March 6, 2025 Show with Dr. John G. West on “Stockholm Syndrome Christianity” (Part 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this sixth day of March 2025.

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And today, we are going to be entering into part two of a discussion we began last week with my guest,

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Dr. John G. West. Dr. John G. West is an author, filmmaker, and vice president and senior fellow at Discovery Institute, and today we are addressing part two of a discussion on his book,

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Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, Why Christian Leaders Are Failing and What We Can Do About It.

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And we're going to be focusing primarily during the second part of this discussion on the subtitle,

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What We Can Do About It, because we had so much to say, or should I say, Dr.

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West had so much to say last time that we ran out of time before we delved very deeply into what we can do about it.

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So I'm delighted that he has agreed to return to the program for part two of this discussion.

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And welcome back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. John G. West. Chris, thanks for having me back again.

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And I want to remind our listeners of our email address. It is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's say you have a criticism over your own church where you're a member.

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You're considering leaving it, perhaps. Perhaps you are a pastor of a church and you have some criticisms about your denomination and things that are going on there that dismay you deeply.

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Well, things like that, we would obviously welcome anonymous questions. In fact, when specific churches are mentioned, we would insist upon it.

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But the email address again is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. So I think it would be wise for us to start off,

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Dr. West, with a recap of what we discussed last week in part one, and then, as I said, shift gears over to discussing what we can do about the situation of pastors, church leaders who are failing.

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Dr. West Yeah. So, well, my book basically is focused on the idea that we often like to blame secularists and atheists as why our culture is disintegrating.

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And I think that although that's true, I became more and more concerned of just how Christians, particularly leading

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Christians in churches, in the entertainment industry, in politics, in academia, how much leading

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Christians were actually enabling the cultural decline. And that it really starts with the lack of biblical faithfulness, and that goes into all sorts of areas which

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I talked about in the book—our views of race and poverty, our views of sex, our view of whether we're willing to stand up for religious liberty, and our view of science from things like abortion and transgender issues and the mutilation of children—and adults, for that matter—but also the idea, is

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God really creator? Is he sovereign? Did he guide the development of life, or are we really the products of a blind, unguided process, or a

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God who really didn't care? And so, in all those areas, I talked about symptoms, how leading people from the former head of the

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NIH, Francis Collins, who was a leading evangelical Christian, but he didn't act like that while there, or pastors like Andy Stanley down in Georgia, who teaches and trains ministers across the world, who basically calls the

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Old Testament the obsolete testament, or Christian apologist

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Mike Licona, who basically thinks the New Testament was inspired by true events, like a movie about someone in history, but then the gospel writers were really creative in changing the facts, changing what

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Jesus said. So, basically, the first several chapters is just showing how much

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Christians have been involved, or self -identified Christians, have been involved in aiding this cultural collapse.

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Even in the area of sexuality, where the reinvention of marriage, the redefined marriage as a constitutional right to have gay marriage—which, of course, the

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Constitution doesn't actually provide that—that was handed down. The person who wrote that opinion was a church -going

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Catholic who was known as a goody -goody in his private life, appointed by Ronald Reagan, so it wasn't an atheist

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Democrat who came up with that decision. And similarly, many of the people, the bakers and florists and people who've been persecuted because they don't want to actually participate and support gay weddings, they're being persecuted by judges and by attorneys generals who are self -identified

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Christians. So, anyway, the big deal is that we need to look in our own house.

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Before we if we really want to change things and have a better culture that's more

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God -glorifying, we can't just blame the atheists. We have to look about what are we doing?

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How are we training our own leaders? How are we training our own families? How are we governing our own churches, our church schools, our

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Christian colleges? And why is it that we produce people who are in leading situations but who don't act like it?

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And, you know, what can we do about them? That's the next part of the book. But so, yeah, it's sort of the first part is an indictment of where we're at.

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And also in each of those chapters, I do try to delve down into what is the historic

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Christian tradition going back to the Bible and even the early church. And on many of these issues, although I'm sort of a

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Reformed Protestant, you know, on many of these cultural issues, I would say that the uniform teaching of the church from the time of the

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Bible, including Catholics as well as Protestants as well as Eastern Orthodox, has had the same teaching.

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And so I try to actually acquaint people with that, that, you know, the things that we're turning our backs on now, like a biblical view of the family or of life or of the need to, you know, obey

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God even if your government or else says you shouldn't. These things are things that I think what

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C .S. Lewis would call mere Christianity. They're things that faithful Christians have held to for the past 2 ,000 years that in many cases we're abandoning now.

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And just out of curiosity, I know that this goes, this deterioration, even apostasy that has occurred, this is not just a modern phenomenon, and we can look at the collapse of the

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Ivy League schools that were rooted in Puritan and biblical thought and teaching and that are now teaching the most horrendous and horrific and grotesque satanic leftist ideas that you can conjure up in your worst nightmare.

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And, you know, we could even go back to Thomas Jefferson, who had his own version of the

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Scriptures with all the miraculous removes. But, I mean, do you have any idea of certain pivotal points in history when the erosion and the corruption really began to have headway in the church at large here in the

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United States? Yeah, I'm so glad that you raise that, because I do think this is, you know, we are sinful, still, this side of heaven, and so this is a struggle throughout history, and even before the

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United States. I mean, if you think the pivotal things in church history, the things that led to, say, the

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Council of Nicaea and the Nicene Creed, well, that was because there were really some serious issues happening.

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But in the American context, you're exactly right when you point out that Harvard, Princeton, Yale, which no one thinks of today as Christian institutions, yet they were founded as explicitly

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Christian institutions, in some cases as missionary efforts to the Indians. I think, actually, Dartmouth had part of that in their mission, but they were founded as explicitly

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Christian, God -honoring institutions. But by the end of the 19th century, most of them were not.

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And so then that led to—so I think in America, you have had this continuing effort.

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And so you had the First Great Awakening, George Whitefield, a lot of people did go back to church, but then by the time of the

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American founding, a lot of Americans like to think, oh, we were founded as a Christian nation. In some sense, that's true.

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But in other senses, it's misleading. So at the time, 1790s, early 1800s, a lot of Americans were endorsing the

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French Revolution, which was anything but Christian, and they were basically embracing

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Unitarianism, rejecting Jesus as God. And in fact, in New England, the Congregationalist churches were largely taken over by the early 1800s and displaced the

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Trinitarians, the people who were Orthodox believers, with Unitarians that were then funded by the state.

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And in Virginia, you mentioned Thomas Jefferson. Of course, Thomas Jefferson was a

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Unitarian, and he was very—he particularly hated, if you read his private writings,

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Calvinists. Those were his bugaboo. He and John Adams were equally—in their ending years of 1820s, you can read their private correspondence, where of the

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Christians that they particularly hated was Calvinists and Trinitarians—I mean,

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Orthodox Christians who believe in the Trinity. So we faced that. In fact, many evangelical

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Christians at the time, they thought, you know, Christianity was going to be destroyed and wiped out in the

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United States. But then God had something else in store, and there were problems with what became known as the

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Second Great Awakening. I know, in fact, a lot of people in the Reformed tradition have problems with some of it. On the other hand,

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I think there was certainly something genuine, so that what you saw by the time of the Civil War, America was actually in church attendance at churches who believed that Jesus was

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God, who believed that Jesus was sinless and their Savior, believed the miracles of the Bible. You had more people attending church in America by the time of Civil War than you did in the 1790s, when there was this falling away.

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And so I think one of the first falling away was after the founding, where you had, like I said, people were gravitating towards deism and Unitarianism, but then

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God did his work. And groups that even exist today, like the American Bible Society, that's when they were formed in the early 1800s to help counteract this.

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And there was just a panoply of voluntary associations outside the churches to work to convert prisoners, you know, in prison ministries, you know, things like prison fellowship today.

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There was an analog in the early 1800s where Christians, to rescue women from prostitution, there were,

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I mean, there was just hundreds of different societies where Christians gathered together. And all the

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Protestant Christians, especially Presbyterian Congregationalists, even Episcopalians back in the days when

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Episcopalians, you know, believed in the amazing work, even though there were also,

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I think, some things that weren't helpful. Okay, then what happened? After the

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Civil War, you have another, partly because of Darwinism, Marx, Freud, and then

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Nietzsche, you had, again, a lot of the Christian institutions that had been founded earlier in the century fall away.

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And so Christians, to their credit, I think God did another work, and a lot of the self -identified evangelical

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Christian universities today were actually established. I know that the place that I used to teach at was a professor,

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Seattle Pacific University, was founded in the 1890s, and it was part of a new refounding of seminaries and colleges that were going to carry on the work that places like Harvard had left behind.

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So they refounded new institutions, and that did a lot of good. But then, again,

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I would say, I'm papering over some things, but by the 1920s and 30s, you had the theological liberalism begin to creep into some of those institutions, and then certainly by the 1960s and 70s, you had a lot of falling away.

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However, I'd say in the 70s, with the 60s and 70s, with people like Francis Schaeffer and a number of other people,

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Harold Denzel, the people who argued for inerrancy of the Scriptures, which is the traditional view,

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I would argue, of Christians, but there was an emphasis on that because that was being lost. So in the 70s and early 80s, you had a,

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I would say, whether you call it a revival or not, a major, you know, many people stood up, and then we lived in the light of that.

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But now, I think, we're in another key place where those reforms of the past, we have a new generation, and they have fallen away, and in some sense, maybe fallen away because some of the prior things were so successful in staving off things.

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But now, I think, we're in a similar situation where the church was in the 1970s, when even the evangelical churches were getting, were really becoming un -evangelical and not trusting in biblical authority and not defending it.

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That was happening in the 1970s. I talk actually about one of the cases in my book that is little known in the

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Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and people stood up, and that had a good impact.

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But now, the current generation needs to realize we're in a similar time, and the choices we make now are going to determine,

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I mean, obviously, God is going to determine, but the choices we make are important about whether we go to another era where we have some live reformation of going back to biblical faithfulness or not.

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And if we don't, well, all you need to do is look in the Old Testament and the pattern of ancient

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Israel and what happens when people finally turn away and don't turn back to God.

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God lets them suffer the consequences of that. Now, one more thing before we move on to what we can do about it.

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Would you say that one of the reasons that the world, and specifically this nation, is doing things and adopting into law things that we didn't even, many of us would never have dreamed would ever happen, at least in our lifetimes, like same -sex marriage and things like that, things that even our current administration is not opposed to or trying to overturn?

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Do you think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the world has stopped looking to Christian ministers and theologians for the answers to life's most critical issues?

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And one of the reasons that they're not turning to ministers and theologians is because many of them, especially those in places of higher learning and academia, are saying the same thing that the secularist leftists are.

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So why even go to Christian pastors and theologians for answers when you could get the same answers and maybe even more articulately spoken and written by secular know -it -alls and people in ivory towers?

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Yeah, I certainly think there is some truth to that, but I actually would say that I think the sad fact is that not all, but many of the leading

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Christian influencers, if you will, basically have been saying the exact same things as the secularists.

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And so there's been no reason to listen to them, so that gets to what you were saying. But I think the most serious thing is not that the rest of the world isn't looking towards pastors of the church, it's that we're not discipling members of the church.

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Again, the number of Christians who I think naively think that, oh, if we just had more Christians in places of power, everything would be great.

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We have loads of self -identified Christians in every culture -forming arena in America at some of the highest levels of both politics, the arts, everything.

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But they're not letting it out. Christianity is personal, but it's not public in the way that their public actions are not consistent.

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So I think that the biggest failing is that we have not been discipling the people who come to our churches.

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So it's not just that people outside the churches aren't listening to the church, it's we're not discipling the people inside our churches.

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And until we get that fixed, I think it's going to be hard to have a larger influence on the world.

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Tom, okay, well, let's start giving our listeners things that we can do about this.

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Tom Yeah, so I have about six or so chapters that delve into this in various ways.

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So the first one is in a section of the book called Causes, but it's a cause so that you can also understand what you can do.

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And the issue is, who do we listen to? And this comes about even from my own experience of people who

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I've known who've ended up becoming lukewarm or end up over the years, they start out as biblical

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Christians, and then suddenly, they're sort of giving the talking points that you hear in the

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New York Times or CNN or even Fox News on a lot of cultural issues. I mean, if you're a biblical

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Christian, there's a lot of really not great things there, even in some so -called conserved outlets.

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And so why is that? Well, they're aping those talking points because that's where they're getting their information about the world.

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So I think in that area, one thing you can do, obviously, is we should all be like the Bereans who, when they heard the gospel, it talks about how they went and compared it to what the

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Bible, what the Scripture said, and so they were discerning, and so that's part of it. But part of it is also making sure you, your family, your church, if you're a pastor of your church, are getting good information sources.

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And the good news is, and people don't even need to buy my book for this, and this isn't exhaustive, but if you go to stockholmsyndromechristianity .com,

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my book website, and go to the section titled Resources, and then scroll down to the tab on News and Information, I'll give you a list.

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I'll talk about some of them here. We, in this information -saturated society, fortunately, there are lots of good things.

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I mean, you're listening to a show that actually brings that, but for general news, like there's a whole

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Christian ministry that does a news service that will tell you about persecution of Christians around the world and the plight of Christians everywhere.

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These are things you're not going to read in the New York Times or not read in the Washington Post or, you know, see mostly on social media, but you can go there.

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That resource is there. There are places like the Christian Post or World Magazine, or even in politics, there are things that may not be specifically

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Christian but are much more likely to be accurate and also cover issues of interest to Christians.

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Just the News is something run by some veteran journalists that tends to give a lot of backup, like they not just write about it, but then they'll link to the actual thing so that you can dig deeper if you want to.

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So the key thing is there are lots of information sources, and there are alternatives to Wikipedia.

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I mean, this is another of these information sources that even Christians use, and Wikipedia isn't always bad, but unfortunately, when it comes to talking about Jesus or abortion or anything culturally consequential, it is terrible.

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And so you shouldn't be getting your information from Wikipedia. Fortunately, there are other encyclopedias out there. There are

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Christian sites like AllAboutGod and GotQuestions that actually have all sorts of articles that are pretty closely vetted.

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So again, I give examples of this. Similarly, there are better search engines than Google.

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Google curates the results. So again, why is this important? You may think that you have a solid biblical view, but if you're getting your information about current events, about what's in your community, what's happening in your nation, and from people who have a non -Christian worldview, they're selecting the stories that—first of all, they're not covering a lot of stories that Christians should want to know about.

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Well, for example, if you're a listener, do you know that just in the last couple of years, there have been more than 500 attacks on churches and pro -life centers?

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500 attacks from arson to—and I write about this in my book, and if you get my book, you can go to the website that actually creates a list of these.

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That's not covered by the news media, because— I didn't even hear that on Fox News, as you were saying before.

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Fox News isn't necessarily a bastion of all truth. No, especially when it comes to cultural matters, because a lot of them are culturally not

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Christians. Practicing homosexuals, too, some of their favorite talking heads.

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Yeah. But this highlights one thing, is that it's not just biased information.

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There are all sorts of ways. Agenda setting is one of the most important functions of the news media. That is, if someone tells you, well, what most—the five most important things that happened in the last week.

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If you are godless, if you don't believe God exists, or you don't believe in the God of the Bible, you're going to have a different view of what the five most important things are.

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If you're a Christian, well, let's say we come across and we're on Easter week. Well, if you're a

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Christian, probably one of the most—five most important stories of Easter week is that we celebrated the resurrection, that churches,

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Christians, millions around the world celebrated the resurrection. But if you're a non -Christian, that's not even a blip.

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And I talk about, actually, the coverage of Easter, other things. At one point in America, they actually covered sermons preached on Sundays in major churches in our newspapers.

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So one of the biggest ways that you're manipulated, that you don't even think about, is not just obvious bias, it's the selection of the stories they cover and those they don't.

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And so my chapter actually goes through all these ways so that you can be aware of how you're being manipulated.

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But again, on the other side, I try to equip you to, there are sources that you can go for for better information.

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That alone, if you just make sure that you get better information sources about the world, and your kids do too, and you train them, or if you're a pastor, you try to train your church members the importance to do that, that will be such a great defense against Stockholm Syndrome Christianity.

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You know, it's not a perfect defense, but that's one thing you do. Where do you get your information from? Another thing in the section of my book on causes, but actually it's also about a solution, excuse me, which is who do you aim to please?

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So it's not just who you listen to. And this hits home for me when I was a

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Christian college faculty member, and I saw that too many of us were aiming to please, oh, were you written up in the

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New York Times? Or, oh, did you get a government grant from a government agency that's funding all sorts of terrible stuff?

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Or, you know, are you liked by these secular professors across, you know, the way in our city?

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If you're aiming to please people who don't want to please God, or people who are sellouts or whatever, if that's who you're aiming to please, it's going to be the gift that keeps giving.

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And so one thing you can ask yourself, who am I aiming to please? And of course we should hope to please

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God, but even in the world, who's our peer group that we're trying to get approval from?

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That will tell you a lot. So then the last area in the section on causes, which is also a solution, is, and I think this is one of the biggest things, and I've seen this in institutions, is do our accountability structures actually hold people accountable?

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And where I saw at the Christian, historically evangelical Christian university that I was at, we had a solid board of trustees who were biblical

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Christians, but they decided that from cowardice or something, that they would not uphold and make sure that the faculty and staff adhered to the mission of the university.

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And when push came to shove, they basically just allowed, you know, the university to self -destruct by their choices in who they allowed to be hired and who they refused to fire.

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And so this is true not just for Christian, you know, universities, but for churches.

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I mean, I go back to Andy Stanley, who is now calling the Old Testament the obsolete testament, arguing that it should be moved to the back of the

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Christian Bible, that we should reorganize our Bibles. He has a board of elders, and presumably not all of them are as heterodox as he is, because they were there when he wasn't so heterodox, but now that he is, why are they tolerating it?

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I mean, so the lack of accountability structures, and it's not just on the area of, biblical faithfulness.

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Also, there was a megachurch—I don't know that I wrote about this in my book, maybe I did, and I won't name it because they've moved on and they've tried to do the right thing now—but they were a large evangelical megachurch, and their senior pastor at the time—it later came out—had a history of molesting young boys, and the elders had gotten lots of complaints on it, and had swept them under the rug.

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The only way it came out, finally, was that one elder, it got too much for him, and so he went public and said, we need to investigate this, and then all heck broke loose, and he was demonized as a

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Judas, but it forced an actual investigation, which I think the church thought they could sweep under the rug, but it turned out that the evidence was overwhelming.

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He resigned, he later died, but it was a lack of accountability structure.

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If you're called by God to be an elder or a board member, don't accept that charge if you're not willing to do what comes with it, which is holding people accountable.

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So those are three things that are some causes of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, but then solutions.

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But then we can also get into—I should pause here because you probably have some more questions—but we could get into more things in the section of the book where I actually talk about solutions, and I actually have 21 things people could do.

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Great. We'll go to those 21 things, at least as many as we can fit into our allotted time, after we will begin doing so after we return from our first commercial break.

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And once again, if you would like to get in line with those that have already submitted questions that they're waiting to have answered, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name, at least city and state and country of residence. And now hear our words from our sponsors, including one of our latest,

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At TRBC, we joyfully uphold the Second London Baptist Confession, we embrace congregational church government, and we are committed to preaching the full counsel of God's Word for the edification of believers, the salvation of the lost, and the glory of our triune

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That's trbccarlisle .org. God willing, we'll see you soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of the Haven, an Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island.

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I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my long -time friend and brother

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Well, we are now back with my guest, Dr. John G. West, and we are discussing his book,

37:59

The Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, Why Christian Leaders Are Failing and What We Can Do About It.

38:06

This is part two, as I said, of a discussion we began on February 27th, and I urge our listeners to, as soon as you can, listen to part one of that discussion because it covers a lot of things that we don't have time to address today because we ran out of time last time we were discussing this in part one and could not get heavily into what

38:40

Dr. West addresses in the book in regard to the subtitle,

38:45

What We Can Do About It. So, we hope that you listen to that soon.

38:50

And again, our email address, if you have questions, is chrisarmson at gmail .com,

38:56

chrisarmson at gmail .com, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence and country of residence if you live outside of the good old

39:08

USA. Before I take any listener questions, why don't you move on to another one of the points that you have of what we can do about it?

39:19

Yeah, so I have a chapter called A Call to Wisdom, and there I actually try to talk about sort of seven things to beware of, or to be wary of, to be careful of, that may help you be misled into Stockholm Syndrome Christianity.

39:37

And these are also things that, you know, can help give you guidance when you're dealing with people.

39:43

So, the first one actually deals with to beware a

39:49

Hollywood view of evil. And that's because I think when people are dealing with error in the church or in the culture, they have this

39:58

Hollywood view—many Christians have a Hollywood view of evil—that, you know, you want this terrible villain character, you want

40:06

Darth Vader, or you want Adolf Hitler, and if it doesn't look like Adolf Hitler or Stalin or, you know, something like that, then it must not be bad.

40:16

That's a Hollywood view of evil. You know, going back to Augustine, you know,

40:21

Christians have recognized that evil is a twisting of something that's good, because the devil can't create anything.

40:27

All he can do is twist that which God creates. But that has an implication.

40:32

That means that errors may have at their very, you know, kernel a kernel of truth, because error and evil have to twist the truth.

40:45

So, don't be surprised when you see things that are errors that have a smidgen of truth, or it may even have an important truth, but it may be twisted in the wrong way.

40:58

And so, I think sometimes Christians are unsuspecting because they're expecting a Hollywood villain when they don't realize that in the real world, that evil is a twisting of the truth and good, because God is the only one who can create things.

41:14

The devil can only twist things. And so, that means that, again, even the most evil things—and this is how you get things like a misplaced sense of love—yes, we're called to be loving.

41:27

That's true. But in a biblical sense, it's not the loving of validation, no matter what someone does, even to their own self -destruction.

41:35

That's not loving. Or that violates God's commands, or how he's created us. And so, this is where it's so important to understand that when you're looking to discern evil, it's not just Hollywood villains.

41:49

It's even things that may have a kernel of truth may go wrong.

41:54

And so, you need to be discerning about that. Another thing on the area of wisdom is really beware the use of language.

42:04

So, we've seen this where people redefine certain words to try to—whether it be gay

42:11

Christian or, you know, they redefine words in ways to get you to come along or to confuse you.

42:19

And that's usually another warning sign. One actual example I talk in my book is there are groups who are trying to redefine pro -life to mean if you buy into everything about global warming.

42:32

And so, you may be a politician who has 100 % pro -abortion voting record.

42:38

But if you vote, you know, for climate change actions, you may be called pro -life.

42:46

That is a sinister move. The people and the Christians who try to redefine what pro -life means to cover up, really, what people are doing bad things, they're misusing the terminology.

43:01

And so, you really do need to look carefully at how people are defining terms and whether they're trying to move you along to something that's not good by their redefining of the term.

43:12

And so, those are some of the things in the area of wisdom, because I do think that's one of the things that to counteract

43:17

Stockholm Syndrome Christianity is we need to cultivate, you know, the Bible consistently says that we need to be wise.

43:24

We need to be wise as serpents, but innocent as doves. But we also need to be wise. We need to be prudent. But that's tied to biblical truth in order to do that.

43:34

And so, I think that's another whole area of cultivating the mindset or cultivating the discipline of wisdom that can help us, you know, stay on the right path.

43:46

So, that's one big thing. Yeah. Okay. We do have Harrison, who is located in East Satoket, Long Island.

43:58

And Harrison said, you mentioned before the importance of caring about who appreciates or believes our message.

44:08

And wouldn't that at the same time include who should we fear? Yeah, I think that that's an excellent point, because one of the greatest problems in our world is that people fear

44:23

God more than men, including people in the church. Even regenerate people often fear men more than God.

44:33

And it reminded me of the quote, I can't remember which

44:39

Mafia movie it is from. It might be The Godfather. It might be

44:44

A Bronx Tale. It might be both. But the question asked to a mob leader, which is better, to be loved or feared?

44:55

And the answer was feared by one of them, one of the mob leaders. And although you cannot truly have a biblical fear of God unless you love him, the fear of God is really what's absent today, even in modern evangelicalism.

45:13

And that is going to lead to some disastrous, not only beliefs, but actions.

45:20

So I guess going back to our listeners' question, it goes along with being concerned about who we want to accept our message.

45:31

Yeah, I think it was Machiavelli who actually said it was better to be feared than loved. So probably the movie guy was actually recalling

45:39

Machiavelli's advice. And that's a classic work, apparently, for Mafioso to read, I've heard.

45:46

I could believe it. But I think you raise a really profound point, both the caller or the listener and you,

45:56

Chris, is we're so used to just talking about Jesus as our friend and God as our friend, and I think that is true for those who are, you know, called by God.

46:06

But this sense of, I think the phrase Charles Williams, who was a friend of C .S.

46:12

Lewis, he had in one of his novels, a terrible good, which we're trying to get at that since we are so sinful and puny that we're misguided to thinking that the natural reaction to good, if you're not good, is, oh, that's great.

46:33

No, there is something terrifying about it. And fortunately, Jesus is our

46:38

Savior, and He died for our sins. But nonetheless, if we understand our relationship and how sinful we are in our own devices, that can be terrifying, and at least a sense of awe.

46:51

And you're right that we don't really have a lot of that, even in our churches.

46:57

And that is something that I think we need to ponder that, like I said,

47:05

Jesus does love us, as those of us who are called by His name, but there is something awe -inspiring and terrifying by the holiness of God, and that's something that is certainly throughout the

47:22

Bible and something that we do not—we sort of cover up. Tom Hanks Well, Harrison, make sure you get us your full mailing address in East Setauket, Long Island, because you have won a free copy of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity by our guest,

47:40

Dr. John G. West. Compliments of the Discovery Institute and also compliments of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

47:51

We'll actually be shipping the book out to you at no charge to you or to Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

47:58

Well, let's move on to another point. Dr. John G.

48:04

West Okay, so then I have a chapter where I then go through 21 different things, and we won't have time for all that.

48:10

And by the way, I mean, I want people to buy the book, so… Tom Hanks Of course. But I think we, you know, some things, just preliminary things that anyone can do.

48:22

One is make—you know, equip yourself. One is do no harm, and the other is pray.

48:28

And I want to just unpack those a little bit. If you are wanting to be salt and light in our society, in your family, you do need to get acquainted with what's happening and understand how far it is from what the

48:44

Bible says and sort of equip yourself to be able to discuss some of these. You don't have to be an expert on everything, but you do need to at least know where, say, for your kid's sake or for other people in your church, where to point them if they have struggles with these things.

49:02

And so you need to do some self -equipping, and I hope my book can be part of that.

49:07

But there are a lot of other great resources. Listening to this podcast is a way of self -equipping.

49:13

But then also, I think this idea of do no harm, which I think I may have talked about last time, so I'll just be brief, but do an inventory of—even if you're not, even if you don't feel that you can do great things, and I actually think we're all called to do significant things,

49:29

God has, you know, it talks about in Ephesians, one of my favorite verses, about how God prepares beforehand for the things for us to do, for us to walk into.

49:38

And so I do think God has something for each one who's listening to calling us to do.

49:43

But even apart from that, I mean, even if you think, well, I can't do all these great things, what are you—don't do any harm.

49:53

Do an inventory. How are you spending your time, talent, and treasure? Are you writing a check to a Christian ministry or a church or a formerly

50:00

Christian cause that you went to 30 years ago that you know is off the rails now, but through a mistaken sense of sympathy or nostalgia, you're just writing the check?

50:12

You're in some sense worse than the people who are no longer following God at that institution, because they may be wrong, but they may think that they're right even though they're wrong.

50:22

But if you know they're wrong and you're writing the check to it, you're facilitating something you know to be wrong.

50:28

So do no harm. Make sure that in the actions that you're doing, at the places you're volunteering, the places you're involved in, where you're writing your checks, that you're at least not facilitating, you know, the forces sort of against biblical faith.

50:44

And then prayer, I really do think I recount a—you know, prayer is largely supposed to be about praise, recognizing

50:53

God's sovereign will, and also, you know, seeking forgiveness. But I also think intercessionary prayer is important, and I write about an example in my book of when at the last university, when

51:10

I was at the university, they were bringing in a major speaker—actually, his name was Clark Pinnock, he's now deceased—he was one of the leaders arguing for that open theism, which really means that God Himself doesn't know the future.

51:23

Yeah, and he was an apostate because he started as a theologically sound man. Yes, he did.

51:30

By the time he came to my university, he was in his apostate area. And so we were, you know,

51:35

I had no authority to counterman that. In fact, that year

51:41

I was actually on leave writing another book, but my wife and I were part of a young adult

51:47

Bible study that we helped sort of lead together. And so with the

51:53

Bible Study Leaders, we brought it to prayer that God would really frustrate, you know, the devil's actions here.

52:02

And it was really interesting. I later talked with the dean of the chapel who was partly responsible for bringing this person, who

52:09

I think agreed with his views, but he actually told me that after the fact that this was one of the absolute worst chapels they'd ever done, why?

52:19

Because he said the students couldn't make a head or tail—they couldn't actually understand what the guy was saying.

52:25

He was so meandering, so all over, that the students couldn't really even understand what he was saying. So God had really made his talk like a babble to them, and that just really struck me of how, you know,

52:36

God does answer prayers in His sovereign will, but prayer—and

52:41

I've seen this in stories I didn't tell in there—but, you know, prayer really is something that I think

52:48

Christians often neglect too much. It's not just—it's real, and God really listens.

52:55

And so I think that's another thing. So those are sort of three things everyone can do. And then, you know,

53:01

I go down to specific groups. If you're a parent, if you're a grandparent, if you're a pastor, if you're an elder, what are things you can do?

53:08

And we can tease out some of those things, but you might have more questions. Well, actually, we have to go to our midway break, and once again, if you want to join us on the air, there are people waiting, but you can get in line.

53:19

ChrisArnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back. Puritan Reformed is a

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Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church. We're devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

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Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

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Dr. Joe Moorcraft. I'm Joe Riley, a faithful Iron Sharpens Iron radio listener here in Attoye in County Kildare, Ireland.

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Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpens Iron is

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Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, Why Christian Leaders Are Failing and What We Can Do About It, this is part two of a discussion we began last week.

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I don't know if you cover this in your book, but isn't another good way to combat this total corruption of the church and the horrible influence that the church has had upon the world by having biblically faithful churches, groups of churches, and denominations start their own

01:09:10

Bible colleges and seminaries? Yes, and that is what happened in the past, as I discussed earlier, that evangelicals started a slew of new seminaries,

01:09:27

Bible colleges, Christian universities at the end of the 19th century. But the challenge is, actually,

01:09:35

Abraham Lincoln once had a famous speech, his Lyceum Address, that dealt with how do you perpetuate institutions once they're founded?

01:09:45

And so I think we can establish new institutions, and I actually think that that is called for.

01:09:52

But even when you're doing that, you need to set up accountability structures and other things to make sure that you, as best as possible, that you preserve them.

01:10:01

And so I think it is a tragedy, and it's a mark on the failures of evangelical

01:10:07

Christians over the past couple hundred years in this country, that you had

01:10:13

Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and all established as evangelical

01:10:19

Christian institutions, basically, and then by the 19th century they weren't. And then at the end of the 19th century, we established a whole slew of evangelical

01:10:28

Christian institutions, some of which still are, many of which are not, and many are in transition to not being.

01:10:36

And so I do think there is a case for establishing new institutions, but I think evangelicals need to get more serious about what it means to preserve and perpetuate an institution once you've found it.

01:10:50

Excellent. Well, Simon, by the way, love the name, it's my pastor's name, give me your full mailing address in Boise, Idaho, so that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cbbbs .com,

01:11:02

can ship out to you a free copy of the book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, by my guest

01:11:08

John G. West, complements of the Discovery Institute. So thank you very much for the excellent question, and if you could move on to another series of points that you have in your book.

01:11:21

Yeah, so another series that I talk about are what grandparents and parents can do, and also answer uncles, and it relates to the raising of kids.

01:11:31

And I do think Christians do think about this, but I think everyone needs to ask, if they have kids or grandkids, is who is actually raising them?

01:11:43

Because I know from, again, my own friends and people at a church where my wife and I were for 18 years, is that a lot of kids are in essence being raised by the culture.

01:11:57

They're being raised by social media, they're being raised by public schools, they're being raised by anything but their parents.

01:12:06

And even in the case of churches, a lot of church youth groups are only about relationships, which relationships are important, but you also need to train the mind as well as, you know, the heart.

01:12:21

And so, if you don't give adequate training to your kids, they're going to become

01:12:27

Stockholm Syndrome Christians or worse. But the good news is that if you're intentional, that, you know, people will go their own way, that's true, but all other things being equal, if you're intentional in establishing a good relationship with your kids from early on, and then start spending time with them to discuss consequential issues.

01:12:49

You know, this may sound a truism, but how many families, say, still talk about issues around the dinner table, or say, if you go on vacation or a trip, that you use those times to actually have real discussions with your kids, not just about fun stuff, but also about some deep stuff that they may be interested in.

01:13:08

And so, you know, some specific things is, number one, take control of your child's formal education.

01:13:14

So, you know, it may be that where you're at, you can't afford to send your child to either a private

01:13:21

Christian school or to homeschool them, but even if they're going to public school, there are things you can do to supplement their education.

01:13:28

But number one is, are you in control of your child's formal education, whether they're going to public or private or homeschool?

01:13:36

If not, you really need to become, and so I talk about some ways that you can do that.

01:13:42

You need to limit your kids' access to the internet, social media, and streaming video. I'm not one that says that they can have no access, but I know when our kids were raised, we intentionally limited their access, and I think that many parents don't know what their kids are getting into online, and it can be some really destructive things that can really harm them.

01:14:05

You know, hold a regular family time for Bible study and prayer. It shouldn't be just going to church once a week.

01:14:13

You also need to, you know, reflect this in your family. And then, you know, use your time with your kids to discuss matters of consequence, and my wife and I love to do this with our kids, and we've seen other parents who do that.

01:14:29

You know, again, ultimately, you know, you can't absolutely dictate to your kids,

01:14:35

I'm not saying that, and you may have done all these things, and they still may turn against their faith, but if you do these things, it's much less likely that they will.

01:14:45

And then, help your kids to think critically. So, one of the things is, when you're discussing things in the news, and when people are making claims, or they hear a claim in public schools, or even in their, say, their private

01:14:59

Christian school that maybe isn't all that solid, help them to think it through, and to think through why it may not be right.

01:15:07

You know, if they hear things about a false view of love, well, we need to be loving, and that means we need to approve or enable someone.

01:15:15

Well, is that really the case? Help them think that through, and help them be like the

01:15:21

Bereans, you know, to cultivate that attitude. And then, I think a final thing would be, if your kids are going to go to college, to really pay attention to preparing them for that, preparing them for the social, spiritual, and intellectual things that they're going to be facing there.

01:15:41

And that's true whether they go to a Christian college or to a secular college. And if you are going to want to send them to a

01:15:47

Christian college, be careful. And, in fact, on my website, I have a list of 10 questions you can ask, so you don't even need to get my book for this, of things that will help elicit some information that you probably wouldn't find out otherwise.

01:16:03

Those, yeah. Oh, I'm just agreeing with you, because I have been told by people who know far better than I do that the number of Christian colleges and seminaries that are still faithful to the

01:16:18

Scriptures here in the United States are few and far between, and that many

01:16:25

Bible colleges and seminaries that began biblically sound have drifted far away from their roots and have professors that are teaching absolutely horrendous and heretical things and denying truths of the

01:16:41

Scripture that Christians just always took for granted at one point that everybody who is a follower of Christ believed.

01:16:50

Yeah, no, that is right, and I think too many people are bamboozled by the rhetoric of the advertisement.

01:16:57

So I have a story from the place that I was at for 12 years. As my university actually in the classroom got further away from biblical

01:17:07

Christianity and were hiring more theologically unorthodox faculty, the rhetoric of the admissions office became more

01:17:16

Christian, because they did studies to show what their niche was, and so they became more intentionally

01:17:22

Christian in the advertising, coming here for Christian engagement with the world and that will integrate your faith with everything.

01:17:32

So we became more Christian in our advertising at the very time when what was actually happening in the classroom was moving further away from Orthodox Christianity.

01:17:41

Now, you can punch through that, but with some well -chosen questions.

01:17:47

For example, one thing you can look at—this is usually public knowledge—if they have a chapel program, go and look at who was invited to speak at chapel for the last year.

01:18:02

It will be instructive. Are they bringing people who are, say, talking about a biblical view of life, a biblical view of sexuality, who has drawn, you know, the historicity and authority of the

01:18:13

Bible, or are they talking about every other trendy issue under the sun that probably are veering into things that aren't very biblical?

01:18:20

That will tell you a lot, where the university puts its resources for their public speakers and for their chapel speakers.

01:18:28

Does the—find out whether the—and ask—whether the campus health office refers kids to Planned Parenthood or will provide prescriptions for birth control for unmarried students, or that will tell you something.

01:18:48

Find out whether any of the Bible or theology faculty are members of the

01:18:55

Evangelical Theological Society. Now, unfortunately, the Evangelical Theological Society is not quite as Orthodox as it once was.

01:19:02

Nonetheless, if they're not members of it and they're members of, say, certain really heterodox places, that will tell you something about what's likely taught about in the

01:19:12

Bible classroom. But like I said, there are about 10 questions you can ask that will give you a good feel for just how biblically faithful or not a college or university is.

01:19:24

Well, move on to your next point of what we can do. Yeah, so I think that apart from kids—so

01:19:33

I have another section of what if you're a pastor or a teacher, and this could include a Sunday school teacher or a small group leader—you know, what can you do?

01:19:40

And I think that the number one thing is to recognize the function of set the right agenda.

01:19:47

This actually goes back to my critique of the secular news media, that one of the biggest influences they have on Christians is agenda setting, which is telling you what's the most important thing you should think about.

01:20:01

You know, if someone has just bombed a church and no one covers it, well, then that's not an issue.

01:20:07

You don't even know that it happened. It's not even an issue. So similarly, as a pastor or a

01:20:13

Christian teacher, you have tremendous power to help focus your congregants, your students, on what are the things they ought to be thinking about.

01:20:26

And so don't just mimic the world. Use that to help them recognize the things that they ought to be thinking about and the things that ought to concern them, the things they ought to be getting more information about, the things they should be getting equipped about.

01:20:41

And here I would say that make sure that you're addressing issues where the battle is raging.

01:20:50

Now, Francis Schaeffer liked to cite a statement that he thought, and many people thought, was from Martin Luther. It actually wasn't.

01:20:57

But it's still a great statement, and I'll just read it here because I think this is something that every

01:21:02

Christian pastor or teacher or small group leader, or even if you're a mentor to other

01:21:09

Christians in your private life, needs to think about. And this is the statement.

01:21:14

If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every position of the truth of God, except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking,

01:21:26

I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity. Where the battle rages, the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

01:21:35

And to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that one point.

01:21:42

So the key thing is where the devil is most attacking, if that's the one place that you're not faithful, that's really consequential.

01:21:52

And so you need to think about that. Are you flinching from the things you think, you know, you may be faithful in other things, but you're flinching at the very point of the edge where the devil is attacking right now, then you're not really doing your duty as a pastor or a teacher.

01:22:09

And so I think that's another thing to think about. Then in another area, we could talk about what leaders involved in governance can do.

01:22:20

So, you know, there are Christians who are called to be board members, elders, deacons, church school board members, ministry group board members, and there are a lot of people who are involved in that, and that can be very hard if you don't have a lot of backbone, because most boards—and

01:22:38

I've been on a number of boards, both at the local level and some above that—and they like to govern by consensus.

01:22:48

And you never want to be the out person. And they also go along.

01:22:55

Usually a lot of boards, they just do whatever the president of the school or the pastor says, and they just go along.

01:23:03

And again, I think we should respect authority. We should respect pastoral authority. I get that. But I'm talking about things that really raise issues of biblical truth, where the

01:23:12

Bible is our supreme authority, God is our supreme authority, and His Word is. And so you need to be willing to stand up.

01:23:20

And so I talked about some ways you can do that. So because most boards try to govern by consensus and most follow modulated

01:23:30

Robert's Rules of Order, the great thing about that is that one person—I talk about the power of no.

01:23:38

And I used this when I was on the board. I wasn't always the most favorite person when I did this, but if someone is about—it looks like it's about to be steamrolled through, and there's no serious discussion.

01:23:50

If one board member raises discussion or before voting says, no, we need to have a discussion on this, and you lay it out, you can change the trajectory of that.

01:23:59

And I can think of one church board that I was on where someone was trying to get us to hire someone who there were some concerns about, and about just how scriptural they were.

01:24:14

And the person who wanted them to hire was saying, well, just trust me. Basically, I'll talk to them. And I was able to get the board to agree to, well, now let's have them answer the questions in writing so we can all see their answers.

01:24:29

And it turned out that when they had to answer in writing, they basically withdrew from consideration because they didn't meet our

01:24:35

Statement of Faith. And so I said, you know, I've seen time and again one board member, just by raising things, you can derail bad things.

01:24:45

Now, you can't fight on everything, but you have to choose your battles wisely. I talk about how you find allies for your efforts on the board.

01:24:54

But then here's one other thing that every board member, either of a church, or a ministry, or a school, one of the most important things you could ever do is oversee who is hired and fired.

01:25:08

And in fact, that was really the key downfall of the university that I was at. I talk about this in the book.

01:25:14

When I was hired, I was warned by fellow faculty who didn't, I think, know quite how biblically conservative

01:25:21

I was that, oh, we have a very theologically conservative board of trustees, and they just denied tenure to someone in the

01:25:29

School of Theology because that person wasn't really, they didn't consider all that orthodox. And so they were warning me about that.

01:25:35

But little did they know in my heart, I was saying, wow, that's great. We have a board that was actually serious about defending the integrity of the institution.

01:25:44

But fast forward 12 years when I left, when I decided to leave, and I could see the handwriting on the wall, the board at that time denied tenure, basically rubber -stamped the denial of tenure to one of the most biblically orthodox, unfired people that had been hired in the time when

01:26:02

I was there. So we went from a board that was willing to get rid of someone who was not biblically orthodox to, at the end, rubber -stamping the theologically liberal faculty and staff for getting rid of someone who was biblically orthodox.

01:26:19

And that tells you a lot about institutions. So one of the number one things you need to pay attention to is who are you hiring?

01:26:27

Who are you firing? Because the good saying in government service is that policy is personnel or personnel or policy.

01:26:37

And that's one reason why, without getting into all the politics of today, that there's this battle in the Trump administration over firing and hiring because they understand what

01:26:47

I don't think Trump understood in his first term of just how serious of getting personnel in place who actually support the mission.

01:26:56

And so that's certainly true of mission -driven institutions like churches and schools. So that's another thing.

01:27:03

And of course, one of the huge problems in that whole area is the debate even among like -minded

01:27:19

Christians who have the same theology, they might even be in the same churches or denominations, but they disagree on levels of pragmatism.

01:27:32

I think everybody, in some sense, who is involved with any kind of activity where you're working with people who are unbelievers and even enemies of Christ, if you want to accomplish things, there is always going to be some level of pragmatism, but there have been those that have gone way too far with that, trying to appease the wicked and their evil beliefs for the sake of victories in elections.

01:28:18

And I even know people who are heavily involved in the abortion abolition movement who have been very disappointed and feel betrayed by Mike Johnson, for instance, for the way that he has helped to squash bills that would criminalize the murder of an unborn child by the mother of the baby.

01:28:48

And so isn't that a problem that we see when even when

01:28:55

Christians may begin with right motives, and we want Christians in office, very often, in order to maintain a level of popularity, they wind up disappointing us greatly.

01:29:11

That is a challenge, and I think you raise a really important issue, which is I do think, and this has long been recognized both by Protestant and Catholic thinkers, that when you get down to the levels of what to do in any given case, that there is a role of prudence for how you best try to achieve the true goal.

01:29:35

And so the challenge with that is sometimes that's legitimate disagreement, sometimes it becomes a pretext and an excuse.

01:29:47

And so the challenge is trying to ascertain which is which.

01:29:54

And I will say, when it comes to what laws to pass in abortion,

01:30:02

I mean, John Calvin wrote about some of this in his laws about how there is a sense in that in order to get laws enacted, they do have to fit the shape of the society to some degree, or else they're not going to get enacted, or they'll end up being repealed, or something worse will happen.

01:30:26

And so I do think if your state, and this does get to how far you go, how fast on abortion, it's not a question about what should be done ultimately, but it is done of how you get from here to there.

01:30:40

And so I am sympathetic to those legitimate disagreements, and so I'm not going to get into the weeds on that.

01:30:47

But what I will say is that I think too often some of the explanations from politicians are pretext.

01:30:59

So I'm actually sympathetic with Mike Johnson's plight on a whole host of issues because he has such a limited majority in the

01:31:08

House. However, I'll give an example of, I don't think

01:31:14

I'll name the politician, but whereas a number of years ago at Discovery Institute we were involved in academic freedom legislation in Florida that would have helped protect teachers who want to teach the truth about Darwin's theory of evolution.

01:31:28

And in that case, both houses of the Florida legislature passed a law.

01:31:37

The Senate law was a bit more extreme in your face, and I think would have had legal problems.

01:31:45

And no one in the activist community was actually pushing for it. So the House was the better one.

01:31:52

There was a leading politician who claimed to be supportive, publicly. So this could have been law.

01:32:02

One house simply needed to accede to the other one, and they would have had the law. And this person took out the public claim that, well, he wanted the more in -your -face law, and so that's why he was pulling the plug on it.

01:32:16

Well, the reality was there was no one who was arguing for those laws, whether it be

01:32:22

Young Earth Creationists, Old Earth Creationists, Intelligentsia, they all agreed that the other bill was fine, and so get that into law.

01:32:33

This was a pretext by this person because he didn't want any law. So he was basically lying, this

01:32:40

Christian politician, that in order—and so I do think that Christians, it's hard to develop this sense of discernment, but I do think that it's fair.

01:32:51

I'm most concerned about Christians who offer pretexts of saying that they're supportive of something when they're really not.

01:32:58

There are legitimate questions about tactics on anything, but then

01:33:04

I think there are some stuff that there aren't legitimate disagreements on, which

01:33:11

I'm kind of focusing on. But you're right that there are issues there. Okay, before we go to our final break, we have

01:33:20

Brian in Martha Lake, Washington, and Brian says,

01:33:25

Do you think confessionalism is a missing element in the church at large, which can help prevent a church from drifting away and even abandoning its theological roots?

01:33:37

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And, of course, one of the key factors in that scenario is that a church or denomination continues to appoint people to leadership that uphold the confession, because even the

01:33:55

PCUSA began with the Westminster Confession and has become largely apostate, and even the

01:34:02

Episcopal Church began with the 39 Articles of Religion and is still nonetheless largely apostate, almost completely apostate, and we could go on and on—the

01:34:12

Congregationalist Church and the Savoy Declaration, etc. So that's a great question.

01:34:20

Do you have any comments? Yeah, I think that's a great point, Brian, and I think you're right.

01:34:26

I actually think confessionalism is a very positive thing.

01:34:32

As Chris, you've pointed out, you're right. Nothing this side of heaven is going to be perfect, and so the challenge with some formerly confessional institutions is that they didn't end up consistently applying, and they gave up.

01:34:45

So it's sort of a paper tiger, if you will. It's a fake confessionalism. But real confessionalism of taking seriously your confession of faith and your distinctives and making sure that all of your leadership supports that, and that it's taught to people who aren't in leadership so they know that that is what your church stands for or your institution stands for,

01:35:07

I completely agree, is a very helpful thing. The only, if I'd say, the downside is, or just to be aware of, is that if you make everything confessional, that does tend to,

01:35:25

I think, push to then, well, we need to compromise. Everyone doesn't have to agree to everything, so you do need to be a bit careful.

01:35:34

And I'm not saying this for any particular thing, but it's just true. The more things you have, the more articles you have, the more things that you insist on, the more likely there's going to be stronger pressure to start giving up some of that.

01:35:50

And once people start treating your confessions as negotiable, then you're down the path that it's hard to stop.

01:36:02

So I do think that, for myself, there is some benefit to being careful about everything that you put in confessional so that you make sure whatever you put in, you need to treat as genuinely binding, or else you'll have it on paper.

01:36:30

I mean, for example, Seattle Pacific University, where I taught, they had a good statement on biblical marriage, but as of two years ago, or three years ago when the faculty voted, 72 % voted against it, while they were obviously hired in spite of that.

01:36:45

And they weren't actually asked that they had to support it, that part of the problem. But I mean, that's the danger of having confessions that you don't pay attention to.

01:36:55

Tom Hanks Well, we have to go to our final break. If you have a question, send it in immediately, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:37:00

And by the way, Brian, you have won the last copy that we have to give away of Stockholm Syndrome Christianity by our guest

01:37:08

John G. West. So please make sure you give us your full mailing address in Martha Lake, Washington, so that CVBBS .com,

01:37:17

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship that book out to you free of charge.

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The danger of centralized power is often represented by the word king. As Americans, we hate the word king applied to any mere man.

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We are Armored Republic, and in a republic, there is no king but Christ.

01:44:47

Arm yourself with tools of liberty at armoredrepublic .com. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko of The Haven, an

01:45:03

Orthodox Presbyterian church in Comac, Long Island. I hold the Iron Sharpens Iron radio program hosted by my longtime friend and brother,

01:45:13

Chris Arnson, in the highest esteem, and I'm thrilled that you're listening today. I'm also delighted that Iron Sharpens Iron is partnering with one of my favorite resources for Reformed Christian literature for decades now,

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Oh, and make sure that you tell them you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron radio.

01:46:54

This is Brian McLaughlin, president of the SecureCom group and supporter of Chris Arnzen's Iron Sharpens Iron radio program.

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

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01:47:24

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

01:47:38

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

01:47:45

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

01:47:50

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

01:47:57

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

01:48:04

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

01:48:16

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

01:48:24

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

01:48:33

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

01:48:42

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

01:49:01

Welcome back, and folks, please don't forget that this program is paid for in part by the law firm of Buttafuoco and Associates.

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If you're the victim of a very serious personal injury or medical malpractice anywhere in the

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United States, call 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT, or visit their website, 1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com,

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1 -800 -NOW -HURT .com. Please make sure you tell Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney of law, that you heard about his law firm,

01:49:31

Buttafuoco and Associates, from Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. And we are now back with Dr.

01:49:39

John G. West, and please continue with the points of what we can do to, by God's grace and mercy, change the tide of how the church and Christian institutions in general have become impotent in doing anything to be a salt and light in this world.

01:50:04

Yeah, well, I think that, as we wrap up, I think the final thing I would like to emphasize is

01:50:10

God calls us to be faithful, not necessarily successful.

01:50:17

And so I do think there are things we can do, and we talked about, you know, a lot of them not in real depth, but I think there are things we can do.

01:50:26

I think God has things that He wants us to do. But I also do want to caution against—maybe if you're listening here, you're,

01:50:35

I hope, distraught by where we are as a nation and where the church is.

01:50:41

And God can honor that, and He's—don't think, sometimes

01:50:47

I think Christians, especially Americans, who idolize worldly success, you know, the bigger the church you have, the more money you have, this.

01:50:58

And in fact, in the Christian nonprofit world, I talk about this in my book, just how much the consultants, because I've had to listen to some of them, are so wedded to the ways of the world, and that is pernicious.

01:51:11

There's many churches who adopt the business models of business success. And again, I'm all for spending money wisely.

01:51:17

Yes, things take money. I get all that. But there is a tendency among American Christians to think, well, if I just work hard enough, it's all dependent on me.

01:51:25

Well, actually, no, it's not. It's not ultimately dependent on us. God calls us to be faithful, not successful.

01:51:33

God in His sovereign will will determine the success or failure of things, but He calls us to be faithful.

01:51:41

I do think it's a biblical principle that if we just squander our talents, times, and treasure, and turn our back on what

01:51:49

God wants, we know from the Old Testament and God's just dealings with nations and with His people that, you know, there are consequences for that, so I don't diminish that.

01:52:01

But take heart. If you're one of the faithful ones who's trying to be faithful, take heart that that's all really

01:52:07

God is calling you to do, and God can do some surprising things with it. And so in the last chapter, I actually go and talk about a lot of times in history when

01:52:17

Christians thought, oh, it was just the end, end of Christianity, in the country of the time that they lived in, and then

01:52:25

God did something amazing. And we talked a little bit about earlier in this session about some of the things that God did of raising up Christians at different parts in the

01:52:33

United States history, but this is also world history. I mean, if you were a Christian in China after World War II, when

01:52:42

Mao took over, and when Christians and missionaries were thrown out of China—Western missionaries, at least—and you had then later the

01:52:50

Cultural Revolution, I mean, that was a really, really awful time, and a lot of people were persecuted and died.

01:52:59

But, you know, it did not destroy Christianity. There are now hundreds of millions of Christians, apparently, in China, and so, you know,

01:53:07

God is not going to be mocked, and God is with his faithful ones, and if God can do that in China, he certainly could do that in the

01:53:16

United States, regardless of what happens, say, to our government. I think what happens to our government is important, but I'm just saying that take heart, and so my final message would be to take hope, because our hope is in a

01:53:29

God who is supreme from, you know, eternity in both directions, before us and in front of us.

01:53:39

And so we are called to be faithful, but don't think that then it all devolves on you, because it doesn't.

01:53:46

Tom Hanks Praise God. And before we go, I'd like you to basically whet the appetites of our listeners regarding some of your documentaries, one of which was a documentary we were discussing before we went on the air today,

01:54:00

The Biology of the Second Reich. Dr. Robert McClendon Yeah. So this tells a little -known story—it's a short documentary, but it won some awards—of the, of what led up to World War I, and so the

01:54:14

Second Reich, so the German Kaiser, the, of course, Kaiser comes from Caesar, and many people don't know just how pernicious

01:54:22

Darwinian theory was on Germany before World War II, and leading to genocide in Africa, in German Southwest Africa, and then these

01:54:34

German theorists who basically were saying that through the right of the strongest and through survival of the fittest, that if you applied

01:54:39

Darwin's law, that meant Germany should control the world, and this was the ideology that fed into World War I.

01:54:45

And so it tells that story. It's a chapter in history that most people don't know about, that, you know, ideas do have consequences, and Darwin's ideas really had some horrific consequences, and this is one of many.

01:55:00

Tom Hanks And why don't you highlight a couple more documentaries before we go? Dr. Robert McClendon So another one that also focused on the impact of Darwinism on the development of what was called scientific racism and also on eugenics, the effort to breed a better human race using

01:55:16

Darwinian principles. I tell that story in Human Zoos, which now has over 4 million views on YouTube, and that also won some awards, and God did some amazing things with that, because we had, it was done on a shoestring for less than $20 ,000 overall for a 60 -minute documentary, but so if you want to know both how

01:55:37

Darwinism fed into racist views of human beings, but also some of the story about Christians who stood up based on the biblical view that God created us in His image,

01:55:49

I also tell that in that documentary. Both black and white pastors, in particular, who—the

01:55:57

Human Zoos was something, just to sort of tease out a little bit, where we actually did, in the

01:56:02

Bronx Zoo, one of the most prominent zoos in the nation at the time, basically put in a cage a young man from Africa in the ape house, in the primate house, on public display in Otabenga in the early 1900s.

01:56:18

And it was a really tragic, horrific part of American history. And more broadly speaking, at many

01:56:25

World's Fairs, they would import people from around the world and put them up behind fences so that people could come and view them.

01:56:33

And so, and this was all done because they thought there were lower races on the evolutionary scale. And I believe

01:56:38

Otabenga committed suicide, didn't he? Yeah, very tragically, later in life, he committed suicide.

01:56:45

And so it's a very tragic story. Yes, being from Long Island, one of my favorite places to visit, beautiful place, is

01:56:58

Cold Spring Harbor. But I learned a number of years ago, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory was the headquarters of eugenics, and they actually inspired

01:57:09

Hitler and a lot of his ideas. Well, Hitler certainly liked them.

01:57:15

I'd say, unfortunately, Darwinism had its own homegrown proponents, like Ernst Haeckel in Germany.

01:57:22

So I wouldn't go so far as to say he inspired Hitler, but certainly Hitler took support from the

01:57:27

American eugenics movement and cited them, that's true. And Cold Spring Harbor was the headquarters of a very creepy organization called the

01:57:35

Eugenics Record Office that tried to get biological records on everyone in what would have been today called a database, they didn't have databases back then, so that they could tell you whether you were evolutionary fit to marry someone else or not.

01:57:49

Whether you're biological, it was creepy. Yeah. Yeah. And that, believe it or not, that laboratory still exists, but it has renounced eugenics.

01:57:59

And even on their website, there's some section, I don't think it's very easy to find, but they have a section,

01:58:05

I think, called the darker side of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories or the dark history or something like that.

01:58:12

But, well, I want to make sure our listeners know not only where to purchase your book, but also find out more about the documentaries.

01:58:21

I know that the primary website for the Discovery Institute is discovery .org, and you have discovery .press,

01:58:29

and you mentioned before a website that has the title of your book in it. What is that? Yeah, stockholmsyndromechristianity .com,

01:58:37

that's the official book website, and there are lots of free resources. If you are interested in my documentaries or other things

01:58:43

I've written, I have a website, johngwest .com, where you can access a lot of that.

01:58:50

Great. Well, it has been such a joy having you on for the second time to complete our discussion on this very important book,

01:59:00

Stockholm Syndrome Christianity, why Christian leaders are failing and what we can do about it.

01:59:07

And I look forward to having you back on the program, perhaps to discuss some of your documentaries or anything else that is burdening your heart and mind that you want to tell our audience about.

01:59:18

That sounds great. Thank you for the conversation. It was a great conversation. I agree, and I want to thank you and everybody who listened, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater