Isn't It Divisive To Discuss Controversial Issues? Part 2

Think about how crazy that is like you're living in a time right now where men pretend to be women go into women's locker room and we're just handing our daughters over to this kind of insanity with these perverts and you know people get mad at me for calling him a pervert and i'm just looking at them and i'm saying yeah but you're just you're letting your daughter in the same room as them.

Morning. The following message may be offensive to some audiences these audiences may include but are not limited to professing christians who never read their bible sissies sodomites men with man buns those who approve of men with man buns man bun enablers white knights for men with man buns homemakers who have finished netflix but don't know how to meal plan and people who refer to their pets as fur babies.

The Gospel of Salvation in Christ Alone

Your discretion is advised. People are tired of hearing nothing.

But doom and despair on the message of christianity is that salvation is found in christ alone and any who reject christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation any hope of heaven.

The issue is that humanity is in sin and the wrath of almighty god is hanging over our heads.

They will hear his words they will not act upon them and when the floods of divine judgment when the fires of wrath come they will be consumed and they will perish. God wrapped himself in flesh condescended and became a man died on the cross for sin was resurrected on the third day has ascended to the right hand of the father where he sits now to make intercession for us.

Jesus is saying there is a group of people who will hear his words they will act upon them and when the floods of divine judgment come in that final day their house will stand.

Jesus as a Controversial and Unapologetic Savior

Yeah so so i guess you know in addressing a lot of the stuff that we talk about you know going from talking about hey here's how jesus here's how jesus's ministry went. Right he wasn't that he wasn't the happy-go-lucky lovey-dovey you know accept and be accepted jesus that a lot of people imagine he was a very controversial person.

And ultimately i mean that's why that's why he was killed. Right. Right they didn't kill him because they like they loved him so much. They killed him because they hated him. And they hated the things he said.

Um so you know why do you hate me. Because i testify that your works are evil. Right. Right. Right. Exactly like i mean i mean i mean there's just no better way to put it than that. That's why they killed.

That's why they killed him. Okay. And so going from that to talking about hey we want to we want to uh emulate christ in that way and not be afraid to discuss the untouchable topics. We're not be afraid to violate the modern day blasphemy laws that are going on loving people enough to talk about these things when no one else will and provide answers that no one else wants to hear everyone else wants to tune out because they don't like the truth they don't like what the bible says.

Motives for Addressing Controversial Issues

So in in discussing you know our motivation behind things there is there is a common pushback that i i have seen from a lot of people uh as it you know insofar as it relates to our podcast sub the subjects of the episodes and then the titles themselves where a lot you know a lot of people seem to believe that you and i are discussing the things that we're discussing.

We're naming the episodes the the the names that we're giving them uh all to simply for the for the explicit purpose of driving engagement and getting you know uh like rage baiting people and and um uh just being controversial for the sake of being controversial.

And so what is what is your response to those types of assumptions.

Slash accusations. Yeah i mean it's it's it's one of those things where i guess if you're asking me to defend defend my own uh impulses there i mean i i can i can give you um i can give you a rationale i mean i i know that i have you know personally i have no desire in being on the internet whatsoever so i mean most of my time posted.

Yeah i i had to i had to i had.

To beg you to do this. At first it was like it was like tim you should do this i realized i realized you were smart and then i was like oh tim you should do this you should do this you should do it and then eventually you're like all right.

Let's do it. See i mean i i honestly i just have no.

Desire to be like a you know a niche internet celebrity like building a platform all that's obnoxious to me i don't have any concern about any of that and i mean i haven't spent most of my life on the internet as a public person just because i i thought that you know i'm more of a local church person give myself to people local church was just uh like i don't i don't have any interest in fame or being a celebrity or anything else building a platform all that just sounds kind of like a headache and i got a lot of things going on for myself anyways but like the issue with all that is i i think looking around and seeing the mess i mean a lot of covid was really a weird time like covid was really a weird time just to watch so many of these big name people that we were supposed to trust um for so many years i mean like the key issue is you have a brain you can see that there's like a cancer rotting within the evangelical world that no one is willing to touch and no one is willing to address because of the you know the current rule rules of being politically correct or whatever else and the rules of winsomeness and so you see all that.

But then i i was even surprised at how much they folded with the covid man like it and and it's one of those things where you like there was a uh there was a moment for me when i was at during during the pandemic where i refused to basically wear a mask so i would walk around not wearing a mask and i my phone got broke during that time.

So i walked into a phone store without a mask on and you know there was a sign saying no mass no service and all that and i just didn't care. I went in there and i was i wasn't gonna lie to people right.

I wasn't gonna lie to people but i i sat down in this phone um in this phone um store and there's a older man there's probably like my dad's age and he looked over at me and sees me not wearing a mask and he just kind of makes this exasperated like facial expression and just kind of you know throws his hands down and just like takes his mask off and puts it in his pocket or whatever and then kind of sat there with this smug look on his face like he was just like like he wasn't mad at me he was just like if this stupid kid over here is not gonna wear a mask i'm not gonna wear a mask.

This is so stupid you know but like uh it was one of those moments it was pretty it's pretty interesting because i i saw a lot of moments like that during covid where people were just looking for someone to have courage man you know they're just looking for someone to say hey yeah we're not gonna play this we're not gonna lie to you.

You know we're not gonna we're not gonna we're not gonna play these stupid games and you know just looking around the world i think that's what you see you see like a crisis of courage. And so i you know personally i don't have like personally knowing my own motivations i don't i don't have any desire to get people riled up.

I don't have any desire. I'm kind of like a i'm like a people pleaser those people might not know that about me but i have a lot of people pleasing tendencies. I don't really um i i don't really enjoy conflict.

I don't really enjoy anything along those lines. But but like the issue is like when you look at the world and you see the world falling apart and you see the insanity that's happening all around you when you see all that like the issue is you you you can look at our our titles and there's something that's triggering people.

Right. There's something that's triggering people about them. But then when you think about what they're doing and you think about the nature of like the subjects that we're talking about a lot of it's about marriage a lot of it's about family.

You know a lot of it's about like what does it mean to be a man what does it mean to be a woman. A lot of that a lot of it's about just these basic like what's the difference between men like human beings and animals.

Right. And like in what was what's actually true is like our in our titles seem insane. Not because we're insane just because we're living in an insane world. Right. So i mean just imagine like um you know calvin having to calvin having to write like a treatise like against the furries.

I mean the issue is it's not it's not us like the problem is not us. Okay the issue is when you're living in clown world you have you sound like an idiot you know talking about the things you're talking about.

But the problem is that like these are real things you know like right like these are real things that people um like that we've just embraced insanity at almost every single level. So i mean i have a unique burden for like marriages you know having good marriages strong marriages.

I have a unique burden for um you know family i mean i have a lot i i'll have a unique burden for counseling situations. I've given my life to help people through biblical counseling. And i just see the wreckage that happens with all these psychological disorders where we're just we've created victim classes of people at every single conceivable level.

I mean there's victim classes related to all these mental illnesses. There's victim classes related to gender you know sexual perversion you know everything else like you know the ability disability like the fat shaming like all this nonsense is just crazy.

Like we're living in a world that is just like satan is the prince of the power of the air the spirit that's working the sense of disobedience. And you're living in a world that's held captive by like his lies.

And just look around you man like we're embracing death and destruction at almost every single level we're killing babies in order to get our sexual freedom right. We don't know what sex is for we don't know what children are for we're placing them with animals.

I mean just imagine how stupid we are as a society that like the things that we're doing and so like the issue is what's what's even more of an indictment on that is the fact that there's these like you literally are living in a world right now where people think that an animal is a people think that an animal is a substitute for a human being.

Right like you know you think about that like they're instead of getting married and having kids they're going out and they're getting a pet. And that's their that's their that's their legacy man. And they're gonna die alone.

They're gonna die alone with that stupid animal that's gonna die in a few years. And they're gonna have a funeral and weep about it on social media and then replace it and they're gonna have nothing. They're gonna have no one to take care of them.

They're gonna be utterly alone because they lived a self-centered life. And then the issue is like we seem like we're crazy because we do an episode on it. It's like we're not the crazy ones. Like we're the only insane ones out here.

And like the fact that the fact that there's no big name evangelicals that are talking about the stuff we're talking about on the regular basis. It's just an indictment on where we're at because there's just such confusion about these things that at so many levels i mean like if i if i knew that there was other people out there who were willing to address these topics i'd shut up and get off the internet and let them you know.

So i don't i don't have any i don't have any interest in doing it myself. It's just a matter of i have people ask me these questions all the time and most of these questions are questions people are sending to me and i have no resources to send them.

So i just you know we do a podcast.

On it that's the way it works. Yeah you know i remember uh i mean this was years ago now but i remember um early on after having met you you had you had pointed me to a debate between or no no it wasn't a debate it was a um it was like a a lecture the the sexual by design stuff that yeah the sexual by design stuff by doug wilson where he's going on a college campus and i think you showed me they made a trailer for it it was like it was the whole lecture is two videos and i think the entire thing is like three or four hours long when you count both videos time put together but then they made a trailer for it where they're just showing essentially it's just the response i mean i don't even know if doug wilson probably has like a few taglines in there from the lecture in the trailer but the majority of the trailer is just people's response to the lecture uh the people the people in the audience who um you know who are just totally losing their minds over what's going on right now.

And i watched so i watched that and um i remember i remember thinking to myself i watched through this entire thing and i'm just like i was blown away by the fact that doug could say something that was so normal so obviously biblical and then he could get the response that he was getting.

And number one i was blown away by the fact that he could even you know maintain his maintain um you know his train of thought that doug wilson could even maintain his train of thought through this entire lecture but then the response that he was getting from people and i i think for me i everything that he said i agreed with before i ever watched the before i ever watched the lecture from him everything he said i was in 100 agreement with him on but the thing that the the the lecture did for me was it showed me a different side of christianity where people were standing up and saying the things that were normal but were not allowed to be said in our current society and they weren't apologizing for it and they weren't you know dancing around i mean they're he was being direct and he was saying he was saying what what needed to be said and then letting people make fools of themselves the entire time.

And so i watched that and i watched i think i watched another an actual debate uh with jeff durbin and james white and i can't remember who the they were debating some atheists and i can't remember their names right now but you know they have this debate um essentially over i think it was um just over christianity in general but it's been it's been years now since i've seen it so i might be getting that wrong.

But in this debate the eighth it's two atheists that are debating their side and one of them is kind of like he kind of seems like this younger guy probably older than me but a younger guy relatively and so he's kind of just new to all of this in general and probably just he he doesn't have much experience in debates i think you can tell that from the video.

But then the other atheist is this much older guy who is just totally unhinged the entire time during the debate and i just watched jeff durbin and james white just totally annihilate this guy because he's so unserious in terms of trying to debate two christians and and so i remember watching these these these pastors talking about christianity unashamedly and in a way that actually brought about persecution.

I think that was a really big thing is every christian talks about you know hey when persecution comes i'm going to be the one that that remains faithful i'm not gonna you know i'm not going to give in i'm not going to forsake my faith.

I'm i'm not going to do any of those things when they take my house when they take my family when they threaten to kill me you know whatever it is everyone every christian says that. But then these were the guys that were out there that were actually getting the persecution and were actually following through with those commitments to not forsake the faith to not forsake the truth to speak the truth and love anyway.

And i think in my mind that was that was just that was the thing that convinced me that i probably wasn't being bold enough in my faith. I probably was i would i was probably too ashamed of the gospel in general back then.

And you know seeing seeing those guys stand up and have the courage to say the things that are unpopular that no one wants to say. Did they did they win the people in the audience. Did they win the atheists.

They're debating. Honestly probably not. But in both scenarios you know the people that they were quote unquote trying to win presented themselves as unwinnable. So then what. So then what's the purpose of of doing the debate.

Then what's the purpose of doing the debate if the other person's unwinnable. What's the purpose the purpose of having the lecture if the people who disagree with you are unwinnable. Well it seems to me and you can correct me if this is wrong tim but it seems to me like the the purpose at that point is to encourage the people who are winnable.

And you know when when the silent people who are. And then encourage the christians who are remaining silent when they shouldn't i i view myself as one of those you know christians who was probably remaining silent when they shouldn't.

But it took those people being controversial you know to a degree that i mean people hate doug wilson because they they say he because he's so controversial in their eyes. And i mean he's you know i've seen him put out some sermons on hey here and he's written books on like hey here's how i fight like jesus fights right.

And you know he he presents this idea in one of those sermons he talks about um you know say say someone comes along and they demand that you like forsake your faith or something. And you know there's a bunch of ways you can respond to that.

You can say uh well sure thing i'll do that right away. You could say uh no i won't do that. You could say absolutely not. I'll never do that. Or you could say no. I don't think i will skippy and and doug wilson doug wilson you know he says that he opts for that last option.

I don't think i will skippy. Um because what it's doing is it's showing that he doesn't he doesn't take the other person seriously. They're they're they're as they're asking a foolish question and he's responding as if he's responding to a fool right.

And now that that's something that's considered unloving right. But then i think for i think for me at least personally that showed me that hey there are actually things that are foolish. There are actually crazy people out there.

There are actually people who at least in the moment right now their hearts are so hardened their minds are so darkened that they're unwinnable right. Now at least i mean god could do anything to change them.

But i mean it's definitely interesting when you think about the nature of the way that communication works so a lot of people they have this one-size-fits-all approach to communication and it shows up in these kind of topics and so then like the issue is in their minds the only like everything reduces to trying to win the non-believer to christ.

Right. Right. But then they don't like and that's kind of what you're commenting on with the debates and everything else. So everything reduces to the objective of trying to win the individual non-believer to christ.

But the issue is there are such a thing as trolls. Okay like yeah like i mean not all non-believers are the same. Okay like meaning meaning like there are some like god in both testaments. There's there's there's enemies of god who just mock like mercilessly mock christians and we have internet troll atheists to come and we have christian trolls who troll us non-stop and you have non-serious people who come on there and their entire purpose is just to mock and deride you non-stop.

That's what they do you know and i mean that's what goliath did like i mean goliath just sat there and mocked the armies of the israelites and they're all afraid of him. Right. Like the whole entire time.

And you know davis response to him is who you know who is this uncircumcised philistine who would defy the armies of the living god at that point. Uh but then we don't have any category for having different responses in different kind of situations.

And then we also don't have any category for there being different people like different people in the audience that we're trying to reach in different ways either. Right. So like the issue is like you know when you see someone like it when you when you see the sexual by design lectures or whatever else you see someone who is standing being bold and standing firm and just saying normal things.

And you see the like the response that comes from the other end of it a lot of people they don't have a category for what they're even witnessing right there. Right. So you know through routinely when you read through the scriptures you see that the reaction people had to jesus was gnashing their teeth and that's like a religious response.

That's like a like that's like a total blind hatred that is irrational it's illogical it can't be reasoned with. Right like the issue is like that's the same kind of like response that herod had to john the baptist when he said it wasn't lawful for him to have his brother's wife.

Right. So when you like the issue is when you put your finger on the idols of the current age they're going to respond religiously like the men love the darkness rather than the light because their their deeds are evil.

Right. A service not above his master. If they persecuted jesus they're going to persecute you. The issue is when you put your finger on the idols of our current day they're going to respond with outrage.

They're going to gnash their teeth at you. Right. They're going to try to destroy you. I mean and we we see this kind of thing happen all the time um directed towards us i mean we get our death threats and everything else people trying to call and you know get us uh docs i mean we've had people multiple times and try to get us fired and everything else.

But like the issue is that like these are religious responses and a lot of times it's it's kind of startling to think about the things that really actually stir people up. You know like just to think about the things that they get so mad about and often what what it is is often it's related to these victim categories like if you put your finger on one of these victim categories they will have this religious response where they utterly loathe you and detest you and want to destroy you.

And they're they're you know they're they're of their father the devil and they're filled with like to do with to do his desires at those points. But then the issue is there's different people that are involved in these equations and you know i've had people you know person after person after person reach out to us related to this podcast and say that it's been a means of helping them to be more bold in their life like just by you know us talking about these issues that they have questions about but no one is willing to touch with the 10-foot pole.

But then they're so central to like your life and your marriage and you know how you relate to people and your job and everything else like they we've i've had people person after person after person come to come to me and basically say hey yeah i've like this this thing has been a means of encouraging me to be more bold in my faith to to that i'm not crazy for thinking thoughts that our culture thinks is crazy i'm not crazy i eat that.

This has been a means of strengthening my convictions and helping me to be more faithful to the lord and a lot of like the only way you you do that is you you have to have people who are willing to say the truth.

You know knowing that people are going to get crazy about it but say what's right and say what's true in that kind of moment. And so like the issue is it's there's any number of people that that are um like every encounter has like you have a wide variety of people who are going to hear this and respond in different ways.

I mean like you think about what's happening in our culture right now like related to like the issues of sexual deviancy and everything else you have like the you know the lgbtq community you know plus community or whatever you have this small percentage of sexual deviance in our country that scream and holler and yell and demand that everyone validate them and affirm them and glorify them and praise them and everything else.

And you have all the normal people in our culture you know um not not as if that we're not all sinners or something along those lines. But you know you have all the individuals who have you know normal sexual orientations you know wherever you want to put it we're bowing down in fear and cowering to them and basically just letting them control our culture.

I mean you think how crazy that is like you're living in a time right now where men pretend to be women go into women's locker room and we're just handing our daughters over to this kind of insanity with these perverts.

And you know people get mad at me for calling him a pervert and i'm just looking at them and i'm saying yeah but you're just you're letting your daughter in the same room as them. Right. You're mad at me for calling them what they are.

But then if you don't wake up your daughter is going to get raped in that locker room. Okay so i don't want her to get raped in that locker room. That's not what i want to have happen. And the only way that that's not going to have happen that's not going to happen is if everyone wakes up and realizes that we're engaging in a path towards self-destruction.

Um but then like the issue is that if everyone's too afraid to say the obvious then this is what happens you know and and you could just see like ridiculous sports interviews where the girls are basically saying it's unfair that they're doing that.

But you know um you know at the same time um but i can't judge their sexual orientation or something along those lines we painted ourself in a corner and we're engaging in insanity at this point. And what you need is you need the same people to stand up and basically say hey it's insane.

Right. Uh this is the path to danger. And so in every individual encounter i mean you have any number of people that you're talking you could be talking to you know you like in these kind of encounters you have the hardened sinner.

You have the you know the priest of the apostles and the priest of the devil. Right. You have like the trolls that are out there i mean and then there are people who are sincerely confused and sincerely deceived.

Um but you know you you respond in different ways to different moments and there's no one-size-fits-all way to communicate with any of this stuff. But you know one one of the main purposes of of going to you know into this kind of territory is to help people wake up and say hey yeah like we're if we don't if if you know more people don't wake up and say the obvious we're headed to a really bad place for sure right.

Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Issues

Right now now.

The last question i'll ask you before we wrap this up is you know we've we've spent this time talking about. Hey what's the point in consistently addressing the controversial issues right. What's. What's the good in being so controversial all the time.

Well i wanted to ask you because the bible does have actually have a category for a foolish controversy. Right. And so. So in your mind what is. How do you differentiate between something that needs to be discussed but is controversial versus something that would be biblically defined as a foolish controversy.

Yeah sure so a lot. What.

A lot of people do at this point is they divide things up into primary issues secondary issues and tertiary issues. So the primary issues then and there might and this is i mean this is a good it's a useful heuristic you just do a way of talking about this.

But primary issues are issues that you can't get right and still be a christian right. So if you get jesus wrong you're not a christian. So john said first john says if anyone um you know denies that jesus came in the flesh this person is antichrist like it paul says if anyone preaches a gospel different than the gospel we delivered if i myself or an angel from heaven preach a different gospel let them be an apple let them be accursed.

So there are issues related to the nature of god nature of christ uh gospel that you like that's heresy property. You can't get them wrong. So like you have that kind of category then you have a category of a secondary issue and a secondary issue is a category where it's like very closely tied to these major themes in the bible.

Um but it's not a primary issue meaning like yeah theoretically you could have someone get that wrong and maybe still be a christian or something like that but it's still very important and i would say that most of the issues we're addressing in our show are related to secondary issues.

Okay like in that way that meaning they're really important like they're about the nature of men and women right like role divisions within the home um you know charismatic stuff you know issues related to sanctification like uh you know all these kind of things are like probably in the realm of secondary issues.

And then you have what's called tertiary issues and that those are just issues that um they maybe they don't they're not so close and central to faith the bible doesn't dress them and we need to get them right.

But then they're you know they don't affect so many other doctrines they don't affect your life in such a broad way or whatever. So those are your three basic categories. And what you have a lot of people doing is you have a lot of people basically saying that if it's not a primary issue then you're being contentious right.

But then the issue is we're told to contend earnestly for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. So like that we're we're encouraged to um like teach people to do all that jesus began to do and teach um sin like is problem like sin has consequences sin has.

Like the issue is that orthod you know bad bad like heterodoxy leads to heteropraxy. Right orthodoxy generally will lead to orthopraxy. Not always but i mean like there's people who are here as a word but not doers.

But then like there's destructive effects of sin. And a lot of the stuff that we're mentioning is just like issues that are just basic worldview kind of questions that people aren't really allowed to talk about.

But then like related to the topic that you're talking about like what is the nature of a foolish and ignorant controversy. I mean there's a lot i mean there's a lot of foolish and ignorant controversies that people can engage themselves in.

Um i mean just you know think about the nature of most controversies that happen probably within the church. And most controversies that happen within the church are foolish and ignorant controversies that generates strife.

So like the issue is that like most of those controversies that people are actually going to argue out over nature of church if you've been in church life any for any length of time whatsoever you realize that people aren't really arguing about primary issues at church.

For the most part people aren't even arguing about secondary issues. Most of the things that they're arguing about really have nothing whatsoever to do with primary issues secondary issues even tertiary issues most of it's about personalities.

So most of the things that people are fighting about they're fighting like these like foolish ignorant controversies things like that they're not really doctrinal disputes. They're not really you know practical disputes.

They're like hey what colored carpet do we buy. I mean they're that kind of stuff like what kind of paint do we paint on the wall. Right you know like let me do my bible study. Like that is so important and so essential to whatever else i need to be the teacher you know and you know it's that kind of stuff and it needs to be i need to be able to a lot of what's happening like in most churches the things that people are fighting about this like about their ego it's about their personality personality kind of conflicts it's it really has nothing to do with faithfulness to god it has nothing to do with like a love for his word and most people they're they're basically just you know fighting over personalities fighting over territory fighting over space um you know like so there there's obviously those kind of things and i mean i think i think there's obviously um um areas that are so tertiary that um so what generally happens is like when you're when you're talking about like a foolish or ignorant controversy like if you think about those three categories those are useful categories and a divisive person is not going to be a person who is contending earnestly for the essentials a divisive person is not going to be a person who is strongly passionate about secondary issues right a divisive person is not going to be a person who even is like discusses tertiary issues i mean so i think we've discussed some tertiary issues in our podcast like like the issue is like the divisive person is going to be the person who treats a secondary issue as a primary issue or treats the tertiary issue as a primary issue right or he's going to be or the divisive person is going to be the person who is heterodox on the primary issues and basically saying we all need to get along or the divisive person is going to be the person who outlaws any discussion about secondary issues because they're not primary issues.

So the issue is we need to be faithful to God, and there's a way to discuss primary issues. There's a way to discuss secondary issues. There's a way to discuss tertiary issues. If you have an individual who's casting people out of the kingdom because they disagree on a tertiary issue, yeah, that would be divisive, right?

If that's the nature, but that's not about like having the discussion, it's about the way that you're packaging it, right? So if you take like a tertiary issue and you say, you can't be a Christian unless you agree with me on that, you're divisive, sure.

Just saying, hey, what does the Bible teach about this tertiary issue? Most people respond to that as if it's a divisive discussion. It's like, no, that's just a biblical question that's being asked because we want to honor the Lord in every area of life, right?

And we want to know all He says because God says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. So the issue related to these topics is, yeah, you can be a divisive person by turning a secondary issue into a primary issue or a tertiary issue into a primary issue.

Or you can be a divisive person by being one of these people who are sneaking into the church in order to bring error into it. Those are the main people that the Bible actually describes as the divisive person.

The divisive person is the person who's bringing all the error and demanding that everyone accept it and love it in general. Like they're the ones who are basically setting themselves up against, in opposition to Christ.