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Jon surveys The Gospel Coalition's most egregious articles showing a political and theological move to the Left.
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Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, Jon Harris. We're going to talk more today about the Gospel Coalition. I realize I do have some things I need to follow up on from last week, and I am planning on doing that later on, especially a number of people who have sent me articles on the Biden administration investigating the Southern Baptist Convention and entities in the Southern Baptist Convention for sex abuse.
Who would have thought? Who interesting time. So we'll talk about that, and I'll follow up on some other things. But today I wanted to talk about the Gospel Coalition again, and the reason is simple in my mind.
It's because over the weekend, I noticed that on YouTube, there were many more views for the video I put out on the Gospel Coalition than there were for previous videos. I wanted to know why, and I just started thinking.
This is only a theory that I have, but I think it's probably an accurate one. A lot of Christians who read the Gospel Coalition know there's something wrong, but they can't put their finger on it. I think that's an accurate representation.
I think they hear things sometimes, especially online, about the Gospel Coalition being Marxist or social gospel directed, or there's false teaching there, and they want proof. And sometimes maybe they're given some examples, but some of the examples seem vague, general.
I think sometimes people think, well, what percentage of the content is compromised like that versus the solid stuff or the helpful stuff, perhaps. I think there's just a lot of questions like that that go through people's minds, but they know deep down something's off, and there may be multiple reasons for this.
I think one of them is a lot of people, a lot of Christians, when they read some of this content, some things get past them. They don't see necessarily unless they're really paying close attention, and they're really grounded in theology.
Frankly, for some of these articles, you have to have somewhat of a grounding in other things like economics and history and sometimes philosophy, and some of those things can get past them because they're not catching it.
I think that's part of it, for some at least. I think the other thing is that when you're reading the Gospel Coalition website, and they go through, I think, phases. Sometimes they'll have a string of bad articles, and it's obvious.
Other times it's not so obvious, and they might even put out some decent articles that aren't necessarily bad. For me, I've just never found them helpful. Even years ago, before I ever had a thought that they might be compromised in any way, in 2010 and 2011, I wasn't really that concerned about the Gospel Coalition, but I just never found them helpful, and that's just me.
I think there's other reasons for that, which I won't get into, but there were other things that I'd rather read if I really wanted to know about what's going on in the world, or movie reviews, which Gospel Coalition does sometimes, or theology, or news, church news.
I just thought a lot of these articles are fluff. They're not giving me meat, and I need meat. That's how I felt about it. That's just me, but I think people who did find some things that might be legitimately helpful on the website, and still have confusion over it.
I even saw earlier this or last week, someone I think had tagged me on Facebook or something, and wanted to reference my content to someone who was confused about this, and so it just drove home the point to me.
People are still confused about the Gospel Coalition, and I hope that this video will be a helpful resource. I hope that this video will show you just a sampling, and believe me, this is hard to narrow it down.
I wanted to narrow it down to 10 articles. I felt like I couldn't do that, and then I just had time limitations, and I said, you know, I will just do 14 articles. That's fine. I probably could have put, though, 50 articles, 60 articles at least in a slideshow, and we don't have that all day to do a podcast, so I wanted to narrow it down to the best of my recollection, and I had a few people email me 14 articles that really show why people say there's a drift at the Gospel Coalition, why it's dangerous, and funny enough, I didn't put any of the articles about winsomeness in this, even though there's a bunch of them, and I thought, well, I should really put one in there, and then I thought, you know, I could, but there's other articles that I consider to be more dangerous and that expose more clearly what the Gospel Coalition is about, so I put those 14 articles in a slideshow, and what I've done is I've taken some quotes from them, and I'm not reading you the whole article.
I often do that, but this is supposed to be just to pique your interest, to give you somewhere to look, to give you some links and resources. If you want to know, someone asks, why is the Gospel Coalition compromised, or, you know, why do you think that?
You can send them these links. You can also send them my video, but I don't usually recommend sending them my video. I think people need to come to an understanding of these things on their own. They need to think through it, and I'm a firm believer in that.
Learn how to think clearly, wrestle with these things, read the articles in their entirety, and then compare them to what you know to be true, what the Word of God teaches, and go from there. So before we do that, though, before we do that, I want to let you know about Bradford Christian College.
Bradford Christian College, I actually know one of the founders of this particular online college, and spoke at an event in Idaho where he was organizing, and he organized the conference, and he told me about this.
And last week, I got a chance to speak to another one of the founders about it, and I want to just talk to you about, for the parents especially who have children who are now approaching that age, this is something that I think may be a good option for you.
There's a lot of homeschoolers, too, that you might be a little more advanced, you're thinking about where to go to college, but I know I was one of those people. I was like 16 going to community college, and sometimes online schools today are a better option for that, depending on where you live.
And so Bradford Christian College is a Christian educational institution rooted in the biblical doctrines of grace. They take what they call the biblical principle approach method, which is, according to Bradford Christian College founders, America's historic method of Bible reasoning.
So you're going to learn things like logic. You're going to learn things that aren't really taught today. You remember back in the day, many of you probably don't actually have a memory of this, but you probably remember reading about when people used to study things like rhetoric and logic in school.
Those things aren't studied as much. If they are, they're usually electives. Well, you're going to get a lot of that kind of thing in the approach that Bradford Christian College takes. And it's kind of education.
When I was talking with one of the founders, they said, this is what the founding fathers of our country, this is kind of what they would have experienced when they were learning. And we want to bring that approach to today's college students.
They assert the sovereignty of God in all of life. They acknowledge his hand in history. They're committed to restoring the biblical and governmental reasoning in the spheres of self-family and civil government.
They have a rigorous adherence to Westminster standards, and they offer a four-year degree through affiliation with Lagos University. So there is some kind of accreditation here. The credits are transferable to other universities and seminaries.
So if you want to go to Bradford Christian College, and then you want to transfer somewhere else perhaps, or you want to go on to higher education, like a master's degree or something, you can do that.
And they take a mentorship approach. So it's not simply just rote memorization and repeating back. There's more of an applicational approach where you're going to actually be talking on a regular basis with a mentor who's going to help you understand what you're learning and how to apply it in your daily life.
And these meetings are weekly or bi-weekly, so this isn't like once a semester. I remember my guidance counselor when I was at community college, I think I saw him maybe twice, and the second time I decided I don't need to see my guidance counselor anymore.
This isn't like that. There's eight 15-week semesters to complete a program. You can apply online to start a program anytime during the calendar year. I mean, talk about convenience. That's actually a huge thing in my mind.
You can start at any time during the calendar year. They have bachelors of arts in Christian education and bachelors of arts in theological studies, and you can email contact at bradfordchristiancollege .com, contact at bradfordchristiancollege .com for more information, or go to bradfordchristiancollege .com.
So this may be a good option for you. It may be an affordable option, and I would encourage you to look into it if you are considering having your kids go to college and you're looking at online colleges in particular.
I think this is especially a good approach probably for homeschoolers. All right, that being said, let's get into the podcast now and talk about the Gospel Coalition. So we are going to start. Here's the title.
The Gospel Coalition, the top 14 worst articles Gospel Coalition has ever published. How do you like that for a title? Top 14 worst articles the Gospel Coalition has ever published. There might be some I'm missing.
It's possible. But from my perspective and my limited knowledge, but my knowledge as limited as it is, it also extends beyond, I think, a lot of other people's on this topic since I have had to spend time on their website quite a bit, including their academic side.
They have an academic journal in doing research. So I've seen a lot of the articles that are kind of egregious, and this is what I boiled it down to. From my perspective, these are the top 14 worst articles that the Gospel Coalition has put out.
So let's start with number one. Number one, pushing a social gospel. And I'm going to each article, I'm going to just kind of summarize. This is what they're doing. This is why. So it gives you another reason.
This is why people don't trust the Gospel Coalition, because they push a social gospel. They're pushing a social gospel. Here's an article along those lines. There could have been many that we put up here, but I figured this one would be probably one of the best ones.
This is by Paul Tripp. Paul David Tripp, My Confession Toward a More Balanced Gospel, April 9th, 2000. I think, is that 19 or 18? I think that's 2019. And this is what it says. It says, For all my passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ, which has been accurate and faithful to the best of my ability, the gospel that I have held so dear has been in reality a truncated and incomplete gospel.
So this author, who I had to read many of his books in seminary, now, after years of writing these helpful, according to many, I never actually, I hate to say it, I never actually thought they were that helpful.
Sorry, Southeastern. Sorry, Master's Seminary. I just, I know I was assigned these books. I just, I never thought they were that helpful, but a lot of people do. And he wrote all these, these helpful books.
And, and he's saying, after all this time, he said, look, I didn't have the whole gospel here. I had a truncated one, an incomplete gospel. He says, by God's grace, I have become deeply persuaded that we cannot celebrate the gospel of God's grace without being as committed, a committed ambassador of the gospel of his justice as well.
So wait a minute, there's a gospel of his grace, and then there's the gospel of his justice. There's two gospels. What does this mean? And he says this, by God's patient grace, I'm now convinced that I cannot be a voice for one without being a voice for the other.
Sadly, I have preached grace and been silent in the face of injustice. The cross forbids me to close my eyes to any form of injustice, whether personal, corporate, governmental, ecclesiastical, or systemic.
What about you? How balanced has your gospel been? Have you been an advocate for grace, but silent in the face of injustice? Have you been comfortable with the segregation of the Christian community, or with subtle personal prejudice?
Where is God calling you to confession, repentance, and brand new ways of living? And if you read the entire article, you'll see that it's very much in line with the BLM kind of narrative. And he explains the awakening he had when he went to Eric Mason's church, the author of Woke Church, and started finding out his gospel was incomplete because he just wasn't aware of, and he hadn't been putting his efforts behind these efforts at creating a more equal society and getting rid of disparities and that kind of thing.
So if you don't do that, then you are somehow failing to have a complete gospel. Now, of course, the gospel is the power of God for those who are actually Christians who have repented and put their faith in Jesus, but it is the power of God to salvation to those who believe.
And the believing is the mechanism by which Christ's work, his finished work, is applied to us. So yes, there is repentance in that belief, but the belief is a trust in another's work, and so the gospel has always been—if you read the book of Galatians, I think it's very crystal clear—the gospel is the work of Christ.
Another gospel would be merging man's works with Christ's work, and you can't do that. And so that's what we have here with Paul Tripp, and I've gone to great lengths, especially in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, Religions and Conflict, to explain that and to parse out the difference between this gospel that's being pushed and the true gospel that we see in the New Testament.
So there are many other articles like this, but this is one of the best, in my opinion, clearest examples of how the gospel coalition—calling themselves the gospel coalition, right ?—is pushing sometimes a false gospel, another gospel, a gospel that needs to be anathematized, and this gospel of justice, whatever this is that includes man's works, is that.
So that's number one. Number two, gospel coalition claiming that Jesus personally grappled with sexuality, identity, and gender. This is in an article from TGC Australia. I decided, because there were just—there was a few egregious things in other gospel coalition websites.
Australia, Canada had some, and I thought, I want one from Australia and Canada. And I know I have listeners there, so I figured I'd be inclusive, as the social justice warriors like to say, and include those particular examples.
So here's the article. It's from Ed Shaw on the church and same-sex attracted people, and it's actually more of an interview than it is an article. It was kind of formed into an article, but it's an interview by Danny Treweek, and this is what he asked some questions, and this is what Ed Shaw has to say.
Ed Shaw says, sadly, the people who are most offended are other Christians, usually in the United States, who think that we are liberal. He's talking about general objections to the gospel coalition. He says, we don't usually get—or, I'm sorry, not the gospel coalition, to Living Out, to Living Out, which is the organization that he helped start with Sam Albury, and it's—there's a lot I could say, and a lot I've said on the podcast about it.
It's not a good organization, but here's what he says. We don't usually get much grief from secular campaigners. Sadly, it's usually from Christians. And gospel coalition Danny Treweek asks, what drives that?
And he says, well, sometimes it is confusion around the terminology we use and other times because we have pushed back on investing in methods and thinking of the past in terms of reparative therapy or thinking that, to be godly, you have to be heterosexual, and that healing in the here, now, and now must mean getting married and having 2 .4 children, but overt hostility actually comes from very few people, really.
So here's what he's saying. He's saying that, among other things, that you don't—he's implying you don't actually have to be heterosexual to be godly. That—and this is, I think, one of the things that probably goes past a lot of people because they read that and they think, well, okay, yeah, I mean, I guess what you do sexually is—I mean, Jesus was celibate, so I mean—but here's the thing.
Jesus—and I'm going to make a bold claim here—but Jesus was heterosexual, and I realize we're using categories today that are coming more from psychology, but I'll put it this way in the biblical language.
Jesus was a man, okay, and Jesus was a man and would have had the desires that would have accompanied being a man, and God actually has a design. There's a plan that God put in place for men, and there's also a plan he put in place for women.
So even someone who's celibate, they don't stop being what they are, and so heterosexual would be the default of this is what God has created men and women to be. That's their design, okay? If you look—if there was a manual that came with you, that's what you would be.
Now, he's saying here, though, but you don't have to be heterosexual to be godly. Well, then what are you is the question. What would you be then? And so this creates a big problem, because really what they're trying to do—and this is the whole effort with living out—is they're trying to let you know that it's fine to be homosexual and also a Christian at the same time and a godly one at that.
You're not in sin in claiming that to be part of your identity, and so that's the whole angle here. That's what they're trying to promote. So he says that, and there's tons of stuff on the Gospel Coalition promoting this view, so this isn't necessarily unique.
This is what's unique, though. Tell us about your plans for the youth night. They're having a youth night at Living Out on Friday night. Do you see youth as a particularly vulnerable age of confusion on matters of sexuality?
Listen to this. Ed Shaw says, Now, it's interesting to me that he said that, and I don't want to get too nitpicky that he's saying plurals on sexualities, identities, and then singular on gender. That is strange a little bit to me, but okay.
Let's go on to the next thing, though, here, that I think really shows, it really exposes where Gospel Coalition is coming from. Identity—or it says, sorry, it says because he, meaning God, is both their Creator God and a human being.
Okay, so God relates to different sexualities, different identities, and gender because he's God who created them, but also there's another way in which God relates. It's not just that he's their Creator.
It's that he is a human being. So this is Jesus. So Jesus knows what it is like to, and I quote, Teenagers today are being presented with such a confusing range of options that they especially need the tender care that Jesus offers all of us as we struggle with what it means to be a human being, which I thought the way he ended that interview, it sounds like every PBS documentary, right?
Not that I watch a lot of PBS documentaries, or IMAX, like science documentaries, they always have to have a line in there about, like, we're trying to find out what it means to be human as we study animals or as we look into outer space for stuff.
We're just learning what it means to be human. Interesting way they ended it. The key thing, though, the thing that makes this, in my opinion, the second article is that line about Jesus. And because the whole context of this article is people who have a homosexual orientation, people who struggle with gender identity.
I mean, it's the whole point of living out. That's why it exists. And they're having this special night and saying, well, hey, you know who relates to that? Jesus relates to that. You know, he grappled with these things.
He really, Jesus grappled with sexuality, identity, and gender. Where are you getting that from scripture? Now, interesting thing is gospel coalition came back because they got so much heat for this, that they put the reference to the passage in Hebrews where Jesus is tempted in all points, yet without sin.
And they say, well, that's what Christians should be getting from this. That's the only point we were trying to make. Jesus was tempted in all points. Okay. Jesus was tempted in all points. He was tempted in categories of sin.
That doesn't mean Jesus was tempted with every single scenario or every single type of sin. It doesn't mean that Jesus is, let's say, bestiality. That was something that really, he grappled with that.
Well, that would be a certain kind of, I guess, sexuality or identity, right? Jesus wasn't grappling with that kind of thing. Jesus was perfect. And you have to make a distinction somewhere between natural desires and unnatural desires.
Romans 1 makes this distinction, and it clearly identifies homosexuality as an unnatural desire. And it doesn't mean that heterosexual, evil, heterosexual desires, sinful desires, that they're any less sinful or something.
What it means, though, is that there is a step downward. There are decisions that are made that lead one to a point of a greater degree of sin. So in other words, these unnatural desires, it's something that doesn't, it's not the initial sin, it's downstream from the initial sin.
When you hear a lot of people who talk about getting into strange sexual activities, a lot of times they'll say, well, it started with pornography, and then it went to this kind of weird pornography, and then this kind of strange thing.
Well, there was a series of decisions that were made there. There was a series of things that took place that led one to that point. Jesus never got on that track, is what I'm saying. Jesus never once made a sinful decision that led to another sinful decision, which led to another sinful decision, which is the case, at least as Romans 1, I'm sticking to what Romans 1 says here.
This isn't me, this is what Scripture teaches, to the best of my understanding. And Jesus would not have struggled with things that would have necessarily been the result of previous sinful decisions, because he was perfect, he was God, right?
And it's a strange thing to say about Jesus, like he would have struggled with identity, like he knew who he was, you know, or he would have grappled with this, he knew who he was. So does God understand you, even if you made sinful decisions and let yourself go to areas you shouldn't have, and now you're in this spot?
Of course he does, because he is your creator, he has that knowledge. But does Jesus experience those exact same temptations? Not necessarily, but guess what he does know about? He knows about temptation, he knows about the category of temptation, he knows about what sexual temptation is, okay?
So that's much different than saying that Jesus knows specifically what homosexual temptation is, or something along those lines. So that's number two, claiming Jesus personally grappled with sexuality, identity, and gender.
Number three, blaming white people in general for murdering Martin Luther King Jr. This is a classic, this is Thabiti Anabwile's article, April 4th, 2018, We Await Repentance for Assassinating Dr. King.
And I quote Thabiti Anabwile, he says this, Until this country and the church leader, sorry, until the church learns to confess its particular sins particularly, we will not overcome the adamant hostility that infects the human soul and distorts human potential.
Don't get me wrong, I know Dr. King's life was much greater than his death, I understand that his death gives us opportunity to reflect on his legacy, but it also gives opportunity to reflect on that twist in our soul that rose up and killed him.
It gives opportunity to repent of the things some have with too much pride, too often refuse to admit is there. Here it goes, he says this, My white neighbors and Christian brethren can start by at least saying their parents and grandparents and this country are complicit in murdering a man who only preached love and justice.
So your parents and grandparents, if you're white and in America, are complicit in that murder. And I'm going to assume that meant they were here, they didn't immigrate. So they were here during that time, that means they were complicit in that murder.
I don't even know if I have to say anything to respond to this, it's simply ridiculous. Obviously, there was the person who pulled the trigger, and if there were any conspirators, there would be some responsibility there, but really, all white people, are they responsible for that?
No, that's not biblical at all. In fact, that's a horribly deformed understanding of sin, it's a mangled understanding of what sin is. To extrapolate out the sins of a particular individual to a whole class of people simply because they shared a certain characteristic, or because white people weren't as, they perhaps weren't in the streets agitating or marching or supporting or doing any of the things to forward elements of the civil rights movement.
That should be irrelevant to whether or not they're culpable in a murder. And yet, for many, it was tangential. In 1960, black people were 10 of the population, and they mainly lived in the southern United States and some northern cities.
Most people, most white people, wouldn't really have had interactions. The civil rights movement would have been a tangential thing, for many of them at least. I could go on and on, but I think the basic point here is that there is an attempt here to take the guilt of an individual and place that on a whole class of people.
Then we have slandering Kyle Rittenhouse in law enforcement. Another thing that Gospel Coalition has been active, especially in one article specifically about Kyle Rittenhouse, and there's others about law enforcement, where they mention law enforcement.
But in this one, they go after Kyle Rittenhouse and law enforcement in an article called, Why I Hate August from 2020. And here's what the article says. Kyle Rittenhouse killed people in the middle of the street on Cameron in front of witnesses and then smoking rifle at his side, casually strolled past law enforcement.
He didn't run away. He didn't hide. He showed no fear. He assumed there was something about his person that would allow him to approach law enforcement with a visible semiotic weapon that had just taken lives and lived to tell about it.
More than a few witnesses pointed out that he had just shot several people, yet he was able to leave the scene and the state. When armed mass shooters, Kyle Rittenhouse, Dylan Roof, etc., are apprehended without incident and unarmed black people are killed out of fear that they might be armed, we have a more insidious problem than a few bad apples.
This thing is cultural, pervasive, and abominable. Now, this is just beyond the pale and it's something that the Gospel Coalition for once actually did go back and they did make an edit and they did have an editor's note.
And actually, let's pull that up right now if I can. They did a bunch of stuff with this article. It's not searchable in the Gospel. Yeah, you can't even, it's hard to find it because it's not even searchable anymore.
They purposely did that. Let me see though if I can actually find the link to it. I'm sure I'll be able to. And okay, here it is. I got it pulled up. And so it says, when armed shooters, Kyle Rittenhouse, Dylan Roof, etc., are apprehended.
Now, the original article that I just read, when armed mass shooters, so they took the term mass out of the equation. That's their editorial. I mean, it doesn't seem to, it says editor's note at the bottom.
Subsequent information has revealed that Jacob Blake was armed with a knife. Also, an earlier version of this article referred to Kyle Rittenhouse as a mass shooter. I regret these editorial oversights.
Colin Hanson, editor-in-chief, the Gospel Coalition. Yeah, that wasn't what people were so upset about. You know, that, oh, it's great. You just, you took the word mass out of it. No, you're comparing Kyle Rittenhouse to Dylan Roof.
Dylan Roof actually did go and murder people. Kyle Rittenhouse defended himself. And there's a big difference between those two things. But you can see the BLM narrative has impacted the Gospel Coalition.
And I mean, this whole article, I did a whole thing on it. It is just, there's so many other things in this article that are just ridiculous. But again, I mean, this is the Gospel Coalition. This is, the name of the website is the Gospel Coalition.
It's supposed to be about the gospel. And you're getting articles like this, that again, blaming people who are for crimes of which they are not guilty, because guess what? It's really popular in society today, in the powers that be, to blame white people for certain things, whether they're guilty or not.
And sometimes they're not guilty and they're still blamed for things like this, as if they are murderers somehow. So, and then the police are complicit in all this. Now, if there was more time, I would show you, I know it's in Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict.
I give you the stats, but that it's actually more likely for officers to use lethal force against white people perpetuating crimes. So, statistically. So, that's something you can find in that book. Let's go on to the next one though.
This is, what are we up to now? This is number five. Yep, number five. And the article is, A Case Study in Persecution Lessons from First Peter from Canada, TGC Canada. I wanted Canada to be represented.
There's a lot of articles like this, even in TGC, the United States, but I wanted to specifically include this one from Canada, for my Canadian brothers and sisters. And this is one of the things the Gospel Coalition has done, pretending the government was not persecuting Christians.
Here's what this article says. What we're experiencing here in Ontario and throughout most of the provinces in Canada is inconvenient and exhausting, but it doesn't feel to me like persecution. And I don't think it would be helpful for our people if I called it that.
I think this letter from the apostle Peter cautions me about making too much of the difficulties that I'm facing. Peter did not want his people to become angry. He did not want them to revile. He did not want them to lose their cool.
He said, do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless for to this you were called that you may obtain a blessing. I worry that a great many leaders in the church in North America have become obsessed with external threats at the expense of internal disciplines and reforms.
Do we really believe that government restrictions represent a greater long-term threat to the health of the church than our own catastrophic internal failures? That's what we call a false dilemma. You could have two threats, by the way.
It's possible that it's a big threat to have internal things, and you could also have a threat externally at the same time. And of course, in Canada, especially, this was definitely a threat. And you can look at the people who went to jail for this, the pastors who went to jail for simply holding church services and doing so, not forcing anyone to come to church, taking as many precautions as they could reasonably, but saying, you know what, we're not going to indefinitely shut down our church.
And this is how TGC Canada in 2021, in June of 2021, guys, this isn't even like in 2020, it's 2021. This is how they're reacting to that peace, peace, when there is no peace. And it's not persecution.
It's not persecution. No, they can treat other, you know, it's essential to go to a grocery store, but not church. That's not persecution. And then here we have, which by the way, I just want to say a point on this, that moving forward, as we have a more totalitarian government, this is the kind of useless take that we're going to probably see more of.
And it just shows how utterly unhelpful the Gospel Coalition is going to be in the times that are coming. Here's another one, teaching Christians to adopt the concept of and rectify white privilege. That's one thing Gospel Coalition has done.
Here's the article, More Than Mere Equality, Identity Politics, White Privilege, and Gospel Peace from March, 2017, author is Jonathan Lehman. And I'll read you some quotes. It says, in the American context, the phrase white privilege refers to the structural injustices affixed to ethnicity and skin color.
More specifically, white privilege can mean at least three things, two of which I accept and one which I don't. First, it means that I possess by virtue of my skin color, social and material advantages.
This is simply a statistical reality. Now, I'll stop there. Really? It's simply a statistical reality that you possess by virtue of your skin color. By virtue of your skin color. That's the key phrase there.
Really, by virtue of your skin, because you have a certain skin color, you get these material benefits? Or is it more complicated than that? People in Appalachia have a very shiny white skin color, most of them.
And they are certainly seven of the ten most deadly diseases are most common in Appalachia. It's there's so much poverty. I mean, so really, really, that's that's really what it is. You just you're white and you just because of that statistical reality.
I guess there's Jewish privilege, right? I mean, Jewish people have more money on average than white people. Asian people have more money now on average than white people. Does that mean there's Asian privilege?
I mean, black people from who are newly arrived here, immigrated here, black immigrants make more money on average, at least in certain cities than do local black people who have lived here for generations.
That mean they have an extra privilege. How does this work exactly? And then he says this white privilege means second of all, that I possess those advantages by virtue of systemic and historic patterns of discrimination and injustice.
I possess the one hundred thousand dollars and you possess the one thousand because my grandfather and his father and his father rigged the system in favor of people who look like me. I accept a second plank of white privilege as well.
So he just accepts it. And at this point, if you accept definitions, you accept the solutions. If you accept the definitions, you accept the solution. So Jonathan Lehman accepting definitions of white privilege, but not wanting to accept the solution, which would be some socialist scheme of some kind, at least not overtly saying that.
Instead, his stand in is, he says this, a classic Protestant understanding of justification by faith alone is history's greatest source of political equality and unity. Really? Objectively, justification is a covenant verdict that unites us to God's covenant people and makes us one subjectively.
It robs political actors of the incentives to warfare and domination by giving people what all people, nations and armies primarily seek, justification, standing and the recognition of existence. Now, this is insulting.
Really, armies are seeking justification. That's what they're really seeking. In Ukraine right now, man, they think they're defending against Russia. They're seeking justification. The Donbass region, too, you know, they're just seeking justification.
People who think they're defending themselves. No, I think there's other things. You could have a Christian in Ukraine and a Christian in the Donbass region or Russian Christian, and they could both be fighting one another thinking they're in the right after something that's not justification.
But still, they're both going to go to heaven. They have other identities and justification by faith doesn't eliminate those identities, those cultural and temporal world identities that are more significant here than they will be, perhaps, or I should, I want to rephrase that, that are more definitional here to how we order our lives than they will be in heaven.
So someone who's Ukrainian is going to have a duty to their family, their country, that kind of thing. And they're going to be patriotic. Same thing with someone who's Russian, perhaps. And justification, you don't just insert that and say, well, you know, I mean, can't we all just get along?
I mean, there's equality now. He's like, well, not really. That doesn't, that's not what results. That's not the thing that is going to appease people who think that there's been a massive crime because of white privilege that now, well, justification by faith, I guess we're fine now.
We don't need all those reparations or anything. Well, no, the woke people are going to say, Jonathan Lehman, you bought into the definitions. Why can't you just go with us on the solution for this? I mean, if there's been, if what you're saying is true, that there's been this system specifically put together to accrue 90 ,000 extra dollars to you that we don't have, how about paying up?
Right? I mean, isn't that the thing they're going to say? And I basically argued against this by saying, I just don't accept these. I think it's more complicated than that. I think we live in a society that's so large and vast and diverse that different places are going to be different.
And there's all sorts of other factors too. I mean, it's not just like it's race or something. There's all kinds of factors that will determine or play into how people perceive you and treat you. It's just, I mean, hey, I listened to some country music.
People are going to treat me differently because of that. They're going to hang out with that guy. That's weird. Or some people are going to say, I want to go hang out with that guy. I mean, there's all, there's a million things that play into this and you can't just adjudicate them all to make equality happen.
You're not going to be able to do that. However, there's a real crime that's taken, but someone's really literally stolen from someone else. That's a little bit different of a story. And that's really what the woke people are saying.
And I think that's what Jonathan Lehman is saying, but it's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's been bad things. There's been barriers for people who is immigrants who've come here and slaves who came here.
But this is the difference between status and condition over centuries. And really not even that, the decades after the reconstruction you have in certain communities and immigrant communities and former slave communities, there was economic mobility.
Some people became millionaires. I mean, there was a, like has things that don't happen that still aren't in place in places like Africa, places where these, many of these people have come from. I mean, they hit the jackpot in some ways or their descendants did in being born in the United States, their descendants.
And, and so there has been a, a blessing that's come from that. There has been, you know, if there's, if there's a law that's specifically creating barriers aimed at certain people because of their race or something, then, you know, show me the law and we'll correct it.
And then once you correct it, you say, all right, done. We've, I mean, this is what one organization I know did. They just said, we didn't let black people in our organization. That was a wrong decision.
Come on in. I mean, that's, that's what you do. Um, what's happening now is there's this assumption that, well, there's been a theft and, and really the way it works is, um, Eric Mason put a fine point on it when he said reparations is for the status that you would have achieved had someone not intervene in your life or the life of your ancestors.
So, uh, how rich would you be if you hadn't, uh, been enslaved or your ancestors had been enslaved? And the answer is actually you would be probably economically much worse off in Africa, in an ivory coast region than you would be, uh, here in the United States, in most places, that's just the reality of the situation.
So I think it's much more complicated. I get into a much more serious, uh, conversation about this and Christianity and social justice, religions and conflict. And I think Jonathan Lehman buys into the simplistic cartoon and then wants to avoid the, um, the net, what, what basically would be the solution to the problem that he's bringing up.
And he wants to insert a different solution here. That's just not going to fly. So gospel coalition, teaching Christians to adopt the concept of white privilege and rectify white privilege here is number seven, making racial consciousness necessary for understanding the gospel.
That's right. Making racial consciousness necessary for understanding the gospel is by Fabian Abuele, 2018. He says, apologists, Dr. James White of the dividing line left me a string of tweets this weekend regarding his view of race or ethnicity, blind new covenant reality in the church for context, Dr. White replies to a snarky reply I posted to a snarky comment from Phil Johnson, wherein I say Phil doesn't understand the gospel.
And I looked it up and yes, he literally said, Phil Johnson does not understand the gospel. The yes, the executive director for grace to you does not understand that the gospel, uh, and it's because, uh, Phil Johnson doesn't understand repentance, according to Fabian Abuele, because the first part of the gospel is repentance.
I would agree that repentance is part of, uh, it's necessary. It's part of the mechanism of, um, of approaching the gospel and, uh, the good news being activated in one's life. I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say repentance is, uh, is the gospel or part of the, I know what people say when they say that.
So I get it. So I'm not trying to be too hard on that, but I, uh, to, to, to be clear, gospel is good news. The good news is what Jesus has done. The good news is, and if you repent and you put, and you believe the gospel, you will be saved.
So what Fabian Abuele wants to do is to take repentance and say, Phil Johnson has failed in repentance. And believe it or not, this is related to, uh, the article I showed you earlier about the complicity in the murder of MLK.
And because Phil Johnson's not being repentant in the complicity of him, his culture, his parents to the murder of MLK, he doesn't really understand the gospel. That's what is being said here. And, and so you have the new Testament.
He says this, the new Testament is actually a pretty ethnically or race conscious collection of writings from the eschatological vision or consummated unity down to the harm, martyriological rebuke of sin.
The Bible plays careful attention to who God made us to be, how that's gone wrong and how it should be considered in spreading the gospel and how pastoral ministry must address it. I praise God for those white Americans who had, uh, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but he basically says he's grateful for Americans who supported the civil rights movement, but he's saying so many didn't, so many didn't, uh, cause they were, they were either racist or complicit in their silence and inaction and that's to white America's shame.
He says it took the force of a secular law rather than Christian preaching and the force of military presence rather than friendly solidarity to curtail the wickedness of that era. Paul would instruct pastors today to rebuke Cretans, uh, he quotes, and I'm not going to get into that, en masse for continuing in the myth of an America where racism is minimized and to rebuke the Cretans en masse for sin so widespread and it's cultural.
So do I. So he's saying Paul would have rebuked you all. Racism is rampant. It's systemic. It's out there. You white people are guilty of it and you don't understand the gospel if you're not repentant of this.
Phil Johnson doesn't understand the gospel and the whole thing is you gotta adopt some view of racial consciousness and racial guilt. You have to, uh, you have to, that guilt has to apply to you and you have to repent of it in order for you to understand the gospel.
So similar to what we saw from Paul David Tripp and to some extent there's this action you need to take, but it's, it's not just repentance for your sin. It's repentance for what your ancestors did, what your culture is supposedly doing.
And it's not even an accurate, uh, it's not even something that Phil Johnson and Thabiti Nabili would agree on. They would, they would look this differently and Phil Johnson would say, I don't see that.
I don't see that we're, I'm complicit in this or that I've done anything wrong or that, uh, that there's this, um, this problem. And then Thabiti Nabili would say, well, of course there is. And so it's a, it's a disagreement over, um, whether or not there's, uh, a sin that's characterizing a whole group of people.
And Thabiti Nabili using an incorrect definition of sin, uh, that has led downstream to Thabiti Nabili calling Phil Johnson basically a heretic. I mean, he doesn't say that, but he's like, he doesn't understand the gospel.
I mean, that's, what is that? That would be, wouldn't that not be heresy or something along those lines? So, uh, that is, I believe, number seven. We're going to go to number eight now, supporting legal protection for same-sex marriage.
Yes, The Gospel Coalition in an article, How Should I Respond to a Colleague's Same-Sex Wedding in 2021 said, every culture and nation must find common consent in public ethics, specifically on what is prohibited, permitted and promoted for the common good.
True toleration must include living peaceably with deep differences. Most Western nations have extended marital status to arrangements other than heterosexual monogamy. The wise Christian will affirm the legal right of consenting adults to order their lives without fear.
Hmm. So same-sex marriage exists and a wise Christian will, uh, will be okay with this. The wise Christian will affirm that legal right, uh, to do, to order their lives in that way without fear. Gospel Coalition, affirming the legality, uh, and the appropriateness of the legality of same-sex marriage on the basis of principle pluralism or secularism.
Number nine, making space for multicultural Christmas is the article. And in this article, Gospel Coalition insinuates American Christmas traditions are lacking. Yes. And they do this by using some standpoint theory, some, it's, it's, uh, it is an anti-Western narrative.
Uh, here's what some of the quotes from it say. The story of Christmas takes place in the first century and not a single character is Caucasian. Yet the American evangelical celebration of Christmas can have a distinctly vanilla flavor.
Nativity scenes have, now let me, let me just stop you for a minute. How, how would you feel if this article opened up with the story of Christmas takes place in the first century and not a single character is Sub-Saharan African, yet the African Americans evangelical or the African American church celebration of Christmas can have a distinctly chocolate flavor.
If you saw that, you would say racism, but why not when it's about white people? I'm just curious. Anyway, nativity scenes have a white baby Jesus. Holiday feasts are filled with Anglo-American foods and the church services feature only European hymns.
Might, might have something to do with the fact that Christianity was so, um, instrumental in shaping Europe for centuries when it was not instrumental in shaping other continents. Like that could be it.
I'm just saying. Anyway, goes on. It says, of course, people of European descent can and should integrate their specific expressions into their Christmas celebrations. Whew. God, that's okay. Thanks for the permission.
Right. But many non-white Christians, the United States struggle with the lack of diverse Christmas celebrations, wondering if there's space for them to celebrate what they can perceive as a white holiday.
Right. So, so here's the insinuation. Basically y 'all are being racist. You're, you are not including diverse people in your holiday celebrations because it's so European and, uh, and so that that's the problem you need to, I mean, it's okay if you want to use European things, but you better use things from other traditions as well.
Now what they don't do in any of the other TGC websites is they don't go to, you know, TGC Africa doesn't have an article out there saying, you know, it's a real problem. There's not enough European or not enough Middle Eastern and not enough South American stuff in your celibate.
They don't do that. It's focused on one group and one group alone. It's Europeans. How can each of us celebrate Christmas at the intersection of our faith and our culture while welcoming differing cultural perspectives on Christ's birth?
Oh, differing cultural perspectives, different cultural perspectives, huh? So this is where the standpoint theory starts to come in. Well, there's different, there's different emphases. There's different perspectives.
There are different understandings of Christ's birth and we're missing out. We don't have a full spectrum of all the beliefs. We don't, we have an incomplete understanding of Christ's birth without these other cultures.
It says, when we read the Bible together in a multicultural community, believers from different cultures help us see the things in scripture we tend to miss due to our blind spots. As Christianity declines in the United States, we should be all the more eager to learn from believers of other cultures and ethnicities so that our eyes might be opened to a new richness and depth to our faith.
Well, how about this? Maybe you got to hold onto your traditions tighter in some ways. I'm just saying, if, if, you know, you're, you're being, uh, if, if what she's saying is really happening, uh, then maybe, you know, to protect your traditions and your identity, you got to hold onto them tighter.
But she's saying, no, you just give them up. That's what she's saying. In the midst of an immigration crisis at our border, how might our heart attitudes be reshaped by not overlooking the relatability of Mary, a vulnerable woman expecting a young child out of wedlock as the one to whom and through whom God's incarnate incarnate son came.
We have much to learn from our cultures, other cultures about remembering and honoring the reproach and faith of Mary in the Christmas story. Now there's the typical TGC connection. We're going to, hey, the border issue is happening.
Let's connect this. It's how is that relatable? You know, as really what it is, it's, it's a virtue signal. It's, well, as, uh, this issue on immigration shapes up and you have conservatives on one side saying we need to vet people and you have progressives on the other side, basically saying everyone come in.
I'm, you know, and there's obviously different flavors in between that, but, uh, you know, let's, let's show kind of some solidarity with the more progressive, the immigrants who are coming in, uh, the migrants, the illegal migrants and say, and, and show some solidarity by using their cultural traditions and understanding the Christmas story through the lens of their experience.
We do well to make space for a multicultural Christmas, inviting culturally diverse perspectives and celebrations of Christ's birth in our homes, communities, and churches. Well, this, like I said, is directed at Europeans in particular or descendants of Europeans.
It is, uh, to get them to change the way they celebrate the holiday, to get them to think they have an inadequate understanding of Christmas and of course, not putting the shoe on the other foot. You know, these other, what can they learn from Europeans, these other cultures, right?
That's not there. So there's, and this is of course, what we see in the world, that there's this oppressed perspective coming from, um, oppressed peoples, minorities, LGBT, uh, people who have disabilities, people who are overweight.
Now it's, there's so many different, uh, dietary restrictions. I mean, there's all these different categories for people who have greater insights into oppression and in, and this is how I think a lot of the redistribution takes place.
It's not money. It's getting you to, uh, it's sort of a redistribution in which you give up even your traditions, you give up cultural things, uh, in order to accommodate supposedly other peoples and, and incorporate their traditions.
And I have no, see, here's the thing. There's no problem with incorporating other people's tradition. There's no problem with that. I love that. I think it'd be great. I mean, I love food from all over the world.
I mean, give me some Jamaican jerk chicken. Give me some, uh, you know, Turkish food. Give me some, there's all sorts of cuisines I love. But, um, what, what I don't think is valid and what is wrong and subversive here is this understanding that we get a better understanding of the Bible by incorporating all these other traditions from these non-European peoples because they're non-European, because they're oppressed somehow, because, uh, there's a border crisis.
Because of all this stuff, then we can supplement our inadequate understanding of the Bible with these other perspectives. And that is against objective hermeneutics. Okay. Here's, uh, number 10, advising church discipline for conspiracy theorists.
That's right. Joe Carter, May, 2020. Christians are not immune to conspiracy theories. And here's what he says. Numerous spurious claims are also being made about Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
A Christian ministry, American Family Association is promoting a conspiracy that Fauci has known since 2005. Uh, and I'm going to, basically, I'm going to summarize because I don't want the YouTube people to kick, kick the video off.
But, uh, he's talking about different things that were said by Christian groups, suspecting Anthony Fauci of being part of a deep state operation and not really caring about the which, um, really that's, uh, yeah, now we're two years later now.
Uh, do you, do you think maybe there was some truth to that? Anyway, Jesus expects us to confront our fellow believers when they are engaging in sin. So what does that mean? Um, that the fact that few in our churches are being confronted much less receiving church discipline for engaging in slander is scandalous.
So what's really scandalous about the church? Conspiracy theorists, according to Joe Carter, aren't being church disciplined. That's the real problem. Uh, not what's, what was happening in May of 2020.
That wasn't the real problem. That's amazing to me. What was happening in the May of 2020? That, that's not the thing that he's concerned about. Uh, the thing he's concerned about is we got to be disciplining conspiracy.
How would you do it if your church isn't meeting? That's the question I have. We're going to church discipline you. You don't come back here unless you repent. Oh, we're not even meeting. I, you know, some church discipline, right?
May 2020, you know, it's so horrible that we're not doing church discipline. How are you going to do it? Like, I guess you're going to have a Zoom church discipline. Uh, you know, and now it's on Zoom, so-and-so who's, we haven't seen him for now, you know, a while, but we, months, but they're disciplined now.
Uh, it's just, it's, it's kind of funny if you think about it. Anyway, we are also giving the watching world the impression such behavior is accepted among followers of Jesus. It is not. And Christians should not tolerate the embrace of the demonic.
Wow. Wow. That escalated quickly. So now it's the embrace of the demonic. If you think Anthony Fauci might have some, some deep state motivations here, might not have a science quite right. You're satanic.
That's, you can't help, but okay. Ultimately though, all the slanderous conspiracy theories originate from Satan. If we are a people filled with the spirit of truth, we won't spread messages from the father of lies.
Wow. I'm glad the gospel coalition can really fight on some things, uh, but it's the wrong things. So there you go. Number 10, advising church discipline for conspiracy theorists. Number 11, neutralizing Christians, opposing, uh, uh, Christian opposition that should have said to totalitarianism.
I'll correct that typo in the slideshow for patrons and Lincoln's in the info section. Men, are you submissive by Michael Kruger? And this is September 30th, 2021. And he says this, perhaps then we need to recalibrate the way we think about and talk about submission in the church.
Rather than repeatedly focusing on one example, we need to call all Christians to submit to whatever authorities are over them. When Christians flout government directives, one might under, uh, understand why the watching culture begins to scratch its head in confusion.
Haven't Christians complained the loudest about how we are living in an anti-authority age? Haven't Christians lamented our world's lack of submission to authority? And yet it's often those very same Christians who seem unwilling to submit when faced with a government rule they disagree with.
Okay. That's, uh, Michael Kruger. Men, are you submissive is the article. And, um, of course this is in a context, this is in a context. And, uh, right after and during in some places, the COVID stuff and, uh, and, and the implication here is Christians just need to submit when the government gives them directives.
They just need to submit to that. And how can Christians, these hypocrites, how can they complain about the loss of authority and then they don't submit? Well, you mean not submitting by going to church?
Is that what you're saying? By, by, by obeying Jesus, right? And I think Michael Kruger in the article admits, well, of course we got to submit to God, but that, but what do you, so what's the point? What's the big problem then he's trying to get at here?
Well, it's the Christians were, you know, some Christians were saying, I don't need to wear a mask anymore. You know, this is ridiculous. Uh, some Christians were saying, I'm going to go to church and worship.
I'm going to sing while I'm there, by the way, I'm not gonna wear a mask while I do it. I'm going to see people smile. I'm going to, right. These things became, you're not submitting, you're not submitting to authority.
And the question is, does the government have that authority? And that's the question I've, I asked the whole time. And I think many thoughtful Christians were asking, does the government have this authority?
Is this something, especially to shut down a church indefinitely? I mean, it was just, uh, and, and open all these other quote unquote essential places. No, no, the government doesn't. Government is accountable to God and we obey God over men.
And there are certain things the government does just, you know, the government said, go jump out on, uh, go to the bridge. You don't jump off of it, but jump on a pogo stick with a clown hat. You know what, you know, you have to submit.
It's the government. Really? Is that the government's job to be telling me to do ridiculous? No, obviously not. And, and, and that's, I think what some people thought with the mask. Um, how about the, uh, the treatment, uh, as I will call it on YouTube, um, you have to get the, the treatment, uh, that authorized by the government or else, you know, by, by job, your employer's even telling you that.
Do you submit to God? Do you submit to what you know to be healthier from your research? Do you submit to, or do you submit to these other powers? And so this is what this does in effect of an article like this, it may not be blatant, but what it does is it neutralizes Christians opposing totalitarianism.
Uh, and then we have number 12, accusing Christians of stifling the great commission by celebrating the 4th of July, Jonathan Lehman. Again, should we celebrate the 4th of July at church? All right. When you add a patriotic song, display the flag or invite the politician to offer special word to your church gathering, you risk working against the great commission.
That's a pretty serious charge working against the main thing Christians are supposed to be about. Okay. Jesus commissioned us going to all the nations. That means, uh, establishing a people not bound or defined or constrained by this world's national boundaries.
Okay. I don't know what that has to do with it, but okay. Uh, so thank God for our nation on, so, so really the implication is your church should just not have any, I guess, national characteristics about it.
That that's it. It's insulting. Jonathan Lehman writes so many insulting things. It's just like my intelligence is so insulted here. Uh, you expect me to believe that? So thank God for our nation on the Sunday, nearest July 4th.
And if your church does celebrate with patriotic songs and flags, don't grumble in your heart. Wait a minute. Jonathan Lehman just told me you're opposing the great commission. You're working against it, but now you're not supposed to grumble in your heart.
Okay. Praise God for his country-sized blessing. But remember when we're communicating about an us and the them. Remember we're communicating about the us and the them. We want Christians, Brits, and Venezuelans showing up on Sunday and discovering that they are us.
Okay. Or if they're showing up in the United States, they're in the United States. It would, if I went to Venezuela and they had a national thing going on and the church said something about it, I wouldn't be offended.
I wouldn't be like, man, I'm not being included. It's Venezuela. No, like, but if they, if they came and told me like, you can't be a Christian unless you're Venezuelan, that'd be one thing. But who's saying that?
Uh, so Jonathan Lehman goes on. He says, and we don't want to tempt their non-Christian counterparts to believe that they must become Americans to be Christians. And perhaps most crucially of all, we don't want non-Christian Americans to believe they are us simply because they love the flag.
Um, um, this, oh man, I hate to say that this is coming up again, but this is the, Hey, who do I have more in common with? The Nigerian Anglican woman or the, uh, or, or the American, the American conservative man, you know, who do I have more in common with?
Well, yes. And no, again, temporal world, uh, temporal realm, eternal realm. Uh, you have more in common in the temporal realm with someone who is your neighbor. Right. And that shouldn't be controversial.
That's a pretty obvious thing. But, uh, but here, here we go with, um, you know, that creates an us versus them kind of thing. And no, they must love the cross. We love them most by pointing not to the flag, but to the cross.
Uh, it's not either, or now if there's a church where they don't ever point to the cross, they're always pointing the flag. Yeah. That's a real, real problem. But, you know, recognizing the 4th of July at your church singing, I mean, there there's great patriotic songs that are also Christian about your country.
Like you sing songs about your family, right? You sing songs, uh, you know, uh, about, uh, I mean, we do at least at my church, we sing songs about a Christian home, you know, how about faith of our fathers?
I mean, there's, why, why can't you sing a song about your country and giving your country to God? Why can't you sing God bless America? I mean, I don't understand this, but this is gospel coalition. So again, it's kind of like the Christmas thing.
It's like, you gotta, you know, rethink that whole Christmas celebration you're doing. And Hey, rethink your 4th of July celebrations. Uh, and here's another one, uh, maligning older Christians in the name of discipleship.
This is number 13, five, five things that frustrate Gen Z Christians. Um, and here I'll read the preface. This is kind of weird. The preface is the goal is not to shame older Christians or suggest we young folks are enlightened.
The goal is to offer some fodder for discussion that might lead the generations to better care for, think of, think with, and serve alongside each other in a changing world. So, okay, that sounds great.
But then the rest of it is like, let's rip these older Christians. So how are they rip them? There's five ways. Number one, when partisan politics reshape faith, it sometimes feels as if older generations want us to pick a king, but many in my generation do not wish to be identified as conservative or liberal as much as they want to be identified as Christ-like.
Okay, there we go. So you, it's like, it's like, it's the third way thing that I've talked about because of this, many of us joined the 35 of people under 30 and voting independent in 2020. Uh, and the approach is sometimes considered innocent or naive, but for many Gen Z Christians, it's the most reasonable and biblical choice.
Okay. It was the most reasonable or biblical choice. So, uh, so don't go in encouraging us to vote for Trump, I guess. That's what he's trying to say. Uh, when, and that's what, uh, the older generations do, but he's accusing them of doing something that Israel did that was an error.
They're trying to pick a king, right? Look at the biblical imagery gifts. They're trying, that was wrong. I was foolish of Israel to want to pick a king. God was their king, but they wanted to pick a king.
And so he's saying that's what the older people do, but it's more biblical to be a younger Christian and vote third party because that's, uh, being Christ-like more. That's the insinuation here. Then you have the next category.
When apologetics outweighs relationships, it's vital. We know why we believe what we believe and why those beliefs are reasonable. But many in Gen Z have seen apologetics weaponized against nonbelievers.
And many of my friendships with nonbelievers, apologetics became a valuable tool after a relational connection formed. Hmm. Yeah, that's interesting. Okay. Uh, so the older generations aren't forming the relationships.
Uh, they're just giving you this apologetics as a weaponist. Uh, so it's a weaponized against nonbelievers. So they're more aggressive. And so that's, you know, apologetics can't outweigh relationships.
So that's the other thing that's accusation against the older generations. They let apologetics outweigh relationships. Have you ever thought that maybe they came from a different generation that cared more about truth and maybe we should be caring about truth a little more?
I don't know. Um, we live in a day where truth is so downplayed that people can, you know, that's one of the reasons you do have friends sometimes, uh, forming across these religious lines and other lines because they, they downplay their, their religions don't really mean much to them.
Right. So, um, that that's the other thing. And so these are all negatives. These are all like the older generation is more aggressive, terrible when Christians don't live what they believe. So they're hypocrisy.
So he says, biblical sexual ethics are cited to oppose same sex marriage, but ignored on other matters like divorce, cohabitation. Uh, the Imago Dei is correctly invoked to advocate against cultural systems like abortion, but not fight racism.
We insist that sin can take structural forms and infect entire societies, but we're selective about which systemic issues we want to call out. Many in Gen Z recognize that living faithfully requires applying scripture consistently.
So this is the holistic pro-life thing. This is, well, in order to be really pro-life, you gotta, you know, these other issues, uh, and they just pick one of them out here, you know, the BLM stuff, that's gotta be part of the pro-life movement.
Uh, when actually murder, hey, murder, you know, the killing someone unjustifiably one of the 10 commandments, that's why, and it is still, um, even with the overturning of Roe v. Wade, it still is legal in many states.
Uh, this is something that is evil and it's, it would be obvious if you're triaging different issues, that would be the thing that you'd want to focus on. This is a directly against the 10 commandments, the, uh, economic circumstances, disparities, that kind of, that's not the same.
That's not the same. Uh, but they're, they think it's consistent to put that in the same category and that the older Christians, they're just not doing a good job with, uh, applying or including those issues.
Okay. When Christians are no more, uh, for judgment than love, um, that's pretty self-explanatory. You know, we want to be known as not judgmental and the older Christians, they can be known that way.
And then when Christians aren't serious thinkers, uh, they, they says you probably have a Christian aunt who regularly shares incredulous articles or conspiracy theories. So yeah, uh, the older Christians, way dumber, way dumber, right?
That's, uh, so that is, uh, number 13. And, um, and then I guess, did I say 14? I guess I did say 14. So I'll show you this one that I'm, you know, I probably should have said 13 at the beginning of this, uh, because this was kind of a bonus that I just stuck on there because, uh, I came across it and I realized, oh, this is one of the things I was looking at, uh, I think earlier in the year when I was looking at some TGC stuff.
So I just stuck it on here, but it's actually from the Gospel Coalition's, um, uh, journal, their academic journal. And the title is Church and State in South Africa. I think it's from like 2007 or eight.
This is a very early one. And I just wanted to make the point that this whole social gospel thing has been there since the beginning. And that's really why I inserted this to say, look, this isn't a new thing.
This has been in there from the beginning of the gospel or early years, the Gospel Coalition, you have this stuff. And it's, it's very similar to, uh, you know, that you have to, to apply the gospel require some kind of works thing.
I'll just read you one thing here, uh, for, um, let's see, there are many black Christians who combine their Christian faith with a social consciousness and their sermons and speeches. The implications of the Christian faith are worked out.
The gospel is applied to the situation. While some applications may is because they're answering political questions and it just, uh, it has more, you know, but it's like, you know, the gospel is the good news of what Jesus did.
And this is something that's been going on at the Gospel Coalition for quite some time. So there you go. Top, top 14 worst articles the Gospel Coalition has ever published. And what, what are the ones that you think that I left out?
I'd be curious in the info section, maybe you could put it. This is the one, John, why don't you talk about this one? Because there's honestly, there's so many and it was hard for me to narrow it down a little bit, but I wanted to give you something and you can go click in the link in the info section.
If you want more info, if you want this slide show, but I wanted to give you something that you could at least start a conversation with friends about and say, look, here's, here's where I'm, why I say there's a liberal drift at Gospel Coalition, or here's why I say that there's a social gospel thing going on because look at this stuff.
And these are things that, uh, that you can bring up. So wanted to make one final announcement here before we close out the show. And that is this, uh, I would love to see you all at the men's retreat.
Uh, if you're a man at the Adirondack men's retreat with Dr. Russell Fuller, October 28th through 30th link is in the info section for this. Uh, and let's see where, how, let me reload this page. How many do we have right now?
We have 40 who have RSVP'd here. I know there's a few more at my church. Um, and, uh, you know, we, this is filling up and I'm really glad that it is right now. Um, I have been in contact with people from Virginia coming from New York city, flying into Albany.
There's all kinds of people coming in from different places. We're arranging rides and it looks like from everywhere that I've seen people coming from, there are others coming from the area or on the way.
And so this is going to be something, if you're coming from a distance, there's going to be carpooling options, most likely available. It's a really good price. I mean, that's a, for two nights, five meals, uh, you're gonna, you're just gonna have a great time.
And I'll probably be talking more about the schedule as we go, but go to the info section, click on the link, sign up, come October 28th through 30th. We're gonna have a great time. I mean, this is, if you wanted to be with like-minded men and have an intimate connection, like to, this isn't like a big conference where you're inside and we're going to be doing stuff together.
We're gonna be looking at the fire and talking. We're going to be going out and hiking and doing all that kind of thing. Uh, you're going to want to come to this. Um, if people who have wanted to get to know Dr. Russell Fuller or AD or me better, I mean, you're going to be able to come and get to know us a lot better by coming on a retreat like this.
So, um, we'd love to see you. God bless.
