The Broken Way

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5 where the
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Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.�
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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.
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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the
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Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.
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Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry, Pastor Steve Cooley. Welcome back. Thank you for having me.
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Six, seven years of Tuesdays, if we put those all together and ran them from end to end, it almost reached the moon,
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I think. Well, and it would be pretty much, you know, the ultimate moment of my life if we could just have, you know, all the
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Tuesday shows back to back to back to back to back to back to back to back. At 1 .5 speed. Oh, that would be awesome.
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Do you listen to theological podcasts at all? Yeah, and you know what, I have done some of that at 1 .5
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speed, but you know what's even more fun? It's .5 speed. Yeah, because they all sound like they've been hit in the
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Everclear. Do not be drunk, because that's dissipation.
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Wow. See, this is why the giving is at an all -time high for No Compromise Radio ministry, gifts and stuff.
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Literally billions of cents or something. I went through my file cabinet to get rid of it because I needed more space for books.
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Just think if we didn't have electronic books, how crowded our libraries would be. It would be crazy. I mean, think of all the things we have on, you know,
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Logos software, all the commentaries and everything. Every time my wife says, honey, there's, you know, more books coming in every day with Amazon, everything else.
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I have books here, books at home. I said, yeah, but honey, what would it be like if I didn't have any, you know, the platinum package?
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Yeah, but there are the keywords, but don't you already have enough? Yeah, but, yeah, but, yeah, but.
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So, I found this piece of paper and I thought, I probably used to use things like this when I would preach or give
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Bible studies or something like this. How awful is this? You read it and I'll tell you if it was in a Bible study because I, like,
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I have a mental trap where I've just stored all your Bible studies now. After a preacher died and went to heaven, he noticed that a
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New York cab driver had been given a higher place than he had. I don't understand, he complained to St.
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Peter. I devoted my entire life to my congregation. Our policy is to reward results, explained
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St. Peter. Now, what happened, Reverend, whenever you gave a sermon? Well, the minister admitted that some in the congregation fell asleep.
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Exactly, said St. Peter. And when people rode in this man's taxi, they not only stayed awake, they prayed.
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What must I have been thinking? That's highlighted. That's just funny, though. Come on.
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That's kind of a snappy way to start things, you know. You can tell we're dated because it's not some
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Uber story. Right. Or Lyft. Have you taken Uber or Lyft yet? I did take
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Uber when I was in LA and it was one of the best experiences of my life. Seriously? Yeah.
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It cost a lot of money? No, it was way less than a taxi and it was actually nice.
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Did you have to sit in the front seat? No. I mean, I did because there were a bunch of us.
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We all took it. But, you know, when you calculated the cost, it was like I'm pretty sure it was about 20 % of what a cab ride would have been.
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It's crazy. And, you know, it's already done for you. You see the cost before you, you know, ever accept the ride.
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So I thought it was awesome. Okay. Will you be at the Shepherds Conference this year? I will be at the
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Shepherds Conference this year. Now, will you tell our listeners, because we'll play this before March 2nd, would you tell our listeners on campus where the
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Tuesday Guy booth will be? Because, you know, they're going to be asking me, where's Tuesday Guy? And just tell me where that booth is and what you'll be giving away and what the handout is and all that.
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I'll be – it's going to be near the coffee shop. In fact, I'll be doing two things.
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I'll be signing my new three -volume systematic theology, and I'll be giving out free coupons for a cinnamon dolce latte.
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That's nice. I thought you were going to be over there at the shoe -shining area. Yeah, I'll be shining shoes. Actually, I don't have a three -part systematic theology, and I'm not giving out free coupons, and I don't have a booth.
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Other than that, everything I said was true. Okay. Now, here's my dilemma, speaking of systematic theologies. I collect systematic theologies.
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Congratulations. Pretty much just English ones because I'm too old to learn another language.
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Yeah? Yeah. Well, and, you know, with all the Cambodian systematic theologies coming out, you know.
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Well, I know. It's just Pakistani stuff too is just flooding my inbox.
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Anyway, I have from CBD – we haven't been there for such a long time, the CBD sale that they had four times a year.
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I have the Norman Geisler systematic theology. I mean I've got Phinney. I've got some
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Wesley stuff. I'd get rid of Phinney. I mean – That's almost fun to have because you can prove that he was –
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Geisler has some good things to say, you know, probably.
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I'm just going to make you hang yourself with your words. He's a pretty smart guy. In front of me,
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I have something from fathommag .com.
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Fathom. Fathom. Okay. As in can you fathom this? That's correct. Can you measure it?
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And in front of me, it says, When Meaning Matters. That's the name of this article. Subtitled, A Review of the
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Broken Way by Ann Voskamp. Is that like a systematic theology? Yes, it is.
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Four volume. This is volume two of Ann Voskamp's – Systematic theology.
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Self -centered, pietistic musings. Or also systematic theology.
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Oh, she just was in America. She's a Canadian. She just was in America protesting refugees, the refugee policy.
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How does that work? I don't know. I mean whatever one thinks about that, it's just – and I wrote this on Facebook and I mean this yesterday.
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If something is immoral and unjust, et cetera, et cetera, like I would protest slavery.
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If slavery existed today in the United States, I would protest it. Sorry. I would because that's so antithetical to everything the scripture stands for.
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But as far as illegal immigration and the deportation – in other words, enforcing the law,
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I can't get too upset about that. Did not Pat Buchanan say black robes matter?
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I don't know. He did. I'm not a follower of Pat Buchanan. I saw him in Marina Del Rey once.
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Did you? I did. He looked younger then. No doubt. Now here's the fun part.
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This article critiques that book, The Broken Wing. This article is written by Jed –
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Clampett. Ostich. Ostich, really? Uh -huh. You never heard of him? Never heard of him. Okay.
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Now here's the cool part. Published on January 9th, 2017. Read time, four minutes.
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It just tells you that right up front. Sweet. And so then I know how long it's going to take me to read it.
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What if it takes me five minutes? I think you kind of – I'm a slow reader. Yeah. Ann Voskamp, The Broken Wing.
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Subtitle of her book is A Daring Path Into the Abundant Life. Just the wording there, a daring path.
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Okay. Well, translation, an unbiblical way of thinking. You know, daring equals unbiblical.
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Now, Steve, see how we wrap all these things around perfectly and we tie loose ends and we have intros and outros.
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And, you know, we work kind of, you know, with a chiasm here in the church.
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Steve, she has a word that she uses in her book about the cruciform life.
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Now, I know you've read many systematic theologies and I know you've studied. You've been to seminary and Bible school.
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You've taught Lagos classes. This is the big butter up. You've been to California to do conferences.
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You're on national radio shows. I'm a nationwide conference speaker. You are?
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Well, now, don't get puffed up. Just continental US, right? Yeah, I've never been to Hawaii or Alaska, yeah.
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That's true. Anyway, cruciform life. Shouldn't you know what that is? Isn't it in one of those systematic theologies?
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I would know it if Ann Voskamp had any theological acuity whatsoever.
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Yeah, but she's selling millions of books. Come on, bro. Well, you know, it reminds me of this thing you started in the beginning here.
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The effect, you know.
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What's the effect of her ministry? Nothing except for to keep some women and weak -willed men happy.
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Yeah, there's only one thing worse than weak women, reading Ann Voskamp. Men reading
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Ann Voskamp. Well, his first subtitle in this review is Lots of Ann, Not a Lot of Jesus.
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Tell our listeners a little bit. When we're going to do this mystical, subjective, pietistic, experiential, you know, as Dr.
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R. Scott Clark talks about, quest for illegitimate religious experience.
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Isn't that where we go? Because when we go inside, we find ourselves. How are we going to find Jesus if we're going the wrong direction?
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And so what she wants to do apparently is just, you know, reflect upon herself, which
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I guess, you know, if the most interesting thing in the world to you is you, well, then you're
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Ann Voskamp. The wild part about all this, to me, it seems easy.
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If you click on an Ann Voskamp video and you begin to watch it, you'll easily see. You know what?
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I ought not to be doing this. This is not – this isn't going to be helping me. I ought to do something else.
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But you've got Gospel Coalition now giving her positive reviews, sticking up for her. I mean if this is not a carnal deal,
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I don't know what is. You know what I call her? What? The Yoko Ono of Christianity. Oh. That is – that is so wrong.
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I want to rebuke you but I want to high -five you at the same time. I know. That's the whole point. Oh. Here's what
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Oshnitz says. Throughout the book, Steve's happy with himself. Throughout the book, his personal – excuse me, her personal epiphanies introduce a
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Gnostic flavor that goes unchecked. Voskamp's source of authority is often a spiritualized higher knowledge instead of revealed
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Scripture. For example, when she attempts to answer the question posed at the beginning, how in the holy name of God do you live with your one broken heart?
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Page 15. Voskamp leaves her Bible untouched and instead relies on her own introspective musings.
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When she does cite Scripture, she often paraphrases quotes from the message or mashups of verses taken out of context that support her personal, quote, higher up and deeper in, end quote, knowledge.
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That sounds like Rick Warren. The mashups. You know, I like to get those mashups on iTunes, you know, on YouTube and listen to them and they've got, you know, they've got
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Staying Alive by the Bee Gees with, you know, Somebody to Love by Queen or something.
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They put them together and it's fun. It's great. It's like a new song. It's awesome. You got the
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Voskamp mashups. Yeah. I have no words for that. I think Ann Voskamp, like I said,
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I mean she is ultimately – see, they're embracing her now but she's going to break up the Gospel Coalition.
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That's why she's Yoko Ono. Oh, no. See, on our mixing board here, we have about 80 buttons and, you know, we don't have a cough button.
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We don't have a theological acumen button. But I definitely am glad we don't have a laugh button because we need to have –
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I mean here we are just sitting here, you know, snowing outside and we're just laughing. It's going to – this is worth it.
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I would listen to this podcast. I would definitely listen to this podcast. I would definitely listen. OK. Here's a quote from Ann's book and then
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I'm just going to give it to you and then you just kind of tell me what you think, Steve, related to The Beatles of course.
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OK. Give me some truth. Bad brokenness is broken by good brokenness.
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All I'm saying is give Ann a chance. That's all I'm saying. I'm just sitting here watching the wheels go around and around.
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She's eating chocolate cake from a bag or whatever. The newspaper says – oh, sorry.
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Well, Broken Way. It says – Broken Way. With a broken wing.
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What was that? Blackbird singing in the dead of night, you know. Blackbird fly.
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Voskamp singing in the dead of night. Blackbird fly. Voskamp singing. What's the answer to suffering in this world?
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Destroy it with co -suffering, with compassion, with giveness. What's co -suffering?
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I don't know. What's giveness? I don't know. Giveness. You know, here's the problem.
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Not only is she a horrible theologian, but she's destroying the English language. I mean, she is putting it to open shame.
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This is just co -suffering. Here's another subtitle to the section by Ostich.
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What do you mean by that? He writes, quote, Voskamp's creative language introduces a second problem, lack of clarity.
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For instance, she never defines her concept brokenness. That might be important.
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Instead, she discusses it as if her meaning is self -evident. Well, it is to her.
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And, you know, if you're reading her, you must understand her. And if you don't understand her, then you're just wrong.
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You know, it's just a bunch of haters and stuff like that. And I think, Steve, that's anything but the cruciform life.
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I just – I remember years ago being in an event and having MacArthur call the purpose -driven life sub -Christian.
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And I'm like I have no idea what he'd say about Ann Voskamp other than, well, probably
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I can't be bothered with that sort of nonsense. And it amazes me that anyone would give her a platform.
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I mean for what? Why? Whatever gets you through the night. Quote, she then asserts that the miracle of her broken way is – now this is always, always koinonia.
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That's her words. So that's the mystery. I think that's like 1
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Timothy 3, the mystery of godliness is brokenness. This reminds me of nothing more than the
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Beatles, the White Album where they just kept going number nine, number nine.
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I mean this is just nonsense on steroids. It's like – well, it feels kind of drug -induced.
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I mean it's just nonsense. Okay. I think this critique article –
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I mean this is the bottom line, distilled down. Her work does not arrive at Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection as the answer to suffering but stops short at humans showing compassion for one another.
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Now, this is liberalism. This is Machen, 1923,
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Eerdmans Press, Christianity and Liberalism, and this is the natural outflow of this kind of thinking.
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Yeah, I mean she would be welcome in any kind of you, you, you, you, you church and you could take it to be either
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Unitarian Universal whatever or just YOU, YOU, YOU.
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I mean that is her church. It's not about Christ and him crucified. It's about me and my brokenness.
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Here it says, Joe Oschtich is a writer, editor, and writing teacher in Dallas, Texas. BA from Moody, THM from Dallas in biblical narrative exposition, and he lives in Dallas now.
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Fascinating stuff. Why don't more people talk about this brokenness stuff and cruciform living?
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Well, I'm sure probably plenty of people do. The question is should Christians talk about it?
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And the answer is no, they should not. Steve, I mean I joke about it all the time, broken and wounded.
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In what sense, this is not a trick question, in what sense is there real brokenness that a
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Christian has, real kind of wounds? Are there any, you know, hey, we're broken people, we're messed up people, a lot of things have affected us in the past.
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In what way is that real? But then she goes off and does it some other kind of way and puts it on steroids.
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Well, I mean it's true, right? That every one of us has lived a life that has been affected and infected by sin.
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You know, whether it's our sinful parents or, you know, our sinful relationships just generally speaking in the world, you know, or sin that we've committed or whatever.
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It is true that our lives have been impacted and devastated sometimes by sin.
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I mean, when you think about just hearing about a woman the other day who had been raped and the consequences of that, listen, bad people or bad things happen all the time, right?
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And many bad things have happened to Christians. The question is, do we just dwell on the impact of sin in our life and just can't get out of that rut or do we focus our eyes on Christ and our lives on the
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Word of God? Good words. Mike Gabin -Roth here with Steve Cooley, No Compromise Radio. Steve, when
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I was working with S. Lewis Johnson's material on the book of Romans and Zondervan decided to publish that, remember that bestseller that I had?
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Yes, I do. I think it's number one on Amazon right now. Yeah, the subcategory biblical adaptations of dead theologians.
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I think that's right. It's number one. I was happy for that. I have not received one royalty check for that, but that's okay.
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We didn't do it for the money. Well, I think there's one in the mail somewhere. About 17 cents. But this is true.
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I received when I worked with Zondervan. I actually got a – well, I did get a check from HarperCollins.
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I cashed it though. I thought, why not? No compromise. You didn't want to send it back and just go, forget you.
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Anyway, I received a regular editor. I received a literary editor. I received a theological editor.
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And they were very – and actually Verland, who was my theological editor, he knew S. Lewis personally.
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He understood theology. He knew the difference between historical premillennialism and dispensational premillennialism and amillennialism, etc.
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And wanted to make sure that I was accurately reflecting Lewis's view because something in Romans 11 came up and he wanted to clarify it.
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And here's my point. Who's her theological editor? They're going to be selling millions of copies.
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Answer, they don't have one because ladies love this stuff. Ann Voskamp would not be popular if she didn't have supply -demand things.
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It's the demand for her books because the ladies want this.
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And now men want it. Well, sad. I mean I guess – are there worse things in the world to read than Ann Voskamp?
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Yes. Well, I'm not so sure about that because – I know this is our first disagreement on live radio.
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It's almost like she's messing around with areas she doesn't know anything about. When she says in her book on page 85,
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Peter is walking on the water and when he realizes what's going on, he takes his eyes off of Jesus.
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That's not really the reason why he starts sinking. He stopped believing in himself and Jesus believed in Peter that he could do it.
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Now Peter needs to believe in Peter. That's just awful. That's not like, well, kind of cutesy or whatever.
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You know what? If somebody like this was at the church here, Steve, and they were an excellent writer, we would say, you know what?
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We'd love to have you write. We'd love to come alongside of you. But let's have a little theological education. Let's just get you saved first.
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When I say there are worse things, I was thinking like really, really horrendous things.
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Yeah, but at least those things are self -evidently horrendous. Here you've got,
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I don't know who published this and I don't really care, but it's like this is going to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.
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And she is now, you know, essentially promoted by the Gospel Coalition as somebody good.
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It could even get ahead of your S. Louis Johnson Romans commentary then if it's going to sell that many copies. I know. And maybe if I should change that to wild at heart or something like that,
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I could have the right category. I mean, if R. Scott Clark were here and he started talking about this whole subjective, pietistic, you know,
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I think if we had some confessionalism involved with her, it would probably help. Do you think that would be true?
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Some historic creeds and screeds? It couldn't hurt.
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It couldn't hurt. I mean, what's next for Ann Voskamp? You know, is she going to try to find a way to get the
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Twilight series and theology, you know, together? Well, it's interesting. In 1
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Timothy 3, it says,
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Wait. That is amazing. Wait, that's not right.
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That is the confession of the church. I think you mashed that up. Accepting all broken and wounded people.
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That's a mash. And, you know, here's the thing. I asked you earlier about broken and woundedness, and is there actually something to be said for that?
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If we talk about broken, wounded in light of sin and the fall, I'm all for it.
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But I think today, correct me if I'm wrong, when we discuss sin, excuse me, brokenness and woundedness, it's this psychological makeup that we have that's been hurt somehow.
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Doesn't it seem like that's more the focus? And, I mean, it's this definite psychological stuff, but it's all through a feminine lens too.
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I mean, it is the, you know, it is the ultimate kind of, you know, kind of,
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I mean, she is permanently locked in at 17 years old, you know, and female. Well, in one sense, this book is better than her last one because I don't need to read about flying to Paris to make love to God stuff in her first book.
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That was just totally inappropriate. So I guess this is – we're going in a better direction where we don't have to have erotic use of language found in the first book.
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So why is the Gospel Coalition promoting her? Why is that? Because I think they've lost their –
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OK. It's like a church leader. So a church leader says, you know what? I'll just accept everybody in the church because if I say, you know,
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I'm a cessationist or I'm a Calvinist or something else, a complementarian, then I'm going to exclude
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Arminian charismatic egalitarians. I just have to have this broad appeal.
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And so they've written a lot about the gospel throughout the years. Bravo. But now they're kind of – how do they expand and how do they keep going?
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And you've got the Southern Baptist who basically, you know, run the show there at the Gospel Coalition, a few
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PCA people. They're bringing in Anglican now. They're bringing in all kinds of charismatics. I just think the tent's too big.
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OK. Here's what's going to happen, my prediction. The Gospel Coalition is going to shorten its name to just The Coalition or The Co maybe.
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Yeah, that's how they're functioning now. Yeah. The Co. Well, like, you know, what's the college group that became –
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Crew. Yeah, Crew. So this will just be The Co. Well, all the letters, negativity, the
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Tuesday guy at NoCompromiseRadio .com. Hashtag and Voskamp. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.
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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.
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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.
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You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.