, if it takes you five minutes to figure out this isn't true, why are they spreading this news?

If you correct them and they fix it, that's probably not a problem. If they keep doing it after they're corrected, they probably have some kind of agenda that they don't – they're not really looking to spread the truth.

They're using it for some other purposes. So make sure somebody's credible, make sure they're correctable, and make sure that they have an interest in actually telling the truth about whatever topic they're talking about.

Too often nowadays we want to kind of avoid telling the whole truth because we're afraid well if we tell this part people are going to latch on to that and it's going to undermine our argument.

But the reality is as Christians we shouldn't be afraid to tell the truth and the whole truth in fullness because our mission isn't always to convince people to think one way or the other.

The other – it's to share the gospel and tell the truth about the world in a way that honors

God. So we should be – always be truth -telling. To me that's the biggest thing

I've seen the problem with recently is just unwillingness to tell the truth or to hold back parts of truth because people are afraid how it's going to be taken.

So if you see sites that are doing that too often, that's probably a big red flag that they're not somebody you should really waste your time on.

Yeah, very often people when they hear a titillating piece of information that is exciting, amazing, and they're rushed to be the first to tell their friends, they very often launch into an email or Facebook frenzy of posting and sending this information to everybody they know because they want to be the first one to tell everybody about this amazing piece of information that very likely may be even totally false or slanderous.

Yeah, a good example of this, 60 Minutes is having an interview I think this weekend about doing a segment on fake news.

And one of the fake news sites that they're talking to, they interviewed the guy and he was the one that spread the message that Hillary Clinton had

Parkinson's disease. And they said, well, where did you get this information from? And it was from somebody who didn't even know Clinton. He said, well, how do you know it's true?

He says, well, she denied it. He said, well, of course she denied it because it's not true. That's hilarious.

So we've got to the point now where we really want to believe what we want to believe. And if it hurts on the other side of the aisle from us, we're more likely to believe it than we are scandalous negative information about people that we trust and we want to believe it.

So I think we really need as Christians, this is becoming a real problem in the Christian community, just kind of spreading false information.

And even after you find out it's false, just saying, well, it could be true. Therefore, I'm going to keep spreading it around.

Yeah, that's pretty horrible. In fact, Christians need to be reminded that thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

That is not only if your neighbor is Christian. I actually had somebody rebuke me or mock me, who was allegedly a

Christian, because I was telling them that they were slandering Muslims about a certain thing.

And he said, well, Muslims are not my neighbor. And I said, you know, if you happen to know for a fact a murderer killed two people, and you go on a witness stand in a courtroom and you swear under oath that he killed three, that is still evil.

That's still slander. And it's still bearing false witness. The person who you are slandering doesn't need to be some holy, godly, and outstanding member of society in order for it to be slander.

Slander is slander, is it not? And you know what? I got in trouble for this a couple years ago. There's some news reports about ISIS.

And the news reports were so good. I mean, it wasn't really news reports. It was just kind of rumor reports that were going around.

And they were so outrageous that it was almost like, well, that can't quite be true.

And some of the pictures they were sending around were from a different war altogether. And so I wrote about it.

And people pushed back and said, well, this is the kind of stuff that ISIS does do. And I'm like, well, yes, maybe they do do that.

But the fact that this is an unconfirmed report that is not true, is pretty much proven not true, means we shouldn't be spreading it around.

But people, again, they just seem to think, well, if somebody killed two people, it's

OK to say they killed three, because they're guilty of something. And that's kind of the attitude we have.

Well, they're guilty of doing something so we can be a slanderous wannabe, which is just not the Christian standard at all.

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, wants to know, are there any blog sites that are notorious for being deceitful and dangerous that you can mention by name?

Uh, yeah, I don't want to mention by name. But there's a kind of a bullet term we use, discernment bloggers.

Kind of Google that term. You'll kind of see some of these sites pop up. What happens is sometimes these blogs think that they have the whole truth about Christianity and everybody else is wrong.

And so they latch on to things and spread negative information about good

Christians in a way that's false and ungodly. I don't want to call anybody out by name,

I think, because I think if I do, I'd have to spend a lot of time explaining why. And I don't want to take too much time on that.

But I think, yeah, I think the key question is ask your friends.

Ask your friends you trust. Who do they think is untrustworthy online? You know, online life in real life is not different.

The standards don't change just because you go online. So if you find somebody who's not really credible offline, they're not going to be credible just because they go online and have a blog.

So ask your friends. Ask people you trust who read a lot online. Is this site trustworthy?

Should I be listening to them? I think that's one of the easiest ways to kind of get around and try to find out.

And also, look who other people are contributing to. Like I read for the Gospel Coalition.

And if you know Don Carson, you know Tim Keller, and you trust them, you can probably trust what's written on the Gospel Coalition. If you don't like Tim Keller, you don't like Don Carson, then you probably don't have a good reason not to trust that.

And so I think it's just whatever standard you would use in your own life, that's the standard you should apply online.

And ask people because I think it's real easy to get wrapped up in this site's, you know, they have a

Lutheran blogger. They have a Catholic blogger. And so anything they say is going to be discredited. And so it's, you know, sometimes we have to be careful what we read online, but we shouldn't, we should be quick not to dismiss everything on a particular site, especially if it's a multi -blogger site, just because of one person.

So I think we just have to use more of the natural discernment skills God gives us to determine what we should and should not be reading online.

Yeah, and of course, the best of men are men at best, and we ought to be

Berean and search the scriptures to see if what folks are saying is true, in fact, even our heroes.

And of course, you may have a ministry that promotes somebody like D .A.

Carson and also promotes Tim Keller, but you might have serious problems with only one of them.

You might, you know, you might have a serious disagreement with only Tim Keller or something like that. But that's one of the things that is a problem in the church at large, is hero worship, where we latch on to somebody whose writing we like about a certain issue, and then we find ourselves just wanting to be in lockstep with everything that they teach.

And that's obviously not what the Apostle Paul even wanted people to do with him, even though he was an apostle. Yeah, and that's another good point there.

When you're reading a blogger or reading a blog and they always cite the same people all the time and never critically, that's probably a bad sign.

If they don't cite a wide range of sources, they're probably not reading enough to know they're probably just following one person.

And, you know, one person could be doing a great job for a while, and then somehow they slip off into territories they shouldn't be.

I think we're seeing that in a lot of evangelicalism nowadays. Some pastors have a big name that are well -respected.

They're being misled on, say, the homosexuality issue in ways that aren't helpful.

And if you've spent your, you know, past few years promoting this person and doing it publicly, it becomes very hard to turn around and say, well, okay,

I need to repudiate them. So it's just kind of it's easy to kind of go along or kind of ignore the problem.

So that's one of, I think, one of the key things when you're looking for, like I answered the question before, when you're looking for who's reliable online, look at who they cite, how they cite them, and whether they just kind of take people's material uncritically or if they actually engage with it in search descriptions and finding out whether it's true.

We have an anonymous listener who wants to know, well, the anonymous listener says, I have a friend who is being slandered by somebody in the most unspeakable and wicked way on the internet through a website that this slanderer operates.

This slanderer refuses to take the site down or change the slanderous remarks that are on it.

What could be done about this short of hiring an attorney? That's a good question.

That's becoming a big problem more and more. I think one of the ways is to put it on social media, put it on some other platform, on a blogging platform, write your side of it, so that when people

Google and something and this slanderous material comes out, there's some balanced material also. I think we kind of assume sometimes that if somebody sees something on the site, they're automatically going to believe it.

A lot of times people will check, and if there's something else that disproves that, it kind of helps show that, yeah, we need to listen to the other side.

It's not just, as Bob says, one side seems right until you hear the other side. I think it's the same thing online.

As long as there's something else somewhere that gives the other side, it helps to kind of balance out that slanderous material.

Unfortunately, that's something I think Christians have to recognize more and more, that we don't like, but we have to recognize that we're not going to be able to fix everything.

We're going to be hurt in ways that we can't change.

We're going to have people say slanderous stuff about us. We're going to have people say untruths about us that we can't correct in a way that fully corrects the problem.

I think that's just part of the Christian life. It's something we just have to deal with. We can fix it when we can. We should try to fix it when we can.

We try to push back, especially when our friends are facing this thing. We should not be silent. But we should also recognize that this is going to happen.

That's part of the Christian life. People are going to say things that aren't true about you. And they said it about our Lord, they're going to say it about us.

Yeah, it's a very horrible situation. I even know somebody who missed out on being hired for a certain position in their career because the potential employer read the slanderous remarks when the potential employer googled the person.

When that seed of slander was planted in the head of that certain organization, they just wanted to do the better safe than sorry route.

So they declined or overturned, I should say, their initial offer to the person.

So it was really tragic and sad that these things happened. And it's really quite an evil thing when people do that.

They're murdering the reputation of somebody. And unfortunately, like you pointed out a good example there,

I think Christian organizations in particular need to stand up to this kind of thing. If they find out something's not true, they shouldn't back away from a person just because it's better safe than sorry or we had to put too much effort in defending this person.

We should stand for truth. And if we see something slanderous, we should push back and not be afraid that because otherwise we're just going to give the what's called the heckler's veto where anytime somebody, if they don't, the other side doesn't like, they can just slander the person and then make them off limits to Christian organizations.

I mean, if that's the standard we're setting, we're going to be in trouble. So I think Christian organizations need to do a better job of pushing back against that.

And individual Christians need to make sure they're defending their friends and family when they can. Yeah, we have to go to a break right now if you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Joe Carter and more of our discussion on the new media frontier.

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Chris Welcome back. This is Chris Orens, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today with a full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is

Joe Carter who contributed to the book we are addressing, The New Media Frontier, blogging, vlogging, and podcasting for Christ.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And we already do have a couple of listeners waiting for their questions to be asked and answered. But before we go to them,

I must, as much as it may annoy some, I must make an urgent plea to you once again that Iron Sharpens Iron Radio is an urgent need for new advertisers and benefactors.

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chrisarnson at gmail .com And I really look forward to hearing from you.

And I also I want to thank from the bottom of my heart, a listener in the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio audience, Erin in Indianapolis, Indiana, who when she was made aware of the fact that I was earnestly seeking to attend the

Gospel Coalition Conference coming up in Indianapolis when she knew that the registration for that event was closed because they sold out.

She went hunting around for me and found a friend of hers who had purchased a ticket to that event and was unable to go and was able to make the arrangements for me to attend the event a week from today, actually a three -day event there in Indianapolis.

I want to thank her from the bottom of my heart for being so diligent to help that desire of mine come to fruition to go to the

Gospel Coalition Conference. In fact, Joe Carter, since you, who are my guest, are an editor for the

Gospel Coalition, why don't you let our listeners know something about the Gospel Coalition? The Gospel Coalition is a network of reformed churches and individuals who are working to promote gospel -centered resources for churches and individuals so that we can have solid quality resources to use, whether it's on the

Bible or learning about current events or whatever's needed within the church today. And who are some of the primary figures that are associated with that?

I know that D .A. Carson is involved in that and if you could give us a list of some other folks. Yeah, it was founded about 2006 by D .A.

Carson from Cherni Indian, Evangelical Divinity School, and Tim Keller, the pastor in New York.

Some of the other names you might have heard of is Albert Moeller from Southern Seminary.

Oh yeah, he's been on this program. Let's see, Russell Moore from the

Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. We have a 55 -member council that kind of oversees the

Gospel Coalition. We've got some great pastors on the council. Let me see.

Some of the names you might have heard of here is, sorry, I'm trying to reckon my brain, trying to think.

But that's all right. And, well, you've listed quite enough, that's fine. And so, obviously, it'd be no sense for me to promote the conference next week because it's already sold out.

But I hope that any of you listening who already are attending will look for me at the

Gospel Coalition conference in Indianapolis, Indiana a week from today. And I would love to meet with you and hopefully have a time to share fellowship with you while you're there.

Let's see here. We do have some listeners that have questions for you. We have Ronald in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island who wants to know,

I completely agree that slander is something that goes on far too often in the

Christian church. However, timidity is also something that plagues modern evangelicalism.

And there are certain heretics that are so notorious because of their spreading dangerous teachings, not only in the television and radio, but in their writings, that I believe that they should be mentioned by name and exposed while others seem to think that that would also cross the line of getting into slander and bearing false witness.

How do you draw the line when it comes to these situations? Well, obviously, if somebody is teaching something clearly in their

TV or radio program or in writing that you have documentation of, it wouldn't be slandering them, right? Exactly.

It's not slander if it's true. I think one of the things we should make a distinction between is between solid biblical teachers who may stray or may teach something we disagree with and those that are actually wolves that are teaching false doctrine.

And I think I would lump probably almost all prosperity gospel teachers under that false doctrine heading.

I think we should be calling those people out. We should be making sure that we do it in a way, though, that appeals to those who will be attracted there.

I think one of the problems, especially I find myself doing, is that because that stuff just doesn't appeal to me at all,

I want the real gospel, I don't want some deluded false gospel. I'm quick to judge it very harshly and speak about it in harsh terms that doesn't resonate with people it does attract to.

So I think we need to make sure that our rhetoric is truthful and helps people get away from that without just kind of blasting them and making people feel like that we don't understand why that appeals to the crowd it does.

It's just like in politics. We don't convince the other side often because we don't want to make a convincing argument. We just want to rant about what we don't like about the other side.

So if we really want to convince people to get away from these false teachers, we have to do it in a way that's winsome and makes it feels like we really care about them and we really care about the concerns and not just we don't like.

Like there's something we just don't like about their message. Yes, and I think that you also need to be very clear or certain that the thing that you believe this notorious person has said or written is actually being taken into context and so on because I've had people post things on my

Facebook page. One of them I had to block recently actually because he was slandering some of my modern day heroes of the faith by not necessarily presenting something that was just totally outside of the orbit of truth but by twisting it enough where it went from being something rather innocuous to something seriously wrong.

I don't know if I'm making sense right there but it can be subtle at times. The way somebody is misrepresented is basically what

I'm saying. Yeah, and we also need to make sure we understand what they're actually teaching in a way that's...

There's various ways to teach false doctrine. For example, faith healing teachers. I saw a pretty funny picture the other day that showed

Benny Hinn. He has his two fingers that are broken taped up and he's wearing glasses. It says, never trust a faith healer that wears glasses and has broken fingers.

Now for us who don't like Benny Hinn, that's, you know, it seems kind of funny that faith healers can't help themselves. But the people who actually know about them know that's not really a valid critique so they don't take it seriously so it just makes it seem like we're just bashing something we don't understand.

So we need to make sure that we're criticizing them in a way that will resonate with people that because we actually understand what we're critiquing rather than just...

We know it's false doctrine. We know it on the high level. We don't know it in the details and can argue against it effectively.

We have Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, are there any dramatic changes occurring within the media and in the blogosphere that your guests may know of that those of us who are less technically literate may be totally unaware of that we should be on the lookout for?

I guess he's talking about like advances or something like that. Well, I think one of them has already kind of happened is the shift from the blogging formats to social media.

Almost everything that blogs did can be done on social media now and it's easier to attract an audience that's already kind of captured for you.

Like most blogs, when I was... You know, in 2003, if you had a blog with 500 followers, you were doing really well.

And now most people have a Facebook page with more than 500 friends. So you have automatically a bigger audience.

So your message can spread a lot faster now than it can in the past. But it's also harder to get heard now because everybody's constantly talking all the time.

So the format's made a lot tougher to get your message across. So what's happened is that the blogs, the individual blogs are making it very hard for people to find them now.

So what's happening is you're seeing media companies kind of buy up. The Gospel Coalition, for example, is a good example of...

We have probably... We have a main site where we talk... We have edited articles. But we also have like six or seven individual bloggers that can write what they want.

So it's a lot easier for people to find them because they're on our big media website than it is for some individual blogger out there.

So it's kind of the professionalization of blogs has come about where it makes it hard where the amateur is kind of hard to break through because the amateur also is competing against people on Facebook and Twitter and other kinds of social media.

So I would say that's part of the biggest changes I've seen in the last few years on that regard. Let's see.

We have Joseph from Amityville, Long Island, New York who wants to know, uh, who are your most highly recommended bloggers?

Uh, one of my heroes of the blog that I've been following since... He started the same blog...

He started blogging the same year I did in 2003 and that's Justin Taylor. He blogs at the

Gospel Coalition. He's a vice president at Crossway Books. He's always got great content.

He's always... He does a lot of research and a lot of work in putting his blog. Another one is

Tim Challies at Challies .com. Yeah, we've had Tim on the program. Yeah, Tim started blogging the same year, 2003.

I've known Tim for years. He's a great guy. He's another one who's very careful about what he teaches and what he spreads through his blog.

He's very trustworthy and he's always got excellent content. He's always got something worth reading on the site. So those are two

I would always recommend. Unrestrictedly. I've never had anything... seen anything on the site that I couldn't recommend to somebody else.

Yes, and these things can be used for the glory of God.

These blogs and the internet itself. But it's amazing.

I mean, you could even go back to the printing press. What a phenomenal invention that God and his common grace orchestrated to be invented that was the primary thing that got the scriptures traveling everywhere and copied and in the hands of the common person, unlike anything that had occurred in history before.

And yet the printing press obviously has been used of Satan at the same time for great evil and to spread heresy and all kinds of wicked, despicable things.

Don't you think that the Christian who perhaps personally wants nothing to do with social media or blogging or anything like that has every right to personally avoid these things, but don't you think they have to be careful about how vociferously and zealously they condemn these things for general

Christian use just because some people misuse this gift to the church, which can also be a curse?

Yeah, that's a great point. There's a lot of times because of our individual problems in our own lives or because we can be easily distracted that there may be good reason why we need to stay away from blogs and social media and all that kind of stuff itself.

But that doesn't mean God can't use it for his purposes for other places. I kind of got into the

Reformed faith because of blogs. I started reading a lot of Reformed bloggers, and at the time, I didn't even know there was such a thing as being

Reformed Baptist. I'd grown up Southern Baptist and been Southern Baptist all my life. I never understood that it was compatible with the

Reformed faith. I thought you had to become a Presbyterian to be Reformed. In fact, some of my Presbyterian friends still think there's no such thing as a

Reformed Baptist. I haven't learned anything wrong yet. That's true. The person sitting in the studio with me is an anti -Baptist bigot, and I'm like, he happens to be a

Presbyterian, but I wouldn't go that far. A lot of these guys really helped me grow in the faith and grow my understanding with the kind of faith that traditions,

I never really knew much about because of blogs. So I think it's easy to dismiss things we don't because we're seeing just the harmful sectors of it without realizing there's so much good material out there.

It's a way to kind of share content that may be locked up. I know a lot of pastors who have some great books on their shelves that they may read them and some of their friends will read it, but the common person will never find that until he takes a quote and puts it on his blog.

And now that blog's on Google and people are searching for something else and stumble across that and it changes their lives.

And that kind of spreading of information is one of the things we should be very thankful of that in God's kingdom that it makes it possible to spread messages that in a way that's never been had in even a printing press.

The printing press is almost nothing compared to the spread of information. Now we can post something online and anybody in the world can access it now.

So I think we should be very thankful when that's used wisely and effectively for the kingdom of God.

Yeah, I thank God for social media because it's one of the ways that Iron Sharpens Iron's audience has become global.

And I cannot deny that without social media and the websites of other like -minded

Christians and Facebook and so on, there probably would be very few people listening to Iron Sharpens Iron, but I know that we have quite a vast and global audience and I thank

God for it. I think people, let me just say, I think people forget sometimes what it was like before.

Maybe you had a Christian radio station that had maybe one or two good pastors on their shows and maybe you could catch them on Saturday night at 6 p .m.,

but you didn't have access to a lot of good material. If you lived in a rural area where your church wasn't really feeding you what you needed, you didn't know where to get good resources or you couldn't afford to buy all these books that the pastors had.

And nowadays, you know, there's so much good content. There's so many good sermons, good resources that come as an adjunct.

They never should replace a local church, but they kind of provide resources that most of us didn't have back in the 1980s and 1970s.

So we should be very thankful for the way it can be used today. Yeah, and of course, there are even people in Muslim lands and others who are hearing the gospel through the internet and through other forms of media in the blogosphere where they would otherwise not be hearing the gospel because they might be in an area where there are no missionaries or so on.

That's right. I mean, one of TGC's ministries is to translate Reformed Gospel Center material into other languages that can be spread over there.

And the reason we're able to do that is because we can make the connections through the internet. We can make these pastors who found

TGC and some other Reformed sites online. They want more. And so they, you know, we're publishing books now and they would have never even heard about us.

We have an article today about the Reformed movement in China. And it's all because of the internet, because the internet has spread information around and made it possible for people who would never even heard of John Calvin or Martin Luther to kind of get to the, to actually read their content online.

They don't have to buy books. They can get the stuff translated into their own language nowadays. So it's just an amazing resources for the kingdom.

Before I go to the break, I will read a question from Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who asks, how can we better protect our children and grandchildren who very often are addicted to the internet from the sexual predators that seem to be everywhere out there, including those blogs and websites that are identified as Christian.

What can we do to not rob our children and grandchildren from the blessing of the internet, but at the same time, keep them safe?

And we will have you answer that when we come back from our final break. And if anybody else would like to join us, we are running out of time.

So if you'd like to send in a question, I would do so very quickly at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. And please give us your first name, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside of the

USA. And please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter, but don't go away. We'll be back,

God willing, in a moment with Joe Carter and the conclusion of our discussion on the new media frontier.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than a half hour to go is

Joe Carter, and we are discussing the book that he contributed to, The New Media Frontier, Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ.

If you'd like to join us on the air, please do so now because we are running out of time. Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And before the break, I read you a question from Susan in Newville, Pennsylvania, who was asking about how we can further protect our children and grandchildren from the predators who are out there on the internet.

And I would even include adult women in that group who have been victims, and I'm supposing men as well, but primarily

I'm sure that the vast majority of victims are women and children. But if you could answer

Susan's question. That's a very important question, and one we have to really think about is how do we, at what age is it appropriate for a child to be online unsupervised?

And I think the answer to that varies from child to child, but it needs to be the first line of defense should always be the child's virtue and the child's knowledge of the world.

There's no technological solution you can put in place that's going to protect the child if they're susceptible to this kind of stuff in ways that they shouldn't be.

So I think teaching children the dangers of the internet without being over, you know, we don't want to do it too much.

I think we, in the 1970s and 1980s, we got a little too carried away with assuming that every stranger we met wanted to kidnap us.

And so that made it harder for kids to kind of socialize and adjust. And I think we need to do the same online, that not everybody's out to scam you or try to harm you, but to make them careful about the way they engage with people.

And I think one of the key ways is to make sure that they don't have any tools for two -way engagement online. They shouldn't have access to ways to chat with older adults or to have older adults contact them directly that doesn't go through you.

This is probably the number one way to do it. Also, every parent should have access to the passwords and logins for every social media site, every place the child goes online.

And they should know, you should know who your child's friends are. There's no adult man is asking a young girl, 13 -year -old girl, to be a friend on Facebook for the right reasons.

Maybe it's somebody in your church that you trust, but if they're a stranger, there's no reason they didn't contact your child.

So looking at your child's friend list and make sure they're age appropriate, I think is probably the biggest key to making sure that they're not talking to people they shouldn't be.

Yeah, I mean, a lot of parents have gone overboard with treating children, their own children, as if they are adults in regard to the right to privacy.

Obviously, there are certain levels of privacy that children should have. Where do you think the line should be drawn in that regard?

I mean, obviously, you don't want to be constantly kicking open the door of your children's bedrooms and just snoop around and all that kind of thing.

But what is your advice in that regard? Well, I think this is a good question about where do we draw the line.

I think one of the things is the more private the communication is, the more privacy the child should have.

For example, if a child has a diary in their own home, they should have more leeway about having their content private than they were when they publish something online.

If they're publishing something online, parents should know what it is. No matter what the content is and no matter who they're sending it to, even if it's only a few people seeing it, that's not really private.

If they wouldn't say it in front of parents, they probably shouldn't be saying it at all. So I think they should have... And I think it should be graduated up where we kind of slowly let them have a little more privacy and a little more as they become more responsible.

I think a lot of the problems is parents have a kind of an all or nothing approach where we're going to lock down everything or we're just going to open up everything.

And the child needs to kind of be walked through the process so that when they get to a mature level, they know how to protect themselves online.

Because if they're just kind of locked down until they're 18 years old, then they get out of the real world, they're open. They're going to be a lot more vulnerable than they would if you kind of bring them up in a way where they can use these tools more effectively without being afraid of them, but knowing how to be careful in there and how to engage.

Well, thank you, Susan. And guess what? You've won the last copy of the new Media Frontier Blogging, Vlogging, and Podcasting for Christ.

Thank you very much for contributing to Iron, Sharp, and Zion with an excellent question. And that will be shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com,

God willing, in the very near future. So keep your eye open in the mail for that. We have a listener that I just actually mentioned moments ago,

Aaron in Indianapolis, who was the one that made it possible for me to go to the Gospel Coalition conference a week from today.

By the way, I have to add in another hearty thanks, a big shout out to Nelson in,

I'm not sure if they pronounce it the same way in Indiana that they do in Scotland, but Nelson's in either

Edinburgh or Edinburgh. Perhaps somebody can correct me, perhaps

Aaron can correct me as I don't know if Nelson is listening. But it was actually Nelson's ticket that he originally purchased for himself that I am able to use to get into the

Gospel Coalition conference. And Nelson in Edinburgh or Edinburgh, Indiana is a friend of Aaron's, so that's how that came about.

But Aaron, perhaps you can correct me on that pronunciation if it ever comes up again. But she says, along the lines of you blogging,

I'm sorry, along the lines of you blocking obnoxious keyboard heroes,

I like that phrase. I thank you for that. Your shares and particular comments and conversations on Facebook are truly beneficial to my learning and our training in discernment, but the angry slanderers needed to go.

I guess she's speaking about me. Well, thank you, Aaron, for that encouragement. Yeah, some people might say that that is a unchristian and mean -spirited thing to do to block somebody, but if they're not doing something that's really perverse, you know,

I mean, they think that blocking, you're cutting off lines of evangelism to them perhaps, you know, but isn't this,

I mean, we could go too far with this concept of keeping communication lines open if somebody is becoming so obnoxious that they, like we were talking about earlier, robbing you of time and so on.

If they are relentless and won't let up on an issue, even though you've warned them, isn't that completely acceptable to block them?

I think so, and I've come up, I've changed my opinion on this recently or probably the last couple of years. I used to think, you know, let them speak, let them have their say no matter what, and now over the years,

I realized what, by letting them have their say, you're discouraging other people. It's like being in a room with somebody and trying to have a conversation.

Somebody keeps shouting in your ear while you're doing this. It's just a level of civility, and if some people can't practice civility, they shouldn't be a part of the conversation.

So I think sometimes it's necessary to block people, to not allow them to comment, because it stymies valid discussion.

It's not just because we're keeping them out, it's because there's other people, and there's a lot of times, for every commenter on a blog, there's probably nine people who just read the comments and never comment.

And it's because oftentimes, because they don't want to get yelled at. You know, they know if they post something, this rude person is going to jump in, they're going to start talking about them or engage them, and they just don't want anything forward.

So by pushing out people and blocking them, sometimes we can expand the discussion and open it up in ways that we couldn't before.

Well, thank you, Erin in Indianapolis. And she set the record straight that the city in Indianapolis is pronounced

Edinburgh, not like our Scott friends pronounce it. We have

Bob in Westchester County, New York, who says, do you have any advice on picking a name for a blog if you start one?

Well, that's interesting. You actually write about that in your chapter. Yeah, I do. And the thing

I've come across now is what I would recommend is, if possible, use your name, if your name's available, or some variation of your name.

Back in the day when I started blogging, everybody wanted a clever name. But then it's a lot easier to just have like chalice .com

or something like that if they know your name, they know how to get ahold of your blog. And it's also, if you want to change the blog name, you can, it's a lot easier to name the blog something clever and have the

URL be something people are always familiar with, rather than what's supposed to seem funny and clever in 2016, you have a blog in 2025.

It just seems kind of weird. One of the reasons

I'm laughing at that I was told, I don't know if you know who John Riesinger is, but he's a very beloved figure in certain

Calvinistic Baptist circles. And in fact, I think he just turned 90. Somebody told me about a birthday that he just had very, very recently.

But the years ago, John was talking about something at a conference that I was at, and he said that a friend of his had spent thousands of dollars republishing a book by J .C.

Ryle, the great 19th century Episcopalian author.

And he did not change the name of the book.

Well, it might've been a chapter from a larger work. And this person spent thousands of dollars reprinting the chapter as its own book or booklet.

And the title was Letters to a Gay Friend. And he didn't bother updating the language because it had nothing to do with homosexuality.

It was about happiness. You know, trying to bring the gospel to somebody that has no fear of the afterlife and so on.

But anyway, what you said reminded me of that. And obviously, I guess people should be also clear about what they mean to convey in the title of their blog.

And they shouldn't use something that has double meanings, especially if it could be something evil or dangerous in the viewer's inappropriate or incorrect interpretation.

Exactly. And even terms that are helpful, like, you know, I had a blog called the

Evangelical Outpost, which I thought was a good name at the time. But then I realized it kind of turns away Catholics and Muslims and people who, because I wrote a lot of apologetic stuff.

They knew when they come to the site, automatically it's evangelicals writing this. So they're gonna have their guard up.

So I think by just having your name and people have to actually read your content before they figure out what you're about, makes it a little harder for them to just kind of dismiss you based on the name of your blog.

Now, what do you mean in your chapter by read first and blog later? One of the things

I always thought is you should, for every, say, 10 minutes to write on a blog, you need to read at least an hour.

You should have a lot of, you should leave out a lot of what you know when you write something, because you should actually know, to know what you're talking about, you have to read a lot about the topic.

And I think that's one of the, one of the things that separates good blogs from bad blogs is how much time they spend reading and learning about the topic before they start writing about it.

That doesn't happen often enough. Most of the time we assume that we know enough, that we read an article, now we know what we're talking about, so we just pop off and start writing about it.

And then later we find out the article was wrong or we misunderstood it and it causes us to lose credibility.

So I think the more we read, the more credible we become, the more we can produce content that actually helps people.

Now further, explain further, know your role, which is another thing that you write about in your chapter.

Well, knowing your role, I think is, for example, is when I started, when I was blogging in 2003,

I wasn't a pastor. I shouldn't be trying to play the role of a pastor online that I couldn't play in my own church. So by trying to give people advice about how their church should run or here's what elders should do,

I try to avoid anything like that that makes it seem like I have some special knowledge in some area where I don't.

That doesn't mean we can't write about things we don't know or we don't know well. We just have to make sure that people understand that we're not experts on this or we're not speaking as experts and that we don't try to do things that, we don't try to play political pastor to somebody when that's their local pastor's role.

We don't try to be elder to somebody if they're not in our church. So things like that. We don't try to overstep our roles or try to be a parent to somebody.

We kind of know what we're writing online to somebody, to strangers.

And so we don't have authority over those. So we shouldn't try to play, you know, try to take these roles from the people who hold them legitimately.

Yeah, well, that's one of the reasons why my radio program, Iron Sharpens Iron, is a guest -driven program.

I have people such as yourself who are experts in certain areas because as I've described myself in the past,

I'm really just a dumb guy with a good radio voice and a lot of smart friends. And I try to get the, you know, the best of experts on my program, people who are theologians, scholars, authors, and so on.

I don't claim to be an expert on anything and I don't want to set myself up to be an expert either.

So that's why it is an interview -driven program. Whereas other people, like my friend

Dr. James R. White, although he has interviews, his dividing line program is primarily himself because the man is a genius and he's a

Greek and Hebrew scholar and he is an apologist and a debater and he's one of the greatest, has one of the greatest minds within Christendom today, in my opinion.

But that's one of the things that people, I'm assuming, like you just were saying, have to be very careful of when they set themselves up in a blog or a podcast that they don't set themselves up in some kind of a seat of respectability that they don't belong sitting in.

Yeah, and probably a good example is, I used to see this all the time, where people who have never studied

Greek or Hebrew, they have a Greek or Hebrew lexicon and they try to tell you what Greek words mean and they're getting arguments with theologians that actually know the languages, like Dr.

White, that they think because they have a book that they're experts on the topic. And so what happens is, it just sows confusion and it leads the unlearned to not know who to trust.

So I think we've got to be careful about trying to pretend like we know more than we really do. Yeah, and what do you mean in your section of your chapter on you get what you pay for?

Oh, well, I think back in the day, it's, this book was written about 10 years ago.

So a lot of the things have changed. Back then, they used to have a lot of free blogging sites and they would come with their own pop -up ads.

And some of these pop -up ads were, you know, scantily clad women. And so people have a, you know, a

Christian blog and on the site, you have a woman in a bikini on the side. So if they were to spend just, you know, $25 a year to actually pay for their own site, they can have more control over it.

So I think when you're, and it's kind of the same thing with them on Facebook and some of the other sites that have ads, we have to be careful about the content we're publishing, make sure it doesn't,

I think a lot of people kind of ignore Facebook ads now, but we have to remember that we don't control these platforms.

And so there's some material that could be popping up there that we wouldn't want people who are reading our content actually see.

Now, in your chapter, you recommend a book by Steve Kerr on the folly of rewarding

A while hoping for B. Why is this such a strongly recommended book in your opinion?

Well, actually it's not a book. It's just a article, a magazine article that was published in a business journal. Okay. And anybody, you can find it online.

There's free copies online about it. And what's interesting about the Kerr's article is a good example he gives is that in basketball, it's a team sport, but you get judged on individual activity.

You don't get judged too often about how many passes, how many times you passed and somebody scored from your pass.

You get it from how many times you scored yourself. So you're trying to get a team activity, but you're rewarding individual activity.

And we often see that in the Christian broader sphere that we don't write content to promote the body and promote the church.

We do it because we want to get a platform where somebody will give us a book deal or we want to be seen as an expert so that people will feed our egos for things like that.

So the process of blogging kind of rewards those kinds of things. It doesn't reward feeding the body.

It rewards individual activity. And so I think that's one of the things we need to be mindful of is what

I'm actually doing and what I'm getting rewarded for doing the same as what I should be doing.

Like somebody pointed out earlier like cat videos online get more attention. That's because that's what the community rewards.

They want something funny and all that. That doesn't necessarily mean what we should be doing. So what gets rewarded and what we should be doing is often two different things.

Well, I want you to have at least five minutes now to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners before we go off the air,

Joe. I would say that aside from the platforms, whether it's a blog, whether it's social media, there's two things we need to be focused on in the content.

The content we produce and the content we read. We need to make sure the content we produce is glorifying to God, that I have a tendency to be too sarcastic or to try to be funny sometimes and it's not glorifying to God.

That we're doing things that are glorifying to God. And then we're also reading content that is beneficial to us.

We're not just reading stuff that's gossip and that's, you know, that kills time. We're actually reading something that's fruitful and we're kind of getting something out of it.

So we're blessed to have all these tools. We're blessed to have all these, this new medium online that God's given us.

And I think we owe it to God to use it responsibly. Well, I want to make sure before we go off the air that our listeners can have access to everything that you've written and everything that you are participating in and on.

First of all, Crossway, who was kind enough to donate the books to us that we've been giving away.

Their website is crossway .org, crossway .org. And obviously you can also get this book and others by Joe Carter at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service who sponsor this program.

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, CVBBS .com.

And please let our listeners know any other websites that you care to provide or any other means of contacting you.

They can reach me at the material on thegospelcoalition .org, ethics and religious liberty commission at ERLC .com,

and at Acton Institute at acton .org. Okay. And we do have room or time,

I should say, for one more listener question. We have

James in Eastern Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who wants to know, what are your thoughts on starting blogs with people that you have a polar opposite view to where you can have a debate or something like that on your weekly blog to give the viewers and readers two opposite opinions on certain vital issues?

I think that's a great idea and I think it would be very helpful unless they're promoting something that's heretical.

I think we have to be careful. Like I've had back and forth exchange interviews with Mormons and people are clear on what my position is and their position, but we don't let them just kind of have a platform where they can promote

Mormon theology because it's a false doctrine. So I think we have to be careful about what kind of material we have in such exchanges.

But I think those kind of things are very helpful. It helps us ourselves to kind of understand the other position when we have to actually discuss and debate somebody one -on -one.

So I think those can be great sites to produce. Now, what you just said, I was a little bit confused when you have a

Mormon on talking about issues. If he's talking about doctrine, isn't he always going to be saying something that's heretical and dangerous?

Other than like social and moral issues that we may agree on, but there's going to be very little that we theologically agree with a

Mormon on. They very often have the same vocabulary, but a different dictionary. Yeah, and that's a good point.

Like in my article, we would say, what is the gospel to you? And then I would say, what is, you know, I would explain what the gospel really is.

And so you make sure that the content is framed in a way that the

Christian truth is always presented right there. And it's not just, you know, one article, somebody stumbles across an article, and it looks like it's on a

Christian site, on a respectable Christian site, it's by a Mormon. That's, you know, spreading heresy. So you make sure you get a very carefully balanced where people can clearly see where the disagreements lie.

Let me, well, since I have time, let me ask you about something that I am involved in or have been involved in since 1995.

I've been orchestrating live, public, moderated debates where you will have very often, not always, sometimes these are in -house intercollegiate debates with brothers in Christ or between brothers in Christ, but then very often most of my debates have been between Dr.

James R. White and Dr. Tony Costa and other conservative Bible -believing evangelicals and Calvinists who will debate

Roman Catholics and members of cults and liberal Protestants and so on. And you do have a side to these questions being publicly defined and pronounced and declared and defended by someone who would be deemed by the biblically literate as a heretic.

I have a couple of friends who actually are opposed to me having these debates.

When I say that I have these debates, I mean, I just orchestrate them. I'm not personally a debater. But what is your opinion about that as far as the, because there is a moderator and there is the truth being defined as well and declared and defended, and there is also rebuttal to the heretical statements being made.

So what is your opinion on that? Well, I think we've got to remember that this kind of content is already going to be out there.

This falsehood is already going to be out there. So if somebody stumbles across it in a place where it's being rebutted, refuted, that's the ideal situation.

That's what we should have more of. Yes, maybe somebody will be attracted to that. And that's because we're probably not doing a good enough job.

So I think we have to be careful to make sure that the person on the opposing side, on our side, is up to the task of refuting false doctrine.

I think if that's the case and that's happening, then we shouldn't have anything to fear that God will eventually show them the light or that's his will.

They'll see that they won't be enticed by falsehood. Well, Joe, once again, it's been a pleasure having you on the program.

I look forward to your return to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. Hopefully, God willing, we will have the opportunity to meet face to face at some point at a conference or something.

And Reverend Buzz Taylor, it's been great having you in the studio. And we also thank all of you who have tooken the time or taken the time, tooken, boy, taken the time to write in questions.

And again, I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart who have taken the time to send in checks recently.

And I thank you more than I can describe for your generosity. I hope that you all tune in tomorrow and send in questions whenever possible.

But I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater savior than you are a sinner.