Vetting Influencers in a Post 2020 World

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The link is in the description. Hey guys, welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. I'm your host, John Harris, with another hot take from the truck today. I'm gonna talk about a conversation I had years ago in seminary with a professor of mine that I have never forgotten about, because I think right now especially, it is so applicable.

So let me just give you a little bit of a thumbnail about what that conversation looked like, because I do write about it in my book, Christianity and Social Justice, but the context is important. So it's, I think 2017, I walk into his office.

I think that this professor possibly voted for Trump. He seems like he's conservative, but I'm not exactly certain, but I'm pretty confident. And I started asking him about social justice stuff, and specifically things happening on campus.

Now at this time, this is before 2020, people out in public didn't believe what was about to happen. They didn't see it, and I did, because I was sitting at a Southern Baptist seminary, and I saw the stuff they were pumping in, and it was really radical stuff.

And so I started asking him about it, and he says, shut the door. He starts whispering to me, and I don't know why he shared this, but he said, look, if people knew what I thought, I might get canned myself.

You need to be careful. Don't share things that are gonna get you in trouble. Your job is to be a student. I said, well, look, I respect a lot of brave men throughout history. If no one's gonna be brave and stand up to this in the faculty or in the administration, I don't mind doing it.

And he goes, how would you do that? I said, well, I could go to the internet. I could go to a reporter. And he said, the brave men from history that you respect, what do they have in common? And I'm thinking courage.

I'm thinking the need of the moment. They were able to see the abilities they had, and they were able to meet those needs. He goes, something else. They had been tested already at lower stages. They had made their way onto a platform where they had authority, and they were in a hierarchy.

And because of that, when the need of the moments arose, they were able to do something because they already had institutions and people who trusted them and put confidence in them. And I said, well, that's true.

He goes, what's your job and what's your platform? What's your role? I said, being a student. And he shook his head. He goes, yeah, that's correct. That's your role is to be a student. And right now, as you're in seminary, your role isn't to go fight the battle of what's gonna be taught at the seminary.

Your battle is to learn. And once you learn and gain a platform, then you can go on to other battles. Now, this was really good advice. Although, as you might be already putting together, I probably didn't follow it.

In fact, I really didn't completely follow it. And let me tell you the reason I didn't. The reason I didn't completely follow this is because I did not see any faculty or administration standing up to this garbage.

None, not one. And I went to several professors. I tried to go through proper channels. Not one of the people concerned were willing to stick their necks out. And I understand why. And I'm not blaming anyone in particular.

But it was because of that that I eventually decided to share about my experience on campus. And of course, this brought severe blowback for me. This was something I didn't really need in my life, nor did I want to do it, but I felt like it needed to happen.

Students needed to be warned about what they were about to face going into a place like Southeastern. And the people funding the Southern Baptist, which fund these schools, needed to know what these campuses were teaching.

So anyway, long story short, I go online, I share about my experience. It goes mini viral. And I decide that I'm gonna start talking about the issue a little more because people from all over the SBC and Christianity in particular are reaching out to me and saying, John, it's happening here.

Please keep talking. And then 2020 happens and voila, there's a platform for me online. Now, this has always bothered me to some extent. I'm not gonna lie. It's always bothered me a little bit that my platform has been online exclusively.

Now, I shouldn't say it's entirely exclusive. I mean, obviously I do have roles that I've fulfilled in other capacities. Recurrently, I'm serving at my church. I had some ministry experience before getting into these roles.

There was some leadership that I had already demonstrated, but to make the jump I did is something that I don't, I actually tend to echo what my professor said. It's not really for most people. And it's a very dangerous thing.

And if you don't view it as a dangerous thing, then I think you can wind up in a lot of trouble. And right now, that's the situation we are in. We are in a lot of trouble. I'm really grateful that President Trump is in the Oval Office.

I'm really grateful for a lot of the positive things I see happening. But we are at a crisis point in the realm of communication, truth, and stability. And the reason for this is because of what happened in 2020 more than anything else.

What happened in 2020 is a number of narratives converged that were being pushed that people now realize were mostly were lies. You had the COVID stuff. You had the BLM stuff. You had the Me Too stuff.

You had the radical LGBT stuff. All of this stuff culminated and people realized not only is the government lying to me, but so are my doctors. So are the pastors in my life, down to voluntary institutions and organizations.

This was everything. And when people have a crisis of trust, they're gonna look for stability.

There you go.

You can hear right there, crisis of trust. I don't know what's going on. Some car in the parking lot is having a meltdown. Okay, the alarm finally stopped. What was I saying? There's a crisis in the West, in the United States, where I live in particular, where people don't trust the legacy institutions they've traditionally trusted to vet information for them.

And they're looking for stability. And they're going online, many of them, to voices that they think they can trust. And really all they have is their common sense and maybe whatever they can pick up on as they watch or listen to someone.

So cues that might show them that someone's authentic. But look, a lot of these things can be completely faked. You don't know me, I can come to you and I can look any which way I wanna look. I can make my studio look any way that I wanna look.

I can dress in a certain way. I can talk a certain way. I can do all kinds of things that might signal to you even implicitly and in ways that you're not even aware of that I'm authentic, right? So this is the thing that we have, I think, a problem with now.

And I've even thought before, I was helping to discredit some of these Christian institutions at least that legitimately were compromised, but what is out there to replace them? And this is a very difficult problem.

My sense has been the best thing in most communities is try to replace these big organizations that maybe you once trusted with smaller organizations. There are some big organizations that you can, I think, trust but you can trust better what you can actually vet.

This is why there's qualifications for ministers. They need to, on a local level, be trustworthy. Even the people around them that are not Christians need to be able to vouch for them, that their character is in accord with what the Bible says a good character is.

So on a local level, it's easier to do this. It's much harder online, much harder when you're trying to get international and national news and commentary, right? And of course, I'm in this world to some extent, so I think about this problem quite a bit, but here's what I think really, really happened.

And there's two, I think, standards, like broadly speaking, that people are using to vet, whether they realize it or not, information and sources. The first is what Richard Weaver called the great stereoptagon.

And I think most people that are engaged in this don't realize it, and it's a huge, huge threat. Richard Weaver wrote in the late 40s, and this was during his time, that radio and newspapers were becoming more salacious.

They were trying to give you gossip, and they were bombastic. A lot of it was overblown. It was tabloidish. And of course, this has only increased and gotten worse. And he noted that this filled a need that people had, a need for belonging, a need for trying to fill the space, especially with those living in urban environments and those working in factories.

They needed something to kind of break the monotony. And this is what happened. They adopted the great stereoptagon. Now, if Richard Weaver was able to see what we have now with the internet, he would be, I'll just say his greatest nightmares would be right in front of him, staring him in the face.

Most of the people out there, I would imagine at this point, at least in middle to lower classes, and even upper class to some extent, they're getting their information from entertainers, from shock jocks.

They're going to places that are gonna tickle their ears, tell them what they wanna hear, tell them what they think makes sense of their life, but sometimes they don't have even the basic ability to think through what's being said and notice that actually they're being sold a bundle of ideology and it's not making sense of all the things that fall outside of the paradigm.

They're moving to outlets that they're comfortable with rather than necessarily outlets that they need, that are good for them, that help them fulfill their responsibilities and tell them what they need to know to fulfill their responsibilities.

Entertainment has completely been fused with these kinds of things. And I'm not saying this is all bad in every sense. It's not bad if you're an entertainer and you do a podcast and you talk about serious issues.

That's not bad, it's the scale on which this is happening that's bad and the exclusive way that people are getting their news. I remember maybe 10 or 15 years ago, there was this big outcry that people were getting their news from Comedy Central.

They're going to the Daily Show, they're listening to guys who are comedians and that's how they're figuring out how to navigate the world, how to vote, how to make choices. And of course, this was a good rebuke.

It's true, this is not a good thing. You shouldn't, if you already know what's going on and then you wanna go and enjoy comedy, then okay. But if that's where you're going for your source, well, that has just increased about a thousand times at this point.

And we are left with a very fractured world where people are coalescing around popularity figures. So this is one of the standards, it's the great stereoptagon, okay? And this is a big threat. You need to be aware of it in your own life.

Even when you're listening to me, think through what value are you getting from this? Are you being informed in ways that actually help you in your life? Is this something that encourages you to do the right thing?

Does it make your life better? Or is this something that's filling a void left behind by something else and you're looking for stability? Or is this something that you go to because there's an entertainment value or it tells you just what you want to hear?

You gotta be careful of these things. Now, the other, and this is a good thing, the other way that people are vetting, and I wanna see this increase, is they're looking for people that have some stake in the game.

They want people who have proven themselves. And the way that you can test whether someone's proven themselves is have they counted the cost? Have they gotten in trouble with the right people, so to speak?

Have they been willing to sacrifice for the truth? And do they have a record of sacrificing? Because that's another thing that you can look at. It's another metric. It's not the only one, but it's another metric you can look at to try to figure out if someone's trustworthy.

Now, of course, now there's a market for this. So you're gonna have people who will say transgressive things just to try to build up their credibility in this area because they're looking to corner a market for people who are looking for that thing.

So you gotta watch out for that. But in general, this is a good thing, especially when it's someone that has already gained a platform and is willing to lose it for the truth. That's the big question.

When it's someone who doesn't have a platform and they just start saying things online that are edgy, they don't really have anything to lose. They have everything to gain. But when it's someone who has something to lose and they just say, you know what, forget it.

I'm gonna do the right thing because I love people and I'm gonna tell them the truth. That's something to take note of, okay? So that's the other standard. So to break down what I'm saying, there's been a crisis of truth.

There's been a breakdown of hierarchy. People are forming new hierarchies. They're doing it somewhat online. A lot of this is inevitable. I'm just describing what is, not what ought to be. And there's two metrics primarily that are being used.

One is very bad, the great stereoptagon. And the other one is primarily good, but you have to still be cautious. And that is looking for people who have stake in the game, who have given up things in order to tell you the truth and really love their own, love their people.

And hopefully in the Christian community, love God, right? They're willing to sacrifice for the Lord and for the higher things. So this is, I think, something that's important to think about. And I'm primarily making this for people who want to influence.

I meet people like this all the time. John, I want to get in the fight. I want to influence. How are you going to do that? Nine times out of 10, I'm going to start a podcast. Some of you might need to start podcasts, that's true.

But for most of you, that's not what it's going to look like. I think that what my professor said was true. And it was only because a very unique set of circumstances was in front of me that I chose to start recording myself online.

And I never wanted a podcast. I never was looking to build a platform. That's what happened. I was surprised at how viral my first video went on this subject. But that's what happened. And I've just, I've looked at every door the Lord's opened as a grace from him, or I should say, not a grace, but like an opportunity, a way to invest myself.

And I keep looking for those things. Even as I'm now pursuing more of a ministry-minded role and eldership and that kind of stuff, I am very, I'm just very aware that those things are very important, that the people that you know in your actual life are around you, that you have credibility with them, because they can see you.

Someone on the other end of a camera can't. And if you're someone who's looking to influence, try to go through those channels. Try as much as you possibly can. Don't just start a podcast. This is my recommendation to the vast majority of you.

As much as you can, go through the institutions, even if they're just local institutions in front of you, voluntary organizations where you can get involved, helping others, and they might be charity, they might be veterans groups, they might be for training young men and women, they might be in your church, whatever it is, go through those institutions, local Republican Party, local politics, start gaining the kinds of skills you need on those levels.

And then once you have some confidence in those arenas, once you have some respect, then start to, and with, I would say, caution and wisdom and advice from others that you respect, then go for the podcasting, then go for the commentary.

And I think that we need to rebuild institutions. It's gonna start, I think, on the local level, but we do need to build even bigger institutions for certain purposes and vet people using them. If we don't do that, then we are about to, we are already kind of there, but we're gonna arrive at more and more chaos, more and more fracturedness.

And the only thing holding the right together at this point is MAGA. And I don't think MAGA is gonna last forever in at least the iteration that we're seeing now. We have a generation that's fading from the scene, a new one is rising up, and they are more fractured than ever.

And it's gonna look a lot different even in the next 10 years. And so the most important thing that I can think of right now is build virtue in your life. And if you wanna lead, make sure that you are invested in institutions that you actually believe in, that you can practice and gain leadership skills in.

Don't worry about the fact that you might not be influencing a national audience overnight. Very few people get that opportunity. Just be faithful in the little, and God will make you faithful in much.

That's my advice. That's the advice that a professor that I love and cherish from years ago gave me. And I still think that it's worth considering. So God bless.